Myopia

“A blank sheet and a pen, that’s all I need”. Ameya strode out of the staff room thinking this. He decided he would roam the institute and wherever he sees something amiss, he will jot it down.

The ground floor entrance of the college was a narrow opening that could allow a maximum of 3 students together. The other opening was a wide one, but for some reason was always locked in iron grills. The students entered through the single door and rushed to their classrooms. The ground floor had notice boards and important circulars that they would miss naturally. The Saraswati idol installed at the entrance was not even worshipped everyday. It just lay there like a founder’s bust.

Ameya shook his head. In one look, he saw so many flaws. He got excited about how many changes he would be able to suggest. The watchman was missing from his position and he could see a middle aged couple looking inside the premises for a glimpse of a helpful face. “Inefficient and insincere. Typical”, Ameya said and moved on. He slowly rotated on his heel and got a view of the entire floor. It was huge and when it was built, it definitely would have been beautiful. Now however, cobwebs hung from the ceilings and old desks were stacked against the walls. Many of the notice boards had out dated notices and posters and there was no welcoming feel to the whole place.

“This place needs to be redone completely. No one would want to walk in here”

He let his imagination graft an ideal floor onto this desolate area. It looked vibrant and beautiful. His thoughts were interrupted by Koli, who swayed into the scene.

“So you met Mr. Raghuvanshi?”
“Yes madam”, said Ameya slightly startled
"Does he have any other job offers for you?”
Ameya walked along silently. He did not like her and he made a mental note of mentioning her on the top of the list of 100 things to change at the institute.

“What are you doing today?”
“I have a repot to make for Rajesh Sir and that will take till evening to finish.”
“As long as you keep busy”, she said and strode off.

“Principal Koli”, wrote Ameya on the sheet of paper he had been carrying around and marked a giant 1 next to her name and circled it over and over again. “Let us see the first floor”. He jumped two stairs at a time with renewed enthusiasm with the feeling that Koli’s career was now in his hands.

The first floor was where the staff room, the principal’s office, the management office and the auditorium were. The laboratories were at the end of the corridor right next to the entrance to the library. The principal’s office and the management office were together and the staff room was their foster child, alone and desolate near the water coolers. “How they must feel, poor staff.”

The auditorium was on the first floor so that its activities would not disturb the classrooms on the higher floors. Ameya peeped into the auditorium. It looked in very good shape, maybe due to its infrequent use by students. As far as he could remember he had only been attending staff functions there. No wonder it was all still there – no broken chairs, no chipped benches, no torn curtains – It looked like a marriage hall instead. Ameya had seen a few students go in at times, but if they were doing anything productive, he had not seen the final result. He thought he would look into that later.

The second floor was made of 12 classrooms and thus could accommodate two thirds of the senior college in one floor at a time. The classrooms were dull and dreary and were always closed from inside during class hours. He peeped through the windows and noted that most of the benches were dusty. Also the whole dais was powdered with chalk dust.

The third and last of the floors had 6 classrooms for the junior college, a computer lab and the main entrance to the library. This floor was warmer than the others and yet there was no water cooler. “Ah, what a good idea!”, Ameya patted himself on his back. Peons were loitering around the terrace. “You can never find them when you want them and this is where they’d be? Such a pathetic style of functioning. But now everything is going to change”

Ameya entered the computer lab and switched on a computer. He saw the time on his watch. It was half past five. He would not get anyone to log into the college computer for him. Everyone would have left. He sighed. He would have to type out his report the next day. On his sheet of paper, he wrote: “Biggest positive – Very punctual about leaving on time.”