Here I go again. Another visit to a shopping mall and I’m returning with a bag of toys. The range and variety of toys to choose from keeps improving with time. As a girl of three and a half years, my daughter can do many things that she could not do a year back. She is now more interested about certain things than she was a year back. More dexterity, more immunity, more intellect, more curiosity mean lots of choices when it comes to toys. The toys that are just eye catchy or just make some stupid sound are just simply not good enough. Now I need to look for those toys that will also improve her intellect, memory and knowledge but satisfies the most important need: fun.

Buying toys for a three-and-a-half year old can be quite difficult. Today, I went to this mall with an intention of ‘let’s buy her some new toys’. As I entered the floor the first thing I saw was loads and loads of board games. Anything that comes with a ‘rules of play’ is not going to be of any use for her. Rules mean nothing to her. We are only talking about this thing called discipline. I think it will take some time to introduce the word ‘rules’. There were train sets. She is absolutely fascinated by trains. But she already has train sets of various sizes and shapes.

And then there were cars. She has cars, trucks – manually operated, battery operated, remote controlled etc. Almost everything except the ones that run on petrol and diesel. There were kitchen sets. Least interested. I’m talking about myself. Not sure about her. Guns? Same kitchen set feeling here too. How about soft toys? Well the whole of Disney family is at home. There are also their underwater friends and technology cousins. Block building? I won’t be forgiven if I buy another one of that kind. I was not planning to return empy handed anyways.

I was trying to recollect what kind of toys I used to play with. My brain said ‘your search returned 0 results’. Yup, Did I have a lot of toys? No. Was there any favourite toy of mine? No, because I cannot recollect having played with any toys or games when I was a kid. We were a struggling family back then. We had to look after our survival and needs primarily before thinking about comforts and luxuries. I guess toys would have come under the luxuries category back then. So how exactly did I spend my childhood? I think much of our time as a kid was spent in the outdoors, with the other kids, doing stuff and exploring stuff. We had probably lots of freedom which led to adventure. May be, we didn’t need toys as much as kids of these days do (that’s one sign of me growing old).

But my daughter certainly does. She needs toys, games, television, movies, music etc. She can get to see a lot of experiences but she would not have the freedom of experiencing them herself. That’s because she is always under our radar. It’s not just because she is a three-and-a-half year old but also because we’re like that. In particular I am like that. I’d buy her whatever toys and games that she wants if it means she won’t have to go out of sight. In a way, I have created this need for toys and such stuff for her. That’s sad but that’s the way it is. Nowadays (that’s another sign of me growing old), kids don’t grow up learning and experiencing by themselves. They are now left with abundance of nicely packaged second hand experiences.

I was still struggling with my choices in the toys section. My daughter was happily playing in the play area of that mall with complete confidence that I’d buy what she’d like. I did finally pick up a jigsaw puzzle, a time teller book and something else. I truly wonder what I’d be buying in the next round of purchases, whenever it comes!

Ever thought of writing an autobiography? I thought about this only today. I’m sure one does not have to be a celebrity to write one. Who’s going to read that then, you might ask. I’d say, yourself and if you allow, a few more people. I’m almost convinced that all lives are equally very interesting and very random that they all qualify for nice autobiographies. Because it’s not just about what happened in your life but also what went through in your mind while these things were happening around you. But what’s the point in writing an autobiography? You think about your life, you talk about your life, then why not write? If not anything, it could be fun. It’s not a crazy idea. We all have stories to tell, why not write them? As I said, if you start writing the stuff you think and talk, you’d have a book.

Generally, what stays on top of the mind are only the strong memories that really invoke some very strong emotions. There could be so many other things that must have happened. Those things don’t come to the fore unless you make a conscious attempt to think, talk or write about it. We don’t often get to bring back these memories unless we have an opportunity like meeting an old friend, visiting your hometown, visiting your school etc. And what stays in our brain is mostly the recent memories. Recent memories always have a ‘high beta value’. Something good happens, we go overboard, something bad happens we get terribly upset. That’s not the case with old memories. Old memories invariably make us proud. Proud about how we achieved those best moments and proud about how we have come through the worst moments.

