Category Archives: Jadavpur

More of Identity Crisis

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Long years back there was a time when the saying was ‘what Bengal thinks today, India thinks tomorrow’. That age is gone. Alongside, the age of the Bengali ‘bada babu’ is also gone. The last batch when a few bongs got into IAS together has reached the fringes of senility. And when I look back at my own university and my own city I can see the reason why. Certainly, partly so. Maybe I will discuss them, but maybe some other time. I shall tell rather tell of an intersting event that happened to me. An incident that confirmed my pity for my Alma Mater.

Those days I was working as a copywriter in Bangalore, and the Mains results had just come out. Preparation for the interview of the Civil Services can be very rigourous, and there you can get a question out of anywhere, or nowhere. Preparing your own background is very essential – background means anything with which you are associated or anything from which you derive your identity. So, you are a Arya Samaji? You should know your Arya Samaj. Are you a Radhasoami? Better know how that is different from mainstream Sikhism. You are a civil engineer? Tell me, why did you join Wipro then when you could have joined L&T and done greater justice to your education. Achha, you are from Kolkata? They tell me that the story of Job Charnock as the founder of Kolkata is all bullshit, and that a prospering and flourishing town had already been in existence when Charnock, by accident, found it? Is it true? You better tell and satisy them properly. The old men and women sitting in Dholpur House can be very fincky. Heard of that recent topper from Orissa who had to give a live Odissi performance to satisfy the curious gazers in the interview room? [Well, this is an Urban legend]. I am just assuming that you get the idea…

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That spring of last year, 2006, was a legend in self discovery for me. For the first time I tried to know about myself, my past, the meaning of my name, about my caste and its history, about my birthplace and its story under the sun, about the schools I have studied in, places I have stayed in, about Bengal, about being Bengali, about Bengali culture, about Rabindra Nath and Rabindra Sangeet, about developmental economics and where Amartya Sen fit in….long list that! Now, a student of literature, especially if he happens to come out of the portals of JU, has a stiff upper lip, a thin skin and a long nose. Even if for the purpose of throwing around names of books and authors, he must read them, or make a pretence of having read them. I remember the previous spring how I had read The City of Joy in anticipation of getting called to Delhi…[of course, I was never called – that year]. One year after and a somewhat more busy with a job of my own now, I wanted to read a few stuff on Kolkata. Now, keep in mind that teachers in JU are not just teachers. They are also enlightened citizens and most of them have their own pet areas, areas where they are acknowledged experts. Many of them have written their books and research papers on them. Kolkata also happens to be the expertise of someone in my department. But if you know the rules of existence in JU, you must be knowing that there are students and there are students. And yet, I needed to get some material on Kolkata. However, not much time back I had my tryst with my own identity about which you can read here…and once bitten twice shy, I did not want to venture into the same folly. As Bush is fond of saying, “fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can’t get fooled again“. So, I wrote a mail to a rather close relative of this gentleman, a lady who is herself an illustrious faculty member, and who, I had reason to believe, knew me by name at least. I knew from other people that this lady uses her email as other people have also written to her on this email. As you have second guessed me, I did not receive any reply…

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Now, you must be wondering what is the big fuss about not getting a reply on email. After all, so many emails go unanswered – there are the questions of being net savvy or not, having proper access, server jam, etc. Probably, the mail got lost in transit, a phenomenon I have not heard of so far, but probably technically feasible. Probably, her spam filter deleted my mail before it was scanned by her eyes. Probably there was some mistake – her mouse accidently got clicked while it was hovering precariously over the ‘delete’ button. Probably her inbox was full [yeah, let’s assume that she had filled her 1 GB or 2 GB of inbox, which would mean she was very much net-savvy, or else she won’t be getting so much mail in the first place]. Well, as you can very well see in this paragraph there are too many probabilties we are relying on. I very much fancy a much simpler explanation. The mail reached her email. It did not get deleted accidently. She read it, all right. And she did not reply. Chances are that she was receiving a letter of this kind for the first time. In Jadavpur it is not everyday that a student gets called for the UPSC interview. And I would have expected that my email would find a rather welcome reception and some importance.

