A Night By My Self

(Wrote in 2004)

It was dark and lazy; the air was cold and the wind was singing a melody to those sound asleep. Whether they would ever know this, I would never know for bed feels like a better invitation. Yet I stood fighting all odds, my bed looking a better companion than ever. Here don’t mistake me for a half-crazy man sharing his night with the wind and dark chilly aura but a man forced by conniving higher echelons – doomed for a full night’s rest by the desk. Here I was destined to go through the pages of small printed alphabets which at that time seemed no more. To be clear I had to finish more than a few dozen pages on ‘Distributed Computing’ whose very thought disturbs me till date What makes it strange is when you know you are the single lone person scanning through the pages, trying to comprehend – when all your friends had been enslaved into the bed – some by knowledge, and some by an age-old trick. Of course, there are this ‘know-it-all’ who had slept earlier than usual and those ‘bad-guys’ who had left the race believing that tomorrow will find its mischievous ways. I would also mention of the ‘poor guys’ who had left it before they had started it. Whatever be it I was a loner with a dearer bed and a dreaded book.
It was miraculous I would say because suddenly from somewhere a new thought darted in. It said “Hey why don’t you go out and take a break”. I walked out and suddenly a new dimension struck me. Here I was trying to comprehend few words of Latin and Greek written by some crazy fellow, who was telling me things that held no meaning to me and out there I was standing and watching the stars, watching their glow, feeling comfortable in their presence, watching time and space and the whole universe in front of me. More than anything else I was learning it on my own – what if there were aliens in the sky, how large would the stars be. Wouldn’t it deserve more attention? I was struck by the enormity of the difference – the difference between few black letters and the big old stars – unimaginably large and vast and old. So, what was I doing getting stuck to those few pages believing that was all to me at least for tomorrow? Weren’t there beautiful galaxies to ponder over, stars living to tell you a tale. How many unnoticed eyes may have fallen on me?
But sadly, I was called back to reality – the brute fact that an exam lay ahead of me and I was one of the least equipped. I walked back to my room – catching all I could from those speaking stars and the milky sky believing there would be another day – when I would sit and gaze the stars and wonder at nature, learn from it and just be with it.
But will there be such a day. The cosy bed is a very cunning servant

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FOOTNOTE: I wrote it at 3 AM in the night before the Distributed Computing semester exam in the college. I had not studied anything and had lot of small print on pages and pages of photostat to cover.
But luckily i passed by writing my own version of answers (stories) 🙂