Z – The alphabet that comes last but is, by no means, the least

In my school days, I would struggle to find words starting with the last letter of the English alphabets namely ‘Z’ – my mind would go blank after zoo, zebra and Zulu.
The zoo is the abbreviation of a zoological garden which a large enclosure, suitably protected by fences and gorges where four legged animals was on view for the benefit of their curious two legged counterparts.
The zebra was one unique four legged specimen that is seen in the zoos and it remains a mystery even today – does it sport white stripes on a black background or vice-versa?
The next word, Zulu, would be used as a common noun to denote tribal characters who roamed the jungles of Africa, their ears and nose pierced with tiny human bones signifying that they belonged to a tribe who relished human tit-bits for breakfast, lunch and dinner!!
Later I came to know about a person called Zorro, a master swordsman capable of hiding his identity by just putting a patch over his eyes. With a sudden swish of his sword, he would leave his trademark imprint of ‘Z’ on all those who dared cross his path.
And, then came the zombies – human shaped robots controlled by unseen elements. They were there before anyone had ever thought in terms of ‘Star Trek’ and the likes.
In our youth, we were fascinated by the zip. It was associated with fasteners and, starting with purses and bags, these one day graduated to become a part and parcel of our apparel. Buttons on trousers became outdated, jackets and evening gowns switched over to zips. The zip, short form of zipper, was more convenient to use. Initially made of metal, the manufacturers switched over to nylon zips! Necessity is the mother of invention, they say. How right they are!!
The latest zip is, of course, the zipouch – to keep the veggies inside, zip up the pouch and store it in the fridge! Of course, the word zip carries a different meaning to the computer geeks. ‘Zip a file’ means to compress it into a fraction of its original size. As and when required, the file can be ‘unzipped’ to its normal size.
Zap is another favorite of computer pros – it means deleting the contents of a file while retaining its database structure.
After zip and zap, we naturally come to zoom! All TV sets have the options to view the offerings in either the normal or the zoom mode. Zoom means to magnify and is also the name of an Indian TV channel.