However, a significant percentage of people will spend in on a hobby, like Photography. They’ll buy equipment like lenses, cameras and bags worth thousands and thousands of rupees. And what is the end result? Pictures. I didn’t get this, so I decided to ask a photography-enthusiast friend, Drinivas, to understand what is going on.

Me: “Why do you click so many pictures?”

“It’s awesome. Just look at how beautiful the landscape is here”, he said, showing me pictures from his most recent “photo walk”.

Why don’t you just do a Google Image search for “beautiful landscapes”? You’ll get so many pictures that are just as beautiful.

“It’s not the same thing!” the friend says, shrugging me off. “This is my creation. My name is on this picture.”

“You can just Photoshop the Google Image results, you know, and put your name on the picture. Problem solved!”

“You can’t do that. There is so much beauty out there. I want to capture it.”

“I thought it was inner beauty that was important?”

After several failed attempts at communicating the value of clicking your own pictures, Drinivas decided that he should  show me the beauty of the world out there, and invited me to one of these Photo-walks.

Drinivas: “Lets do a photo walk. Why don’t we go to Cubbon park at dawn tomorrow?”

Me: “Dawn? What’s that… like 9:30 am?”

Drinivas: “BE THERE AT 6AM”

Me: “That’s disturbing!”

A warning to all readers: A photo walk is NOT where hot fashion models walk on a ramp to get their photos taken, as any normal person would expect. Instead, it is a group of photo-nerds walking about, clicking pictures of bees, drains and flowers. I learned this AFTER I showed up at the photo walk, which is unfortunate, because I was really looking forward to some fashion.

I’d bought a point-and-shoot camera with me – You know, one of those cheap Cannon cameras that fit in my shirt pocket. As everyone had assembled, they started the ritual unpacking on their camera bags. They were taking out these huge lenses, some as big as a cricket bat. Following the extraction of the lenses from the bags, the next step, I deduced, was to screw everything together, which was another long and interesting ritual. It was like watching the old-timers deal with these giant computing machines, and I was eager to show off to these folks that they make cameras much smaller now, like the one I have in my pocket.

“You know, they make cameras smaller these days” I said loudly to the group in general, taking out my credit-card-sized camera. “They even fit in your shirt pocket, so you don’t have to carry around a huge bag for your camera!”

There was a collective gasp from the group. They all suddenly went silent. Everyone was staring at me.

What had I done now?

“Put that tiny thing back in your pocket!” he growled to me.  There were hushed whispers all around, like they had just seen Voldemort.

“What?” I said to Drinivas. “What just happened?”

“You can’t bring a small camera here. You’re embarrassing me. Here, use my spare camera”, Drinivas said, handing me a 3-foot-long camera-plus-lens contraption.

“Why? I like my Camera!” I protested, but he shoved the huge thing into my face.

I lugged around the camera, which must have weighed like 200 Kgs. Each time we came across an “interesting” site – Like a bird or a puddle of water on the road, the whole group would gather around furiously clicking pictures. I tried to click pictures of a couple of birds, but by the time I set up the camera and configured all the settings and did the focusing etc… etc.., the bird had decided that it couldn’t wait around for me to get my act together, and it flew away.

The whole photo walk was a disappointing experience for me, mainly because all my pictures looked like they were clicked by an arthritic monkey. Drinivas, however, seemed to do OK. Check out his pictures here.

I still maintain doing a Google search for “bird pictures” is easier than waking up at 5 AM and chasing after impatient birds.

Big, BIG mistake.

People inexperienced in the art of gifting will often make serious mistakes, but a blunder of this scale is going to haunt him a lifetime. To understand why this is a massive mistake, read on.

You see, the ritual of gift giving is really an exercise in expectations management. The main problem with gifting is expectations escalation – If you give a gift of a certain value to your better half, then the expectation of a gift of greater value is automatically generated for the next year, which is a spiral that can only end in pain and suffering. Similar to Moore’s law in the field of computers that says that processing power doubles every 18 months, I have invented The Pointless Law of Gift Management, which states that “The expectations of the value of a gift doubles every year”. If the expectations are not actively managed, then the they can quickly escalate into unmanageable levels, resulting in the aforementioned pain and suffering.

