College Cogitations

Time, as they say, does fly.

Do you remember the New Year's Eves you celebrated as a child? For a young me, the 31st night was different from the other festivities of the year. As a ritual, as the clock reached midnight I used to devote some time contemplating upon the year gone by. Friends made, books read, birthdays celebrated, holidays enjoyed, and other such innocent enjoyable tidbits from the last twelve months would crowd my mind. This practice of introspection is something I still carry out every New Year's Eve. With the passing of the years and suppression of free spirits, the reflections I encounter now are of quite a different kind, but what hasn't changed a fraction is the childlike astonishment I still derive upon discovering the simple fact, that yet another year has passed. How could it possibly end so quickly!

More than two years back when I was on the brink of starting college, someone had given me a pretty sound piece of advice. Your college changes your life completely, he had said, but for the better or for the worse is a decision up to you. So neatly and concisely put, I appreciate now. Two years and some more into college, during this critical time of the year when yet another fresh batch of students await what lies beyond those coveted doors of admission, a little contemplation and advice seems due. Things are definitely going to differ depending on people and circumstances, but the general sentiments, I hope, will not be overly contrary to anyone's.

Half of my undergraduate days have passed and it seems that I am on a permanent roller-coaster which has no intention of pausing. You learn and you experience, you progress through the motions at breakneck pace, you are thrown up in the air and then you have the bitterest of falls, only to be thrown up again. You are living as if on a persistent and continuous high where your mind is, if nothing else, active. This frenzied state of activity, it is to be noted, is not at all occurring on an academic plane only, and that is where things get so absurdly interesting. School education was a cushioned fortification, the protected andarmahal of palatial residence. The big city outside the palace is a jungle where wolves hunt alone and in packs. Welcome to college, the prep-school for the big transition from secured interiors to an insecure exterior, where girls and boys become women and men.

"You are primarily a student, and whatever other activity you may wish to pursue should come after that", thus spake the concerned parent, solicitous relative and the rest of our well-wishers galore when college started. Overburdened by well-meaning guidance, blissfully incorrect preconceived notions and a few mountain-loads of expectations, we step in through the gates. I would merely be wasting words if I tried to explain how entirely inaccurate I had been in my earlier conceptions about college, and how amazingly novel everything was around me when I stepped in. Savour your freshmen year like anything, our college seniors used to tell us, for nothing else is quite like it later on. To make mistakes and be perfectly acceptable in doing the same, to be a "junior" again after a long long time and have no precursory baggage to carry with it, to look up with awe at hallowed portals you had dreamed of entering and at long last you have obtained the keys to do so: those days were a chance to revisit the simplicity of boyhood but with a formed mind.

And then, as is the norm, life happens. When the initial reverence is broken, the vagaries of college life come to the fore. The law of averages has this irritating habit of catching up. Outstanding professors are balanced by rotten ones; the best of friends are counteracted by the worst of them. Also, the mind gears up for life beyond college, which is one heck of a decision to make. It is then that the true worth of you and your institution is exposed. When the initial glamour is diminished and a rhythm has been established, how are things spanning out?

A riot of confusions

Education takes a new turn and undergoes a complete makeover. Whichever discipline you may be pursuing, the rate at which new things are learned and applied is phenomenal. To a Learner, the ocean of knowledge is at his beckoning. But since in today's day and age the Learners are an endangered species encountered only in Rajkumar Hirani films, let us address the needs of the more practical minded, for whom there are grades. Oh grades, what a conundrum you are... The simplest solution would be to get the best grades and be done with it. But for those of you who appreciate the minor snags in this approach, certain misgivings may prevail! Banal and clichéd though it may sound, the grades are not the end itself, but the means to quite a different end, vast in size and more enduring in nature. They provide a depiction of the potential of a student, but a depiction only. But at the same time, the sculpture may be susceptible to slight errors in the hands of the maker in certain cases, but never should it be assumed that a model fashioned out of a well-bred German Shepherd would be made to look like a malnourished street dog. In simpler jargon, grades are very important, but there is life beyond them.

