Google : Looking Back in Time

Well, yet again nostalgia at work. I promise this is going to be the last post in this mood, at least for the time being (of course I may have to post nothing at all for sometime to honour that but ab bol diya to dekha jaayega).

Sometimes I think of Google as the Hubble Telescope. Now Hubble was a wonderful thing. Along with Voyager 1 and 2, it was the Hubble Telescope that made sure that I want to be a astronomer even today. Now in the age of ISS and mars rovers, it is difficult to understand the kind of fascination and excitement that something like voyager and Hubble generated. I had a big poster of Hubble Telescope from a science magazine that I used to cherish a lot. Ah ! the good old days of big dreams when satisfaction was so easy to achieve !!

But lets move over Hubble. The topic of this post is not Hubble but Google and why I think of it as Hubble sometimes. One of the most exciting part of Hubble was that it could look into very distant corners of Universe. Now the farther we look, the older the pictures get since light takes a lot of time to reach us. So the farther ahead we look in distance, the further back we look into time. Now this was something amazing. Every few months, some images taken by Hubble would be released and you would find yourself looking further back into time. So how does this connects to Google? Well, in a rather peculiar way.

I have now walked this earth for about 23 years and in those 23 years, there have been so many things that I have loved and lost. That odd piece of poetry, that lovely snap, that wonderful story, that song from the lost lanes of childhood, that innocence!! Some of those are lost for ever and can never be recovered but others would still be around, somewhere if only I could reach out but the search space accessible before Google came up, was very minimal. What Google did, I can never be too grateful for. So many things have turned up before me when I had no hopes of finding them ever. As time passes, and here enters Hubble, Google reaches out to more and more things and comes up with another lost piece on my past. It keeps looking deeper and farther back and keeps getting better :-).

And following is what I found last month. It took Google 2-3 years since I first looked around for it but eventually it did find it. So before the curiosity kills the cat, this is the text of a Motorcycle ad. It appeared in 1998-99 when I was down and out in IT-BHU trying to make some make-or-break decisions in life (it all turned out to be good in the end, almost too good ) and I liked it so much that I had it struck on my wall. No great poetic gem or deep philosophical vibes here but just something that touched my heart at one point of time in my life. So guys, here it comes, my way

I am not a star.
There is no halo over my head.
Fate doesn't like the colour of my eyes.
Struggle and strife are old friends of mine.
Who am I ?
I am survival. I am guts. I am pride.
I like odds.
Especially when they're
stacked against me.
Because there will
come a time when I will
stare them in the eye.
And smile the smile of
the one who's pulled it off.
I am the guy who will have
deep lines on his face someday.
And it'll make me look good
when I laugh.
Because that is the day
I will fear no fear.
And taste sweat that is sweet.
And look back for the
very first time and say,
I did it my way.
The long hard way.

Comments

Unknown said…
a very interesting post. i would have found so many lost friends through google, and revived so many memories that were shelved and forgotten.

and yeah that poem was damn neat. i was in love with it when it used to be aired. thanks for sharing it :D
Jaya said…
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Anonymous said…
Really was an interesting read altogether. I adore and respect Google for what it is. Your post provides a new perspective to the adorable.

May you do well in life.
Amitanshu

Popular posts from this blog

बिछड़ते दोस्तों के नाम

क्या लिखूं?

Do nightmares qualify for dreams?