When I was a kid, I spent summer vacations in Secunderabad, where my maternal grandparents lived. They lived in a quaint bungalow in Marredpally, Secunderabad. My grandparents lived on the first floor. My grandmother's younger sister and family lived on the ground floor. During the summer months uncles, aunts and their families got together at 208 Marredpally.
There was an old abandoned garage to the right as you entered, a pomegranate tree and a guava tree to the left. The address, 208 Marredpally was a warm home, bustling with activity and echoing with the noise of boisterous children. We were 8 on the top floor plus 4 on the ground floor....
We formed a cousin club. Marredpally was a quiet residential area with lots of greenery and open spaces.We played on the streets and bylanes during the day and slept on the open terrace in the night. We played gully cricket, gilli danda, seven stones, hide and seek, played on the slide, the swing and the seesaw in the park nearby. We had to be literally dragged into the home during meal times and bedtime.
The cousin membership did not grow past twelve. The youngest missed all the fun. We played throw and catch with him as we would do with a ball. We had rubber balls, cricket balls, big throw balls, small ping pong balls and Aditya the roly poly ball.
All of us were well behaved, as we liked to call ourselves and were called in the neighbourhood. My brother and myself attended school in Kolkata. The others went to schools in Secunderabad and Hyderabad.
For the entry to the cousin club, a password was mandatory. By a password, I mean a code word, which would be changed every day. Time has wiped them from my memory but it could have been anything such as Badam Gully, Lingam Pally, Chinna Anna who was my mother's youngest mama, Periya Anna who was my mother's eldest mama, Merchal Appa my mother's grandfather or Gnanambal who as you all know was my grandmother or Kaduganoor which was my mother's maternal home town.....
We made the daily entry into the cousin club, a fun ritual. Each day, one of us would decide on the code word. A chit system was followed and the one who picked up the chit reading "You are the Code word generator " had the privilige to decide on a common familiar word. Based on clues, the others had to guess the word.
We were together all the time, we ate and slept together, we played, fought, we hugged, we laughed, we cried and every morning, while stepping out of the house we had to mutter the password in order to qualify to participate in the day's activities..
Say for example, Ruby Stones Parvatham or Niagara Viswanathan it could be.....If you said it right, you could enter. Parvatham chitti and Viswanathan chittappa lived on the ground floor. They were USA returned and the entire family looked upto them in awe. The password could be Brownie the German Shepherd or Snowy the Pomeranian. Then there were those days, when we used to rack our heads, especially my brother and myself when the word would be Charminar, Koti, Mirch Bajji, Bhaingan ka saalan, Sultan bazaar or Begum bazaar.
Now ! fast forward by many decades and I find, lacking in our lives "A Cousin Club," but dominated and ruled by passwords. Those were the days when we could survive without the password. I would cry, bring the house down, make a fuss and scream " I do not know." A sweet caring elder brother would let me in.
That is no longer possible. In case I do not know my password for access to any site, I have to manoeuvre my way on my own, verify my genuineness through a link in the mail and create a new one.
Our daily existence today, depends on passwords. Today, we cannot live without the password that connects us to devices, which in turn connects us to the world. The devices, the phones, the pads, the pods, the laptops, all the digital, electronic gadgets we live with, without a connect to the real....Yet, it is a necessity, a need of the hour...something we cannot do without...
Passwords and their dangerous cousins, the PIN numbers which can fall easy prey to hackers, have the potential to make us all crazy, so much that for instance, in a situation when money may be withdrawn from the account without the account holder making any transaction, the individual has to rush to the bank, file an FIR, lodge a complaint in the bank, deactivate the internet banking account and cancel the cards...So much for technology advancement...Thank God for the SMS alerts ....
Without the password, there is no internet, there is no email, no Facebook no IRCTC,no Amazon, no Snapdeal, no Flipkart, no PepperFry, no Make My Trip, No Urban ladder. Without PIN numbers, we are rendered swipeless. My relationship to my passwords is getting stronger day by day. The number of passwords in my custody has been rising steadily. Lest with advancing age, I forget, I have written them down.
It is always better to be safe than sorry. I would recommend usage of strong passwords with alphabets, upper cases, lower cases, characters and numbers. which involves complicated numerical codes say for example.....1942 a LoVe_QuiT stOry or 1857=sEpOyJhAn_sI. But these are vulnerable, much within the grasp of any hacker. Frankly I don't know why anybody would want to know about the passwords I would like to use or prescribe..Anyway all in good intent...
I don't deny my dependence on the gadgets and devices. They give me the comfort that I need, so that I can relax. It is clearly evident that relaxation gives me the space to blog and I am enlightened in ways too many to be able to narrate the benefits in one go .
It is the era of the gateway and adding to the shopping carts, the secret numbers, the PINs, the OTPs, though sometimes I realise that they can also be the reason for me to get flustered.
So on the 21st of June, Two thousand and nineteen, I have decided to evolve into a strong username and a password, unique to my roots, across all the sites where I have an account. Henceforth, I am my username. I am my password....Gives me a great sense of relief. So while on the one hand, I will never forget my passwords, on the other hand I will be reliving my childhood days...Sounds fun, Doesn't it ? :-)
Here's an example :-)
Username : Badamgullimaykhili
Password : kadDUganOor#chOks_65
