Precious Five

11APR2012 

It was a warm afternoon. News from the earthquake in Indonesia was flashing all over the place. Bangalore too experienced tremors on the day. I was at work with my colleagues when we felt the tremors which were not very brief. There were moments of indecision- what should we do- Run outside? Stay seated and pretend nothing happened? Should we call someone to help us face a possible calamity? There were a lot of discussions going on. There was news of a second one hitting us soon and warnings of tsunamis screaming out on any and every news station. While I participated in these discussions, for a micro second, all the important things to me in life flashed before my eyes. Mind does travel faster than light....and the frames of all that was important came at an unimaginable pace. There were plenty of things that went through my mind at that point in time..a billion important things but I have come to realize that the ones that I really remember after snapping out of the mental state of the time are the ones that are of utmost importance to me.

1.Family and Friends:

The first thing that occurred to me in that micro-second was my family and friends. One of my brothers is in the US. My mom at home, dad at work. My other brother- possibly at a client place. My many uncles and aunts and cousins and nieces and nephews scattered across the globe. I thought about all of them in that small fraction of time. I thought of my new to-be family members- Rakshit and the bit of his family that I knew then. My immediate family, Rakshit and his immediate family and my best friend Malabika  mean the world to me. I always associate joy and happy thoughts when I think of them but this time it was quite painful to think of not being around them.

2. Apple Gadgets:

I am yet to comprehend on why I thought of my Macbook Pro, iPhone and iPod (and also the next buy iPad) at a time like that. It could be that they are quite expensive and I worked very hard and saved a lot to make those purchases or possibly, subconsciously, I thought these are going to help me in difficult times post a natural disaster.

3. Work:

Some people say and like to believe that I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth but this is not completely true. I would say I was pampered and doted upon by my family, especially my parents. My job helped me find myself, made me more independent in my ways, transformed me from being a quiet, shy person to a confident and kind of an outspoken person, not to mention financial independence that it brought with it. 

At that moment I also thought about the teams that I work closely with in India and also outside. They are like a second family to me as most of my waking hours are spent with them.

4. Collection of Books:

I am happy that I own a huge number of books. I am very fond of classics and works of fiction and own a lot of books which I assume are hard to find. It is a little difficult to imagine myself running out of a building with all of them when an earthquake strikes but I surely would love to grab as many as I can or as a part of my disaster facing stratagem, get Kindle so that there is only 1 little thing to run with.

5. Collection of Movies:

Comedy and classics (those which meet my definition of classic) are my favourite genres of movies. I have over a period of time accumulated a sizable collection of movies in multiple formats on multiple devices. It is not easy to build a collection of this nature as it involves a lot of looking about and watching out for some of those rare movies. These bring me a lot of cheer to me and I assume, this is most probably the reason why it occurred to me in this time of confusion and mild panic.

There were a lot of other things which I would consider as weird to have thought about but for some reason I did and I remember- a pot of Aloe Vera gel, Mexican green wave pizza from Domino's, Spicy tomato pasta (fussili) from Pizza Hut, my Parker pens, Lucky and Happiness diaries, my doctor's prescription for glasses, childhood photographs, Crocin, Imol, perfumes, trip to Bannerughatta National Park etc...

One way or the other, I realize that there are so many things that mean a lot to us and we take them for granted and realize how important they are to us only when we are threatened of losing them or after having lost them. For now, I would think these are the most important things to me...