If I think of my primary school, I have about half a dozen events most of which is not worth mentioning. In my high school, dozens of stories but again most of them are of less relevance. In my college days, some very interesting events certainly worth recording. My CA days have to be half of the book. Just three years and there were clear directions in various facets – life, family and career. And then comes the office days leading up to the present days. Basically, I can talk about how I was brought up, what kind of kid I was, why some events and stuff that are still vivid and what impact they had on me, what moving around meant to me as a kid, my disappointments as a kid, my backstreet highs, what kind of school I got into, my new friends, my academics, my gully cricket and how sucked at it, my love for chess and how I had that discussion with my father that I’d be a professional chess player, how I cleared the 10th a bit uncharacteristically, how higher secondary sculpted my future career, how I topped the school in 12th and the chicken pox scare just before the exams, oh, I’d keep on going!

If you like writing and if you like to revisit your life, there is no better thing than to write an autobiography. Writing an autobiography is not the same as writing diaries or making a collection of it. A diary might record things as and when they happen. Events and views would be very current. An autobiography is a recollection. It is today’s view on yesterday’s events. I get a chance to evaluate and appreciate what I have done all along. Of course I do that as soon as things happen but more often than not, it would have the bias of the recent memory. Think of a decision that you took 10 years back. The way you evaluate and appreciate that decision now would surely be better than how you’d have done the day after the decision was made or a year after the decision was made. I’d imagine that now you’d have more maturity and better understanding of the problem or the decision than you had back then. It would be so fascinating to see how sometimes things were so right back then look so wrong now and vice versa.

Also, you cannot deny that there is this joy of re-living those memories. Nostalgia is a very common human feeling. Even if you’re having your best times, you can still feel nostalgic. The joy of or longing for re-living these old memories is what makes people to arrange for a re-union, sign up in orkut and facebook, make a trip to the home town, visit those places that you did when they were young and all such stuff. We like to recollect and re-live those moments. When I went for my daughter’s school for her admission, I went back about 15 years. Just like in the movies. Almost remembered the name of the guy who got me kneel down in the sun for couple of hours. Now what I’m pondering is if I can jot down these incidents, events, memories and later on edit, arrange and organise for a meaningful mass of text. And probably, call it part one of my autobiography!

Your autobiography could even be worth sharing. Someone could know more about you. You might end up knowing more about yourself, you never know! Truly, I think, if we set out to write an autobiography, we’d know how much we don’t know about ourselves. You might have to talk a lot about your childhood to your parents, family and friends. You might be searching for that old photograph that you’re never keen to show to others, that handwritten letter which could illegibly soiled, that trophy that you won for God knows what, that gift that you always managed to hide from everyone, that piece of memorabilia that you believe is still there somewhere. To use a cliche, you’ll walk down the memory lane. And trust me, you’ll enjoy that trip.

When I say autobiography, I don’t have a 500-page book in my mind. Just a story of my life so far, whatever number of pages it takes. What will I do with that book? I don’t know what I will do with that but I’d certainly enjoy writing it and that would be, for me, well worth the time. On second thoughts, well, I can gift it to my daughter 15 years later. Not bad, eh?

A long bike-travel is something no one appreciates except the ones who travel. Sometime during my college days, when my cousin and I decided to go to our friend’s place in Cuddalore (30km from Pondicherry), I don’t think anyone appreciated – the family, friends, girlfriends – no one. There were words of caution from everyone, which was useful but no one said ‘Go on. Enjoy. Have fun’. We were warned of the speeding heavy vehicles, crossing cattle, possible fatigue, checking brakes/petrol/air, having to call etc but hardly anyone said ‘you’ll love it’.

