Reliving my childhood days!

Months later, I guess its finally time to have her updated.The only few things that have been going over my mind for the last couple of months, is what exactly am I doing with my life? Where am I heading with my career? Life seems to be mundane, monotonous,dull and absolutely lack-lustre in a C grade corporate, especially in a support project like mine, where in my technical skills are getting rusty by the day.All,I’ve been doing over the days is cribbing about it, feeling pathetic about things and shedding a few tears to get off the temporary agitation and frustration.I’m getting nowhere with it.So, I decided to get on with doing something I really like doing.It doesn’t really matter if I get my technical skills polished or not, but I definitely have to spend some time doing something that matters to me.After all, its my life.

The first thing that I decided to do is start reading again.I walked down, to our office’s Information Resource Center, a.k.a. library and picked Randy Pausch’s, The Last Lecture, not because it was inspirational, but it was one of the few lighter reads available.The book indeed was inspiring.As a matter of fact, the book inspired me to write this post.Randy talks about how important it is to dream as a child and bigger the dream, the better. I don’t remember if I dreamt big enough, I definitely did not dream to be doing some great virtual reality thing like Randy, but I enjoyed every moment of my childhood.I am very grateful to my granddad who really helped me through the years.When I was in class 4 or so, I remember telling him that I wanted to improve my vocab. I decided to take up the assignment of learning 5 new words a day and opened the dictionary.My granddad said that it doesn’t work that way.Merely memorizing words will definitely not help;you need to learn to use them.So, I suggested making sentences out of the words, so that I get to learn not just the word, but the usage along with it.He was strongly against the idea and wanted me to start reading books. The only way to polish your vocabulary is to read more and more.He got me the Gingerbread man and a couple of small short stories from the local library.There started my reading habit.My first big book, was Oliver Twist, when I was in class 5. Although the book was very depressing, Dickens had made a mark.I started pursuing abridged classics from then.And, not to forget, my granddad was right.My vocab improved by leaps and bounds over the years.

Months later, when I casually strolled into the library I was so familiar with, I walked across the shelves from Jeffrey Archer to the Mills & Boones & Wodehouse and picked a couple of books. I picked my childhood favorite RK Narayan’s classics.Who can forget the legendary writer and his epic town Malgudi. His tales bring in an earthly feel.Simple, crisp, yet captivating; that describes RKN’s writing. Reading his essays brought in fond memories of the Malgudi days, The Messenger’s mail and many more.

Its not just the library or reading, but there are indeed a lot of things which we enjoyed as children, which are missing in the life of today’s kids. I hardly see kids playing outdoors and I’m sure a lot of you will agree with what I say. Kids these days are hooked to the computer,tv,video games and predominantly stay indoors. When we were in school, we had our Chennai-90 gang play games ranging from Cricket and Khabadi to the silliest of games like Ghost in the GraveYard. We didn’t have computers/video games/mobiles.The occasional show on TV was the only source of indoor entertainment.Come vacations and we were permanently outdoors until our mom’s started yelling at us to get back in. I still do occasionally play a game of shuttle with my sis and it indeed brings in memories from those days.

I am still proud to say that I use a cycle, and I have been using it for the last 20 years.I fondly recall the times when we used to make timetables to spend our summer holidays. Maybe theres still a small bit of paper lying somewhere in my shelves, with that Mon-Fri, 7:00 – 9:00 AM – Cycling scribbled in tiny writing.We used to get our ladybirds and cycle around the clean, green lanes of Bessy, and make different shapes on the tennis court inside the CPWD quarters, until the watchman came down growling.Swa,Swe,Nandini and Bhargavi would recall those times.Bliss! Sometimes,when the weather is lovely and when I smell the rain in the air, I enjoy a long ride on my ladybird, cherishing every moment from the past.

In case your feeling down about something, just forget everything. Go crazy, do what you love doing, do what you wanna do.If you just wanna scream at the highest pitch possible and freak a few people out, I’m with you. 1,2,3.. GO!

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