Return of the prodigal

After a couple of months of 'abstinence' I was welcomed back into the domain of cyberspace by my new laptop. This arrival was closely followed by the arrival of the first music gear that I can call my own. So the hours would now pass more easily. But then is that the best thing that could have happened ? If that surprised you, perhaps the following stats will make things a little clearer.

The highlights of my IIT life were two things of seemingly contrasting attributes: my computer and my music. Without either, I would not have had half as much fun or 'accomplished' anything of note. If the computer was an extension of my college life, helping me stay in touch with my academic side (however little that might have been !), my music was definitely my release, my way of putting frustrations aside - an invaluable stress-buster when the going got tough. Hence in the absence of either, there would be a sizeable hole in my daily routine as you can well imagine. A void that would be hard to fill, if at all. In Kharagpur (that was my college) it was hard to imagine that life without these two things were at all possible. Imagine my consternation when I was faced with the daunting prospect of confronting a new people, a new culture, a new university, essentially a new life, without the comforting presence of my old friends.

That was two months ago. I would work at my desk in the university, chat with my parents and friends, but when I came home at night there was this huge void staring back at me - an emptiness that I find hard to put into words. For the first few days I would just walk about aimlessly from room to room trying to pass the time somehow. I would bring back papers to read, but would soon be lulled into sleep by the sheer monotony. That was when I remembered another 'old friend' that I had quite forgotten about.

You see, in college, there would always be too much to do. If I was not playing football or fiddling around with a guitar, I would just spend hours lazing around on my computer. Caught up in this hugely demanding schedule, I had almost forgotten what it was like to pick up a book and be transported to another time, another place where time seemed to fly past in a blur. But all that was about to change.

In the depths of my despair, my gaze fell upon a book that I had brought with me, perhaps for just such an eventuality. It was a novel by Amitav Ghosh called 'The Hungry Tide'. The next thing I knew, I was 100 pages into it and loving every bit. The voracious reader in me had been awakened, and how! In the next few weeks I had gobbled up titles as diverse as 'My name is Red', 'Confessions of an Economic Hitman', Kafka's 'The Trial' and started on 'A People's History of the United States'.

And just when I thought I had rediscovered the artistic side of me, Dell came knocking at the door and ruined it all. Talk about timing !!