Short Story

Starry Starry Nights

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My last post on depression in some ways inspired this post. Re-reading that post reminded me of an incident in my first year of hostel life, or rather beginning of second year, the days during which my exam results were announced. I remember this because there was something about it which proved as a spark in my rebound from depression; it was not a special incident, and frankly nothing dramatic happened either – but somehow it is still etched in my memory.

It was the days during which our first semester results were going to be announced. Being the lazy sloth I was, and still under depression, I was frankly hoping against hope of clearing all my exams in one go – in fact if I did, then I would have been surprised. There was a surprise – no, a better word would be “shock” when the results came out. I had managed to fail in 4 subjects, and meagerly make it out in other three. Out of the 7 subjects that we gave, I had managed a feat of failing in 4, and failing badly at that. That probably was the pits when I was in depression. It was the end of the world as I saw it; Parents would be shocked and they would shout at me, I had figured, and frankly saw my whole life wasted out.

However, as Karan mentioned in my last post, there comes a point when you tend to be in depression so long that you actually begin to enjoy it! That was precisely beginning to happen – so I would harp on my achievements or lack of it in front of my friends; but secretly I would be sad and jealous that I couldn’t clear my exams as my both roommates had done (clearing the exam was the only priority then).

It was probably a few nights after the results, when I was still sulking, and it was after dinner, that my roommate said “Lets go for a walk!”

The night was looking pretty nice with cool breeze blowing, with a sky full of stars. Hubli being a small town, it did not have that halogen glow over it restricting the view of stars – infact, the days we had a power loss, often we would sit out looking at the sky, full of stars – sometime you could make out the edges of the milky way.

“Sure” I said, not knowing why my roommate would ask me to go for a walk with him in the night (Why me?). As we left the building, we decided to take a circle around both our hostel and the senior hostel, and return to our hostel by road besides our sports ground.

For most part, I and my roommate didn’t talk much. It was as if we did not want to talk, but keep walking. As we reached the desolate part of the area between the ground and our hostel, he spoke up in Kannada: “You know, you really need to figure out what you are doing!”

“What?” I quizzed him, instantly realizing the direction this discussion was headed to.

“Nothing – its about your results – you are down 4, you need to think about it” – He said. I smirked at that comment. He asked me then– “Do you want to tell me something?”

“Tell you what?” I asked him, still trying to joke around, when he quipped – “Anything at all?”

I don’t know why, and frankly I don’t even remember why after all these years, but I do remember this – at the end of it, the look on my roommate’s face was that of “I will never ask you this again!” – I remember telling him that night about my depression; I remember telling him how my life sucked, and how I had lost so many good things in life; I remember telling him too how I hated Hubli and wanted to be in Ahmedabad, and how I had been forced to be in Hubli by my parents; About the girl that I liked so much back then; About disappointing everyone around me; And about my disappointment that nobody really shouted at me or anything because I failed – I had expected it, but it didn’t happen.

Frankly I don’t even remember finishing off my story to him – after all it was not an endless walk to the hostel. All I remember though was that night I and my roommate became better friends; It was nearly 7 months we had been staying together, and we were good friends already, but that evening he became a better friend of mine; maybe because he just listened to what I had to say, without telling me what I needed to do.

Things didn’t change overnight in my life after that night, but that night helped me get some of my thoughts out in the wind. My roommates words didn’t necessarily change my attitude towards life dramatically the very next day either, but I guess somewhere along, it always remained that much needed impetus that was required to kick start a thinking process.

And it was neither the first walk we had gone after dinner, neither the last one we too. Usually three or four of us would go walking every night. But that night, it was just a walk, under the starry starry night.

It took me another 2 years to get my backlogs over my back. And frankly that part itself is another story which I will put up sometime. However I never failed again throughout my engineering. At the peak of my engineering, in seventh semester I had topped couple of subjects not only in my college, but university as well. That night of the results, one person I would have loved to go for a walk lay smiling, six feet under.

Check my email yaar!

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Yesterday, a rather peculiar thought struck me about email, and how it has become a very personal and integral part of people. People are very touchy about others reading their emails, and most people safeguard their emails as if they were an extension of their own being. I am myself like that, and often resort to paranoia at while to assure that nobody except me reads my emails. And companies offering email security have only made it more paranoid.

There was a time though, email was simple, and didn’t raise blood pressure levels like it does today. Around 1997 when Internet and email were just launched in Hubli, it was very expensive – at around 60 bucks an hour, students could hardly afford to surf the net, not that there were any great sites out there either.

It used to be an event of sorts when someone went to check their emails. The moment someone came to know that we were going to “Internet”, friends would simply holler – “Arre yaar – check my email too man! This is my username and password!” We would write everybody’s username and password on piece of paper and then at the Internet center, check each mail for each of our friends – not that they received too many. Once back, we used to catch up on each friend and let him know about what emails he received. It was that simple. There was nothing personal about email, and anybody would check anybody’s email.

Then time went by, and people began to have more emails. Now after a year, the internet prices had come down to 40 bucks an hour, and number of email services had gone over. Friends would now give us multiple accounts and passwords to check emails. Often times we used to mess up one guy’s emails with another! But still the purpose of email was still not a personal matter. I personally had around 6 email addresses on 6 different sites then, and would usually give at least 2 email accounts for others to check on my emails. (And I must admit here, that for a good 6 months it never dawned on me that it would have made more sense to have 1 single username and password across 6 sites. Instead, I used to carry a cheat sheet with me, neatly tabular, containing the username and password for each site!).

Then, the Internet rage caught on – More cyber cafes sprang up, and Internet became cheaper and cheaper and became really affordable to 10 to 15 Rs per hour. Now it was not necessary for our friends to tell us to check their emails, neither did we have to tell them as well. Suddenly, email became a personal thing of sorts. People would no longer discuss nor be privy to other’s emails. Friends changed their passwords overnight, lest “someone from the hostel” remembered their password and would snoop on their emails. Formerly when it was expensive, two friends would use the same PC to surf the Internet on the same PC, thereby sharing the cost of it – now, two friends would sit on two different PCs, and would make sure that the other guy did not know about personal emails he received.

Ten years down the lane, this has started to become an obsessive compulsion disorder – and I observe, its not just me, but everyone around me as well. People love to check emails – it’s a part of daily ritual – you wait for people to mail you, so that you can mail back to that person, and then again wait for someone else to mail you. Everything revolves around email; weekend plans are made in an email thread; vacation plans are fortified in emails; movies are discussed and decided upon in emails. Almost everything that could be said, can be said via emails.

And the more and more we have began to rely on email as a part of human communication, the more we’ve seem to grow touchy about it. Even me – I would hate it if anybody, including my family members would read my email. Email to me is sacred, holy and something to which I am only privy too – anyone else trying to even get a whiff about it makes me paranoid. And I observe similar behavior with people around me. I know people who don’t use Gmail because Google computers read your email! We are even scared of computers reading our emails in this age. Many check their personal email outside of office lest someone in their office snoops on their emails. Email seems to have become such a sacred part of our existence, that our sanctity depends on it, and we must make sure nobody in the world can touch it.

And then I sometimes wonder. Why am I being so paranoid about it anyways? Exactly what is it about email that is so damn personal? I shudder at the thought of next big thing that technology will bring us. As I have maintained, technology was suppose to make life simpler – and yet human life seems to be hell bent on treading the opposite path.