Chaubees (24) Ghante!!

One should keep on trying new things…. One thing that I had not done was to go 24 hours without sleeping even for few minutes.. Last month while on a trekking trip I had gone 22 hours out of home. But again, that was a long travel and was dotted by a couple of half hour naps on the bus.
So today it was a new record of sorts. It was a long day which started at 7.00 .. Had 2 exams today in quick succession. And not some ordinary ones. Usually we have exams of 2 hours each. Today the 1st one was of 4 hours and the second lasted 2.5 hours.. Special consideration given due to them being case based exams. The energy sapping 6.5 hours of writing was not the perfect ending I was looking to end the exams – but due to the mental and physical exhaustion, it was satisfying to know that they are over!!!!
It followed a ‘bakar’ session at prithivi theater café over bread pakodas and cutting chai.. We happened to see Shashi Kapoor there, who had come for the Rajat Kapoor Play – Hamlet. My friends found it disturbing to see him so old and vulnerable. It was actually unbelievable to see him that way with the image of “bhai.. tum sign karte ho ki nahi” and “mere pass maa hai” still so fresh in mind.
Raka, Deepak, Sanchit and me then moved to the beautiful roof top @ Deepak and Sanchit’s place where the bakar session went a long way into the night with a lovely weather and excellent breeze to give us company. The session broke off at 3.30 AM with the awesome weather finally giving in to the rains.. I have a train to catch at 8, so there was no point sleeping after coming back at 4.00. It was realized that packing was still to take place so the activity was undertaken on priority followed by completing a project report, due for submission.
It is a bit odd to realize that you need to brush your teeth and take bath when you don’t actually get up after a night’s sleep. Now, as I rush in to take a shower, it is 23 hours since I got up and with the time to leave for station just half hour away, I am positive I would achieve my record of 24 hours – may be more!! I guess the train is the place which will now act as a lullaby…
It’s Time to carry on as I hear the birds chirping and a new day setting in!!

Addicted

In shackles!!
I knew this problem was prevalent. But today I got a chance to see how widespread it is with me being a part of it. The addiction is the internet.
We, a group of 10 started a journey for Bangalore last night from Mumbai. The last moments before leaving the campus were on the net. A 24 hour train journey followed. Thanks to the ubiquitous mobile towers, we were well connected on the mobile. Some technological constraints like battery running out did exist but that can be largely blamed on to the Indian railways – for not providing charging facilities.
But 1 thing that was missing was the access to the internet. Though technology has advanced to provide us the facility but we, generally used to the constancy of Wifi in our college and home are not adapted to the data cards as of now. It was around 11.30 PM when we reached our hotel after a long tiring journey. The news of internet being freely available in the hotel was a news that brought life to all the dead tired faces and in no time each one of us are in their respective rooms on their Gtalks. Freshening up, tea/coffee/dinner – all can wait. The priority is getting plugged to the world – to return to the matrix.
Strange – our lives have become - the same lives which we lived without even mobile phones till a few years ago. With what I experienced today, it feels that the physical existence is starting losing its significance. Its feels almost the same sitting at my table in Mumbai or some hotel here in Bangalore. Wonder where we are headed. For now it is just a sense of addiction with some long term implications.