यादें

चलो आज फिर यारों से गुफ्तगू हो जाए,
पुराने सालों की यादें फिर कुछ ताज़ा हो जाएँ

सुना है बारिश का मौसम है वहां फिर से,
याद है मुझे, वोह भीगना, और कभी देखना classroom की खिड़की से.
हाँ याद आया, उस दिन भी तोह बरसात हुई थी,
ताज महल की सीढ़ियों पर फिसला था कोई.
उम्..कौन था वो.. नाम याद नहीं है,
पर हम खूब हसे थे... रहा होगा वोह कोई.

बात बेबात हुए झगड़ों का भी अलग मज़ा था,
class के अंदर हुई बहस का result स्कूल के बहार लगता था.
एक सूजी हुई नीली आँख, और एक फटा हुआ होंठ अब भी याद है,
फ्लिमो मैं देखा था, उस दिन देखा की हकीकत में भी होता है
पर वो लडाई भी मानो बीती class की History जैसी होती थी,
जो result के बाद कभी भी याद नहीं रही.

कुछ अलग फिजा चली थी 98-00 के सालों में,
फरवरी का महिना कुछ ख़ास हो गया था सारों में.
Pocket money से बचाए हुए पैसे रोज़ गिनना,
Archies और Hallmarks पर सारा सारा दिन भटकना.
फिर बहुत मज़े से सुनते सुनाते थे कहानियाँ,
Rejections की ज्यादा और Accepts की बहुत कम, बस कुछ यहाँ वहां.

और कई पुराने किस्से हैं,
कुछ देखे हुए और कुछ सुने सुनाये,
चलो आज फिर यारों से गुफ्तगू हो जाए.

Just write

Here I am, back again after my sabbatical of more than 4 months. Neither had time nor a subject to write about. In-fact as the title of the post suggests, I still haven't come out of the writer's block and don't know myself what this post is going to be about.

I just don't want to be consuming a URL on the blogspot.com where it's already become impossible to find one that you think usable. The internet has grown like anything in past few years. I remember the day when I created my first email address. That was way back in the year 2000. Hey, that means I am celebrating 11 years of my online avatar this year. Yey!!! Here's remembering the good old days of cyber cafes and creation of my identity in the virtual world.

I still remember. I was fresh out of school enjoying the feeling of "I never have to go to school again". Sitting in a Cyber Cafe, waiting for my turn. Already 30 minutes have gone by since I registered my name in the list of people waiting for a computer. Demand was much more then supply back in those days. I can never forget that mechanical cacophony of the modem dialing up to get a 128Kbps connection. The guy, who I was supposed to replace, decided to spend another hour with this mysterious new creature that was driving crazy both men and women alike. I waited patiently for next 20 minutes and my name was called. I walked inside the temperature controlled room adjusted myself on the roller fitted chair.

The snow white monitor sitting atop the black cabinet of CPU looked like a mismatch. The keyboard and mouse were hidden in the tray under the table top holding the CPU and monitor. The complete arrangement was certainly not much different (mouse was an addition) from what I was used to see daily in my bedroom. I befriended computer much early in my life. I spent a lot of my early teen years with my Pentium 386 running on MS-DOS. Yeah, those were the days of black and white screen without even mouse, forget about rest of the things.

The room was cold, they used to keep it at abnormally low temperature those days. With little difficulty finding the keys on the keyboard, I typed www.yahoo.com in the address bar of the IE page that was otherwise displaying a static HTML page with adv. of the internet cafe I was at. The screen did not change for first few seconds. My already low confidence was fast moving towards the rock bottom when there was a flicker and then the whole screen turned white. As if choosing a new canvas before painting my wish on it. The wait was getting longer by each second. The waving flag(windows) and rotating earth on the top right corner were not exciting me any more.

I was about to call for help when the first few images started to appear. A deep red Y with an exclamation mark. The bottom left of the screen read 20 images remaining. The blue blocks were filling, the otherwise blank, status bar one at a time. I was getting impatient, but never cursed the internet speed or even thought that way. That's how it was supposed to work back then. After spending one full hour and 35 bucks, I was the proud owner of an email address on yahoo.

Even then I couldn't get the same email address that I was looking for. It was like all the prime locations in the hot selling virtual cyber land were already taken up. But I still managed a decent name plate for my online habitat.

11 years down the line, it is hard to believe how much our lives have changed. It seems like a previous life sometimes. And looking at the trends, I am sure I will enjoy lot many more before, as they say, pulling the plug...