When it comes to computers, I had access to them from an early age. My uncle, my father’s brother had a computer, and as a kid, I used to play games on it. He mainly used it for Photoshop work, and I would often watch him edit photos. Around 5th or 6th standard, or maybe even earlier, we got our own computer at home. However, we didn’t have internet access. My brother and I spent hours playing old games on it, I still remember one Dracula game, where either Dracula or his son (i dont remember who he was really) was trying to save his sister from enemies. Eventually, though, that computer stopped working.
At that time, I had never used the internet and had no idea about its true potential.
I still remember the first time I got a glimpse of the internet. One of my mother’s brothers, named Pradeep, was working in a Gulf country at the time. Back then, my grandfather, grandmother, and my mother’s second brother, Prasanth, were all living in my mother’s house. Our house wasn’t far from theirs, so I used to visit occasionally.
Sometime around mid-2013 or early 2014 (I don’t remember the exact date), my uncle Pradeep bought a computer and set it up at my mother’s house. One day, he showed me a new movie on YouTube. I was already a movie lover by then. In fact, I’ve always loved watching things on TV—movies, cartoons, and all kinds of programs.
That was the moment I first encountered the internet, even though I didn’t fully understand what it was. I didn’t know that YouTube was a media-sharing platform or anything like that. At the time, I simply thought YouTube was a place to watch movies.
Slowly, I began to understand how to use YouTube and explore other things online. Whenever I visited my mother’s house, I would use the computer there. After a few months, Uncle Pradeep returned to the Gulf, but the computer stayed. I still remember a time when an eye infection was spreading, and all my family members except me got affected. So, I had to stay at my mother’s house for about a week. Every day after coming back from school, I would sit in front of that computer—watching YouTube, exploring, and unknowingly stepping into the digital world.
Slowly, I started falling in love with computers and the internet. Everything about them fascinated me, the way they worked, the endless possibilities they offered. Then one day, my uncle gifted a touchscreen phone to my second uncle. That was the first time I got to use a touch phone with internet access. It felt magical.
The WhatsApp app amazed me. The idea that we could send voice messages, images, and texts instantly felt like magic. I was especially fascinated by the ticks—one tick, two ticks, and the blue ticks, they all sparked my curiosity. At first, I used to confuse the WhatsApp logo with the default SMS app because they looked somewhat similar to me.
Eventually, I learned about the Play Store and understood that apps are downloaded from there, and that’s how WhatsApp had been installed. Before that touchscreen phone, my uncle had another basic phone on which I used to play small games. Good old days.
Those kinds of gadgets always sparked my curiosity. I found them so interesting that I naturally started developing a deep fascination for technology.