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My wallet had gotten huge so I decided to get rid of all the crap I had in it that I no longer needed it. As I was cleaning it, I came across these four Id cards (I’ve blurred out some details).

My MCard was by far the most used and hence the dirtiest. It reminds me of an incident in my last year of college. I used my MCard as photo Id to pick up a package at my apartment. The person at the desk refused to give me the package because she said I looked nothing like the photo (I guess that’s what adding 30KG does to your face). I had to go fetch another photo Id to prove to her that I was the person I was claiming to be.

The Cottons card reminds me that I hadn’t shaved a single time until I graduated. As a result, I had a really hairy face for around a year or so. At the time of course, I kept saying I had no facial hair. Looking back at photos from the Prefects’ Investiture and Graduation I look like a hairy gorilla.

My two summers I spent in Berkeley were awesome. My love for the Bay Area started during my summers there, and it is still one of my favorite places in the world. I can safely say that those two summers changed the way I look at a lot of things in life.

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It turns out that I’m not the first wannabe photographer in my family. The camera on the left belongs to my maternal grandfather. Sadly, I have no memories of him using it. It had been lying in the basement for a while. It was brought out yesterday when the basement was being cleaned. The camera on the right belongs to my parents. Unfortunately I only have very faint memories for this camera. From what I’m told it was a state of the art camera when it was bought.

I haven’t yet found any photos that were shot with these cameras, but hope to someday…

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This week’s theme is “Memories”. Deepavali is almost on us. This of course, means that it’s time to go buy fire crackers. My brother and mother went to Hosur a couple of days ago to bring back this stuff. I used to love setting these off as a kid. Back in our Banashankari house, my brother and I would try to break PVC pipes, mosaic tiles and plastic bottles by setting off Lakshmi Bombs, Netaji Bombs, Hydrogen Bombs and so on (not to worry – these aren’t all that dangerous, they’re just noisy). We would also try to set them off in piles of cow dung in front of other people’s houses in an effort to get their doors plastered with flecks of cow dung. In hindsight, this was a horrible thing to do, but we had loads of fun doing it.

I don’t remember when this happened, but at some point I lost interest in setting off fire crackers (I suppose being away from home for 7 years didn’t help matters). Thinking about it now, it all seems like it was in another life.

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Technically this is on my desk, not a shelf, but I think that still counts. This is the swim cap I picked up a few days ago with the goggles I bought a few years ago (I’d never used them until very recently). I used to hate swimming as a kid, but my parents made me learn it anyway. I’m really thankful for that, because as I’ve gotten older I’ve really come to love water. Sadly, I haven’t been in water for a quite some time now so I can’t swim worth a damn. Since I’m headed to Thailand early next year, I figured I’d try to swim a bit and get back in shape. So far it’s been tough going, but I’ve got plenty of time so hopefully I’ll be all set for the Andaman waters.

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I don’t remember when we got this thing exactly, but I’ve never really figured out what it’s supposed to be. I think it looks somewhat like a silver surfer tennis dude.

I took this down to shoot properly since it was way too high for me to shoot in its original position. Here’s where it usually is:

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