How long does a toy live ???
How long does a toy live ?
It seems like an innocuous, infact sufficiently vague a question - I mean what is the toy we are talking about, what does it do, who plays with it etc. etc.
But if we look closely, its sparks off a very interesting exploration of human nature.
I still remember, it was 1987, I was a typical grade six kid. Get up in the morning, get cajoled or scolded to study, get ready for school, come back, finish lunch, study or watch TV, go out to play and then come back by the time darkness falls. We had a group of 5-6 guys in our locality who would play together, anything ranging from cricket to hide and seek to flying kites to cops and robbers to just loitering around.
Those days, if God had come down and asked, "Son, ask for something and that is the only thing you can ask for", I'd have gone for a cricket bat. I had seen it only too often that the guy who has the bat in the locality, calls the shots. He gets to bat first, bosses around and can always throw the trump card, "If I am out, the game ends here" and then walk away with his bat.
Moreover, a bat that I used to see everyday in the show case while passing through "Sangam Sports", a sports goods shop on the way to school had exactly the same logo, "Power", as the bat, Kapil Dev held in one of the stickers I had. Kapil was my hero and if only I could have a bat which in some ways looked like the willow he weilded.
I would frequently dream of holding that bat and hitting all those bowlers in my locality for huge sixes in a true heroic fashion - dancing down the pitch and hoisting above the bowler's head.
As luck would have it, I stood first in my exams and mom asked me the same question, "Son, ask for something".
The bat had come. The "Power" sticker was very much there. The smell of the willow, the new rubber handle grip, the edges - it was intoxicating. The shopkeeper had told me that usually, bats break because their handles break and that happens if too big boys play with kids' bats - so do not allow big guys to play with your bat.
For the next week, I'd religiously go out, be extremely careful to see that no body hits any stone or gravel pieces with my bat, no big boys play and no body treats the bat with disrespect. I was the king and the bat was the sword - and the king was fiercely protective of his sword.
Two months down the line, kite flying season started. I started having dreams of the new charkhi (the spool on which thread is rolled), Monu Bhaiyya had - it was so smooth and fast and you did not even have to worry about the knots coming in the thread and it getting entangled. The kids who had a charkhi were always respected more than the ones who just rolled their threads on a stone in the form of a gulla or a thread-ball.
The bat, ohh, I shoved it beneath the huge trunk in my bed room because if I kept it behind the door in my room, it would fall every fifteen minutes and make irritating noise.
Cut to 2005. Having a good camcorder had always been my desire. I did an extensive research on semi-professional camcorders - wanted to have a camcorder as close to the real pro-ones as my pocket would allow and was willing to loosen my pocket strings much more generously.
Finally, after three months of research, I finalized on a model. The piece was ordered on the internet. The site said, "3-5 days for delivery". I waited for three days and started expecting a huge box with my nirvana in it - despite the fact that two out of those three days were Saturday and Sunday and hence only one business day had passed.
My impatience was surging. When the store guys called me on the third working day to confirm the order - I was heartbroken, "These buggers, taking three days to just confirm the order, when will they ship it and when will it reach me". Every day since then, I keept calling the store to enquire if they had shipped it, when were they going to do it and why were they taking so long. That stopped when after two days, I was told that it had been shipped.
Now, I stared looking at the parcel status provided by the carrier quite morbidly - how else would you describe checking the status every 70 minutes ? After three excruciating days, my parcel had landed up in California, just 59 miles way from me. The carrier said they'd deliver on the third day and I thought, "Well, these guys give a very conservative estimate, after all, it can never take 3 days to cover 59 miles, I am sure they'll deliver it before that".
For the next three days, I waited for the UPS van with increasingly baited breath every successive day, even intercepted the UPS guy in the next building to ask him if he had a parcel for me and bugged the lady, on the reception, by my hourly queries of whether she had received any parcel for me, so much, that after a while, she would not even wait for me to speak and would smilingly tell me that she hadn't yet received anything.
I had gone crazy and I had become a kid.
The day finally arrived. I received the parcel. Went home and started playing with it - read the manual cover to cover, plugged in the battery, shot videos, stills, picture in picture and what not. Explored all the functions and options it provided. Didn't even cook that night and didn't even call my girlfriend. I was possessed.
Two days, took out the camera, did some nature shooting.
Today, the 12th day, I haven't touched the camera in the last 9 days and don't exactly remember where I kept it.
A toy lives only as long as you don't have it.
