One fine day, my maternal uncle threw a surprise I could not have imagined. A collection of pristine postage stamps, affixed inside the pages of a blank notebook. The pages were filled with stamps of all shapes and sizes – squares, rectangles, hexagons, and even triangles! There were domestic ones – only the rarest, and many international stamps – with portraits of many unknown leaders. About half of the 200-page book was filled with stamps, and it looked more like a 300-pager with a bit of a bulge due to the glue and its contents. The fragrance of the glue could be felt, and only added to the allure. The first page was filled with my name, my date of birth and some decorative lines that made it look like a frame. Oh, and it was my birthday gift! I found my gift waiting as I travelled home for holidays from my boarding school.

As an adolescent, it was always unsettling when someone asked what my hobbies were. Was drawing my hobby? I only did it during our classes, although I was not too bad at it. Was it Soccer? I played every day. Was reading considered a hobby? I read almost every edition of Tinkle and Amar Chitra Katha from the library! What does it take to make it a hobby, I never knew!

With the new gift in hand, with so many unfamiliar stamps, I didn’t know what to make of it. The book lay like a prized possession. When someone visited, I’d show them all the stamps from the world, and marvel along with them, especially, the hexagons and the triangles! Was I supposed to study their historical significance? I did not know. In a day or two, naturally, I felt the need to carry the baton, and grow this collection. It put me into one of my dharma-sankats (dilemmas). I had occasional thoughts of running up to the local post office to get some stamps, but I knew these everyday stamps would look out of place. If I had to start doing this hobby thing, I needed a source! I didn’t travel much to get those exotic stamps, and I knew my mailman is not going to get me any international mail. Even before my hobby started, the thoughts to abandon were creeping in.

In any case, my collection served one definite purpose – it provided me with a solution to one of my other dharma-sankats. If someone asked what my hobby was, I knew it was Philately, and I answered without skipping a beat. I had so many to show-off that no one could deny that. It was also a unique hobby, considering my age; no one in my circles really did that, and that felt special. I knew that there was a small problem with this claim – that I hadn’t collected a single stamp by myself!

Finally, as holidays ended, my return to school put everything else on the back burner. My dilemma was just as fleeting as my holidays! Other activities took up too much space and time, that I only managed to get back to the book after a good number of years! As I reflect on it today, my uncle hadn’t travelled all that much himself, nor did he expect anymore than I did from the mailman. Maybe he never really expected me to build on this collection. He probably just passed his possessions onto me! After all these years, I never checked!

When I returned home next time, my uncle threw another surprise – one that was a little unsettling, and adding one more to my dharma-sankats! What I did with that Mouth Organ (Harmonica) is a story for another day.