It was 10 years ago when someone first asked me this question. Since then I have had many people ask me the same question and I have done everything other than hide behind a bush to avoid it.
What is your hobby?
When I first left school to study in a college, the seniors wanted 'to get to know us better' and so they asked us what our hobbies were. They were not particularly impressed when I told them I did not have one. Some of my untruthful friends told the seniors that their hobbies were to listen to music, to watch tv etc. They were all lying. Some dictionary suggested that a hobby was the thing you did in your spare time for pleasure. If you go by the definition all my friends were doing something else for pleasure during their spare time and they were not mentioning it to the seniors. Someone who was slightly inventive said his hobby was philately. But why would one want a collection of his or her saliva under stamps? When I become health minister, I will deem it unhealthy.
When I left college, I assumed real world people asked real questions. But I was wrong. Job interviewers asked me the same dreaded question. So did the landlords. Atleast the landlords had a case. If I told them my hobby was gardening, they had every right to suspect and investigate what I was growing in the backyard.
If I suffered due to the 'what is your hobby?' question in India, I suffer more from the 'what did you do in the weekend?' question in the UK. UK is a land of weather and weekends. The natives and the aliens trying to assimilate into the local culture just can not stop complaining about the weather. When the weather is good, they talk about the weekends; which is most of the time in a year.
To the British, a good weekend is when you took a long walk in the park, or went rowing or cheered your son play football or any one of those activities that I don't really take pleasure at.
'Raja, did you have a good weekend?'
'Absolutely'
'What did you do?'
'Huh, nursed a hangover on Saturday and watched some porn on the Sunday. Good weekend
really!'
Unfortunately, they don't think so.
