My all-legal affair outside marriage..!
I recently had a lifetime change.. when you talk about lifetime changes, you normally think about getting a job, getting married, having children, buying a house, having an affair, having a divorce.. umm, I think you get the drift 
I went for a change in my life recently with the same bit of seriousness, as I would for any of the above, and it makes sense that I call it a “Lifetime change” too…
The change was that I dumped M-S Windows (or Miss Windows) and embraced a new stylish girlfriend. Now having spent almost every day of my life, for the last 16 years, in front of different types of computers, I think they too, deserve to claim a piece of my life. So it is appropriate to call this change a lifetime change.
You know, I have ‘dated’ a lot of ‘damsels’ so far.. err, I mean computers.. a weird one called ZX Spectrum back in 1988 that ‘claimed to be a computer’ with a Cassette tape (!), the oldies – PC XTs, the ATs, Honeywell Unix terminals and many other Unix terminals whose names I have forgotten, the IBM mainframe terminals, PC 286s, 386s, 486s, Pentiums xxx, Dual cores… bla bla bla.
And I have seen the Operating Systems that control their behaviors, mood swings, tantrums – the various flavors of Unix’es, MS DOS, IBM Mainframe OSs, Windows 3.1, Windows 95, 98, NT, ME, XP Pro, XP Home, 2000 flavors of Linux’s (!), Windows -2000, -2003, Mac OS-X, Mac Leopard….
So many of them, but I managed to stay loyal to one family throughout this 16 yr journey – the Microsoft family! I have dated many girls from that family, keeping the family loyalty intact for all these years! I have enjoyed the closeness, their popularity, their riches, and at the same time, have suffered at their hands, defended them out in the world, got embarrassed because of them, but still, at the end of the day, I came back to them – in their palace, to their kingdom, back to my in-laws house in Redmond….
I never looked anywhere else.. because I was so brainwashed by the Microsoft family members! I didn’t have a voice of my own, nor was I allowed to think outside the “Window”! I was comfortable, because it was all too familiar to me – someone blowing their fuse whenever they want, not having anybody to depend on, always living in fear of losing everything you have.. I thought that’s how it is in a love affair – you know, being ready to sacrifice, being ready to give, being forgiving, undemanding.. And I didn’t realize when those love affairs morphed into hate affairs.. I continued on as if I was married to the whole family and as if there were no divorce courts! It was as if, I had to go from one cousin to another…!
So then this day in February, I was in the bathroom, (nothing unusual about that.. I am in my bathroom every day! – looking in the mirror.. you know, the usual stuff, checking if I still look young.. oh, there is a gray hair here, maybe I can pull that out.. and suddenly that inner voice growled at me – (you know, how your inner voice growls at you in your stomach.. ever experienced that? That’s your inner voice..) – so that voice said – “hey buddy, you are not so old.. so you are old but not sooo old.. don’t give up on life. You will find a soulmate if you are committed to making this change.” And I started looking at my options.. Linux was too complicated and couldn’t have been someone to go steady with. The only other option I had been eying all these days was the stylish Mac, the one I had complained about in the past like a fool. I poured my heart out in front of her and she was magnanimous in accepting me.
That day, I finally embraced a bright, slim MacBook Pro and flew away on my vacation to India. Call it my disloyalty to Microsoft family or my mid-life crisis – but that’s how my love affair with the Mac started after so many stale years of living with the Microsoft family.
I had a few flings with the Mac in the past but it was always too clumsy, since there was no commitment from my side. And I used to always complain as to why it did not ‘click right’ (but well, Mac doesn’t have a “right click” on its mouse anyway … But I guess I never looked at her heart, which is made of pure gold – the Unix heart – one that holds steady..
From that day, I began living my new life, accepting things that were minor inconveniences, adapting to the new way of life, new moods, new responses, all the while admiring the beauty of my new girlfriend. And I told myself, nobody is perfect… err.. that sounded familiar!
..anyway, I still live my life, there is still programming, surfing, storing, retrieving, shutting down, starting up, but it is just done in a different way.
After all, life is a way of living rather than the living itself!
—- END OF PART 1 —-
Days passed by, then months and then a couple of years.. One day, I found myself in the same bathroom, in front of the same mirror.. again! And I was questioning my lifetime change all over again………
Cracks had begun to appear here and there within 2 months of starting this new relationship, and it eventually died last week without even reaching its first anniversary! Last week, standing in front of a mirror, I looked straight in my eyes and asked – is this what you really wanted? That you can’t do things you want to do, that everything takes 5 steps when it used to take one or two, that productivity is suffering at the hands of beauty…?
I thought about it real hard, “can I go back to Ms Windows.. and what kind of a welcome will I get?”, “will it be life as usual again or have things changed irreversibly?” I had to try though.. so I knocked on the door of the “Redmond mansion” again..
..there she was.. same attire, same attitude, just the way I had left her. She welcomed me with a “crash”, as if to tell me that she hasn’t changed just because I dumped her once. I expected this, and remained nonchalant.. unperturbed. I just wanted in, and accept my fate with all its fallacies. I had learned my lessons – that all the beauty in the world is in the bias of the infactuated! That nothing is stable or reliable, that beauty does not necessarily mean practicality, that hype seldom matches reality, that awe should sometimes just stay that way and not try to be part of your day-to-day life, and that everything that gets trashed by elites is not always useless.
So I am back.. some people tease me about my choice, some say I didn’t have the guts to handle a glamorous girlfriend… all I can say is at the end of the day, I tried, I dated the hot and happening Mac for a year, but things did not really work out between us. People may laugh at Ms Windows, think it’s stupid and unreliable, but I did go over the fence and played the field… and tell you what, they are all the same!!
Don’t get lured by one or the other, stick with the one you like and live your life!