How many words??

The dissertation mania has caught on and nobody at college acknowledges you with a “Hi, how are you?” anymore; it is just a “Hi, how many words?”. This dissertation fever gobbled up my entire weekend and my work was growing at less than 50 words per hour on Saturday and was literally driving me mad.

Books and papers scattered all around, some stuff downloaded from the net, I sit like an idiot here, staring at all that is lying around and trying to gain sense out of all the intellectual ‘wealth’ (well, not actually, but the attitude seems to be reversing because of over indulgence in the act of gaining knowledge!) that I possess. Ok, this guy says this, that guy says that and after all that, I wonder, “Why should I brand India?” and ultimately, “What is branding??”.:

Type a sentence and I go to Tools -> Word count. “10 words”, MS word shows with earnest. Oh hell! Just ten words, but I spent five minutes writing it!! This is total inverse relationship between time spent and the final outcome! Dazed, I continue; this net is a huge temptation. I vow to myself to stick to google and not go anywhere else, no not even to my blog. I gave myself very few allowances, for the last three days – “You shall visit your blog only to see comments and type some lines, nothing more, do you understand??” And mails, not more than two per day! “Dissertation, dissertation..” Oh dear, this is sad!

After I finish a paragraph, in what seems like ages, I would think I felt tired and I needed a break. A slight desire would pop up there, to probably sneak into yahoo messenger to catch up with someone online or just drop in five lines of mail to somebody saying, “Boy, am going crazy!” or just pick up my phone and call someone, whom I haven’t spoken to for like days together! I would think I am feeling sleepy, switch off my monitor, tell my mom to wake me up after 10 minutes and those 10 minutes would just vanish and I would ask for another five minutes. Now after all this, when I am done, if I had all the time in the world to sleep, I am dead sure I would just be sitting and blinking.

At college, the lab is a sight of utter confusion and tension, people walking in, walking out, and I would wonder inside my head, how many words these people would have typed. (One girl told me it is 8000 over and I almost shrieked and fainted!). Look at me, such a donkey, I have struggled and managed a bare 4000 odd words and I still have thousand more to reach the minimum mark of 5000. I already feel like an exhausted athlete running with all my might towards the finishing line!! Sigh!

Somebody says the deadline is 5PM Monday and there is a word around that the petition that all of us signed for date extension has reached who it was supposed to have reached. I had signed it for solidarity, (sometime mid last week, VERRRY confident that I would wind up work neatly) and now it looks like I join the extension gang in its truest sense.

Tools -> Word count, dissertation, chapter 5, 276. Time spent 45 minutes. (Time spent brooding, don’t ask!). I am thinking and trying to be original.

Tools -> Word count. Size of this post, 507 (already? I feel like I have more to type). Time spent - 7 minutes.Not bad. But I am being original here too. Wonder what the difference is? ;)

Ok, that is my break! I take a deep breath, decide all good things should come to an end now and all bad things will also come to an end soon and I am opening my other window – “I – n-d-I-a-n a – r-c-h-I-t-e-c-t-u-r-e c-h-a-r-m-s .........." (Charms?)