I am having the time of my life. Am I really?
Vacations as all educational institutions are one of the lots of places shut down as a measure to prevent the spread of H1N1 virus or Influenza A, better known as Swine Flu. Pune where I am currently studying, is the worst hit by the pandemic in the country and having no better choice, I felt it best to come down to Udupi, my hometown. The past one odd month has been really great for me. I had the opportunity to attend the ‘Bhajana Saptaha’, a weeklong extravaganza at Udupi, late last month. This was something I had missed for the last 3 years. And no sooner had I reached Pune and was just settling into academic mode, came this bigger news.
In the back of our minds, most of us were actually making pretexts and finding reasons to convince the college administration to give us a break from the hectic (?? Read on...) routine. Swine Flu was the most preferred excuse. As luck would have had it, even before any of our attempts, the Govt. of Maharashtra came as our Genie and granted us exactly what we wanted. A week long holiday, and we were in fact encouraged by the college to go to our respective hometowns. 95% of the people actually vacated the place in awesome speed. What was more appreciable was the efforts by the university to provide more frequent transportation to the city from the campus to enable people take flights / trains / buses to their respective places. Everyone actually went home and was actually having a great time. I too came home and this time, I got to be a part of the Sri Krishna Janmashtami celebrations after 3 years.
But some of us were greedy. We again started finding excuses that Pune was not safe and the holidays be extended. We even made ‘logical’ reasoning and came to conclusions that classes would “anyway not commence” till the coming Monday and that visiting faculty will also “not want to come” to the campus and so on. We also started calculating probabilities that the Govt. itself “may extend the holidays” beyond Ganesh Chaturthi which is a very big festival in Pune and draws huge crowds. We started praying for the holidays to be extended beyond the festival, and yes our prayers were answered once again. Again, I will be celebrating Ganesh Chaturthi with my family after 3 years.
But somewhere in some parts of India, some intelligent people silently saw this as the silence before a storm to come. When I too started thinking of it, I realized what type of a hurricane we are heading into. We will not have holidays for Deepavali; we may not have holidays after our semester is over. What’s more worrying is that there won’t be any holidays for studying before the exams. As if to rub more salt on the wounds, we may have classes from 9 to 9 everyday, Saturdays and Sundays included. Daily assignments, submissions, presentations, evaluations and tests will anyway continue.(If that was hectic, what will you call this??) We may have to forget our social and personal life for the next few months and adapt to a fully ‘Gurukul’ style of learning where we are totally isolated from the outside world. Few friends have already started making analogies of what we will be going through come 24th August 2009. One of them said, we will be the ball, college admin will be Sehwag on a juicy wicket with a fast outfield and the outcome will be ‘zabardast dhulai’! Another said that we will all be put in a pressure cooker for the next 3 months and the lid will be opened only after it is totally ensured that we are all ‘fully cooked’. The crux of the matter is that we better be prepared for the tough days ahead.
So, my dear reader friends, I am pretty sure that I will not have time to write these posts as often in the near future and that is the reason I am writing it now!
Vacations as all educational institutions are one of the lots of places shut down as a measure to prevent the spread of H1N1 virus or Influenza A, better known as Swine Flu. Pune where I am currently studying, is the worst hit by the pandemic in the country and having no better choice, I felt it best to come down to Udupi, my hometown. The past one odd month has been really great for me. I had the opportunity to attend the ‘Bhajana Saptaha’, a weeklong extravaganza at Udupi, late last month. This was something I had missed for the last 3 years. And no sooner had I reached Pune and was just settling into academic mode, came this bigger news.
In the back of our minds, most of us were actually making pretexts and finding reasons to convince the college administration to give us a break from the hectic (?? Read on...) routine. Swine Flu was the most preferred excuse. As luck would have had it, even before any of our attempts, the Govt. of Maharashtra came as our Genie and granted us exactly what we wanted. A week long holiday, and we were in fact encouraged by the college to go to our respective hometowns. 95% of the people actually vacated the place in awesome speed. What was more appreciable was the efforts by the university to provide more frequent transportation to the city from the campus to enable people take flights / trains / buses to their respective places. Everyone actually went home and was actually having a great time. I too came home and this time, I got to be a part of the Sri Krishna Janmashtami celebrations after 3 years.
But some of us were greedy. We again started finding excuses that Pune was not safe and the holidays be extended. We even made ‘logical’ reasoning and came to conclusions that classes would “anyway not commence” till the coming Monday and that visiting faculty will also “not want to come” to the campus and so on. We also started calculating probabilities that the Govt. itself “may extend the holidays” beyond Ganesh Chaturthi which is a very big festival in Pune and draws huge crowds. We started praying for the holidays to be extended beyond the festival, and yes our prayers were answered once again. Again, I will be celebrating Ganesh Chaturthi with my family after 3 years.
But somewhere in some parts of India, some intelligent people silently saw this as the silence before a storm to come. When I too started thinking of it, I realized what type of a hurricane we are heading into. We will not have holidays for Deepavali; we may not have holidays after our semester is over. What’s more worrying is that there won’t be any holidays for studying before the exams. As if to rub more salt on the wounds, we may have classes from 9 to 9 everyday, Saturdays and Sundays included. Daily assignments, submissions, presentations, evaluations and tests will anyway continue.(If that was hectic, what will you call this??) We may have to forget our social and personal life for the next few months and adapt to a fully ‘Gurukul’ style of learning where we are totally isolated from the outside world. Few friends have already started making analogies of what we will be going through come 24th August 2009. One of them said, we will be the ball, college admin will be Sehwag on a juicy wicket with a fast outfield and the outcome will be ‘zabardast dhulai’! Another said that we will all be put in a pressure cooker for the next 3 months and the lid will be opened only after it is totally ensured that we are all ‘fully cooked’. The crux of the matter is that we better be prepared for the tough days ahead.
So, my dear reader friends, I am pretty sure that I will not have time to write these posts as often in the near future and that is the reason I am writing it now!
3 comments:
Certainly true!! We would be having a very tough time when we get back to the college!! No doubt we would be 'fully cooked' but we need to make sure that, at the end we 'become a very good dish' i.e. we ought to have secured good summer internships.. let's see what happens!! Be mentally prepared.. hope everything goes good!!
Ha ha... Dude its called 'law of averages'... Latest example is - Dravid scored tons of runs from 2002 to 2006... and then a lean patch followed after that..Make your defence tighter not to get bowled neck and crop !!
Enjoy this moment buddy, It ain't gonna come back.
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