An instance when my presence of mind did not desert me!

Am I ready to blog about this week’s theme, ‘An instance when my presence of mind did not desert me’

I have been thinking about it for the past one week since the theme was announced. I remembered a few incidents which made me feel happy. Happy, because mostly my presence of mind has not deserted me. I instantly thought how it would have been, if the theme was about how my presence of mind had deserted me.

The incident that I am narrating here is one which I will never forget. The presence of mind that I had exhibited that day is not something that I get to do every day.

I was then working as the Principal of an engineering college. I think that it was the first graduation day and college day that I was conducting as the principal of that institution. As a part of the celebrations, since our new library block was coming up, it was decided to have the inauguration of the library building along with the graduation day.

Like in all cases, the building was handed over to us only a day before the inauguration and somebody suggested that it would be nice if we could shift all the books from the existing library to the new block.  There were more than 10,000 books and it would have needed me hours of hard work and labour to shift even one-third of them.

I had the librarian and a few faculty members shift the books from the morning itself. By lunch, we must have shifted about 1,500 books. It was after lunch that I had this idea. I called a few Heads of Departments and some faculty members and told them my plan. It was to cancel the classes that afternoon.

I decided to form a human chain from the existing library to the new library block, right up to the book racks, consisting of about 150 to 200 students. I asked the students to pass the books by hand. I had about 10 faculty members to ensure that there was no pilferage of books.

When I found that this idea was successful, I immediately asked other classes to be cancelled and in about three to four hours, I was able to transfer all the 10,000 books to the new library.

There was some resentment among the students thinking that I was trying to save the money. But when I went to the class after the celebrations thanking each and every student for making the inauguration a success with their help, there was genuine happiness in their faces.  They knew that they had helped in accomplishing such a mammoth task.

I think this is one incident which each of the student present that day will never forget in their life and neither will I.

How Internet changed my world

 Am I ready to blog about “How internet changed my world?” I would not have even thought of this blog name if it was not for the internet. 

When was I attracted to the internet? Not in the early days though. 

I started off with a Hotmail account maybe in the early years of the internet. I remember my uncle buying a book about Internet and its use for me for 100 rupees in 1998.Not that I read much. It was around the same time my father in law gave me a laptop to use. I don’t think we got an internet at home till around 2001.

I was very slow to make use of internet. I must have been having a hotmail account, which was created by my wife, for more than 10 years. I have mail written by my wife when she visited the US in 2003 and a record of her stay for more than 2-3 months and I keep refreshing my memories reading them.

Hotmail account was followed by a yahoo mail account created by a PhD scholar for me, because it was considered to be good and fast to store lot of literature review material collected from the net.

When I was doing my PhD, internet was an important tool. It was easy to search for papers. My guide always used to tell me how difficult it was to collect research articles when he was doing PhD. Those days in the absence of computers, writing everything on paper was so difficult. When I wrote my thesis, I realised how much easier my life was because of computers and internet. I could write what ever came to my mind just the way I do today and edit by cutting, copying and pasting. Imagine doing all this on white paper.

I always tell my students that all that they have to do is google and you will have the answer immediately. A luxury which we never had as students. Such beautiful power point presentations, animations.....

I have become so addicted to the computer or a laptop for the past 15 years that I have forgotten how to write. I find it extremely difficult to write and an irony it is, that I have so many pens.

When did I get into facebook? I don’t remember but the credit must go to the spouse for getting me a facebook account I guess. It is a wonderful tool to connect with friends. I did find my college mates through this. What more do I need? The spouse ensured that I had a blog and along with that, a g-mail account and a chance to rediscover my capabilities in writing.

And finally, all of you who read this blog? You would never have come into my life, if not for the internet. Makes me think of the song Dorakunna ituvanti seva?

What about all the banking services, e-ticketing services and other features that internet offers us? Is there an ending to how Internet changed my world ?

Thanks Internet for making our lives so easy, interesting and communicative.