An Open Letter to my Missing Laptop

Dear Inspi (as I lovingly used to call my Dell Inspiron 7000m),

This is to let you know, we all are missing you a lot at home & office. Mom-Dad have not taken the food (of their choice) for the last so many days. My office clerks have stopped doing the routine work-typing the office documents etc, attributing it to your absence (huh! Another excuse to avoid work in a typical sarkari office!). I know I have not lost you after you got dropped from the rear seat of my car... but, contrary to popular belief, you have somehow managed to run away. I still remember you were quite upset since the last few days while we were trying to forcibly load a pirated version of Windows Vista over your pre-loaded XP. I accept everybody is possessive about his old companions but never had I imagined you would be so stubborn and place that outdated version of XP over all of us! Now, in hindsight, I believe you had at least some reasons for being so inflexible… I now recall how you used to pop-up those technical jargon and messages expressing your inability to install Vista… at times those were genuine… many a times irrelevant… Since you always had a notorious history of such acts, this is probably the reason I never really believed what you popped-up and incessantly tried loading the pirated Windows Vista premium over a Dell Inspiron 700 M with 512 MB of DDR-II RAM having an Intel Centrino Mobile 1.7 GHz processor. I might have been brutal but you many a times gave me reasons to expect best from you. Hope you still remember that chilly mid-night of 28^th December at Indore when I tried and successfully loaded the pirated Photoshop CS2 over you... never to use it though. I was really impressed by the way you took it in your stride. Then, after initial reluctance, how you agreed to allow me to load 3d-Studio Max & Maya, further strengthened our bonding. I believe we really had a great camaraderie when you (after initial hiccups) used to run all those pirated VCDs & DVDs. Now that you are nowhere to be found, I often get up in the middle of the nights, gazing at the stars from the window of my flat at 4^th floor thinking how blessed I was to have you. With teary eyes and a heavy heart I often miss my personal collection of music, snaps, clips, videos, articles, documents, wall-papers et al, that you so very gracefully use to carry and unfold at the touch of my finger on your touch-pad. You were a real companion, a true friend - the way you used to absolutely hide all those x-rated pictures and videos under all those fake files and folders (and sometimes cunningly made difficult even for me to remember and retrieve). You were so moody, Inspi, and had your unique way of throwing tantrums, when you didn’t want to play an MP3 you used to throw irritating pop-ups – Disc not readable, No Data on the Disc etc, then I used to fool you by playing the same disc through another player (iTunes or Real Player). You often proved to be a nincompoop, when after installing and running all the ‘heavy’ software, you used to balk at opening an MS Word or Excel… that was really silly, friend!

I always used to take special pride with you in that black artificial-leather-bag over my shoulder. I still remember the envious gazes of fellow travelers while on flights or on train, silently looking at you (and me) and getting impressed by that 12.1 inch TFT screen. That probably used to be the only moment when I used to acknowledge that ‘size does matter’… the smaller the better!

I know I have not lost you, I know you have gone by yourself. I believe we will surely meet again after some months or years just like they get lost & meet again in Kumbh ka Melas as in inumerable Bollywood movies. By that time you may get a new ‘owner’ I may get a new ‘Notebook’ and might move on in life. As of now, I can only beg and say… पुरानी बातें भूल जाओ, जो हुआ सो हुआ, घर लौट आओ तुम्हें कोई कुछ नहीं कहेगा…॥

तुम्हारा अपना ही
Sammy (as u lovingly used to pop-up on your TFT)