Standing amidst the strikingly contrasting lush green trees for over 100 years now, I have witnessed the rapid and erratic progression of reality over time. From barely two buses leading to my location in the 1940’s, I have now evolved into a buzzing hive of activity at the very heart of the remarkably historic city of Chennai. Yes, it’s me the most loved and respected Red building. In those days of yore, having a TDC12 12- bit computer in my campus was a wildly elusive fantasy in itself. Time has literally turned the tables around enabling one to find a snazzy hi-tech computer in every nook and cranny of my campus.
Several decenniums later, this pandemic has brought my world to a screeching halt making me feel soulless, reminding me of my inanimate presence. Virtual reality has been around for quite a while now however it is only in this pandemic that the startling cognizance of the potential of virtual reality to replace actual reality dawned on me. My very first encounter with VR was vaguely enigmatic as I could hardly fathom what people caught sight of in those bulky goggle like thingy’s that made them whoop and hop in delight. It remained an abstrusely inexplicable theory to me until I saw that my own industrial engineering students used VR to give a virtual tour of a portion of my own campus in their webpage. I was literally thrilled beyond measure to realize that people anywhere in the world can get a sneak peek of my campus. I yelled an ear-splitting scream of joy and guffawed out of my abiotic mouth and blushed, for having become famous, just as if I wasn’t famous enough or as if my cheeks weren’t red enough or even as if you people would ever hear me!!!
On the contrary, we now sojourn in a radically obnoxious position that many cousins of mine (i.e.my contemporary universities) have resorted to virtual learning platforms like engage classrooms where students and professors can learn together in a virtual class room.“How cool eh?”On one hand I am brimming with utterly exceeding elation knowing that my students can continue learning even in this situation whereas on the other, the dire trepidation of the new virtual world has cast a veil over my ecstasy as I badly miss waking up to the voices of fresh -faced students teeming with energy who ramble around my campus!!
