What do you do in your spare time?

Personal pursuits have always been that — very personal. Collecting picture postcards, writing secret comics, aero-modelling, origami, modifying vehicles, creating paper collages… hobbies have always been just about anything.
Till sometime ago, the word ‘hobby’ evoked images of stamp collecting, coin collecting, bird-watching and so on. While these evergreen hobby ideas continue to charm a few, over time, hobbies have also evolved complexities and some may seem positively quixotic to the average stamp collector.

Meet Raghavendra BS. This information technology whiz keeps a tough day job with an MNC. He is 34 years old, and can almost sound childlike when he starts talking about his pursuit of personal creativity. He builds miniature radio-controlled aeroplanes and flies them on Sundays at the Jakkur aerodrome. This is no pastime for him; rather “it’s my passion,” he says.
Raghavendra has created an electronics lab at home for this, and spends “every minute of free time I get building and designing airplanes,” he says.

For him, it started with his fascination for planes and flying as a child. He could never afford to pursue it then, but almost as soon as he started working, he threw himself into this expensive hobby. “To begin with, people can start with a model for around Rs 8,000,” he says. Raghavendra, though, has spent close to Rs 30 lakh on his expensive hobby so far. It is definitely therapeutic for him, he says. “It is a stress-buster because I am so happy doing it. And it involves a bit of everything — physics, carpentry, plumbing, designing etc.”

If his hobby is an ultimate thrill for Raghavendra, for Gnanashekar M, his hobby more or less defines him. This 20-year-old animator is a famous name among gamers in the world. “I started playing video games when I was six, and soon graduated to computer gaming. It has given me so much fame that when I log into my server — Best In The World — everybody recognises me,” he says. Quite understandable, for he is a proud finalist at the World Cyber Games held in Los Angeles.

On an average, he plays an astounding 18 hours a day! Asked if this doesn’t eat into his other activities, he is quick to correct: “Well, it definitely helps me with my work as an animator. Plus, I do nothing much other than work and play.” He remembers to eat, usually, when the games get into a short boring stretch or so. Stepping out with his friends only means going for a gaming tournament.

Sandhya Satyamurthy likes to collect passport-size photographs. She started this hobby when in Class II and built up such a huge collection, that it broke her heart when she lost it while moving houses. After nursing the loss for a long while, she started it again a year back, and is overjoyed to see her collection grow rapidly. While her recent collection started with friends and family, she also picks up random photographs — “sometimes off the floor,” she says.

To her, this hobby is a reflection of herself, as she calls herself a “very people person. I really like a lot of people,” she says.
Hospitality professional Aslam Gafoor always loved the sound of bells and started a bell collection sometime around 1990 during a trip to Switzerland. He bought a traditional Swiss cow bell (Treicheln). “Then, I did not realise that this was soon to become a very serious hobby for me. I now have over 200 bells in my collection which is always growing,” he says.

Gafoor has bells made out of clay, wood, iron, steel, glass, ceramic and so on, from all over — India, Australia, Dubai, the UK, the US, Hong Kong, France, Italy, Maldives, Singapore, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Prague, Holland, Turkey and Japan.

“The bells are placed all over my apartment — in the kitchen, bathroom, balcony, and on my car key-chain.”

If that’s exotic, Aruna Lakra’s hobby might sound downright simple. Nevertheless it keeps her excited, and that’s purpose served. She collects crisp ten-rupee notes. She started it three years ago, and sheepishly admits to a rather huge collection by now. While her friends and family are always helping her out by giving her all crisp notes they find, they often tease her to no end about this.

Well, to them, Lakra could quote Dr Franklin Spencer of the Bangor Institute of Psychology who says that hobbies are, in essence, “a modern expression of suppressed primordial instincts.”

Simply put, he says, hobbies reflect an urge to discover and develop ourselves individually and as a species. For that matter, we must remember, as Dr Spencer says, that “Einstein was still a patent examiner in Bern when he first developed the theory of relativity in his potting shed on Saturdays.”