For a lot of people, college is the first time in twelve years that you are among a large group of unknown people and you are about to form a lasting bond with a lot of them. I remember standing in my admission queues, looking around, and wondering who among these strange faces around me are going to become my brothers-in-arms, my associates, my companions, my confidantes. These friendships last more, I had been advised by another senior, in comparison to your school mates. Maybe such generalizations should not be made, but the fact remains that your compatriots from college have met and known you as an adult, and despite each having all the convolutions and complexities of an adult mind, you have gelled along. In other words, you know each other in all your imperfections before you strike a chord. In contrast, I suppose most people are acquainted with the very awkward feeling when childhood friends from school met after a long time turn out to be entirely different people as adults, and old memories (and long silences) become uncomfortable.


Through the inconceivable highs and the gut-wrenching lows that life provides abundantly, your college mates are the people you celebrate and lament with. These times do not simply remain as echos in some sentimental corner of your heart; they fashion and construct your character. That a person is known by the company he keeps is a very old adage, and never is it more appropriate than now. Distractions are not the rarest of occurrences in the life of a young adult, and more often than not they are brought to the fore by a companion. Dabbling with politics and dreams of changing the world crop up. It is perfectly reasonable to dream - where would we be without them - but contact with reality should not be for a second forsaken. Every successful human has undergone this journey of sweeping aside distractions, training the lens on the object of focus, but all the same occasionally stopping by the wayside to pick up a shiny pebble or two.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull

"So long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, adieu..." As every month ends, we turn the pages of our calendar. Very soon, sooner than I shall ever anticipate, will come a New Year's Eve when I shall pause and think of my journey through college, and how it ended so abruptly. I shall be soaking in the last bits of sunshine before twilight takes over. Bathing in those slanting rays of the dying sun, I shall be bidding adieu to four years of intense pleasure, testing trials and a collage of unforgettable memories. Imagine a huge maze, which upon entering takes you four years to cross. If I am lucky enough, I'll conquer it in time. I'll look back at the young boy who entered the maze, then at my own reflection upon leaving, and note the difference. But for the moment, I'm stuck right in the middle, fighting and progressing inches at a time, with friends and family at my side, hugely enjoying every moment of it. Let me enjoy the maze while it lasts.

"Not all those who wander are lost" : J.R.R. Tolkien.

Politics and Education

Aristotle

Indians, by nature, are political. The science of politics is in our blood, and the art of manipulation of human free thinking is a skill humans at large have perfected over the ages. And its not I alone who says this; "Man is by nature a political animal" is what Aristotle said back around near 350 BC. Might I modify this and say, The Indian man (and also the woman) is, by nature, a political animal. Charity begins at home, they say, and for a young budding Indian mind developing into maturity, home is where the brain develops. So it is of no great surprise that our educational institutions, the nursery of fresh young minds, should have a very substantial role to play in the nation's political scheme of things.

If you had asked Lord George Curzon (Viceroy of India, 1899 to 1905) or Sir John Simon (Chairman of the Simon Commission of 1927) about how Indian students played a substantial role in the Indian freedom struggle, they would have been able to give you a picturesque account. These gentlemen had been at the epicentre of two major political protests of the early 20th century: The Partition of Bengal protests and the "Simon Go Back" movement. In both instances, it had been the student community which had jumped in with abandon into the troubled waters of politics.

These are only two instances. Preceding these, and succeeding them as well, many political events in our glorious history have acknowledged a tremendous role played by the students. India has across the ages produced generations of very bright and hard-working students. Though the privileged went to England for higher education, quite a number of education centres came up in India with a reputation of producing the finest brains of the country. Lahore, Allahabad, Calcutta, Madras and Bombay boasted of the finest Universities back in the 19th century.

The Simon Go Back Movement of 1927

A proper education system for young Indians was devised for the first time by the British themselves. In this regard, important it is to note that when Thomas Babington Macaulay, Council Member, delivered his Minute on Indian Education in February 1835 to William Bentinck, Governer-General of British India, proposing the introduction of English education among Indians, he had merely wanted to create an assortment of clerks and officers (babus) out of the native Indians who would have a mere proficiency in English to be able to assist their colonial masters in their machinations in this land. Later on, it was this English Education Act 1835 itself which would come back to haunt them, for this had opened the doors of scientific and political vision among the youth, who would ultimately be a driving force behind the ouster of the British. The ancient age-old Indian philosophies when combined with knowledge of Western rationalism and free-thinking, changed the way Indians thought. To read more about Macaulay's Minute, the Act, and his supremely egotistical and idiotic remark about Indian literature, read this article.

