my library duty..

during this summer vacation i got a unique oppurtunity of doing  library duty.. nisarg saw this notice on dc  where interested students can get around 100 bugs per hr. this one seemed to be a good oppurtunity so nisarg, abhishek and I decided to apply  for it, as always …finally i was the only one who applied. i got 4 days of 2 hr slot each from 10 pm-12 midnight .i was ready for it and had a good $$ reason too.

i did’nt knew what actually i had to do in it and i never tried to think upon it ,well how much difficult it could get  its just a matter of 8 hrs. 1st day i went there and asked the security about it . first he took my name roll and signature in 3 different registers which was pretty irritating and then finally gave me an answer that just go and sit somewhere. i was happy to know that the job was just to sit and relax otherwise i had some wild guesses of me carrying loads of books from hall 1 to hall 6 .

i usually sit in the journal section where we have good air conditioning and nice comfortable chairs to sleep. i quickly went there and  mind it i do had my notebook with me to study. i heard someone saying that we had to switch off lights of each hall while leaving as the part of our job, from 10-11:30 i just waited with my concentration more on my watch rather on my notebook. as the clock hit 11:30 i went to hall no 4 and started switching off the lights at first it was fun trying  3 to4 swtiches at once but it went boring when i realised there were too many switches. finally after around some 200 switches this marathon came to an end. while i came to the ground floor the person incharge asked me wether i did the job or not i very proudly said yes “hall 4 poora band kar diya ” but he made some akward face and replied  ”aur annex building band kiya na ” ..

shit i said to myself annex building is like 4 floors of journal section where thousands of journals are kept like a safe. no body usually goes to that area. i was a little annoyed but was ok with me  n i said to myself ” paise bhi to de rahe hain chalo kar dete hain ”  , i started with ground floor it was haunting and silent all around . not a single soul was there to accompany me instead there were thousand of books may be lakh of them ,some like not touched from decades. i slowly went to every corner and swtiched off  lights and fans the more they went off more silent and darker things became. these safes were long and there was little spacing which made things difficult for me. it seemed as if i was inside a horror movie where a suspense scene was about to be broken by a ghost standing next corner.

finally ground floor was over but 3 more were there to go .. in my orientation day i was told that IIT KGP library had one of  the asia’s biggest jounal collection . i practically visited every corner of  its massiveness. finally about midnite i completed my job as i swiftly gained speed after some experience with switches .  while coming out to the enterence i saw the whole library in darkness as if all those books were left asleep. i was the last one coming out while hall 1 was totaly under darkness.

i left the the library prasing myself of doing a daring job and saying to myself “200 kamana utna aasaan bhi nahi tha ” . at the end it felt nice that first time in my life i physically earned something. i added a new and very challenging experience to my life..