On A Mundane Fresher Year Circa 2009

More than four years ago, I had arrived in Calcutta, a city that was very different from my cosmopolitan and easy-going hometown. Bosco educated, more confident with English than Bangla, carrying more or less a good boy image, there was obviously only one destination I wanted to be at: St. Xavier’s. I didn’t make it in. And was quite surprised to be accepted at Presidency, whose first and only impression had left me with a rare inferiority complex.

My first class made me realise that I was the only student who hailed from outside a 20 mile radius around 86/1, College Street. My little confidence with shudhho Bangla disappeared; people assumed me to be a Hindi speaker. That phase lasted a year and more; APG still makes fun of that.

Hostel admissions, I thought, were a matter of formalities, unaware that red and blue were more than colours here. Once I had overcome the awe at the faded Rajendra Prasad pIaque, I was met by two groups of people desperate to induct me into ‘their’ ward, with claims about the opposition so wide apart that I knew one, at least one of them had to be lying big time. Unfortunately for me, I had nothing to judge by. It was a stroke of luck that made me a paanch er chhele.

Political decisions were simple. I was asked if I wanted to be a stooge of the State and I said no. No senior spent hours at the quadri explaining ideological intricacies to me, nor were there different shades of independence available back then. Did I want to be an activist out to change the world? No. I had had enough of popularity back in school and had already realised it to be the two-faced bastard that it was. More importantly, I didn’t know anything about anything. My naivety and ignorance was exemplified in a question I once asked S____, “What is all the fuss about the rockstar with the stylised face on everyone’s Tshirts?” “Che Guevara!”, he replied, with a straight face.

Screening Jashn-e-Azadi at Presidency University, Kolkata

It can be said that 86/1 College Street, Calcutta, has seen a microcosm of the history of modern India unfold within its walls. Since 1874 when the already fifty-nine year old Presidency College shifted to its current address, future Presidents and Prime Ministers of  India, Pakistan and Bangladesh; Nobel Laureates, freedom fighters, an Academy Award winner, Bharat Ratnas; the leadership of the Naxalite movement of the 60s and 70s; and eminent judges, writers, journalists, scientists and actors, have spent their student days at 86/1.

Two years ago, soon after I joined the institution, the Left Front government upgraded Presidency College to the status of a state University in a last-gasp bid to hold on to the votes of the bhadralok intellectuals. 2012 dawned with no Student Union elections having been held the previous year, and it is in this backdrop that the following events unfold.

Salman Rushdie’s well-publicised ostracism from the Jaipur Literature Festival was met not with outrage in Presi’s canteen addas, but with the absence of even a poster put up in protest. News filtered in of a seminar in Symbiosis University being “threatened.” But little awareness existed among students who were more inclined to read tabloid-like, unputdownable newspapers than their relatively austere counterparts, including The Hindu which broke the story.

The cancellation of the launch of Taslima Nasreen’s book ‘Nirbasan (Exile)’  was almost a non-event for Presi and the earlier cultural censorship meted out to the writings of AK Ramanujan andRohinton Mistry in university syllabi went ignored in a campus that prides itself in upholding liberal values. Bong-haters reading this would smirk and point this out to indignant Bengalis, but pray refrain, because the rest of India has done worse, earning the Indian liberal the unenviable tag of a wimp restricted to fighting its battles on cyberspace alone.

Which is when Sourav Roy Barman, Pratim Ghosal (both second year Political Science students) and I, as good followers of modern subversion created an event page on Facebook on 5^th February 2012 inviting all interested to a screening of ‘Jashn-e-Azadi’ somewhere on the Presidency campus, tentatively on 8^th February.

Derozio Memorial Debate 2010: Behind The Scenes

Bang! Bang! Bang! I wake up. The century-old door to my hostel room is buckling under the pressure of some spirited banging. It’s Singh. I have a call. If you’re wondering what I’m doing in 2010 without a phone of my own, then the facts that I’m a heavy sleeper (or used to be) and that half a dozen missed calls don’t go far towards waking me up should suffice as an explanation. Back to the call. It’s Panickon. There’s a problem. I need to be in college in half an hour. I grunt back an affirmative.

Cut to an hour and a half later. I’m finally in college. Yet another breakfast skipped. The Principal’s room is dignifiedly serene. I rush across the room and enter the back-room we had made our office. ‘Dignity’ just disappears from the face of the earth, the word ripped out of every dictionary ever printed! Brace yourself: Gullu Eyes is sprawled on the floor, laughing maniacally at a joke he had himself evidently cracked. Panickon and Twilight are beside themselves in laughter. Veggie was standing in a corner, giggling and wondering what she was doing there. Napoleon had a bewildered look on his face; his blush meant he had been the butt of the joke. The latest budget sheet had weird elephants drawn all over them. There was a smiley at the end of an official looking letter. Elsewhere, the computer screen showed a distorted graphic of what was supposed to be the design for the newspaper ad, now edited beyond repair. Distant memory told me there was a problem? Yeah! But that’s another story! Welcome to DMD World.

Stairway to Heaven

The roof lay strewn with
The remnants of forbidden pleasure,
Dark was the field out in front,
Dark with people, or phantoms were they?

The night, blurring the city for once
Humming a melody of whispers,
I look to the sky, and then to you
And wonder

A star, is that faraway?
Or a dot hanging in the in-between?