"Do I have a Choice??": The Dreaming Insomniac Part III

Preparing a seminar which should take a minimum of 30 minutes was certainly not an amazing thing to do. 30 minutes called for a minimum of 35 slides. Above all that, the most important element, without which the speaker would be prepared to speak hardly anything on the subject at hand- the source. The most severe of pains was getting the information; some articles, some diagrams, something... Without these, it would be close to impossible to blah blah. Of course, it must be kept in mind that to achieve success and acclaim for hi/her presentation, it is absolutely essential that he/she takes enough time to study the resources patiently with interest, dedication and most importantly, in a good frame of mind. And here I am! Impatient, flustered, disinterested, utterly frustrated and to top it all, very very sleepy. Thanks to the 5 hours of snooze I’ve had in the last six days, of course, put together.

Life in the temple of education has taught me, like every other wannabe techy, that crying over the milk that is anyway going to spill is simply a waste of time and above all, waste of tears. Hence the moral of the story is, acceptance is a virtue. Acceptance is the order of the day for mortals like me, who have only one choice, which sorrowfully, happens to be, no other choice. Again as Morpheus in The Matrix: Reloaded put it, “Choice is an illusion created by those in power for those without it.” Now that I’ve realized the essence of the road-to-engineering-degree life, it was time I pondered of what, how and from where to get my work done. To answer the first question- what? Well, all I knew about this one was that I was to speak on “Basics of LASER” and nothing more than that. It struck me then, amidst my strains to think of a possible way out of the enigma that I found myself in, that a complete and comprehensive solution to the question must lie in the answer to the next question- how? But strange enough, I saw myself facing the same dilemma as I was in before. Without breaking my head, I skipped to the next question, which turned out to be the best decision I had taken in the day. The answer to from where lay in the lifeline of the campus, the Octagon, the computer centre. But again, as always, we had a new problem posing before us. We have the Octagon to ourselves alright, and its open 24/7, however, getting a free terminal was something that even Mr. Hercules might find way too challenging. Sadly though, owing to the expansion policy of the college, an increased intake of students without expanding infrastructure of the college had created mayhem at all levels and Octagon was not spared either. Come to think of it, it is an amazing proportion, isn’t it, 40 computers in the internet lab for approximately a thousand students? Thanks to all these, the lab had become an arena where there would be an angry junta waiting for free terminals when all those people sitting on the computer, hooked onto some online dating sites with chat windows open and coochy-cooing some Rita, Mita, Tina, Lolita, Sasha, Laura, etc, etc. As and when someone logs off, all those who were waiting pounce on the system and a war of possession commences. I was in no mood for such gimmicks. Hence the most opportune moment had to be midnight, which in other words meant, seventh night of sleeplessness. Again, do I have an alternative?

Amidst all this planning, I meet Anil on my way from the canteen to hostel. “So what’s the plan? Taking the seminar?” he asks mockingly. “Do I have a choice? Darling, I want to stay alive!” was my reply. And the sadist remarks in a dramatic manner, a la Matrix, “It is not the choice, but why you made the choice that’s important.” Encouraging this conversation was not in my best interest; hence I put an abrupt full stop to it and set for my chores.

The day’s itinerary was not very different from the rest of them. After class there was practice till 10 in the night for my next play, Barefoot In The Park. After that an elaborate dinner of 3 Mountain Dews™ and a bread omelet at the night canteen followed by a nice a session of revising the play’s progress and planning for the next day’s action. All this went up till midnight. In short, I didn’t have to literally wait for the moment, it just came. After dumping my bag and notes in my room, I set out for the Octagon. As expected, the internet lab was relatively less populated. Of course, the slice of junta here was engaged in some sort of leisure that gave them immense pleasure and created a world of fantasy for them and their dreams. Can’t blame them, can I? After a certain level of frustration, man can’t hold it longer. They have to get engaged somehow. Hence, the visual medium was the most easily accessible. Call it misuse of technology, for all you care. I could not help letting out a chuckle, looking at these innocent yet immensely corrupted fellows glued to their screens. I wished I could just observe them longer and write something about them. Alas! That wasn’t my job. Besides, do I have a choice?

