It’s quite interesting to note, that the world I have known has changed so much. And all this in a span of such a short time. Now it seems as if I talk of the stone age when I talk of yesteryears. Which was not very long ago.. just about 7 years back. I was still at college then. There were no cellphones. Ok I’ll rephrase that as no one used to sport a cellphone on their person except maybe if they were the Tatas, Birlas, Ambanis, Hindujas. You get the drift. My parents used to call me as often as they could (which would be once a week). At times, they used to book the call through the army exchange. This entailed *waiting* for your call, till the operator would tell you that the call had been connected. It could take the entire day for your turn depending on the call traffic on either end. The girls’ hostel having just one external line, which also had the intercom connected to it, made it an impossible task to get through to anyone. At times I got the call during my classes. The ‘tai’ (hostel maid) used to call us from the class. The person would go bolting like a bunny to the phone and attend the STD call. The STD rates were exhorbitant. Just 5 minutes of a conversation meant parting with one ‘gandhiji’. This also when the rates would be 1/4th, which used to happen at 11pm in the night. We would especially request our warden to let us go to the nearby PCO (which would be a km away) and call home.

Picture the scene now. My mom picks up the cellphone and dials my sister’s cellphone number.(She happened to be studying in the same city as I did). They talk every *single* day. Not only this, they keep calling her to ensure her safety, the entire duration of the train journey that she makes to that place. It was one of my “duties” to reach back and let them know of my safe arrival as soon as possible.

The advancement in technology has changed this world so much. There was a time when I used to write looooong letters to my friends and post them all over the country. (Ahem… They used to wait for letters from Twilight Fairy). Buying greeting cards was a major pastime with me. I would lounge around in card shops spending hours and come out with a huge stack keeping in mind miscellaneous occasions and several people. I would keep my supply of inland letters and stamps stocked. It all slowly came to a fullstop when I started working. Most of my friends had also started working and now they had an official mail id if not a personal one. Greeting cards got replaced by e-cards. Archies? What’s that.. ok, a comic character by that name comes to my mind now.

To withdraw cash from the bank there was a “procedure”. Firstly one could not just get up and go, visit the bank whenever one felt like. There were certain days assigned for cash withdrawal and certain timings. One had to fill in a withdrawal slip and sign it. The passbook (with a not so complimentary picture of you) had to be taken along with it. Once at the bank, one had to go through a huge rush at the withdrawl counter. After waiting for your turn, you would get to a person who would stare at you and then at the picture in your photograph, and ascertain that the person is indeed you. Once this interesting detail got confirmed, they would go through some drawers, finally landing at something you scrawled, but now called specimen signature, indexed somewhere according to your account number, match it with the one you made on the withdrawl slip and *then* sign the withdrawl slip and pass it on to the cash counter. phew.. Again, await your turn, produce your passbook, get it updated, collect the cash and be able to leave.

The scene now – go to the ATM, punch some buttons, withdraw cash and come back in less than a minute.

I am sure at the pace that the world is changing, some day I would just need to utter the word “cash” and it would come flying into my pocket. I dont care where it comes from, as long as it lands in the right pocket. The left one is also ok.

It was my paternal grandfather’s birthday on 27th September. He was born in Afghanistan. Lived like a pathan, went through a whole lot of experiences in life. This included the partitiion trauma and his father (my great grandfather) being murdered during that phase. He left all that was his, in what is now called Pakistan. Everyone still talks of the palatial marble and glass house that they had just got constructed barely in May’47 and partition happened in August just when the house had become a landmark for locals. After getting his family to Delhi, he restarted life from a bare scratch. He started a poultry farm. My dad remembers an abundance of poultry products and milk during those times. My grandfather was on duty with the police when Gandhiji was murdered by Nathuram Godse. But I don’t know why I never discussed this historical incident with him. He was a very powerful man. Even when he would be really ill, his lungs would somehow find the strength to bellow. He would always raise his voice against injustice. No wonder we are still fighting the cases against poultry farm land encroachment by the government. Bauji is what we addressed him as. I remember how I used to trudge along with him as a kid, to get his urdu paper. He used to read and write Urdu (and not punjabi, even though we are punjabis) and of course English and Hindi. But his main love continued to be Urdu. All his diaries, personal or with various important notes are in Urdu.

