Who is winning ? (Convocation Diaries Pt. 1)

With this, I will begin my Convocation Diaries, which is not going to be a long series at all. But I named these entries separately, because I felt I should classify them distinctly. That is so because the content of these entries is and will be intricately tied with the Convocation event which I had gone to.

The convocation's intimation had flown into my electronic mailbox. The said intimation also perhaps through its own’s other self-copies, had done so with the mailboxes digitally cornered in the cyberspace to each of my fellow batch-mates as well. I looked at it as an opportunity to feel the same air in which I had lived for the last 5 years. I also looked at it as an opportunity to travel and get a change of routine albeit for few days only. So for my forward journey, I had booked a ticket and reserved my seat on a train scheduled for departure 2 days before the convocation was to take place. That would allow me to to factor in the time a train takes to travel and also afford me a relaxing option to read a book along. I have always liked train journeys because they let me utilize the travel time for reading books, sometimes even an entire book in a single trip. I had also been unable to read a book since past few weeks because of the time I spend at my office and at my rap related efforts. So naturally and excitedly I liked the idea of being able to do book-reading-cum-train-travel.

On the day I was to leave for Kolkata for my convocation, I woke up, thankfully, on time after having slept very late in the morning the previous night/same morning. After successfully tunnelling through the dungeons of daily routine with the sprint of a cheetah, I made out through my way to the New Delhi Railway Station using a variety of 4 modes of transportation available in the city. And as smoothly as a warrior slices through a battalion of spearmen, I made out my way through the crowded station to the caterpillar awaiting me. Entering it, I found out my berth in no lesser seconds than it would have taken such a caterpillar to eat me alive, if it was giant..and breathing! Upon throwing my backpack up on the upper berth, I monkeyed myself up on the supports attached to each berth to reach the berth reserved to me.

After lying cosily on the berth blocked for me, I fished out a book to read. And then I read.

After quite a while, and because my eyes needed a break, I looked around to the group of people seated below my berth and few who were around. I saw people down below who were busily engaged with their blackberrys, iPads, smartphones, psps and other electronic contraptions birthed by the Japanese.

I went back in memory lane, when as a kid I had travelled on trains, (which were the only possible means of transportation I could have access to then btw). I remembered people around me seated in trains would pass their travel time by cracking nuts and chomping on kakri (cucumber) and pop-corn or other munchable snacks.

Well, the contrast was remarkable, beautiful and worrying at the same time.

I wondered, whether this improvement (lets call it so for convenience) around me, is my rise or my nation’s rise?

If only I had moved into a different circle or had my nation collectively moved into a different circle?

I’d no delay in understanding changes.

Image from here.