Write about your first computer.

The bedsheet was picked from its upper edge and straightened between two hands. It was a beautiful light red coloured sheet with touch of yellow and orange at several places. What occupied the bedsheet was a big elephant looking upfront. The elephant had no colour of its own, it was made up of white outline. There were flowers which were made in similar way as the elephant, they were around the elephant in a single circular arrangement.

There was one flower, two, three, four, five…. Something was wrong with the fifth flower. It seems there was tear in one of its petals and that this is what was worrying the holder of the bedsheet. Vahini was busy with her favourite hobby, paper craftwork and she might have just pressed ahead the cutter more than what was needed and intended. Now, there was a tear, the kind she didn’t want.

Vahini was already aware of the ‘now you are a grown girl’ speech her mother would give her upon detection of the mistake. So, it was decided to play safe and not inform anyone of the occurrence. It might just prolong peace till evening. Vahini picked her things and moved away from the spot of the apparent crime.

She crept past her mother who as busy in the kitchen and entered the study room where her elder brother was busy with recent addition to the house, a ‘desktop computer’. She had seen them before in the school, but having one at home made her realise its true potential.

She enjoyed using it, after all she had discovered a whole new world in it that they didn’t tell at school. A computer had a CD drive and hence could play music and movies and it allowed her to play games beyond the usual pre-installed games that came with the operating system.

The desktop computer was all white with a CRT monitor, track ball mouse, a CPU with both floppy disk drive and CD drive and yes it had two speakers. Unlike today nothing was wireless and nothing was portable.

Vahini later wished she had taken a picture to remember it by, for no other computer in her life really felt the same. She had spent some good years of her childhood on it. What eventually happened to the computer is lone of those fragments in her memory which she has lost or maybe cannot remember as of now, , perhaps like a tear in a bedsheet.

Written by Anuran Chatterji

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