Let us illustrate this with the example of my friend, who bought the Galaxy S II phone. He bought this as an engagement gift, which will raise the expectations of a wedding gift to a trip for two to Greece. If that is the wedding gift, then the first anniversary gift will have to be a diamond necklace, which will require the 2nd anniversary gift to be a trip on a private jet. By the time the 3rd anniversary comes around, my friend will need to buy Sri Lanka and gift it to his fiancee for her expectations to be met. I don’t think he’s going to be able to buy Sri Lanka, at which point the expectations will come crashing down, resulting in a lot of pain and suffering for my friend.

But don’t worry, my fellow compatriots. I have figured out a way out of this conundrum. The key is the first gift. It has to be cheap enough, so that the increase in expectations of the value will be offset by inflation, resulting in the same real value for the gift for eternity. Clever, eh?

I have taken my own advice in this area. The first gift I bought The Girlfriend was a keychain. Which was followed by a Masala Dosa the next year, followed up with the thoughtful gift of a Nickname the next year and so on. As you can see, The Wife’s expectations of gift are so lowered, that for the next year, even if I buy her a litre of petrol for her car, she’ll be very pleased with me.

Coming back to my friend – There’s no real way out for him. His only option is to cut his losses, and take the hit of pain and suffering right now, so that the expectations for the rest of his life can be managed properly. I would recommend that he gift her half-a-bar of snickers as a wedding present, which will reset her expectations back to a manageable level. Otherwise, he’s looking at a painful 3rd anniversary.

The One-Hand-Pitch-Catch Out

This rule was born out of necessity because some of the older guys would never get out, and kept hitting the ball over our heads. To counter that, we used the one-hand-pitch-catch rule. This meant that a batsman could be out even if the fielder caught the ball after one bounce, but he had to use only one hand. Also, the ball bouncing off of trees, parked cars and uncles that were walking by did not count as a “pitch”. Our street had lots of trees, so we’d run around like monkeys waiting for mangoes to fall off the tree when a ball was hit into it, in the hope of catching it as it falls.

The-Ball-Is-Too-Fast-Appeal-And-Subsequent-Fight

Occasionally, the batsman would complain that a bowler threw the ball too fast, the bowler would deny it and invoke the “your-guy-did-it-too” argument, which would subsequently deteriorate into name calling and hurtling of various other multi-lingual abuses. Eventually though, the argument would be settled, and just as the bowler was about to throw the next ball, he’d ask “So what’s the score?”. Unfortunately, because of the previous argument, everyone would have forgotten what the score was, and the inquiry regarding what it is would lead to yet another argument with the same set of name calling and multi-lingual abuses.

Direct-Hit into House is Out

This rule was forced upon us by the next-door uncle, who’s window we hit one too many times. The other problem was that if the ball went into a house, someone had to jump the compound to get the ball back, which was a decidedly boring thing to do. Eventually, we agreed that the batsman that hit the ball into a house was responsible for getting it back, unless it went into the house with the dogs, in which case the kid from that house got it back, but he got double batting the next time.

Batting-side-Wicket-keeper and the Traitor Conundrum

Because we would never have enough players, the batting side would usually supply the wicket keeper. Normally, this is not a problem, but as soon as the batsman nicked a ball into the hands of the wicket keeper, and he caught it, the trouble would start. There would be a strong accusation that the wicket keeper was a traitor for actually holding on to the catch, which would cause the bowling side to come to the defense of the wicket keeper, causing even more accusations of him being a double-agent and a spy. This would often times lead to the wicketkeeper to defect teams, leading to an imbalance  in the number of players on each team, and could only be set right by the creation of the position of the infamous “Joker”.

The Glass-Break Run-Away Protocol

This was the only time when all the kids would come together – When someone eventually broke a glass window. The protocol of reaction in this situation was clear and well communicated. First, the wicket keeper was responsible for taking the stumps out and running away with them. The batsman was responsible for holding on to the bat for 3 days, since we’d not be allowed to play in the street for 3 days while the dust settles down. All of us would form small groups, and each group would run off into the closest house, turning on Cartoon Network, and mass-pretending like everyone was watching TV the whole time. The ball, of course, is disowned and sacrificed in order to protect our identities.Eventually, the parents would come around with the ball trying to find out who the owner of the ball was so that the kid could be punished, but we were prepared for that. Each ball that we bought was immediately inscribed with the name of a non-existent kid. Planning ahead pays!

Those were the magical days!

The Wife: “Do you want to clean the ceiling fans?”
Me: “Not one bit”

And I returned my nose back into the adventures of Asterix, just as he was about to thrash up Julius Ceaser’s bodyguards. The comic book was suddenly snatched from my hands.