Now, as luck would have it there was not a single question on Kolkata. If there were, I am sure, I could handle it easily. I had done my own reading. I never bothered to collect much of knowledge or wisdom while I was in JU, but once when I did try to collect a little bit of it, while I was out of JU, I had this curious misadventure. As you may well expect, it left a bad taste in the mouth…

It is not a surprise why so few make it from this province. Why the IISWBM IAS coaching centre was wrapped up – no successful candidates. Bengal deserves this drought.

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Identity Crisis of an Alumnus

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STOP. For an instant, take in this information:

  1. When you search for “jadavpur university alumni” on Google, you get this.
  2. When you search for “alumni association of jadavpur university” on Google, you get this.
  3. When you search for “how do i become a member of jadavpur university alumni association” on Google, you get this.

If you have got the drift of my endeavour, I am trying to learn how to become a member of the Alumni Association of Jadavpur University. I will assume the following:

  1. Warts and all, alma mater is alma mater – it means “nourishing mother” in Latin, and mother, however lousy or great, is mother still.
  2. And when you leave your nourishing mother, you want to be in touch with your nourishing mother.
  3. Every institution should have some form of association for those that depart from its portals.
  4. It is a shame and a great loss if it does not.

As inquisitive students of JU, I remember the thousands of trips we must have made around the central ground (god knows what is it called; if you are god, you can email me with the name here). And invariably the thousands of times we must have wondered what is this board, saying ‘Alumni Association’, doing here. Does anything happen inside? Who comes in? Who goes out? For years and years we saw some ghastly concrete structure being made right in front of the Ashirbaad canteen, a structure that encroached on the yard in front of the popular joint. For years and years we were told that the new building shall have accommodation for the Alumni Association. If and when it comes up. I think some building did finally come up in that yard. I vaguely remember having seen some board put up in one corner (or was it some other building that I am mistaking for). I don’t know if the Alumni Association has any building of its own. But regardless of any physical infrastructure, if the Alumni Association has any presence, it is felt through its absence – winds rush in to fill the vacuum. Thus, many who leave from JU enquire about it. I remember many of my friends asked this question. I am presuming on their behalf that most, if not all, would like to become a member of any Alumni Association. That they would like to have some reunions every few years, meet up with old fellows, check out who has got the most beautiful wife or girlfriend, and what not. If and when they can afford, they would also like to make some contribution towards the nourishing mother, monetary or otherwise. If only someone told them how to go about that.

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If you check out the official website of the nourishing mother, you will find the following:

  1. There are five pages under Alumni section, three of which are dead links (they don’t lead anywhere, as no pages have not been built. The webmaster, very thoughtfully – or is it thoughtlessly? – has added a Magazine page, but alas! there is no magazine!).
  2. The Activities page is an essay in poverty, and jubiliates in the vacuum of unaccomplishment (my dictionary says no such word exists; well, I can certainly coin one).
  3. The Membership page seems to be from Shakespeare. It must have got mislaid when the Bard was composing the character of Shylock. I cannot help but reproduce it here:

The Alumni Association by its very constitution survives on its members. If membership dries up, the Alumni can not remain functional. For the last few years we have noticed a decline in membership. Since the Association does not belong to a select few but to all past, present as well as future students, the functioning of the same becomes troublesome. We sincerely hope that things will improve or we as students of Jadavpur University would lose a body that should ideally be a part of our makeup.

If you wish you can donate to Jadavpur University.”

So much for Alumni Associations. But then grouping up is a natural instinct. Whether it is through fora like Orkut or Batchmates.com, people team up. Resourceful (in both senses of the word) people from US of A, who are invariably from the Engineering Faculty, have made their own tinpot arrangements to cater to their own little interest groups [Bring up your Google and check out for yourself – there are more websites on JU communities than you can imagine]. Thus, instead of a community of all ex-JUians, we have clans spread over the wide wide world and the other www. I have also come across scores of other fora, on Orkut, on Blogspot, many of them being manned or wommaned by my heriocal successors in the institution. A year and a quarter back I floated a suggestion through a fellow JUian who has his way with women and children that the present JUDE fellows can make a database of present and past members of the Department and then fill up data on a continuing basis, which could later be turned into an online and self-updating database. Last heard, NASA was also planning to go to Mars.

