Experiences of a Lifetime

When a senior of mine told me that the only place he hadn’t been driven out of yet, was Connot; I really didn’t think it was possible anyway; that is until the Mr. Arun of Arun store decided to do the honours. “Sheesha toot jaayega yaar!” a frustrated old man letting it off on a bunch of innocent children (read:3rd and 4th yearites), after we decided to go crazy with our crazy ball(the 10 buck thing that bounces madly?) in front of his shop. It was a nice feeling. It reminded me of the days we used go down to ‘play’. Playing would involve being divided into teams for a game of cricket and then being selected by a captain to play in their team which would prove a privilege if you were selected first. (I was the youngest of the lot and was invariably selected last by an unfortunate captain). I would try to do my best to prove them wrong and yes, there were certain days I was declared the hero of the game (grin).This was in Calcutta (as it was called in those years during my 3rd standard)...

It is a small and dingy room. The last rays of the day’s sun are gliding into it through a little window located rather close to the ceiling. The walls of the stuffy room are poorly plastered and the floor is almost bare. In the left corner, a middle aged man is sitting on a white cloth that he has placed on the floor. He is wearing a white kurta pyjaama and an intricately woven cotton cap on his head. He is facing the wall and performing his daily namaaz. Just then there is a commotion outside his room. A hawaldar with a rather large underbelly opens the lock to the cell. He pushes in a small, thin man. Enter Hawaldar and the new prisoner. Hawaldar: There you go. Now, yours is an open and shut case and you'll be free six months from now. You will get two meals a day to your cell. Once a week you will get some fresh air and help provide free labour to the mining factory. Ok? Without waiting for a reply, he hurriedly locks the cell and gives him a warning look. Exit ...

Life could get so much easier had it been like Gtalk wherein you could take a while to think, during which you could always pretend to be doing something ‘important’ after which you would be shown ‘typing’ your message across. Imagine if you could just erase what you shouldn’t have said to someone you care about and then replace it with something more carefully thought out. However, instead of trying to make our real lives electronic-ised by internet influence; we, the human race are evolving more to make our e-lives as real as possible. We started out with e-mails, Video Conferencing, and finally, Instant Messaging, most popularly on Gtalk. Now the latest buzz and the in thing is Google Wave. Yes, Google is omnipresent. I wiki-ed it up (finally, something that is NOT Google!) and this is what I found: Google Wave is "a personal communication and collaboration tool" announced by Google at the Google I/O conference on May 27, 2009. It is a web-based service, computing platfor...