Coming back to focus on Calcutta, a host of colleges provided the society with the brilliant minds nurtured to provide not only political and economic but social upliftment as well. This tradition then carried on after independence, Calcutta turned into Kolkata, but all these centres are thriving along right upto when this blog is being written.These institutions are all distinguished enough and need no introduction, but for the sake of records, a few of these are the Presidency College (now University), Scottish Church (alma mater of the immortalized Animesh Mitra of Kalbela fame), Bethune and Lady Brabourne (for urban girls from all communities), St. Xavier's College (one of the first Catholic institutions of the city, founded in 1860), the famed Medical College (their first batch of medical practitioners graduated in 1838), and of course, Jadavpur University, where the spirit of revolution lives on, and which yours truly can proudly proclaim to be a humble student of.

"The foundation of every state is in the education of its youth", said Diogenes the Greek philosopher. So why is it that the young and the educated have always been attracted into the unsafe waters of politics? This question can never be answered by looking at the state of Indian politics today. I won't really go into the redundant discussions and deliberations on how far our political system has degenerated and why at present it is a muck-pool; we have heard it all too often. But the aspect to deliberate upon is that if this has been the state of affairs for quite some time, then what is it that has been drawing the drawing the best minds of the country to politics, and sometimes, to extremist politics? Not the muck, for sure.

Youth is that infinite whirlpool of energy which provides the world with all that is positive. The brighter the mind, the firmer the body, the deeper are the reserves of this vital energy. And if energy it is, it has to be spent. The earnest call to serve mankind is a bugle which has been blowing constantly over the ages. It is a clarion call rendered from the chasms of human suffering, which calls on fellow human beings to lessen the extent of misery. Pointedly enough, very few people have the ears to catch this cry. Even more pointedly, time and again it is only the youth of the nation who have registered these calls and responded.

Pre-independence, it was the deplorable condition of the average countryman and how the colonial masters were systematically destroying a nation that stirred young men and women into action. You might have been a Gandhian or maybe a Netaji follower, you may be Right wing or you may be having extreme-Left ideologies, but it does not really matter, when the goal is the same and the soul is uncorrupted. As the century progressed, the catalysts changed. India was a fledgling democracy, and the need was felt to ensure that democratic rights are fully made use of. This drew more students and young professionals into politics who wanted to carry on the good work their predecessors might have done. Then came the 70's, and with it the disenchanted ultra-Left wings, who no longer trusted the democratic pillars of the country. With suffering comes the urge to rectify the sufferings of thousands, so those who had suffered much and were gifted with fine brains started going the extremist way. Extremism can never be a solution for any evil, whatever it may be, but that is a topic for another blog. It suffices to note that the Naxalite leaders had mostly, without exception, been young men. Read this Indian Express report about an IIT-KGP dropout who eventually became a top Maoist leader.

V for Vendetta

Partycracy found its way into the system post this period. People were inspired by party symbols or individuals who they thought had what it took to deliver the country to greater heights. College student unions flourished, and politics penetrated daily life. Some were disenchanted by the dirt which gradually started encompassing politics, while others stayed on to serve their affiliations. At some point of time, the muck became so immense that it was no longer capable of attracting young minds into mainstream politics. This was the start of that period when an average young boy of eighteen joining college was being instructed by his concerned parents: Akdom 'politics'-e jorabi na kintu. Those fine brains, which had been able to channelize their energies in proper ways earlier, could not do so any more. But that could not really discourage us, could it! Today we are proud to belong to a free thinking intelligent politically-conscious generation who do not need a party banner to express, spread or cultivate ideas among the masses, and work for their betterment. This, my friends, is the politics of tomorrow.

As citizens of the society we live in, it is our duty and our right to give back to the society whatever we have gained from it, and we do not need the banner of a political party to do that. So if that is the need of the day, then change we must the political definitions prevalent today, and device new ways to progressively channelize that "infinite whirlpool". We are a union with 350 million 'youth', which is about the entire of Japan, Germany, UK and Italy put together, and you might throw in a Singapore or two as well. It is time to throw off the shackles of conventional politics. Grab the weed from its roots and drag it out of the soil. Break barriers, create new definitions. Strain the brains, set the sinews on fire. "Ring out the old, ring in the new". Young India, lets rock.

Swami Vivekananda

"Arise, awake, and stop not till the goal is reached."