The Wife: “Let me rephrase… I need you to clean the ceiling fan.”
Me: “But… What for?”
The Wife: “My parents are coming over for dinner. We need the house to be spic and span”
Me: “Don’t worry, they’re never going to look up. It doesn’t matter how dirty the ceiling fan is”
The Wife: “Please… That’s not true”
Me: “Nobody looks at the ceiling. Unless you make them choke on the food. Hehehehe”
The Wife: <She gives me The Look™>
Me: “Err… OK, quick, without looking up. What color is the ceiling?”
The Wife: “Hmm…. White?”

Truthfully, I’ve never noticed the color of the walls, let alone of the ceiling. But wait… She’s staring straight at me as well. She doesn’t know the color of the ceiling either. I’m scared to look up, because I don’t want to be the idiot that doesn’t know what color our house is. But neither does she. Oh dear, this has turned into a staring contest. We’re looking straight at each other. She’s not even blinking! Oh my God! She’s going to look up at the ceiling as soon as I blink. I can’t let her have that. I continue to stare harder.

She’s now giving me the “I’ll-kill-you-if-you’re-wrong look”.
I counter with a “There’s-still-a-small-possibility-I-might-be-right look”.
She turns it into a “You’re-going-to-pay-for-this-dearly look”
I meekly offer a “Maybe-we-can-come-to-some-sort-of-agreement-? look”

The contest comes to a premature end with my intellectual surrender, and we both look up at the ceiling. Damn it. It’s white.

The Wife: “Right. Get up on that chair and clean the fan”

Sun Tzu, the author of the great treatise on marital arguments called “The Art of War”, offers some helpful advice in this scenario: “When cornered by the Tiger, act like a Penguin.” I’m not entirely sure what that means, but I think it means you slime away like a penguin when asked to do any work. Therefore, it’s time to go into backup plan.

Me: “Why don’t we just turn on the fan? That way, no one can see the dirt.”
The Wife: “What?”
Me: “See… When the fan is rotating, you can’t really see the dirt on it – It’s all blurred!”
The Wife: “That’s not the solution”
Me: “But its ONE solution. One that works too”
The Wife: “But the dirt will still be there…”
Me: “…and no one will be able to see it. Problem solved, right?”
The Wife: “Yes, but the dirt will still be there.”
Me: “Don’t worry, it’ll be our little secret. Literally our Dirty Little Secret. Wink-Wink. Hahaha…”

Oh dear. There’s that look again. That tingling feeling of impending doom crosses me. But this is not the time to give into tingliness. Sun Tzu and I are going to fight this out, fight it out to the end. The damn ceiling fan is not going to outwit me. I mean, what does it say about me if I let a stupid fan – all it does all day is go round-and-round – defeat me. Surrender is not an option.

I am going to win this one.

[Update - Part 2 is here]

As usual, the answer comes from Shahrukh Khan. Have you seen that SRK movie – Rab Ne Bana de Jodi? It’s this epic movie where Shahrukh Khan goes undercover as a dancer. SRK and I have similar problems – We’re both trying to do shady things while protecting our legitimate careers. SRK is trying to protect his career in the electricity company, and I’m trying to protect my life against all the people that I’ve pissed off. Thinking about it, Batman, SRK and I are in the same boat here. We’re all doing this great service to humanity by risking our lives, but we need to protect ourselves from the evils of society. Batman has the Joker to worry about, SRK has the US immigration department to worry about, and I have The Wife to worry about.

Anyway, The way SRK solves the problem in the movie is totally brilliant! He – get this – stops wearing glasses and taadaaaaa! He becomes a brand new guy that no one in his regular life can recognize. Totally inspired! What brilliance!

I was going to use this same strategy, but unfortunately I don’t wear glasses. So instead, I decided to continue to write this blog under a pseudoname. Enter PowerPanda!

That’s right – I am now the PowerPanda. @powerpanda7 on Twitter. PowerPanda has all my superpowers, so you shouldn’t really see a change in what gets written here. Now, I can say whatever I want here without any fear that I might one day get a letter filled with white powder sent by some deranged character. Now, to be completely fair, my name has appeared in several blog posts here, and there’s at least one picture. But no matter. This is the internet, and as everyone knows, the internet is the safest place to lock away secrets. My secret is safe here.

So, ladies and gentlemen, the time has come to let the PowerPanda take over. Behold, The power of the panda.