Alright! So this was the plan. I’ll browse How Stuff Works website as well as Wikipedia and try getting some stuff downloaded transfer to the intranet using my flash drive. Sounds simple enough, I thought. Well, to my amazement, it was damn simple alright. I was elated. Took just an hour to acquire the required pieces of info and voila! Here I have my resources. A look at my watch said 1:25am. That was very encouraging. As per the POA, I dumped the stuff from the net lab to the user lab where we access the intranet. Now that acquisition was over, it was time for assimilation. In other words, the material has to be properly organized, put into slides, order them according to the sequence of presentation and then do the final touches such as inserting the pictures and the reference links. This was the tedious part of the job. Because before I do all these, had to study the material and make myself well aware of what I was supposed to speak and what should be kept as back up to answer questions raised by my “cooperating” classmates and perhaps, even by the lecturer herself. Without wasting time, I got myself going through all the pages I had just downloaded and studying the graphs carefully with the closest detail. Thanks to some basic fundamentals that I was acquainted with, getting the concepts into my gray matter didn’t seem all that taxing. Thanks to the amazing illustrations, the principles were there on my screen and required minimum strain for comprehension. The entire process was time consuming. But that was pardonable since I didn’t feel the pressure at all, for I was all to myself in an empty user lab at 4:50am. I was free to let out grunts and yawn noisily. I even sang at moments of joy and clapped in frenzy when something I did worked out! Thanks to a very understanding guard sitting at the entrance of the Octagon, who was fast asleep and snoring away to glory. Now that’s what I call a “sound sleep”.

For a change, I was beginning to feel that the cosmos is indeed smiling at me in this early hour of the morning. I mean, come to think of it, everything I had planned on doing was simply just happening in front of me and guess what? I have had to put minimum effort. Well, I realized that optimism was not rally alien to me. It’s just that, things don’t work out the way it should at times and we tend to keep reminding ourselves of only those instances every time. And the result? We grow to think that nothing good can ever happen to us. Even if they really happen, that’s just a bonus. Not anymore for me. We have to be optimistic about our stuff. All we need is a little bit of planning and most importantly, sticking to the plan. If we do that, then there is nothing that could go wrong. Absolutely nothing.

The watch said 6:05 when I heard the birds chirping and crying to welcome the first rays of the sun. A look outside the window and I saw the night sky is slowly turning blue with streaks of dark pink and purple. That’s what made me look into my watch. I had every reason to smile, for here I was, with 38 slides in my presentation which included 4 graphs, 6 pictures of LASER equipment and 10 detailed step by step illustrations of the actual process of LASER generation. The sense of triumph was such that I didn’t feel tired anymore. A bit fine tuning was all that was left, i.e. giving the animations and things like that. It was 6:10 now and people had started coming into the lab slowly and taking their seats. One of them looked at me with sympathy, thanks to my sunken eyes and dark circles. But I wasn’t bothered.

For the final revision, I put the presentation on slide show. One by one, the slides came and left at the click of the mouse. Important points faded in and expanded. The illustrations swiveled and expanded. The layout was strictly professional and the colour scheme was in conformity with the whole mood of the presentation. At the end I wanted to save “the thing” and transfer it to my flash drive. And then it happened amidst the slide show. The screen went blank. I waited as though the system had slowed down. But no! The screen would simply not come. I pressed every button possible! Alt-Ctrl-Del, Esc, Alt-Tab, everything, but the screen simply refused to come alive!

“I’m really sorry! It was a mistake! I kicked it by mistake” said someone. I turned in the direction of the voice. And there was this guy with a pleading look, sitting at the last system that was close to the switchboard. “Beep!” said my computer and then the Windows Xp™ Loading screen came alive.

And so did the reason for this post.

PS: This post was made on the 28th of September, but due to technical reasons, uploading it was not possible on time. The delay is regretted.