10 Things I once used to enjoy…

Has it ever happened with you that you are doing something day in and day out for a while, and then after a period of time you suddenly let it go?

Well, here is a list of 10 things, in no particular order, that I once enjoyed, but seem to have lost interest… at least for now.

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  Crackers and fireworks: As a kid, I thought I would never tire of lighting crackers. It seemed the best means of enjoyment. The sound, the light, the smell thrilled me. Not any more. I don’t even remember the last time I must have put a matchstick to a cracker or to a bomb. Not that I would stop any kids from enjoying them.
  
  
  
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  India Today: India Today has always been a staple magazine, just as Times of India has been the staple newspaper. However, over last year or two, the quality seems to have gone down, whereas the price has shot up; it used to cost Rs. 10/- now it’s up to Rs. 25/-. To my surprise, The Week -- a magazine I hardly ever took a glance -- seems to have improved significantly. Its last few issues have been worth a read.
  
  
  

• Writing, with a pen: I loved writing, especially with a fountain pen. (Remember those “Hero Pens”?) Until my graduation, I must have filled at least a dozen notebooks with my diary scribbles, reviews of books, articles and stuff.

Today, I don’t even have a good pen, for most of my writing (which seems to have transformed into “blogging”) happens on the machine. Admittedly, this is one activity I am sad about losing. One of my New Year resolutions is to buy a diary and a good pen and to write as much as possible.

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  Reading a newspaper: No day ever began without a cup of tea accompanied by the morning newspaper. I remember sitting by the kitchen table, reading out headlines to my mother as she prepared the morning breakfast. Now the news is mostly read online, with major headlines just skimmed through.
  
  
  
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  Forwarding SMSes: We had a group that forwarded SMSes to each other with a devotion. Not that this activity has entirely ceased; but the frequency has considerably gone down.
  
  
  
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  Using Sticky Notes: How I fought with HP over using Sticky Notes? And, now I have myself stopped using this as reminder tool (though I do use them to scribble short notes or details of temporary importance, such as URLs or IP addresses).
  
  
  
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  Yahoo!: No, not the Shammi Kapoor song... it still remains a favourite. I am referring to Yahoo! Portal. When we first hit the internet, Yahoo! Served as our anchor. Everything we did, revolved around it. We had Yahoo mail accounts, were members of Yahoo clubs (which later became Groups) and so on. Nowadays, the epicenter of our online presence has shifted to Google.
  
  
  
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  Watching TV: As a kid, TV was our primary pastime, after playing. We watched Doordarshan, we watched DD2 (Metro), then came the channel explosion of cable TV. Ever since I shifted out of Goa for job, TV has vanished from my life. And for good. The only time I made an effort to watch it at my landlord’s place was to catch up on Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Marathi series. And after the fiasco of finale, I repented over watching that too.
  
  
  
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  Fiction: Well, I haven't stopped reading fiction genre entirely… Just last week, I finished with The Lost Symbol, and loved it. But on the whole, the fiction section is something these days I don’t venture towards on visiting a bookstore.
  
  
  
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  Ghazals: For about 4 years, from 2001 to 2004, I listened to nothing but ghazals. Mehdi Hasan, Ghulam Ali, Jagjit Singh, et al. I had a stack-load of  CDs, the ghazals folder on the computer measured a few GBs. Then suddenly, I put them aside. No reason as to why, or when… Perhaps it was too much of a good thing? I haven’t listened to them in the last five years, except perhaps a chosen few, that too a couple of times at the most.
  
  
  

This is not to say that the activities mentioned above are in any case bad or that I have vowed never to take them up again. Maybe, a few years down the lines you might see me doing these very same things all over again (though, I have doubts).

It’s just that the excitement associated with them at the time doesn’t exist now, at least for me.

As they say: there’s a time for everything.