This post was triggered off by an interesting conversation started by Chetan Bhagat on twitter (Yes I am on twitter @Pooja_Gupta). He asked all his followers to tweet about their first crush. No doubt, an interesting parady of tweets followed this.
Well, this lead me to think of mine. Though, it might sound crazy, but I had my first crush (and yes it still exists) in III standard. My father brought him home one fine evening and introduced him to all of us. I stood behind my mother gazing at him dreamily, completely awestruck by his simple looks yet immense power. Then I heard the magical words from my father's mouth that he was here to stay with us forever. Yes! he was our new family member. He spoke english, but not our kind. My father said that he had a different set of rules for english. My father told us that he will teach us how to talk to our new family member and that I can spend 15 minutes every evening after school with him under my father's supervision.
I welcomed our new family member with an open heart. He was none other than our FIRST COMPUTER.
Every evening, I would rush to meet my computer. I loved to watch him startup (or as I later learned 'bootup'). The sequence followed during booting became a permanent imprint in my mind. I knew the exact statements which flashed on the screen (though I had no idea of their actual meaning), the sequence of lights ON and OFF on each of its parts - CPU, monitor and keyboard (I later learned that this is known as POST : Power On Self Test). My father taught me how to play Pacman and my fingers started moving deftly on the keyboard.
Few months later, I joined standard IV and guess what, a new subject was added to our curriculum - Computers. I guess I was the only student happy with the addition of a new subject and also a member of the handful of students wo had met Mr.Computer before. Computer course at school started off with an introduction to computer, its evolution, its different parts and finally moved onto the simplest of computer languages - LOGO. I was fascinated by the small turtle moving steadily on the screen and that too on my instructions! Even the simplest task of drawing a square on the computer screen,now seemed the most important and meaningful task to me. I would go back home and replicate all the tasks on my home computer too. Writing FD, BK commands of LOGO became the top highlights of my day. Needless to say, I scored highest in my computer exams at school. My favourite question would be the booting procedure and I would happily describe it the way it was imprinted in my mind.
Today, as I sit in front of yet another computer and write this blog post, I thank ny first crush for all the decisions which it had made simpler for me: Be it selecting my subjects in XI standard, engineering branch, industry in which I want to work and many more.
