Bringing up The upbringing

I remember this one picture very vividly. Its me with me frown, on the porch of our rented house. Which I thought was our house in North Delhi. My mother in that picture was a young dashing woman of the 90s. She was to about to leave for work or to the market. In those days, it was the same - a formal occasion. I was a child in my single digits of existence. Oblivious days.

Summer vacations in those days were easy, because there were no expectation except being safe. So I got left behind at home mostly. Me and TV. Heaven. But some other days my mother would take us to her office. My dad went to office , of-course to Honda, but it never sounded exciting. Except that the phone number was pretty cool to remember - 5757231. This is one phone number I would remember throughout my life. Side-note: no matter how much you might be your mother's boy, your dad's phone number is still the most etched in memory. Because he gets things done. And yes, I am close to my mother. Let me tell you the reason now.

She was a scientist. I was mischievous. So I could not be left home alone. Therefore, on other days of summer vacation, I would need to leave my summer igloo. Those particular instance I would travel with Dr. Rashmi Paul to the National Physical Laboratory, CSIR. We are all enamoured by IITs, but my friends those are professional colleges where students enter to leave as employees. At CSIR you enter as scientists, leave as unemployed scientists. Before India sold it's talent to the west, she invested time, money, people into science through institutions like NPL. It's the coolest place I have been to, ever. The reasons are many.

This is the place where I discovered computers. The first computer I used was a dumb terminal. A dumb terminal is a keyboard and a monitor connected with wires to a processing unit located somewhere else than the desk or office you are using at. This was the past in 1990s. In between was something we call modern computing. Let me assure you my friends, history will repeat, this will be the future again. Though without wires. But this dumb terminal wasn't just any dumb terminal. It played pacman and more games. Which is what occupied me for half a day. But I could never understand at the age, why my mother had to take permission for getting me in to play games on a computer. And even after that, why do I need to take off my shoes before entering a freezing cold room. That was my first experience of air conditioning too. I was the only kid in a room with other people seriously looking at graphs and stuff I never understood at the age. I focussed on my highest score. Then some middle aged man told me after some days where the actual computer really was in that cold fridge I came to. It was in a separate huge hall. It was called a supercomputer. It was one of two in the world. Big deal, it still was predictable at Hangman. And it just had 16MB memory. Anyway, it did make some climate change models for some protocol they setup in Kyoto. I did not get the significance then. But I immediately understood the need that computers need to move beyond a command line prompt to something more point and shoot. Since kids like me were going to use it.

Over the next few months and years, I saw more computers. Which are not super in name, but much more super in use. I saw computers with climate change models on black and white satellite maps. I saw computers which had colour screens. I saw computers which had something called Netscape. That was the most interesting application ever. Finally I did not need to ask my mother everything. I also understood the need to clear history. Ctrl + H is the shortcut, in Windows. Unix has no history, just command prompt. Important lesson.

I was the coolest kid in class and colony - by temperature and by geek quotient. Religion was forever pushed out of my life. Thank God.