16 June 2010

What is your Hobby?


Oxford dictionary defines hobby as ‘an activity that you do for pleasure when you are not working’. Does that mean work is not pleasure? Alternatively, can something you do for pleasure also bring in the dough? Can your hobby become your profession & when it does, will it stop being a hobby?!

In school, my classmates had amazing hobbies – collecting coins, stamps, pens, peacock feathers (!), sketching, painting, crochet & so on. Impressed by a philatelist’s album, I tried my hand at collecting rare stamps. A year or two into it & a few ‘Gandhis’, & ‘Rajivs’ later, I stopped going after stamps & switched to coins. After the first few paisa, put a happy end to that too. My coin collection had started resembling a beggar’s bowl.

I began to worry that I had no hobby to boast of before friends. All I did, after & away from school, was garden. I liked the texture of soil on my hand. I liked putting seeds & saplings into the ground, making a mound of earth around it, sprinkling water & then, every day, bending over, & waiting patiently for the first burst of life to appear. The first sprout of leaf is so delicate, tender & exquisitely beautiful. It was my reward.

But gardening wasn’t a ‘cool’ hobby. There were girls whose hobby was cooking (eeeww) & they made it look cool. I wanted to elevate gardening to the cool status too but I wasn’t good with words. I could not articulate my love for it. So, in school, I’d go for the ‘safe’ option: What’s your hobby? Reading. It never attracted any criticism or even an attention. It was a harmless hobby!

A decade later, all those reams of A4 sheets that went into printing my resume carried the following lines:
Hobbies: Movies, Theatre, Travelling, Reading

I like doing all of these – whether it is travelling to a new place, reading a book, watching a theatrical performance or even a movie. It makes me happy. It satiates my thirst for constant entertainment. It stays with me long after the activity is over.

But none of these require any effort on my part; only money :)! Blogging, I can safely say, is my first ever ‘real’ hobby. It is therapeutic in some strange ways & I am doing it with great zeal. And coming at age 33 this is quite something, I must say.

18 comments:

  1. My hobby back then was reading and movies and its the same thing even now but I have added a few more to the list.

    ReplyDelete
  2. my hobby is blogging and photography

    ReplyDelete
  3. @Suzaan: books n films - eternal , universal,na?

    @Jidhu: i know. n u r gud at it :)

    ReplyDelete
  4. My hobbies are reading and blogging.
    Great to see how you tried everything out before finally settling on to this fun way of spending your time. :)
    Please read my latest blog post, too. It's a tech blog...please promote it on Indivine, if you like it!:)
    You can access it here: The Tablet Revolutionary

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. sorry seeing your comment only now :(
      thanks for reading Yash
      ya i will visit your blog

      Delete
  5. Writing is therapeutic, and reading other's writings are all the more therapeutic.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. oh i am sorry i noticed your comment only now. thank you so much for reading Nandhini

      Delete
  6. Playing video games .........Obsessed ...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. :) that was quick - from twitter to the post :)
      thanks

      can u believe i have never played a video game!

      Delete
    2. You are missing something for sure......

      Delete
  7. i have read these and commented also but my comments are missing....strange.

    ReplyDelete
  8. I too suffered the fate of not having a hobby that I can brag about among friends.I did not even read earlier and had to resign myself to cricket which was very much a common place hobby.

    And when you talk about gardening I'm reminded of my mom's craze on gardening.She stops and her face glows when she comes across a nursery somewhere like a child who has seen a toy shop and sometimes her plant buying is similar to toy shopping of kids aiming at grabbing the best possible thing.On a serious note,she has a garden that I even amaze at.Our home in my native boasts numerous fruit yielding trees,eye catching flowering plants and a cool collection of rare plants.I am happy about it though at times I feel that the garden gets more attention that me. :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. ya cricket is everyone's hobby

      awww! your mother and i would have a gala time if we ever meet and if i get to be in her garden :) your description is making me envious

      Delete
  9. You have arrived at a blessed conclusion. Theoretically, even I claim to be a photographer! What is worse, I have sunk millions into it (mios in paise, not rupees ;)!
    Turly therefore, blogging remains our ultimate calling.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. :))) it is our calling indeed - cheap, and affordable :D

      Delete
  10. Yes, reading and blogging are my favourites. I think gardening is very cool too though I don't have a green thumb :)

    Http://rachnaparmar.com

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. yeah you do read a lot from what i gather from your posts

      Delete