You drive a car and you ride a bike. To say that ‘I ride a bike or he rode a bike’ does not come naturally to me. So I might just use ride and drive interchangeably. So, wherever I say drive I mean taking control of the operation of the vehicle

I don’t even remember now what we had told our families about our biking to Cuddalore. Probably, I’d have told my parents that I’d only be a pillion rider and my cousin would have said something in those lines at his place. My parents very reluctantly okayed the idea purely because they know I’ll somehow find my way. It wasn’t actually an ‘okay’ as such. It was more of ‘I advise you not to go. It’s upto you’. Of course we had got dozens of advices about this trip and we ignored some of them, including that of my parents. The fact that we were a bit careless about the plans and preparations made the trip all the more interesting. Execution as per the plan could give us satisfaction but not excitement. If we were so well planned and executed the plan so well, we may not have quite enjoyed the trip.

Both of us had Hero Honda Splendors but we had tuned them to our styles and methods. Since my cousin is a veteran of many bikes, we thought we’ll use my bike for the trip. We also took just one helmet as we thought that must be just enough. We started at 9 in the morning. To start a 200km bike trip on a March morning was not such a great idea. We agreed to swap the duties every half hour. I say duties because the pillion rider too has responsibilities as much as the rider. As a pillion rider, one needs to help the tilt and balance of the vehicle, put some sense into the rider whenever required, keep an eye on the things a rider may not normally have and such stuff. Naturally, both of us loved bike riding which meant neither stuck to the half hour limit.

Onward journey was all fine except one minor incident. It had to be when I was driving because he drives far better than me. In the ECR, you normally see all these road signs like ‘accident zone’, ‘dangerous curve’ and all that. I had negotiated quite a number of ‘dangerous curves’ only to realise they weren’t so dangerous at all. Then came the next one. I under-estimated that one. Because, my estimate was based literally on the ‘track record’. I was driving at 90km/hour and my cousin too failed in his duties as a pillion rider. I just realised that I was going straight at 90km/hour while the road is curving sharply. Some terrific presence of mind with some lightning quick hand-eye co-ordination averted a big danger. The bike skid outside the road a bit and both of us had controlled the bike with a level head. Near miss.

We reached Cuddalore via Pondicherry. Spent a night at my friends place. The next day we started at 2pm so that we don’t have to do night driving. Anything after 6pm is night driving because of no or poor street lights. We thought we could be in Chennai by 5 pm. At about 4 pm, the bike started stuttering a bit. We stopped and checked the tyres, they were fine. I just casually looked at the petrol indicator. Shock horror. Almost zero petrol. We didn’t know if the stuttering was because of the petrol but that was an unbelievable shock. We had no idea how far the bike can go. There were no petrol pumps in sight. Upon checking we were told there is one 20km forward and 15km backward and such stuff. Nothing was nearby and we ran a risk of pushing the bike for an unknown distance. I’d have agreed for half hour shifts with the first shift starting with my cousin.

The light was fading fast. We were stranded. Signals to stop the cars did not work. Now I know why they didn’t work. I don’t stop the car when a stranger signals in a deserted place. We had to think fast. Time was running out. We thought of taking the risk of using up whatever little petrol left in search of more petrol. We found out that the nearest town is Kalpakkam which was a 15 kms away or something. We went on. We had our action points clear. No over use of the clutch or gears. Maintain consistent speed. And hope. Hope that the bike lasts until Kalpakkam or near any other signs of life.

We reached Kalpakkam finally. It was a beautifully built township. It reminded me of Neyveli. The township exists all because of the Kalpakkam atomic power plant. I could see that it was a modern town. It had nice roads cutting in right angles, no high rise buildings and plenty of green too. We started hunting for petrol in there. We were told that there is only one petrol pump that could be open that Sunday evening and even that one could be closing soon. It almost 6pm then, we had to rush. And ‘the’ petrol bunk was at the far end of the Kalpakkam town. Murphy’s law reminded. The bike started stuttering again. After tremendous efforts, we reached the far end of the town and the petrol pump was there. We did not want a sucker punch, we hoped they were open and they had petrol. Our oil exploration was successful.