It seems like an innocuous, infact sufficiently vague a question - I mean what is the toy we are talking about, what does it do, who plays with it etc. etc.
But if we look closely, its sparks off a very interesting exploration of human nature.
I still remember, it was 1987, I was a typical grade six kid. Get up in the morning, get cajoled or scolded to study, get ready for school, come back, finish lunch, study or watch TV, go out to play and then come back by the time darkness falls. We had a group of 5-6 guys in our locality who would play together, anything ranging from cricket to hide and seek to flying kites to cops and robbers to just loitering around.
Those days, if God had come down and asked, "Son, ask for something and that is the only thing you can ask for", I'd have gone for a cricket bat. I had seen it only too often that the guy who has the bat in the locality, calls the shots. He gets to bat first, bosses around and can always throw the trump card, "If I am out, the game ends here" and then walk away with his bat.
Moreover, a bat that I used to see everyday in the show case while passing through "Sangam Sports", a sports goods shop on the way to school had exactly the same logo, "Power", as the bat, Kapil Dev held in one of the stickers I had. Kapil was my hero and if only I could have a bat which in some ways looked like the willow he weilded.
I would frequently dream of holding that bat and hitting all those bowlers in my locality for huge sixes in a true heroic fashion - dancing down the pitch and hoisting above the bowler's head.
As luck would have it, I stood first in my exams and mom asked me the same question, "Son, ask for something".
The bat had come. The "Power" sticker was very much there. The smell of the willow, the new rubber handle grip, the edges - it was intoxicating. The shopkeeper had told me that usually, bats break because their handles break and that happens if too big boys play with kids' bats - so do not allow big guys to play with your bat.
For the next week, I'd religiously go out, be extremely careful to see that no body hits any stone or gravel pieces with my bat, no big boys play and no body treats the bat with disrespect. I was the king and the bat was the sword - and the king was fiercely protective of his sword.
Two months down the line, kite flying season started. I started having dreams of the new charkhi (the spool on which thread is rolled), Monu Bhaiyya had - it was so smooth and fast and you did not even have to worry about the knots coming in the thread and it getting entangled. The kids who had a charkhi were always respected more than the ones who just rolled their threads on a stone in the form of a gulla or a thread-ball.
The bat, ohh, I shoved it beneath the huge trunk in my bed room because if I kept it behind the door in my room, it would fall every fifteen minutes and make irritating noise.
Cut to 2005. Having a good camcorder had always been my desire. I did an extensive research on semi-professional camcorders - wanted to have a camcorder as close to the real pro-ones as my pocket would allow and was willing to loosen my pocket strings much more generously.
Finally, after three months of research, I finalized on a model. The piece was ordered on the internet. The site said, "3-5 days for delivery". I waited for three days and started expecting a huge box with my nirvana in it - despite the fact that two out of those three days were Saturday and Sunday and hence only one business day had passed.
My impatience was surging. When the store guys called me on the third working day to confirm the order - I was heartbroken, "These buggers, taking three days to just confirm the order, when will they ship it and when will it reach me". Every day since then, I keept calling the store to enquire if they had shipped it, when were they going to do it and why were they taking so long. That stopped when after two days, I was told that it had been shipped.
Now, I stared looking at the parcel status provided by the carrier quite morbidly - how else would you describe checking the status every 70 minutes ? After three excruciating days, my parcel had landed up in California, just 59 miles way from me. The carrier said they'd deliver on the third day and I thought, "Well, these guys give a very conservative estimate, after all, it can never take 3 days to cover 59 miles, I am sure they'll deliver it before that".
For the next three days, I waited for the UPS van with increasingly baited breath every successive day, even intercepted the UPS guy in the next building to ask him if he had a parcel for me and bugged the lady, on the reception, by my hourly queries of whether she had received any parcel for me, so much, that after a while, she would not even wait for me to speak and would smilingly tell me that she hadn't yet received anything.
I had gone crazy and I had become a kid.
The day finally arrived. I received the parcel. Went home and started playing with it - read the manual cover to cover, plugged in the battery, shot videos, stills, picture in picture and what not. Explored all the functions and options it provided. Didn't even cook that night and didn't even call my girlfriend. I was possessed.
Two days, took out the camera, did some nature shooting.
Today, the 12th day, I haven't touched the camera in the last 9 days and don't exactly remember where I kept it.
A toy lives only as long as you don't have it.
posted by Prashant @ 10:34 AM
1 comments