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Enjoy? What Enjoy?

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Sometime during my PG years when the semester system had not yet been introduced, a student-teacher session regarding change in syllabi was held at the old location of the departmental library. People sat in various positions. Vociferous pitches were made by many as to why one text should be removed and another introduced. It was a long session and lively one at that. I watched with much interest and amusement as one after another made his or her presentation. At the end the teachers, especially those who were responsible for the UGC mandated syllabi change (or whatever; let’s not get too technical here) made their remarks. And it was here that Swapan da made a little speech that somehow took the cake for me. I don’t recall the verbatim speech, but it went something like this:

For too long I am hearing the complaint that the studies are not enjoyable. This text is not enjoyable. That Austen is so boring and what not. I think you should realize the fact that we are here in the university not for enjoyment, but for studies and instruction. And whoever gave you the idea that studies have to be enjoyable? Studies requires steadfast devotion and hardwork, hardly enjoyable fare. Please make substantive suggestions as to how the syllabi can be changed for the betterment of the coming batches. How it will help you actually….

Not much was spoken after that.

 

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Understanding Shakespeare by yourself

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Having had my upbringing in Hindi-medium CBSE govt-schools, it was as late as Class XI that I heard of guys like Wordsworth or Keats. Yes, I had even heard of someone called Shakespeare; we had an extract of his from his play As you like it (Seven Ages, probably a speech by Jacques). Point is, I was as dumb about English as you can imagine anyone to be (for that matter, I have maintained the status).
Somehow I went to Jadavpur University English Department. Since I did not have Bengali as a subject during my life, and since there was no provision for Hindi, for morons like us there is a provision for an extra subject called ‘Alternative English’. This Alt Eng had a play by this person called Othello.
We few guys are sitting at the first class of our Alt Eng, when this gentleman walks in briskly, and before banging some book he was holding in his hand (the Arden edition of As you like it, which he insisted all of us buy or acquire), said in all earnestness verging on ferocity:

“I don’t know what the level of your competence is, but now that you are here, you are supposed to read and understand Shakespeare by yourself”.

With an open mouth I thought, “If we are supposed to do so much all by ourselves, what are you here for, sir?”
I took his advice to heart. Henceforth a guy called Ramji Lall became my best friend in college.

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In the buff after football

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Football was rare for us at Jadavpur. There were not many enthusiasts, or there was no ball. There were some champion footballers who did not bother playing with us (rightly so). No girls would watch us meaning their boyfriends would not bother to play, or meaning few would be inspired enough if there was no show-off. But once in a blue moon we did have our games. Sometimes there were the so-called ‘challenge matches’. With our famed rivalry with the Economics Department, we did have a few intensely competitive matches between us. This was one such match in the MA first year, sometime during the monsoon of 2001.
It had been raining, and the whole football ground was a stretch of mud. With Bengalis playing, it was a free-for-all where all are more intent on hitting someone’s leg than the ball. At some point of the time I was on centre-right at midfield, and from there I hit the ball hard, a la Bobby Charlton, and ‘netted’ (no net, sorry) the ball gloriously. Mouths agape. I think two pretty girls from my class on whom I have weaved a few poems, were watching from the other side. Talk of luck. Huh!

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Splattered in mud, we took our dips in the local lake beside the windmill. Light was falling. We did not have any towels with us, so we were having to change our clothes behind the proverbial bush. From far I saw one of these two women coming towards us. Scared I dropped my pants and ran behind the bush, as she came up and met our group. It transpired later that she was coming to ask me to join the Departmental Tour to Sikkim – somehow I had said that if some other woman was not going, I would not come.
So, this young lady comes to meet me to persuade me to go to Sikkim, and I was in my birthday best behind the bush. Of course, I did have some more memories during this Sikkim tour, with this same lady; but let that remain the recipe for another anecdote later.

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