To the best brother one can ever wish for.

My brother has given me an iPod nano. It's the sleekest, most stylish gadget I have ever seen.

He gave it to me on the 20th of September, which was when he arrived home from America, and I let it lie in my shelf without configuring it or installing iTunes. My friends saw it and went green with envy, saying it's not fair - everyone should have a brother or sister who should go to America to bring you gifts. And then one of my friends said, iPods come with Bose headphones, don't they? Man, you're so lucky! Have you listened to it?

I said no, not yet. Everyone was taken by surprise. "What!", they said, "you've had it lying there for one whole month and you haven't even configured it yet!" I said no. After all, what special would be there about Bose headphones, I thought. How different would it be from, say, the headphones of my mother's mp3 player? Then one particular friend started pestering me to configure it and listen to the godd*** songs. I finally got fed up, and got down to configuring it.

I loaded a few songs on to the iPod, connected the headphones, and played Chhaiyya Chhaiyya from the film Dil Se.

I listened, mesmerized. It was as though I had suddenly warped into the very studio in which A.R. Rehman was recording this classic. The world disappeared, and I was floating in an unseen sphere of reverberating music, oblivious to the clock in my room which showed three thirty a.m.

I realized why my friends had been pestering me. It was the most complete music experience I've ever had. Everytime I connect the headphones to my ears, I am transported to a misty heaven of bliss, drifting on a river of sublimity that is sound.

Which is why I don't listen to it often. Because you cannot have enough of bliss. Because the rarest things are not meant to be common. Because I must give it the respect it commands, and not turn it into a time-pass device. Because I did not realise what a thing my brother gave to me.

These pics are taken on a Canon Rebel XSi SLR camera, which, too, my brother gifted to me to encourage my hobby of taking snaps. That is in addition to the Canon Powershot A 720 he gave me earlier. And that, is besides the innumerable other gifts he has given me time and again, like, say the Dell Inspiron.

I know how shameslessly materialistic this sounds. But...