By the time we returned to the ECR it was almost 7. We were a bit delayed because bugger had to smoke, we had to have some soft drinks. At 7 in the ECR, you’d see nothing. It almost pitch dark. No streetlights. All that guided us was our bike’s headlights and sometimes the reflectors on the road. Most of the distance, we didn’t know where the road ended. We had no clue if we were in the middle of our side of the road or at the cliff of the road. Because of this we had to drive at a slow speed, not more than 40 kms/hour. Every time a heavy vehicle whizzed past our tiny little bike we had to hold our hearts in our mouths. Every now and then, the high beamed headlights of the oncoming vehicles almost blinded us for a few seconds. We still had to change shifts. We took it as a serious responsibility and we truly had to trust each other, to be particular, he had to trust me which luckily he did.

We have always bitched about city traffic. At that point of time, the moment we entered the city, the city traffic was such a comfort. You felt like you’re in the mainstream. The air of security was back. Traffic jams, horns blaring everywhere, gestures and abuses – man, we’re back, we’re home! It’s a nice trip to recollect. Excitement bordering on a bit of danger. The key things were that we were prepared for the worst case scenario if we didn’t get the petrol and when we had drive in the dark, we were very determined of how to drive and how not to drive.

What am I trying to tell you with this post? Nothing. I just thought I’ll write about this today.

I’ve been wearing spectacles since I was 10. To wear spectacles at that young age is one of the most annoying things to happen. That artificial piece of thing on my body did not please me at all. It’s not like your clothes, watches or caps. There’s a dependency on glasses. You depend on them and you need them. Without them I could not be effective or useful. As a young boy suddenly you’ll feel like you’re a bit physically challenged. It’s never that easy to play any of the sports with the glasses on. I now feel that may be that’s why I was hooked on to chess.

I loved playing cricket. I was never a good player though. I was average at best. I had poor technique and footwork in batting. I was a decent bowler I guess. In fielding, I was hopeless. My wearing glasses did nothing to improve my cricketing skills or form. It’s difficult to bowl with your glasses on. You run the risk of ‘elbowing’ the glasses. So, the underarm and overarm versions of bowling suited me well. While batting, I always dreaded the quicker ball and wearing glasses gave me that unexplainable insecurity.

Once I even had my glasses broken by a hard cricket ball travelling at some speed. May be, if I was a better batsman I would not have put all the blame on my glasses. I didn’t have this thing called ‘hand-eye’ co-ordination. It was so bad that it was like the hands and eyes belonged to different people. My fielding was a joke too. My reflexes were never quick enough to get my palms together for a catch. Especially when the ball is skied up, I used to position myself so well in the zone, only to see the ball pop out of my hand. So my positioning was all right, it’s just that my palms were executing the brain’s instructions quick enough. Not many would realise that when a ball is up in the air, the first feeling you get is to protect your glasses from the falling ball. Easier way to achieve it would be to catch the ball but didn’t I tell you my fielding was a joke?

As a young boy, you had to run a lot. Run in the playground, run to school, run to home, run to the shop, boys don’t simply walk. Running with the glasses on can never be as fast as otherwise. Once again, the awareness of the glass reminds you that you can’t run wild. Holding the glasses with one hand and using the other one for aero dynamic movements was not just good enough. The most embarrassing thing was to see your glasses fall off on the road and then with blurred vision looking around all over to see where it fell. So bloody humiliating it is. Used to feel like a sick old man trying to reach out for his walking stick.

Physical difficulties aside, there was something else too. Bespectacled people were everyone’s bunnies. That was a thing to be made fun of. There’s a range of crazy nicknames and funny one-liners to ridicule the ‘glassers’. By the way, there is no single simple word in English for a bespectacled man. And I don’t want to keep writing this word ‘bepsetcalced’ word because the letters for this word are spread across the keyboard increasing the chances for typos by this untrained ‘typer’. So, let me call them ‘glassers’. To be ridiculed for wearing glasses is the worst insult for a glasser. Most annoying and most irritating. I don’t know if this is still the case in schools. There was also this misconception that the glassers would be very studious and teachers’ pets. That did not help us in joining the mischievous mainstream. Not every glasser wore glasses because they were reading every book published. I used to sit very close to the television and I managed to do this so effectively that I had to enter the glasshood as early as 10 years of age.

