I?

I am son.

I am father.

Brother. Uncle. Nephew.

Husband.

Lover. Former lover.

Spurned lover.

Lover-in-waiting (eternally?).

I am haste. And patience personified.

I am friend. And foe.

Shishya. And guru.

Boss. And beer-sharing colleague.

I am jester. Shoulder. Weeper, too.

Agony, I am. And ecstasy too.

I am all this. And more.

But I am not me.

Am I?

Losing it

Am really losing it...

First my memory fails me and it becomes difficult to pinpoint places/people/ incidents/ birthdays...

Then, without warning, my Seagate 100 GB drive fails to be recognised by my Mac after it's worked perfectly for months. I'm told that all the work I've backed-up over the last three years is there; so are the music files and the photographs.

Everyone's reassuring me that the data can be recovered.

Okay, now you know it and let's say, I also know it. Question is: does the drive know it!

I need the work-files back. And the photos. Everything else is sacrificeable.

This is all I have of my memories and, until the day they can backup our brains in a real-time environment, Seagate will have to be my crutch.

Fingers crossed, I await the data recovery guy's report. Makes me feel like I'm in surgery and waiting the doctor's prognosis...

Nostalgia @ Rs 5/kg

It can take over 20 years to squirrel away precious memories in the form of notes, letters, photocopied articles, workshop material, photographs...

And less than three hours to sift through cartons and discard most of them.

The cleaning up of painfully collected archives (physical not digital) is a mind-numbing exercise that leaves the shoulders aching. But nothing is as disconcerting as the fact that you can sell all of what you've discarded for just Rs 5 per kg to the loccal raddi-walla.

I may have been richer by Rs 145 on a cold Sunday morning. But what's gone are old remembrances that there is little room for in this weary world of mine.

Christmas is meant to be a season of giving. I just gave most of my memories away. I should be happy, I guess.