i m blu

I have the strongest possible urge to weep. My computer is dead. My hard disk collapsed and is now beyond resuscitation. And gone with it is the music from my life and the few movies it housed. I am sad beyond consolation.

(No I’m not being dramatic, this really has upset me and I am enveloped in the most genuine and stifling blanket of melancholy)

Now my desktop held more importance in my life than any machine could. In fact given my severe allergy to all nature of gadgetry and technology in general, it is a wonder we (the comp and I) ever got along. Because it wasn’t just a computer, it was a time capsule of sorts. Three years of college memories: pictures, documents… scraps of this… bits of that. It even had the first few unpublished posts of a prospective blog, which were never brought to light for fear of public embarrassment.

But what I’ll miss the most is the music. Carefully collated by several (ok at least one)generations of seniors who were benevolent enough to pass it down to me (or rather pai, to whom the comp actually belongs). I miss having a constant soundtrack to life. I miss my meticulously prepared play-lists, one for every mood… and my favourite one of all titled “rainy day”.

I’ll miss how the comp invariably reminded me of the pleasant and not so pleasant aspects of my Hudson lines existence. Breakfast at Tiffany’s… ponnie’s treatise on the urban discontent of the 1950s, Casablanca… my missing the point completely, Dirty Dancing… “nobody puts baby in a corner”, Love Actually… everyone suffering giggle fits, while one amongst us cried the bitterest tears of heartbreak (not me, my turn came much later… but all in good time), Shrek 2… a head leaned against my elbow, I knew for certain I was in love and was loved…

How I could never ever catch the climax of any movie, I’d simply fall off to sleep.

And now it’s gone. I’m usually not the kind to obsess about the past enough to want to hang on to it with a vice like grip. I don’t ache to get back to it or do it all over again. The past is… well… in the past, where it belongs. I just feel sad that suddenly, in the blink of an eye I’ve been denied all access to it.

I think the repairman sensed my grief. When I walked into the shop he said he’d charge me 300 rupees irrespective of whether the process took 5 minutes or 5 hours. I somehow managed to get him down to 250. Half an hour into the visit when the preliminary diagnosis was made, he said that if I had to walk off empty handed he’d take just 200. When he finally discovered that all my data was irretrievable (only to watch my face fall in helpless disappointment) he said I owed him 150.

At this point all I could manage was a sad, apologetic little squeek… two words…

“students’ discount?”

I ended up giving him a 100.

*

I shall now proceed to bury myself deep in my bed. Wrap my quilt around me till I can scarcely breathe. Only to emerge when the world is a pleasanter place. A place where everyone appreciates my sense of humour and I don’t have to eject fake laughs at other peoples’ jokes. Where I can be absolutely invisible when I don’t want to have a conversation or be observed.

When the sun stops playing hard to get. When weight-loss doesn’t miraculously reverse itself over the course of one night. When everyone gets a job and stops irritating the shit out of me with the most moronic of questions. When I acquire a legion of faithful foot soldiers who leave a basket full of the most delicious fruit at my doorstep every morning and lay down a direct pipeline that provides me a guaranteed supply of coffee… 24X7. When all the term papers decide to prepare and submit themselves without any external motivation and all my clothes decide to launder, iron and arrange themselves neatly in my cupboard.

A place and time when hard disks give you a full weeks notice before crashing…