Victorinox

Someone known to me only as "j" made a very nice observation about a year back and I write about it now. He (I assume) was in the presence of a group when they were asked a logic puzzle by another in the group. The puzzle involved ropes and the mention of a Swiss Army Knife to be used in the solving of the puzzle. The puzzle was adequately answered by a third member of the group. His answer just mentioned a knife without going into the specifics. The riddler heard but did not hear the knife being mentioned and raised the obligatory objection. "j"'s response was a brilliant observation and to the effect that it seemed an abomination to use the Swiss knife without mentioning its name.

From the time I first laid eyes on the Swiss Army knife when I was a boy, I have always wanted one. I have never met a guy, who was a boy at heart and did not appreciate the Swiss Army knife. The dream was always to own it; the dreams never included the use of the multipurpose pocket utility knife. Fantasies always involved having the "trusted" Swiss knife by my side as I did great things like scale the Kanchenjunga.

When I was in my 5th grade, the famed bookstore Landmark opened in Madras on Nungambakkam High Road and soon I learnt of its exitence and visited it taking the 29C bus from Adyar. Prior to Landmark, the only other widely known bookstore that catered to the general English novel reading public was the Higginbothams on Mount Road, but I always found that the Higginbothams had huge no.s of copies of books by Shakespeare, Bronte, Twain and Tolstoy and not enough Tintins, Asterixes and absolutely no DC Comics books. It was Mahagony lined, musty and smelled like my granfathers bookcase, not that that was not exciting in its own right; but "Oliver Twist" and "War and Peace" are not books for kids in middle school.

So, when Landmark came into existence with its fresh decor, airconditioned interior and targeting the younger audience, I was hooked. It became the instant favorite and after close to an hour of browsing thru the books, I came upon a glass enclosed showcase that displayed the various models of *authentic* Victorinox Swiss Army knives. Till that point, I had only read about these in novels and other books and seen some hanging in the small streetside shops of Burma Bazaar on 1st Line Beach (these, I was adequately warned by my other grandfather, were at best, fakes, reproductions that were made in Ambattur or Ludhiana or at worst, smuggled goods from Muscat and Dubai, where they had been used for shady purposes).

I stood there for another half-hour surveying the collection and trying to decide which of them I would buy if I had that kind of discretionary spending power. I decided on that day that I would buy a Swiss Army knife as a present to myself with my first month's salary on full time employment.

Fast forward some 11 years to the early morning hours of 11th September '01. I was in Grad school and woke up at 9AM (early for my routine in those days) and walked to my department and to my computer and started checking my mail. First, I was surprised to have received an email from a Professor with whom I didn't directly work with, who rarely sent emails on lists, who was and is something of a legend - highly respected, did some great work in Systems, hard charging and advised some of the brightest PhD dissertators in the Department. His email was simple and to the point and conveyed the tragic news of that unfortunate morning - that one plane had crashed into one of the World Trade Center Towers. I thought to myself what an unfortunate accident this was. The day had worse times in store for everyone.

Fast forward a year to when I started working and some more to now, times have changed. I never did buy it. There are some rare moments on some days when a little glow of longing shows up in my mind but the resulting excitement is fleeting. One day, may be I'll buy one for myself, may be when time has gone by and I live close to or visit areas that have a little more geographical drama than this featureless Midwest... May be I will never buy one. At least not for myself, may be for a son or a nephew or for another kid at heart...