In old age, ppl go through a sort of reversal of life. A lot of it resembles childhood. They become dependent on others. Their reasoning is still stuck in their own times and thus they fidget at almost everything. They also get pleased easily and with some small insignificant things too. My grandfather had this habit of “rewarding” whosoever made him happy. He used to give us some cash as a token. But this used to happen very rarely. I remember wishing that he would have a real long life and live to see his greatgrandchildren (through me). Although he had seen several through other cousins. But that wish of mine can never be granted. He left us 2 years ago.. just 2 years short of his 100th birthday.

Some of the things that most of us would remember would be something of an extreme emotion.. something which made us really happy, or something which sent us hurtling to the opposite end of the emotional spectrum. Such a thing is waking up. If all our wishes were granted, one would wish to be woken up to a breakfast-in-bed service. Of course after having slept off the early morning hours. Preferably next to a hunk or a goddess. In a bed made of fluff or something.. basically in surroundings which tantamount to heaven. But this is not about such pleasures in life. This is about rude awakenings. Some of the most rude awakenings that I have etched in my mind.

One such stirring up to life happened when I was travelling back from Bangalore to Delhi in the Karnataka express a good 6 years back. For some reason (to cut a long story short), I had to appear for SSB (Service selection board) (Yeah I know this makes a separate post, now why would I want to go for SSB) in bangalore which had been arranged in a rather hurried manner. Most of us girls didnt have reservations. So all we could do was, take a second class ticket and hop onto the train. Yours truly was prepared for the worst and having faced such situs earlier, was equipped with a proper sleeping bag and stuff to basically stretch oneself on the bogie floor for one night. One of my friends had a reserved berth and I was tagging along with her.. so as to rightfully claim the floor in her coupe as my own :P. In spite of trying to avoid sleeping altogether (given the conditions), there came a point in the night, when we could just not utter another word and would have rather collapsed. I decided it was high time I caught up on my sleep. While going to bangalore also I had stayed up instead of sleeping although the sleeping bag had at least given us the freedom to sit on the bogie floor without squirming. This time I decided to sleep with all the luggage, shoes, stench, snores and all. There was a family in 2 of the other berths. A family because they had a small kid with them who would screech at all inappropriate times and generally behave irritatingly. Thankfully the kid was also sound asleep. The night quickly rattled by and the morning came. Sounds were embedded in my subconscious as I could make out a lot of activity around me. But I decided to stretch on for a little while more. After all where would I have sat anyway. My consciousness drifted along with the train and I dreamt of a lady screaming at a child.. me in the dream. The screams just kept getting louder and louder and shriller in intensity. I could just not react. Sometimes in your dreams you are totally incapacitated to do what you would really do in real life.

And suddenly that female slapped me HARD right across my face. I was totally stunned. Suddenly I woke up because the pain was too much. Something had actually hit me hard right on my nose bone. Having zapped back to reality in a second, I realised what it was. It was my own milton water bottle which was hanging right over my head and had fallen with precision on the bridge of my nose. The lady (now in reality) was apologising profusely and tried to massage my nose hurriedly. I managed to push her away just in time otherwise she would have ended up hurting me more. It seems the pesky kid had mistaken himself for tarzan and was going on jumping from one top berth to another. In his frenzy he probably forgot that my water bottle was not jungle foliage or something to glide across on. Till date I shudder at the thought of that rude awakening.

The other one happened more recently.. well not even a month back. I was sleeping on a mattress on the floor in a new house because of the lack of furniture. The house happens to be on ground floor and it was the monsoon season. The previous night I had thrown out a frog from the house assuming it would never be able to get across the small gap under the doors. Again, I could not sleep much because of sudden new surroundings (happens with me) most of the night. Also the fact that there could be a frog lurking nearby was there in the back of my mind. I could only sleep in the pre-dawn hours. But lady luck had run out on me again. I woke up with a start to something that had jumped on my face. Even in my deep slumber I didn’t even have to think about what it could be. Even before my eyes opened, I knew it. Yes, no points for guessing that a frog had jumped on my face. Yeah, may be it was hoping to transform into a prince. But I can only thank lady luck for whatever little courtesy she had shown me. At least the froggie didnt land right on my lips.. bleah.. I got up immediately. Had I been supersitious I would have probably made a fullfledged hulla because of the first thing I saw after waking up – a frog scared out of its wits probably more than I was. At least I had this in the back of my mind all night, but that creature would have just not understood how this rock it jumped on, simply animated into life. After having kicked it out of the house, (it was only too grateful to be let out), I slammed my way into the bathroom and washed and scrubbed my face till I was sure that more scrubbing would only end up scrubbing off my epidermis.

So much for the start of a bright new morning.