In college days, glasses posed me a different problem. I couldn’t wear sun glasses. Goddammit! I was always crazy about sun glasses and I thought I’d look good with sun glasses on. But I could never wear them. The sad part is even if I were to try sun glasses, I wouldn’t know how I look. I’ll hear my friends saying that it’s good and all but I could only believe them. The best I could do was to get myself photographed with sun glasses on. Then I started believing the results of some research that said sun glasses are bad for health.

The glasses have become almost a part of my body now. It’s literally true because the power of my glasses have grown with me. I started with a minus 2.5 and right now my left eye is minus 5.5 and right eye is minus 6.5. Mathematically speaking, the power has reduced but I know that it has increased. But I would never understand how the left and right eye have different powers. There is something my left eye has managed that the right eye did not learn. Poor, I thought I only had a problem of hand-eye co-ordination. If I don’t have my glasses, my life comes to a standstill. You have come close to kissing distance for me to recognise you.

For all the troubles I’ve gone through because of glasses, I must say that I grown to love wearing glasses. Sometimes it’s plain lucky that people presume glassers for learned, educated, intellectual and sophisticated men. Good for us. We can continue to wonder how to locate ‘my documents’ while people mistake us for partitioning the hard disk.

Have you ever boarded a train with no destination in mind? I have. Travel for the sake of travel. I think you should love travelling to be able to do that. When you travel with no destination in mind, you can feel lighter (not just from the baggage pov). You can take time to appreciate things better. You have no worry of whether you’ll sleep off, you have no doubts of which side to alight etc. If the train gets too crowded or makes you uncomfortable, you can always get down and catch another train. Anyway, it’s not that you have a particular direction or destination.

This travel I refer to, happened about 10 years back. Me and my cousin boarded a train with an idea of going to our hometown. Few minutes into the travel, strangely, we agreed that we drop the idea of getting down at the destination. We thought we will just get down in the last station and catch the train back home. Or basically, we were ready to get down anywhere and go anywhere. Go anywhere but return home by evening. I must tell you, it was so much fun. We felt so free.

I’m sure many won’t do that and even if they do that they won’t really feel proud talking about it. Imagine yourself travelling just like that. You gotta update someone on your travel right? You need to explain to someone what you gained out of the travel. You need to convince others why you did something that you wanted to do. Isn’t it?

I know some people say that they want to be like birds. Being able to fly anywhere, to feel free with no hurdles or hindrances whatsoever. In fact, a flying bird is a symbol of freedom. We may not be as free as the bird but you know what, we are more free than we might think. Birds go wherever they want to. Same applies to you and me. We are as free as we think we are. I know, we have certain roles and responsibilities that restrict our freedom but we tend exaggerate this. The truth is we need a reason, a tangible reason, for everything that we do. If you board a train, you need to go somewhere and to do something. We need a real, visible output at the end of any process. May be that’s because all these things are seen as a process. Also because, you are being watched. By everyone around you. You need to explain things that you do.

I want to be able to do things that need not give anything to me tangible. I may not want to get any financial, social or reputational benefit out of everything I do. Do things that give me peace, calm and joy. Most probably these things won’t be very popular. They will attract remarks like “are you crazy?”. I’m an xbox console addict. When I play on xbox, that does not help anyone but me. I don’t hone any ‘useful’ skill, I don’t improve my knowledge, I don’t ‘gain’ anything. But that’s my time. I don’t care if that helps me or not. I don’t care even if people say I’m wasting my time on it. That’s my private time. Try applying this to travel, you’ll feel as free as a bird.

