After many many years, i now again have a study desk. After spending a good half of the sunday morning cleaning up the trash that had got compiled on my desk, here i am. Sitting on the very same chair with the laptop on the same classy table that i had bought more than six years back in Hubli.
I always had a study desk right since my school days, as far as i can remember. I just did not like the idea of having a study board sitting on the ground or on the bed. I needed a table and a chair to be super productive and my corner in the corner room of our house was my enclosure to dreams. The perfect room like i recall it now.
I am sure everyone believed that their room during their growing up years was just the perfect room suited to them and so was mine. The corner most room in the house, with no access to balcony and no attached bathroom. I had to give up the balcony room as the computer could not be kept in that room to avoid the risk of corrosion from the sea air and i had to make a choice. The room with the balcony and the bathroom? or the room with the computer? I think the choice was simple!
My room was the smallest one in the house with just enough space. I had my study desk in one corner next to the window and the computer on the other side, with the single bed in the middle. I would juggle from this corner to that corner in my inquisitiveness and those days of dial up internet connection. Getting access to the Digit Archives CD month on month and installing and uninstalling random software provided on the CD took up hours and i enjoyed every bit of it.
Recently, on my holiday at home, my Mom recalled my ways during my undergrad days. I would not get out of the room for hours sitting at the same study desk for hours together lost in between the books and the computer. Mom would serve snacks and juice in the evening right into my room and even the aarti jyothi would be brought into my room as i just refused to get out of it. Dinner would be served and kept on the table with the standing instructions – eat it before you sleep. I would. I was hooked.
It was not the computer. Back then, with slow internet speeds and not many social networks (Orkut was famous in the final years of my engineering), the computer did not have much attraction. I think the overall setup and the whole quest of being completely organised and the drive to complete and strike of stuff appealed to me right since then.
The fascination with the desk continued and i ensured that my desk and chair remain the cleanest and most accessible place in my hostel room during B-School. My room would turn into the party room eventually but the desk and the chair would remain unharmed. That was my favourite corner and no one would disturb it.
In my trainee period i could not afford the luxury of a desk at home in my nomadic life. As soon as i settled, i got myself a lovely office desk and a luxurious office chair. I convinced myself with the spends with the argument that this would be my home office. I was posted in Hubli and did not have any office space. The arrangement worked beauitfully. I would be glued to my new office desk-chair setup all day, returning to the mattress only to sleep.
I carried the setup to Mumbai, and due to the space constraint had to keep my TV on the desk. There was no other space available for the TV, and neither was any other place available for the desk in my small 400 sqft 1bhk. I would occasionally put in my writing pad and the laptop on the desk, wrestling space with the TV, but the arrangement never worked.
The same setting continued in Gurgaon, where i had a bigger place but no desk initially to place the TV and wall mounting in a rented apartment is not a good idea. I eventually did wall mount the TV but then the desk turned into a dump yard of all trash in the house. The desk landed up in the store room as other furniture made its entry.
There were frequent suggestions of throwing the desk out of the home but i remained adamant. I loved the desk and hoped that one day it would be back to its glory.
That day is today. The desk is back where it should have always been. My Study Room. With a couple of magazines laid on top and the window overlooking the green expanse of the society, it is the most suited place for this piece of wonderful furniture that has served me for long.
I am now hoping the productivity levels to increase and looking forward to more frequent updates and an increase in my writing levels.
The desk and the study table is the best furniture investment i have made.
This is a wonderful book written by an accomplished doctor. Thoroughly researched and lucidly written, this book leaves a mark to expose the rut that lies in the medical profession in the country. Right from the Medical colleges (or should it rather be the medical entrance coaching centres) to the Corporate medical centres of excellence, the entire system is heavily lubricated with huge amounts of money.
I came across this book on a portal and the topic immediately intrigued me. I knew i had to read it and it was on my kindle before i knew it. The first part – the epilogue by Abraham Verghese introduces us to the author. Though Verghese claims he did not know Paul well before this, he does manage to put up a decent show introducing him to us.
This is the trouble of choices. I was recently having this conversation with a colleague on how we Indians do not really appreciate choices, or probably we feel intimidated with them. Like in a restaurant, a typical middle class man would be baffled with the choices on offer.
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The core premise of the book is that the easy money and growth of the first decade of the century is over. China would slow down (and to think, the book was written in 2011, and the prediction is eerily true!) and the other BRICS countries are not really in a position to take it up. (Ruchir somewhere went quite conservative with his outlook for his Home Country, India).