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.