My tryst with carom

Its a phenomenon we notice everywhere. The day you create a blog, you go on writing posts like you have been awaiting this day for eons. And soon, the frequency reduces drastically.Atleast for most. Though,there are a few brave ones that continue to maintain the vigorous pace.

It is a similar situation, that we have here. :-)
One of my colleagues, Vinay just came and asked me if I would join him for a game of carom as he was finding it hard to pass time. I said I would join him in a bit, but he is not at his desk now.Nor is he near the carom board. So I imagine, he is off trying to interest more people into it.

So I thought I would pen down my little history with carom,while I wait for him to get back. When I joined here about four months ago(here being Microsoft Research, where I'm interning), I was delighted to find that every floor had a little recreation room which had a carom board. Its not like I am extremely fond of carom or anything, but it had been a while since I played my last game, and I have had quite a few fond memories from my childhood, playing carom with everybody possible, my parents, friends, neighbours, parents' friend, cousins and anybody else you can imagine that would have allowed themselves to be dragged into a game by a 12 year old. Infact, I even remember these carpenters that were working in our house who would be kept from their work because of 'my persistent invitations to play', though I'm quite positive they did not have any serious qualms about it, especially considering that they were being paid by the hour.:-) But finances weren't the first thing on my mind then, and some might argue that it isn't even now. :-)

Well, So I developed this habit of playing carom every evening for the first few weeks of my internship, and not surprisingly, soon everyone in the lab, atleast on my floor knew about my enthusiasm. It was not too long before I had played with most of the usual 'carom playing' folks in the lab, and very soon I realized that though I had played a lot of carom during my childhood, I hadn't really developed the right techniques.

So,then started some intensive coaching sessions,where some of the people sensible enough to have picked up the techniques earlier on, started lending me tips and tricks on things like how to hold the striker to achieve the maximum performance, which finger to hit it using, etc. And it was during this period of extracurricular education, that my manager chose to give me something interesting to work on.

Soon, technical interests and the zeal to excel in my first internship overcame my enthusiasm to perfect carom playing techniques, and I found myself playing carom less and less often. Sadly, I not only failed to completely learn the new techniques, but also successfully unlearnt whatever little bit of techniques I had innocently developed during my younger days.

Realization struck late,about three months later to be precise, when I picked up the striker once again, only to find that I had lost total control on the striker. My fingers weren't sure if they should do what they used to do instinctively earlier or apply my new half baked knowledge. And eventually I realized that all my strikes were turning into disasters.. My fingers seem to have developed a mind of their own.

I hope that,soon, I will atleast get back my ability to play carom naively. So that I can get back to playing it with reckless abandon. Maybe if i can find Vinay now, I cant start now itself..