THE POWER OF LAN

I am sited in the comfort of my home. I has all the resources which are normally available to the average middle class Indian.But I am a bit bored. I do the obvious. I switch on the idiot box. After a few hours I realize just why it is called the “idiot” box- you have to be an idiot to watch some of the programs on it. With IPL not on till the evening and the good English series not being aired I succumb to the torture and give in.

After having switched off the 21 inch, I took a leap backwards in time; I next tried the ancestor of television-the radio. But gone are the days of vividh bharti (not that they were much entertaining). Today we dance to the tunes of FM radio. But I soon got feed up of RJ’s cracking below the belt jokes. It was really awful, the cheesy alias, the brain dead PJ’s and the irritating, artificial tone negated the joy of listening to good music. I soon gave up on that also.

So I turned to something which is the invention of the century. The largest network on the planet with millions of pages, each with its own uniqueness and appeal had to be the answer to my boredom. But I was cheated once again. The browsing speed was too slow. I did not feel like surfing educational websites. So I was reduced to social networking. But I was never an active member and I always used to feel that the task of going through others private information is an act of voyeurism. So it happened again- I got feed up. Not knowing what to do I started to search for some good, entertaining torrents. My search found many hits but when I pressed the magic download button, it flashed the estimated time left. My heart sank. I would die of boredom before this download could be complete. If only I had a faster download speed? Then it struck me, not long ago I had that facility, because not too long ago I was a member of a 2000 computer strong, 20 TB worth LAN. Not long ago I had access to my college LAN.

So whenever after college I had to study I had the prefect distraction and did not study, whenever I should have gone out and played, I being true to my engineering subject did play, but “on lan” not in the hot sun. Also, whenever I was bored all that I had to do was run "DC++.exe" and presto-the beautiful and limitless world of entertainment was there in front of me. It was all that easy, so easy rather that we did not appreciate it, but know when we no longer have that invaluable asset we miss it like hell.

So when out of utter desperation I see the DC++ icon in my desktop and double click it which the hope that a miracle will happen and I shall somehow get connection, I get the reply “Host unreachable” and my heart sinks. I knew the result before clicking it, but sometimes when you miss something terribly you start to hope against hope.

Yes I miss my classmates, I miss my institute, I miss my friends, I miss my bestest friend but DC-I miss you too :-(.