Anyway, as the discussion progressed, I made a very persuasive and passionate argument explaining my position. I think my argument was very logical and consistent, but the wife disagreed, and her exact words, I believe were: “You’re full of nonsense!!”

So here is where I need your help, faithful readers of my blog. My brilliant argument for buying BMWs is below. Read it, and tell me whether you agree with it or not! Make me proud!

Argument for buying fancy expensive cars:

We can generally agree that I am young and foolish. And young and foolish is the best time to buy expensive cars, because if I become old and wise by the time I buy a BMW, I will know better than to waste money on ostentatious display of automotive excess. If I gain wisdom before I gain a BMW, other priorities of life like owning a house, saving for retirement and children’s educations will take priority over my precious BMW. Therefore, it follows that the main priority of my life should be buying a BMW.

There is an advertisement for an insurance company, I think, that shows a young man wanting to spend money on himself, but doesn’t because he ends up thinking about his wife, his kids etc… You know what happens to that man at the end of the ad? He jumps into a river! I don’t know if he drowns or not, but the important thing is that he doesn’t get his Mercedes.

No one wants to drown in a river. Therefore, one must strive to buy a Mercedes as soon as one can to avoid a tragic end like the man from the advertisement.

So, my dear readers. Are you convinced? Is buying a BMW the sole purpose of life? Let me know in the comments!

So, since the last time we checked in with Chitradeep Chetty, he’s been off to the jungles of Bandipur several times and has photographed several tigers. He’s also been showing off these pictures, especially after some of them got published.

A couple of months ago, he invited me, the wife, and a group of other friends to go to his sasuraal (bandipur). He said it would be great, he could get us inside the forest and we could see tigers and other wildlife. It sounded interesting and off we went.

So we’re in the forest on a safari. The forest itself was actually quite beautiful. There were lots and lots of trees and flowers and branches and leaves… but no tigers. There were 8 of us, and after a while, we started getting impatient, and started chatting about the good old days. This upset Chitradeep.

Chitradeep: “Sshhh… guys. Don’t talk loudly in the jungle.”
Me: <in a hushed voice>: “Why?”
Chitradeep: <getting more annoyed, dripping with sarcasm>: “Because the tigers are talking on their phones and you are disturbing them. Huh!”
Me: “That’s absurd…. How are the tigers getting signal here, deep in the jungle?”

There was an awkward silence that followed, where everyone wanted to laugh, but Chitradeep was staring us down, and we settled for a hushed giggle.

We continued to wander in the jungle, and we occasionally saw some birds. And then we saw a big buffalo type thing. It looked just like the buffaloes you can see on the streets of Bangalore, but apparently this one was special, so we all respectfully nodded our appreciation. After a while, we went and waited by a watering hole, hoping that some wildlife will turn up.

We waited, but apparently the animals were not coming. We began to speculate why.
Me: “Why aren’t the elephants coming to drink?”
AJ: “They will come to drink after an hour.”
Me: “How do you know?”
AJ: “Happy hour starts then.”

More hushed giggles and more staring by Chitradeep.

We waited for some more time, and the elephants finally came. It was pretty cool. They were so big and majestic. Several of them, including 3 cute little baby elephants. They came to the water, hung around there for a while and socialized. (With each other, not with us.)

And then, they started to do something crazy. They started picking up mud and throwing it on themselves. Disgusting. That too just after washing themselves. The baby elephants were also rolling in the mud, covering themselves up with dirt.

Me: “That’s disgusting. Why are they doing that?”
Chitradeep: “They do it to protect themselves. The mud acts like a sunscreen to their skin.”
PR: “It doesn’t seem to be working. Look how dark their skin still is.”

More giggles and more staring by Chiradeep.

We started moving along the jungle track when suddenly the driver jammed on the brakes. He shut off the engine. Chitradeep Chetty turned back and motioned us to keep quite. Silence. Just the sounds of the jungle. Everyone is frozen in their seats. We’re all frantically looking around to see what we have run up against. Chitradeep Chetty gets out of the jeep gingerly. He’s stepping very carefully away from the Jeep. He turns back and motions us to come out the jeep slowly and without making noise. We walk up to him. Silence. He points his hand to the ground just around a bush. We peek our heads. And there it is.

Tiger droppings.

