Back to the future

Today morning I woke up to the alarm from my mobile. It stuck to me two decades ago alarm meant from a huge winding clock. I just thought how meanings of various terms have changed/new ones added. Being a compulsive blogger, I thought of keying down some of them. Here are some of them:

Mobile Phone – would have been considered an oxymoron because lifting the good old ITI phone itself required a lot of muscle.

MP3- A third time Member of the Parliament or a telegram code for 3 MPs coming to a certain place?

Mineral Water – Some sort of hard water or one which is released from Mines or steel factories.

Laptop – as in the phrase “She is his laptop”

Desktop – the top of a Godrej office table.

Pen Drive – Right hand drive or left hand drive can be understood, how do you drive with a pen?

Bluetooth – Yellow tooth is what you get because of improper maintenance of your teeth, Bluetooth is possibly what you get by seeing excessive number of B*** films?

www – one of those lecherous graffiti written in the men’s toilet or near public phones.

Broadband – must be one of those terms used in yellow journals to describe a guy with a **** *****, u know what?

Blog – must be a short form for brain clog. People who are obsessed with blogs like me should be having one.

Prepaid – the only thing prepaid those days was movie, bus and train tickets.

Cookies – the ones you got in a bakery.

Virus – the one which came into your body if you are not careful with your food and other habits.


Directory – a book which contained names and telephone numbers.

IT – Income Tax Department

Presentation – one which you gave in glossy colored papers in weddings and birthdays.

PowerPoint – one which you connected your electrical appliances like Radio, TV or Iron Box to make them work.

Attachment – affection and fondness you had towards people or things.

DTH – Did That Happen?

Spam – Sp(iced H) am , tined meat product made from Ham

Wallpaper – the nondescript design sheets that used to be put up in restaurants.

Screensaver – The screen was meant to save you from the harshness of the weather outside, so this term made no sense

Paint brush – an implement used by the painter to spread the paint across the wall or door.


As in the case of my other blogs, this is a hastily written one without any in-depth research or conviction with the sole intention of increasing my blog counts. A lot of terms have been unnecessarily represented here only to prove my non-existent intelligence.

My wardrobe malfunction

Right from 1st standard, I was always awe-stuck with my brother making speeches on Independence Day and other competitions in schools. So when I got promoted to sixth standard (the cut-off for a student to be allowed in these competitions), I readily gave my name when it was called for. The first assignment was to speak on Independence Day about Lal Bahadur Sastriji. With active assistance of my father and the Panasonic two-in-one we had at our home, I practiced the speech over and again. Three days before the event, Dcuna Madam who was in charge of the culturals decided that all the participants will wear a dhoti and make the speech. I never took it seriously and continued with preparing for my speech. My father had taught me how to keep the head at 90 degrees and talk. How to bow to the Judges, the principal, etc and how to maintain eye contact with the audience

The D-day came and all the “freedom fighters” were made to wear dhoti and come to the stage. First it was “Gandhiji”, next “Panditji” followed by “Patelji” and then came my turn “Sastriji”. I stood up to see nearly 900 students in front of me. I immediately realized that public speaking was more than reproducing a prepared speech. All the lessons of my father on the etiquettes of public speaking vaporized from my mind. I was shivering, mumbling the speech when the audience burst out laughing. A wardrobe malfunction had occurred and my dhothi lay on the floor. Obviously, the tension within my body had resulted in this scandalous wardrobe malfunction. Thankfully, I had worn inside the customary half-white pant for Saturday class and any further embarrassment was prevented. I could see my brother feeling for me but I did not want to give up speaking. Despite all the jeers, I continued speaking. To my surprise fear had evaporated and I was able to speak freely. Though I did not win any prize, I did get a special mention from the principal for courageously standing on to speak despite the mishap.

Thankfully, there was no moral police around those days or else a campaign would have lodged against me for intentional wardrobe malfunction, that too in a boy’s school.

Press any key to continue!?ha ha

It was around 1993, I had enrolled for a computer course in one of the reputed institutions at that time viz., Brilliant Computer Centre. PCs with hardisk had not yet become popular and PCs with two large diskettes had to be used. One was the boot/program disk and other was the one in which we had to save our work. The first couple of classes were theory and there was an interesting specimen in the class. I will not name only not to offend regional sentiments. In 2 days of theory he came up with very funny questions about computer like “can we get shock through the keyboard?” etc, etc. Ours was the first batch which used to start around 6am. Hence, his presence in the class was cherished.

The day of the labs had come and I was expecting him to come up with some genuine doubt. So the instructor told us how to power on the PC, insert the boot disk and later the program disk, working disk, etc. We were all eager to work on the PC and started right away but our friend was stuck blinking at the monitor. The instructor walked upto him and asked “What is the problem, why are you stuck?” He in his typical English and mannerisms explained all the bla, bla and told when he inserted the program disk, the monitor is giving him a message “Press any key to continue” and our man wanted to know where on the keyboard is “any key”. The entire class went into peals of laughter. The instructor had the presence of mind, she took out her marker pen and wrote “Any Key” on the space bar and asked him to press it. Problem solved and he continued with his work to land up with some other “intelligent” queries later.

From that day till date, the phrase “Press any key to continue” brings a smile on my face and I have never stopped relating it to countless number of friends.