This whole thing is turning into a mission now. My second visit to the Dutch national archives happened today. I got to meet an in-house VOC researcher at the archives who is an indologist. It was so exciting to discuss about Dutch East India company history and Tuticorin history with him. (Wait! this doesn't have anything to do with the title)


I had requested for some more maps, and was puzzled to see thin but super-long cartons being brought to me later. Each of these maps were vast, being almost 4x3 feet in size! What an experience it was, to feel the antique maps in their original form and texture! I also saw one of those maps in microfiche (micro-reproduction technique of preservation). Just to keep you all intrigued, here’s a section of a map showing Rama's bridge connecting India and Srilanka.

 My passion for the old, started with an interesting incident in childhood. One of my earliest hobbies was coin-collection. I had always been collecting new coins which got released in the year. I was the first one to hold such coins amongst all in my circle. But only later did I realize that my new coin loses its charm the next year, when it’s nothing but a lame coin. It struck to me that the charm and the value of an ancient coin goes higher and higher every day, every year, unlike my today's new coin!

I’ve had several such fads before. Some recent ones were Sithar, Naadi astrology, and Dracula. But these fads never missed to leave a big deal of knowledge-legacy to me. (I’m yet to write about some of these, which I will, soon).

Well, what’s with the title of this post?! Yesterday, I was talking about all this stuff to one of my friends. At one point, I understood that he came to a conclusion that I was a nerd! But he’s mistaken. You know what, the world’s changing. The cute girls of the generation Z would look at such a person and mumble, “Woowww, he’s so HHHOT..!!”.