In fact, for everything that we do, including blogging, we have an audience in mind. Being at office, being at home, being with friends, we play to the audience all the time. Aren’t you tired of playing to the gallery? How about doing things that are just for ourselves? That don’t have to necessarily enhance your health, finance and all that stuff. Just doing things for the heck of it, because you love it and you want it. For all that I talk about destination-less travel, I never did it more than once. But the one time I did ‘travel to nowhere’, I realised the joy of it. That joy need not always come from such travels. Just have to do things with the sense of absolute freedom with a sense of I, me, myself.

Back in my high school days, we were made to believe that if we didn’t learn typewriting and/or shorthand, we wouldn’t have a career. To be honest, even when I was in the last year of my school I had little idea of where my career would be. Anyway, we guys used to flock the institutes to learn shorthand and typewriting. Most guys from boys’ school went to these institutes also because that’s where it is co-ed. The fact that you could write love letters in shorthand excited one and all. Typewriting and shorthand were considered as special skills. Some could type 60 words per minute and some wouldn’t even be able to push the keys hard enough to see the ink on paper. You can guess where I would have fallen.

I was a complete failure at typewriting. I did join the typewriting classes but it did not even last a week. I decided to drop out because of two reasons. One, I thought it was a bit too clerical for my liking. I came to a conclusion that my typewriting ability or the lack of it would never have an impact on my career. Two, as you’ve found out by now, I couldn’t type. As simple as that. The typewriter was such a hard mechanical device that lacked style and sophistication. I thought it was an everlasting symbol of industrial revolution. I was way too gentle for that. I just couldn’t do it. That’s not to say I’m not dexterous. I’m a console addict, can beat you to death in an xbox game. Typewriter was not my thing.

Meanwhile, I was always crazy about shorthand. There was something special about shorthand. That was like learning a new language. A language only a handful would know. In a way, it was also a code language. It’s fun to write stuff that not all mortals can understand. For some reason that I don’t remember, I never joined the shorthand classes. But I had this shorthand book that was picked up in a platform shop. I tried to learn it myself. It needed a lot of patience than I had expected. I could not graduate beyond cat, mat and rat.

About 15 years later, both typewriting and shorthand seem like a dying skill. There are not many institutes and not many willing to learn. Sometime in the last few years, I’ve learnt to type. I’m not the fastest typer (I hate the word ‘typist’) but I not a rabbit either. Typing with the computer keyboard gives me a lot of pleasure than with the typewriter. In terms of convenience, the computer keyboard is only a million times better. Flat keyboards with soft touch key pads. Also thank God for backspace, copy, paste and all that stuff. The most important thing is again the sophistication I was talking about. The other plus I see is that, with the keyboard, I can see and read what I type. The pleasure of admiring your own creation. With typewriter, the paper is arrested inside the metal frames and I feel like I’m punishing the paper with hammering hits. It’s like canning the paper and if you’re poor at writing, it’s even worse, pity the paper. I know there are people who still love the typewriter. As an invention, it is just brilliant and its design is absolutely original. In terms of usage, I think it’s slowly moving to the museums.

I still have the fascination towards shorthand. It will always be in the list of things that I always wanted to do but never did. One of the less obscene things in the list. I think shorthand has already gone out of fashion and business. Dictaphones have completely eliminated the need for learning this not-so-easy skill which requires constant practice to stay upto speed. With dictaphones, you just have to switch it on and you don’t have to go to institutes to learn how to switch it on. I don’t know if anyone still learns or practices shorthand. It’s a pity that shorthand is disappearing. There is something romantic about it.

I’m not sure if all those experts in typewriting and shorthand still stand to benefit from their skill. I know most of those institutes turned into computer education centres. At least the typewriting/shorthand institutes charged less. I’m not sad that these are going out of existence. I’m just amazed at the pace of technological development that has rendered these ‘once-career-defining’ skills to something useless in a matter of 10 to 15 years. I’m just 30 and certain things that I’ve seen and experienced back then now would look like a scene from those black and white movies. Can I say mobiles that we use now may go out of existence (or develop into something else) in another 15 years?