This is typically where I start and I’ll try to keep it really simple.

I am a “Bengaluru Huduga”, which translates to “I am as blue as Bangalore”. Born and brought up in the IT capital of India, I was naturally exposed to computers at a very young age, apart from exposure to a wide variety of rich cultures.

Love at first sight 🤩

I remember one of the first glimpses I ever had on a PC. It was a Saturday during my primary school days (1st grade or 2nd grade, don’t remember exactly though) and I remember entering the Library (which was essentially a small room for kids with access to comics) and glazing over a newly installed all-white Intel Pentium powered PC. The illustrious CPU cabinet had a vertical slide mount (to prevent kids from pressing the power and reset buttons I guess?) that you could not avoid noticing. The PC, I suspect, was running on either Windows 95 or Windows 98 (I can’t tell anymore).

However, I still remember the first software I ever used: (Dangerous) Dave.

Dangerous Dave, Level 1

If this image triggered one of the emotional episodes from your childhood, beware, I am not responsible!

If you are an ’80s or ’90s kid reading this post, it’s quite likely you have come across this game too.

Miss playing Dave? Look no further: https://www.retrogames.cz/play_480-DOS.php?language=EN

Ping me with your high score: @0zand1z:matrix.org

I still remember my teacher guiding us with the introduction of the Monitor (a colour CRT one at that, very hard to find back in India in those days as most homes still were able to afford only monochromatic ones), Keyboard and most importantly the ball mouse(let’s admit, we have all attempted to play catch with the trackball at least once).

Once our instructor taught us the basics, we patiently had to form a line in the library and wait for our turn to use the computer. I still remember my heart pounding out of excitement to use this new “thing” I had just discovered.

Each student was allowed to use the desktop for a few seconds and was taught how to “double-click” to launch a DOS application. Remember, there was no scroll button back then, just a middle button very similar to the left and right one.

It was my turn to play Dave. I was taught how to use the arrow keys to make Dave move from one point to another. As you may guess, I pretty much lost all my Daves to the fire before even clearing the first level.

We were then sent back to the hall where our parents picked us up. It was a hot afternoon with an all-white uniform that day. What a wonderful day it was. <3