Nostalgic Tales

“We were excited without a clue we were standing at the beginning of a revolution.” I was in sixth standard when we got our first computer lab at school. We removed our shoes outside the lab without knowing that one day, we’d be stepping into a portal that would change the world. Back then, I thought the virus people warned about was the same one that gave me a cold. It didn’t take long to realize I was more serious about the computer’s health than my own. My best friend was the first among us to get a PC at home. That’s where I first heard The Summer of ‘69 . He also played Aap Ki Kashish . We didn’t know it then, but those speakers were ushering us into the age of digital intimacy. Logging On, Growing Up By the time I reached 11th standard, I had moved to Jharkhand. And yes, the computer lab became my go-to spot for impressing girls. That’s when I created my first Yahoo account and signed up for Orkut . Believe it or not—I still have access to that Yahoo inbox. I j...

Our first phone wasn’t really ours. It sat in a box—switched off, admired, and returned like a sacred relic. My father received a gift—an old Vodafone cell phone. But we were living in a village, and couldn’t afford a network provider. So he preserved the phone carefully in a box. On some evenings, he’d take it out, turn it on, feel it in his hands, and put it back. Just for the experience. It was around 2001 or 2002. By 2004, things had changed. Mobile phones started moving into every family. Nokia was a huge part of that revolution. But we still didn’t have our own number. Whenever I needed to call someone, I’d use the phone at a shop right across from our house. I had memorized their landline number—along with my best friend’s and my school’s. Our first actual phone was a black Nokia 1600, with an Airtel SIM. I had moved to Ranchi by then. During one visit home, I convinced my mom to let me take the phone back with me. Was it third-hand? Fourth? Who knows. It worked. ...