My Hobby

A hobby is different from work. A hobby is pursued during leisure. It gives relief from boredom and refreshes the mind after tiring physical or mental work.

Hobbies differ from person to person. Manual workers may like to read books or magazines after hard physical work. Intellectual workers may give rest to their minds by playing some light game like badminton or tennis. Many people take interest in gardening, photography, seeing movies, etc. during their leisure time. My hobby, however, is stamp-collecting.

I am aware that a hobby is pursued mainly neither for earning money nor for adding to one's knowledge nor for gaining popularity. There is absolutely no selfish motive involved in a hobby. The main purpose of a hobby is just pleasure through recreation. Money, knowledge, popularity, and such other gains are only by-products of the hobby. Secondly, a hobby is not intended to take precedence overwork. It is only complementary to work. It provides new energy to our minds and limbs 10 more and better work.

I selected stamp-collecting as my hobby just by chance when I received letters from my pen-friends by in foreign countries. Very colorful and descriptive stamps of various designs were fixed on those letters. I was so much enamored of those stamps that I decided to have stamp-collecting as my hobby. Now I exchange stamps with my friends and make purchases even from the market. I am a member of a number of stamp collecting national and international societies which help me in collecting stamps from different countries.

I have with me about two thousand stamps from various countries. Most of the stamps are of a rare variety and my friends who see them are all praise for them. They are arranged in a number of albums in a very systematic manner. They tell us about different personages, flora and fauna, historical events, achievements in the scientific and other fields of various countries, etc. Some of them denote some festivals or great or important days like the International Year of Women or Year of the Girl Child etc. I love to see them off and on.