Inspiron

Niche. I remember Geetha madam teaching this to us in her biology classes - something to do with animals finding a unique place in an ecosystem. As the IT sector peaked up, and MBAs spewed up jargons one after the other, niche also found its way into common use…
But what I’m writing about has nothing to do with the new IT definition of niche - I’m going to blabber about a laptop. I’m sure you fail to see the relation; three months before I’d be along with you, but today I’m a changed man.

When I came to the US, I accommodated myself in a 2BHK house with 4 guys; all of them had a personal laptop. Fortunately for me, there was an additional one which was provided to one of the guys for official purposes. I’m basically an outrageously social animal, and for the initial week I couldn’t even imagine how people could spend all their time glued to the front of their laptops. I’d have preferred a game of cards involving everyone; a discussion involving everyone; watching a movie along with everyone - you get the idea… Even though we came from different places and would go away to different places, it’d be better if the time we spent together could be spent as a family. Well, I’m not getting too emotional, but you know, that would have been nice.

Instead, what I see is oodles of time spent in front of the laptop; atrocious!! This prompted me to think about what might be driving this. I then realized it; and it was so plain obvious. Even while all of us thrived under the same roof, and we tried to have a family atmosphere, the laptop was an outlet to their individuality. It was their wife, their brother, their mother; in short it was family. It was the entrance to the internet which would connect them to their loved ones; it was the window through which they satisfied almost every urge. It was their niche, their own place to be, in this "hostel" - somewhere they could let out their emotions, imbibe the emotions from the outer world, and yet show it to no one...the next best friend to man himself (long gone are the times when that description suited a dog; a laptop now rightfully earns that adjective.)

When I had this BIG realization, the natural step for me was to get one on my own. Guess what - I started spending more time on my laptop than the others on theirs… But we still have a happy family in our home.

Oh, BTW, this is titled Inspiron because thats the name of my laptop model. In a way it applies to what it does - it inspires....