Every day I travel 4 kms in the school bus, reach the school, have my breakfast, and go on with my day. This has been my routine for the past couple of months. Once I reach home, I feel like plugging myself to a fast charger to feel alive again. I am exhausted both emotionally and physically. Unlike other job sectors, teaching is an emotional investment too. We are analysing student responses, having meaningful conversations that sometimes transgress the boundaries of a classroom or the prescribed syllabus.
By evening, I have had my fill of conversations and feel what I earlier mentioned - complete exhaustion. In the little time that I have at home, I take care of what is left of me. With a cup of black coffee I sit in front of a screen that sucks me into a world of stories. I lose myself in watching what the OTT platforms have in store and am increasingly depending on the curated content that they add on "You might also like". I finish one series, move on to the next, finish that one and this vicious cycle continues. I stop reflecting on what I watched and sometimes I also forget what is happening on the screen.
The loud noises and colours help me drift away and stop thinking.
I look at the pile of to-be-read books and go to bed with a sense of discomfort and guilt at not having read anything new. Suddenly the world shrinks in front of my eyes and reduces itself to the black screen where I continue scrolling the curated content.
Everything feels predestined, pre-decided and I no more feel in control of what I watch or engage in. This one day I remember myself walking into the library, picking up a book of Milan Kundera (just because I had a fleeting memory of this author being mentioned in the class) and immersing myself in that book. It was a different feeling altogether, it was fresh, it made me feel alive.
More than being guilty of not reading it is an overwhelming feeling of losing control of what I consume. Picking books from the array after reading the blurb or picking it for the mere joy of surprise, or just picking a book since the cover page looks attractive and promising. While I don't feel that reading books is the only way to learn, I miss the element of surprise, I miss being in control.
From the news that I read every morning on my phone, to the series I watch in the evening...I like them all. I know what I am going to watch, at least the genre. I know there will hardly be anything new. I know the cyberspace is as intelligent as it can get in knowing me more than myself. The more it is showing me things of my liking, the more is that gripping fear of losing control, of not having surprises, of not having to wonder ' will I like this?' because sadly I like them all. I don't have to think or engage much. It is all there at my fingertips, where I choose what the AI has already chosen for me. Did I really make a choice there? I know I barely did.
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