I’m like: “What the hell?” and Chitrdeep is all excited that he has seen tiger shit today. It’s like once in a week occurrence here in Bandipur, apparently. After excitingly starting at it for a while, we return back to the lodge, all the while Chitradeep is in high spirits, and as soon as we reach, he goes off to discuss today’s catch with his jungle-lodge buddies.

So, to summarize our trip: We came, we saw, and we smelt.

Anyhow, the trip was quite fun. We saw a few more animals, several peacocks and still more elephants. But no tigers or leopards. Chitradeep Chetty has assured us that the next time we come, he will make sure to schedule a meeting in the tiger’s calendars.

Update: Check out Chitradeep’s wildlife photos here, and judge for yourself if this is a scam!

The Wife ordered me to get a haircut the other day. I usually follow orders, but with this particular order, I was hesitant. You see, I hate going to barbers. I have this (somewhat unreasonable, but highly plausible) feeling that barbers are agents of an alien army, and that they are just waiting for the right time to start their war on us humans. I don’t want to be in the barber shop when this happens. You’re laughing, but I have plenty of evidence for my theory (more on that in a later post).

Anyway, so the wife was getting increasingly frustrated with me over this, and the more I resisted, the more insistent she became. Eventually, to break the deadlock, she came up with a new idea.

Wife: “Why don’t you go see a stylist?”
Me: “Eh?”
Wife: “I’ll get you an appointment at one of these upscale cutting salons. You’ll enjoy it. They’ll give you the five star treatment!”
Me: “Ohh… I don’t know…”
Wife: “I’ll take that as a ‘YES’”.

And so, she got me an appointment at ‘Javed Habib’ the next day. I resigned to me fate, thinking “How bad can it be?”

I’d obviously never been to a “stylist studio” before.

As I walked into their “shop”, the staircase was full of life sized pictures of small heads with large amounts of hair on them. Even their lounge was stuffed with magazines like “Style Today” or “Hair Haute”. Overall, they’d managed to create a overwhelming atmosphere of intimidation that was designed to keep regular people like me outside. But I had broken through! They were not going to be happy.

The receptionist greeted us. “Welcome to Javid Habib Ma’am”. She greeted the wife. Then she looked at me, unsure of what to say. “We have valet parking outside!”. Great. She thought I was the driver.

“I know. I’ll remember to tip later.”

Shock on the face of the receptionist. Disarray on the face of the wife. Confusion on my face.

Nervous laughter everywhere.

Receptionist: “Right….Heheh… This way… err… Sir?”

She led me through the studio to meet the “stylist” who was going to work on my head. This dude was something to look at.  He had a super-fancy hair style, with lots of spikes and channels running all over his head. Quite a sight.

But the minute he saw me, all the blood drained from his face. He couldn’t believe a peasant like me could show up at his fancy studio.

Stylist Dude: “Err… Sure, OK. Why don’t you sit down” he says to me. I obidiently sit down. He runs his hands through my hair, presumably trying to come up with a plan of action for my makeover.

Stylist Dude: “Do you use badam oil?”
Me: “To drink or put on my head?”

I meant it as a serious question, but he just laughed it off, thinking I was trying to be clever.

Stylist Dude: “Do you apply any gel?”
Me: “Gel?”
Stylist Dude: “Or maybe some Conditioning Serum?”
Me: “What is Serum?”

And that was too much for him. A grave expression of shock came over his face as he exclaimed “YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT SEREUM IS?!?” He stopped what he was doing, gave me a scandalized look, wondering if I were a caveman that had time travelled to the 21st century. Everyone in the studio stopped what they were doing and started staring at me.

Me: “Huh…I know what a comb is. Lets start there.”

He turned to the wife with an exasperated look. He had clearly given up on me. My wife rolled her eyes, as if saying “Look what I have to put up with everyday”, and then proceeded to talk to him directly. The two started discussing what style I should wear, whether step-cuts and swirls and asymmetrical length cuts would suit “My Look”. After several minutes of careful deliberation, they decided on a style for me. I was out of the loop for all this time, mostly looking at the ceiling trying not to make eye contact with anyone else. I didn’t understand a word of what they were saying, but it sounded like intelligent conversation to me.

After everything was decided, he got to work. For the next 45 minutes, he clipped and chopped, alternately muttering curses at my poor old barber and instructing me to “grow my side-locks another 5 mm” or “use egg yoke 5 minutes after taking a bath”. I just nodded along.

