Finding Hobby

The question of having a hobby as a formal activity had never been posed to me until my UPSC interview. It hadn't really found a place in the list of things I considered worth thinking about. This doesn't mean I had no hobby, just that the activities I did for leisure hadn't been codified as hobbies in my vocabulary.

It’s been almost six years since I last gave this question serious thought. The question kept returning, and the pressure to have a hobby is huge. But my escapist attitude surrendered my schedule to the mighty civil list, rendering the whole idea of hobbies moot.

However, fate today led me to the corners of the internet where Sandeep Maheshwari, Shiv Khera and Jean-Paul Sartre seem to be algorithmic neighbours. Hence, with renewed motivation, I am determined to find my hobbies again.

I have generally claimed writing to be a hobby of mine, but the state of this blog belies my claim. I have barely written a post or two in the last two years. Every time I pick up my laptop to jot down my thoughts, the Conduct Rules of the service cause self-censorship worse than the totalitarian state in 1984. I tried writing about things unrelated to service or government, but the sole reason I write is the catharsis of putting out whatever is on my mind. Writing about 10 animals I find cute just doesn't give me that satisfaction.

When it is not the service rules, it is the fear of a post I write today resurfacing 10 years later, right when I have inevitably landed in soup for some reason or the other. This fear has taught me to use CTRL+A and delete more often than I expected.

Having sacrificed writing to the Panopticon, sports appears to be a safe choice - both playing and watching. However, claiming to be an avid player could easily land me in situations where my knowledge of the different white lines is put to the test. On the contrary, watching sports is easy to do and right up my alley.

Amongst the plethora of options, watching cricket is the unquestionable national pastime. Unfortunately, this popularity is its own enemy. Watching cricket as a hobby doesn't bring the same amount of oohing and ahhing that being a connoisseur of global cuisine or classical music does, and the kind of self-confidence and self-assurance it requires to defend popular choices in exclusive circles is something that will take a few more years for me.

Following tennis, F1 or golf are tempting options, but the effort I need to put in to have an informed conversation on them exceeds my need for validation. Golf, in particular, feels like a cult which grew by accident when even the founder didn't expect as many people to fall for the shared myth. I do have some experience with playing squash on and off, but given that I don't really live in metropolitan cities, there have been more OFFs than ONs.

There are many other outdoor activities possible apart from sports.

Trekking, bird watching and gardening are other relatively mainstream, but not too mainstream, choices. However, my body betrays any evidence of trekking, my patience belies the demeanour of a bird watcher and my limited ability to differentiate stem from root makes gardening hard to sell.

There is a good chunk of hip indoor hobbies I think can be considered. While philately and collecting coins have been lost to the cruel ingress of modernity, board games are still in vogue. As a former Ludo enthusiast, board games don't feel too unfamiliar. They offer high-tier bragging rights too. The challenge remains the time I need to commit to pursue this hobby. If a game exceeds the duration you normally get stuck in Bangaluru traffic for, I expect it to come with snacks, a pension plan, and emotional closure.

The last honest option is to accept watching reels and shorts. I admit the first reel is still hard to open. The thumb-brain coordination required to open that first reel is a little rough. However, after the thumb wins the battle, it's smooth sailing. The cesspool of reels draws me like a moth to a flame, or light into a black hole. The number of lives I am able to support with this noble act is huge. At every quarter-end, I endlessly scroll reels to help with that 1 basis point of GDP growth that otherwise would have been lost.

There are many more fish in the hobby ocean today. AI is a newly emerging hobby with the advent of active Clauders and ChatGPTers. Book reading has found a new resurgence after Faqir Chand Book Store got raided for photos. Collectors are collecting all sorts of items except anything that's useful.

In this background, true to my profession, I am going to actively try every hobby imaginable. That, perhaps, is going to be my hobby.