What are your Hobbies? Reading Books, Watching TV, Playing Cricket. A Stock answer one comes across. Google says Hobby is an activity done regularly in one’s leisure time for pleasure. What are the benefits of hobbies, other than consuming the free time? Of course, now a days, students find no time for other activities than the course they are pursuing. I personally feel that any activity which helps to open doors of learning new things about the world we live in, is a good hobby.
So, What are the popular hobbies other than the ones mentioned above. A very popular pastime of yesteryears was Philately i.e., Stamp Collection. Many of our generation, used to collect Postal stamps of various commemorations, distinguished personalities, National achievements etc. We used to exchange stamps from friends. The exchange has its own standards as sometimes two stamps are exchanged for one depending on the value of the stamps, not in terms of money but in terms of availability. We used to be envious of the friend who has the best collection. The Stamp collectors used to wait anxiously at the Head Post Office on the day of release of new stamp and the first day cover. The ones who succeed in getting the coveted stamp used to feel proud of their achievement, one more valuable addition to their collection. It is just not collecting the stamps, but arranging them in an album, country wise and theme wise is an interesting activity. Talking of themes, there used to be several thematic collection viz., Birds, Animals, Monuments, Heads of States, to name a few. A keen stamp collector reads the history/importance associated with personality or event of the stamp released, thus enhancing his/her general knowledge. ‘Philately’ is rightly called ‘King of hobbies’ as it is easy and not very expensive. A visit to a Stamp Exhibitions can be great fun as well as refreshment of the awareness. Having said that, there seemed to be a slide in the number of Philatelists now as most of the correspondence is done through electronic mails and the volume of postal transit is lower than that took place in yesteryears. I would be happy if I am told that my opinion is wrong.
Numismatics is another popular hobby, i.e., Collection of Old coins, Monetary notes of all the countries. Compared to Philately, it is expensive as one has to invest in them to get old coins, notes. Some do pursue with lot of passion, boasting a collection of very old mint. Vintage possessions are considered valuable and have high price in the market. Again one can understand the history of the empire/government which has issued them.
Phillumeny is a very colourful, easy and fascinating hobby. Phillumeny is collection of match box labels. Phillumeny was a great pastime in the era of ‘No Lighter’ as every household used to have number of cartons of matchboxes. There used to be several matchbox manufacturing companies with different brands. Different labels are put on the match boxes and people used to buy them by using the name. A phillumenist can be seen suddenly stopping on the road to pick up a match box label, much to the dismay of onlookers. Though not as popular as Philately, Phillumeny has its own fanatics, with some of them boasting a collection of thousands of them collected from over a hundred countries. Like Philately, Phillumeny is an expression of popular art as it has a variety of themes viz., Animals, religion, mythology, monuments, royalty etc. It was said that even the paintings of artists like Raja Ravi Varma and his contemporaries were copied on the labels. With the passage of time and advent of new igniting devices, the passion for Phillumeny was doused.
Some other hobbies are Collection of Post cards of various countries, Painting, Photography, cooking to name a few old ones. Now Blogging is a hobby pursued by many. There are a number of hobbies for us to be creative and make our life happy. After all, One person reportedly holds a Guinness record for ‘Suing’ as he reportedly made it an actual hobby to file law suits for any reason. Hobbies can be unusual and fun, right!
