We are a ‘mail’ away, sitting miles away

Though I am yet to invent anything, inventions always fascinated me.

I was fascinated by Radio during my childhood. I used to hear music flowing out of this marvelous box in many places like public parks, hotels and in some of my neighbourhoods. I wished I had one at home.

By the time we got one in our home, almost all the houses in our neighbourhood have had it. So I had no reason to be a proud child of a house that owns a radio. However, I was still happy to have one at home. It was a small battery operated model. Unlike today’s FM channels, radio stations worked only for a specific time during those days, morning, afternoon and evening. It has become a practice of my mother to switch on the radio before she starts her routine morning works and we all family members woke up hearing some devotional songs that used to be broadcast in the morning.

As I was a school going kid then, my encounter with the radio was only in the evening. In the evening children of our family will gather around the radio and curiously listen to the music and some other programmes, leaving the news bulletin to elders.

As the days passed my curiosity towards radio was also diminished. As I grew, my fascination turned towards telephone. I used to view the members of the families that had telephone at their homes with much respect. How fortunate they are, I used to think. They can talk to anyone in another place from by just sitting at their homes. And they can also communicate with other family members at their home when they are outing. But my wish for a telephone remained as a wish for a long time.

That is the time when television made the entry into Indian homes. For majority of the middle class Indians, owning a television set was a distant dream. Some of the households who had owned it kept the TV set outside their homes during Saturday evening, when our own Doordarshan, the one and only channel then, used to show old movies. Most of the members from the families in the neighbourhood will gather in front of the television to watch the movie like in a cinema hall, minus the chairs, fans and ACs.

No doubt, television was a fantastic invention. It was black and white in the beginning then slowly graduated into colour. Today it will be nearly impossible to find a house in India without a TV set. Owing a TV set has become necessity rather than a luxury. If television made the world closer then the cable TV network has made the world smaller. For anything that brings good there will be a bad side too and as far as the cable TV networks are concerned some of the reality shows contribute to make the bad side.

The following one should have been said earlier than TV, but in my order of thoughts it comes only now. Though I have marveled about almost all these above inventions, aero plane had a special place in my heart.

My imaginations still go wild when I think of this wonderful invention. How could such a huge and heavy thing be lifted in the air and fly like a bird with so many people in it? Though the technology has its own answer to it, come to think its functionalities, we owe lot to the people who have made it possible.

It took nearly 30 years of admiration from the land to physically experience the pleasure of flying in an aero plane. My first flying was to an overseas destination, crossing the paddy fields, mountains then the sea and at last landing in a wonderful Arabian city after being in the air for almost four hours.

By now I must have travelled a quite lot of times by air, but that four hours of my air travel will always live with me, not because it was the best but it was my first.

However, if you ask me to rate all the inventions in an order of numbers, none of the above will find the number one spot. I can never place an invention other than the Internet at the number one spot. The reason for this are plenty and one of them is I am able to share my thoughts with you in this manner.

It just brings us closer to a ‘mail’ away, sitting miles away. Truly great.