Eventually he was done. He seemed pretty happy, and the wife seemed happy too. To be fair, I was looking presentable for once. “This is good!”, I thought. That feeling, however, was short lived until he presented me with the bill, that was more than what I’d spent on shampoos and haircuts combined for the past 2 years. I reluctantly paid, and left, somewhat happy that I had got a makeover and had a swanky new hairstyle!

I must point out, however, that the style disappeared the next day, and however much I tried, I couldn’t comb my hair the way he had, and I just can’t make it look like the day before. My hairstyle is back to the state it was – uncombed and haphazard.

Update: Here’s my before and after picture!

Hairstyle BeforeAfter

We eagerly popped in the Basic Instinct Video CD into the computer driver, and eagerly started up the computer to watch what was rumored to be the greatest movie of all time. But the computer just frustrated us. It was too slow to play the cutting-edge-at-the-time MPEG video that was on the disk. The computer constantly stuttered and jerked, and couldn’t  manage to play the movie smoothly. Getting your hopes up and meeting with disappointment like that is very frustrating, and encourages people to do stupid things. We knew that we had to make the computer faster, and that there was a setting on the motherboard that would boost the speed of the CPU all the way to 66 MHz. I suggested we should enable that setting, so that the computer would become faster, and we could watch the movie. But my friend was skeptical that would work.

Friend: “If the computer could run faster, why would Intel make it run slower on purpose?”
Me: “Because Intel is stupid. They probably don’t know it can run faster.”
Friend: “What? But they made the CPU! How can they not know?”
Me: “Look… Do you know how your Kidney works? The kidney is inside you, but that doesn’t mean you know how it works.”
Friend: “Hmmm….Good point!”
Me: “Of course! The CPU is just like a Kidney. We’re just making the kidney do whatever it does, only faster. Its that simple!”

And so, we shut down the computer and flipped the switch on the motherboard, and started up the computer. The computer booted up fine, and when windows started, we started the movie. This time it played brilliantly! SUCCESS! HAHahahaha!”

We settled in to watch the famous “Basic Instinct” movie. I ran to the kitchen and quickly made some popcorn, you know, to make the movie experience more authentic.

The movie started. Just 2 minutes into the movie, my friend started sniffing around, trying to smell something.
Friend: “Do you smell something burning?”
Me: “Its just the popcorn.”
Friend: “No… I think something is really burning.”
Me (lost in the movie): “Shhh… This is the good part… Look…”

Sharon Stone, the heroine of the movie, sits down on the chair in the police station and lights up a cigarette. The policeman asks her a question and… FLASH… BLUE SCREEN!

The computer crashed! The screen reads “Windows has encountered a fatal error and has shut down to limit damage to your Computer!”. What the hell? Limit Damage to the computer? What damage?

Just then, from the corner of my eye, I see a white smokey thing coming out from the back of the computer cabinet. Uh Oh. This is not looking good. I open up the case of the computer to see what’s smoking inside the computer. The case is very hot to touch. And just as I take out the side cover of the computer… BOOOOM… a fog of white smoke comes out of the computer!

Me (Coughing) : “EEiiikkees!!! WHAT IS THIS!!!!”
Friend: “Cough.Cough… I think someone is coming… COUGH COUGH!”

The timing couldn’t be worse. My parents have just returned back home. I can hear them as they walk in.

Dad: “Something smells weird… Something is burning!”

He walks straight into my room. By this time, I’ve had the presence of mind to pull the power cable off, but its too late. The room is filled with smoke!

Dad: “WHAT IS HAPPENING?!?!”
Me: “Hi Dad. What’s up? How is Murthy uncle?”
Dad: “Is the… Oh No! Is the computer burning?!”
Me: “NO NO! Technically, its only smoking…”
Dad: “THE COMPUTER IS SMOKING!?!?!”
Me: “Well, look at the bright side. At least I’m not smoking! He heh.”

My Dad never finds these kinds of jokes funny.

Dad: “How did this happen?!?”
Friend: “I… I think my mom is calling me. Bye then!” and he ran off
Me: “Ummm… Actually… I… I set windows screensaver to “Fire”, and the fire…JUMPED OUT… and hmm…. I mean…The virus must have given the computer a fever and… maybe… eerrr…”

In retrospect, I should have blamed it on a short-circuit or something, but if I had that kind of presence of mind, I’d be a different person altogether. Anyway, after that, my Dad put me to computer classes, because he thought I should wreck other people’s computers before trying it at home.

