I don’t think I can quite remember at what age I began to become conscious of the seasons and their effect on our lives but Summer has always been for me, the time of the year with no school to go to, no History lessons to read, no Hindi classes to sit through, nothing! It was the time when I was free to pursue all that I waited all year to dream about – cricket practise, reading my favourite books (Hardy Boys and the like), watching a whole lot of television, movies and, believe it or not, programming in BASIC!
Indeed, now that I think about it although it does make me laugh, there was this period between 7th grade and the 10th when I spent time with my friends Krupasagar, Rustam and Sandeep writing code for our super-ambitious projects. And we would write code in BASIC – first in GWBASIC before moving on to Visual Basic for DOS! It makes me laugh hard to think about it now but back then, we were almost like a mini startup. I remember there was this time in the winter of 1994 when Rustam, Sandeep and I spent loads of time toiling over this program we called ‘Superlink.’ Now Superlink was no ordinary program! At that time, modems were fairly new and people did primitive stuff like connect to other computers with modems using the Windows 3.1 Terminal program and exchange files using protocols like X, Y, Z, Kermit and the like. So we decided that we would write this really sophisticated modem communications program which allowed one to do much more than was possible at the time. For instance, you could connect to other computers running Superlink and actually have full control – browse the hard drive, copy, move, delete and transfer files and a host of other things too! It was the most advanced product at the time and if only we caught the Internet boom and were of the right age, who knows what we might have ended up doing! Sandeep was my senior by a year and came to the US to do his undergrad. Rustam ended up going to Australia and wound up in the US after a while (when I last heard, he was in Chicago doing something in some university). And as for Krupa, the only chap I am still in touch with, is currently a production assistant with a TV channel in Madras.
As I grew older, things changed but the magical quality of the summer remained just the same. It was always the time to learn new things, hang out with friends, play as much you liked and essentially just grow up.
This summer here at Wash U has been just another one of those magical ones. The research work has been stimulating and I find that I have so much time to do other things too – like go to the gym, play basketball, take music lessons, catch up on reading and just hang out with friends.
As I think about it, I realize that this shall be my last summer as a student. The thought makes me a little sad but oh well, life goes on.
Ob la di ob la da life goes on bra
La la how the life goes on
Ob la di ob la da life goes on bra
La la how the life goes on
– Beatles, “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da”
