Being Kid

Back to those days when I would just return from school and quickly run down towards the small comics shop. Reading comics was pure bliss. Waiting for new set of comics; Chacha choudhary, Nagraj, Dhruv, Doga were the favorite characters. The story line was simply superb I couldn’t comprehend and tried to figure out what actually is going on and the excitement kept the momentum. I knew the heroes and always wanted that they should get over every bad thing. Reading a thirty page comics those days took around 6-7 hours. Even during exams I used to hide comics inside course books and used to read late till midnight. I remember I was never a good student but I had somehow managed a huge collection counting in thousands. Days were awesome and filled with excitement as school was just a duty that would get over maximum by 2 and you had the rest of the day at leisure. The most worrisome was homework and home coming of dad from office! Friends were always available till 7(telephones were not that frequently used). Roaming freely with no worries (exception being the deadline of 7PM).

Moving on to late 90’s people were now globalised, we started used dial up connection for internet. Every information was at ease; yahoomail, rediffmail were the hot cake. The first thing that I remember was connecting my land line that I learned somehow from a friend and creating my first email id that was purely used for chatting with people I hardly knew. The consequence was huge amount that reflected on the phone bill! But it was pure fun waking till midnight and doing things which were not allowed even on that slow connection. Life was totally different where kids like me spent most of the time sitting in from of that slow processor which took almost a decade responding to the simplest of commands. I moved on to playing Mario, contra and many more such games. Comics now took a back seat which was now kind of obsolete. I missed the hours spent playing gully cricket, meeting friends face to face and all the discussions were now more focused on the hours spent in form of chatting and flirting around with some fake id’s. I moved onto a smarter generation which relied on these machines more than relations.

Global era as you call it, I am in my late twenties and now I am kind of street smart, who is dependent on Google for finding even lame answers, call it smartness or dumbness but in today’s generation Google gives answers for every question you put up. Meeting friends, family is something I have to plan. Reading books is still a hobby but it’s dependent on the work load. I don’t wake up these days early as I have no one around to play those silly pranks. Evenings are well spent in office looking after problems that are not mine and for sure will not benefit me other than financially. I miss missing my friends , hours well spent playing around and breaking glasses with my brother, my father’s pat on the back for everything I was supposed to do, things that were specially cooked by my sister , my mother’s lap and the list goes endless.

Zindagi ki daud me kuch zyada hi aage chala gaya; manzil to mili par raaste khota chala gaya