You know how they say that there are lessons in failure? I learnt my lesson that day too. “Always have a believable excuse ready before starting off on any project”. This mantra has served me well over the years!

Anyway, this fiddling was not limited to just toy cars. My Dad had just bought me a brand new computer. This was way back in the late 90s when computers cost more than a years’ supply of household groceries. My dad thought of it as an investment though, since he figured that introducing me to new technology would pique my curiosity and help me learn lots of new things. He was right, I did learn a lot of new things. Mostly cheat codes to games like “Prince of Persia” and how to find secret levels in “Dangerous Dave”.

After the computer was around for several weeks, I started to wonder how it works. During this time, they used to teach us “Computer Science” in school, so I figured that the teacher would know. So I went and asked her if we students could open up one of the school computers to study what’s inside it.

Me: “Teacher, can you open up the computer and show what’s inside?”
Teacher: “Why do you want to see what’s inside? I already drew the block diagram on the board yesterday. What were you doing then?”
Me: “No, I mean, can we see what’s REALLY inside. There can’t just be 3 boxes called “ALU” “CPU” and Memory… there has to be cooler stuff inside…”
Teacher: “You’re not supposed to open up computers!”
Me: “Why?”
Teacher: “Because there are viruses inside!”
Me: “You mean computer viruses? But…”
Teacher: “Yes, computers have viruses inside them just like dogs have rabies inside them. If you get one of those computer viruses, you could fall sick and DIE!”
Me: “Oh?”
Teacher: “That’s right. These are the real things that they don’t teach in your text books. Listen to me!”

I took what the teacher said to heart, and got really freaked out. I mean, rabies was bad enough, but what would happen if I really got a computer virus? Scary stuff! I decided never to open up my other toys, God knows what other viruses are inside them.

That feeling lasted about 2 weeks, before I was itching to open up the computer again.

I had a friend in my class who was also interested in these kinds of things. The two of us gathered the courage one day and decided to really open up the computer to see what’s inside. The opportunity came when my parents went out one day, and my friend and I were left alone at home. We decided to take the big step.

I got a big can of cockroach killer spray (in case any viruses jumped out), and then proceeded towards the computer. I had the screwdriver in my hand and my heart was thumping. As I screwed apart the back of the computer, my friend was starting to panic.

Friend: “What if we die?”
Me: “At least we’ll die bravely!”
Friend: “Should we get a flashlight? I’ve heard that the dark monsters are afraid of light. The viruses may be too…”
Me: “Keep quiet… Just be ready with the cockroach spray of something happens…”

I unscrewed the cabinet from the back, one screw at a time. When all the 4 screws came out, both of us looked at each other, prepared to face whatever monsters would jump out of the computer. I slowly removed the side cover plate out and……..

It was absolutely brilliant. There were no monsters inside! Just a beautiful collection of multi-colored fans, wires and cables. At the bottom was a big circuit board, with literally thousands of shiny metallic wires soldered. It was like a giant city for little electronic chips. Our experiment was a success!

Before my parents returned, I had screwed the side panel back on to the computer. We decided never to mention that we had opened up a super expensive, delicate piece of sensitive machinery to my Dad. He would have flipped out.

But since we had opened it up once, we couldn’t just stop then! We kept up with our guilty pleasure of waiting till there was no one in the house, then secretly opening up the case and going through the insides of the computer. One of us would constantly be on the watch near the door to warn if someone unexpectedly came back. Once we had our fill, we’d careful hide away all evidence of our actions, and hide away all the screwdrivers and other jumpers we’d removed from the computer below the bed. I guess this is what the other kids did with their Playboy magazines.

After a few weeks of this, we’d learnt enough about the workings of the computer to know about motherboard jumpers and clock speeds. I remember thinking at the time that the motherboard looked ABSOLUTELY nothing like what the teacher was telling us was inside a computer. It was like telling kids that there is a giant chariot pulling the sun across the sky everyday, and the kids believed that, never asking any questions, just believing. I became convinced since then that my school was a big fraud.

Anyway, so this was the time that the Video CD arrived on the scene. One small shiny silver disk contained a whole movie! Someone told us that we could watch the movie on a computer, provided that we had a fast enough computer. My friend, the same guy that helped me open up the computer, got hold of one of these disks containing the movie “Basic Instinct”. We’d heard a lot about this movie, and wanted to check it out ourselves. So, as usual, when there was no one in the house, we popped the CD inside the computer, and waited for the good times to start.

Update: Part 2 is here