I don't know how to write

It's been such a long time I don't know how it feels to write, what to write and how to write ... it feels numb, honestly, to be typing away at the keyboard after all these days. The last post was on June 18, 2011. It must have been right in the beginning of the summer break. Things have changed dramatically since then - I have cut off a cancerous part of my life, have moved a few steps in my career, have come back to college and made new friends, had a wonderful DreaMerger ... the list keeps going on.

At the beginning, change was difficult. When you get used to someone or something being an integral part of your life, and when that someone isn't there - there is an emptiness in life. But sometimes, it is just necessary to cut off that 'something' for your own well-being. People ask me 'why did it happen?', and I don't say anything. Maybe one day I will, maybe that day will be before college is over - but not right now. Have I moved on? I think, yes. I don't think about it much now; I simply don't have the time. I've found a new thing to love, a new emotion to feel. At the beginning of each day, I feel like a new person.

Something at the top of my mind right now is the movie 'Titanic'. Something about that movie holds me spell-bound. Perhaps it is the cinematic genius, but I suspect that it is my fascination with the real Titanic. The idea of a 'watery grave' is as enticing as it is enigmatic. It is a part of time one can't reach, but whose gravity escapes no one. It is like time which 'used to be', which isn't, but which is still there with us somehow.

I've been out of practice, but I'll try to get used to this soon.

P.s. thanks for your wishes, folks. That you believe in me is what matters more than anything else.

Returning

A few days back, a thought occurred to me - why should I write a blog? Does anybody really care about what happens in my life? No. Does anybody care what my views on any subject are? Of course not. Then what is my audience, and what does it expect of me? In what way can I do justice to myself and to whoever reads this?

Every view I have will quite certainly not be unique, and every experience I have will also have been experienced by several before me. But the probability of somebody having the exact same sequences of experiences as me would be hopelessly low, and hence my views on these experiences are likely to be quite different from most other people. Hence, I write on how every experience of my life is shaping me - guiding me, and being guided by me, towards a future that appears as hopeless as the past has appeared distant.

The last few months, starting from October last year, have been extremely taxing emotionally. I have heard of emotional breakdowns - but this was just so much different. There were issues in friendships, which unfortunately got intricately linked to societies in college. So fragile was this system of interdependence that I had been party to weaving, that once one fell, everything else also seemed to fall out of place.

Today, I see myself in a very different light. Sometimes I feel I do not recognise myself, that these past nine months have forever changed me. For one, I do not think I will ever fall in love. Because I did. Love that was more generic than just interactions between two individuals, love that has known only complete devotion and submission. A broken heart, and more so a broken heart that knew pure love, is hard, maybe impossible to repair. Now, I do not believe that that is necessarily a bad thing. Maybe not being ready to love people so easily is infact a good thing!

The only thing that I feel upset about is that it all had to end this way. My conception of success had always been one which I shared with people around me whom I love. Probably I so desperately wanted it because I have barely ever had people in my life to share my success with. Alas, it does not seem to be meant to be. Probably, the next few successes I have in life, of course with the doses of failure, will be solitary ones. The chalice of success without friends to toast with feels empty, but it is a chalice nonetheless.

On the flipside, I met some people on the way, through this most tumultuous of times, whom I think I can possibly form relationships with. Of course, no longer will I be blind in my faith in friendship and in things good and rosy. But maybe these relations might work. After all, nothing is impossible.

I end this post with a word of caution for the reader. Never try to stretch yourself for somebody else, it just ends up tearing you.

Good luck!

Stephania - really?

Enough has been said about 'Stephania' by people more experienced than me. My first introduction to the hoopla around 'Stephania' was an article by Shashi Tharoor for Delhi Times where he wrote about what made Stephens special. Among things he said was the fact that in St. Stephen's, religion and region did not matter and the pursuit of knowledge and intellect was given precedence over scoring marks, rote-learning and the like. The merits and demerits of his arguments, and whether they are valid over a quarter century after he left college, is something I do not find myself qualified enough to comment on. Instead, what I can comment on is what difference I see in St. Stephen's today from other colleges of Delhi University.

The idea of teaching in St. Stephen's going beyond the textbooks and examinations is slowly, and surely, dying out. Not to say that the blame can be rested on the faculty of St. Stephen's College - it would be more appropriate to blame the suffocating nature of the DU syllabus since it leaves colleges with little time to pursue their own charters. Education in DU is being turned into a McAloo tikki burger - you get the same taste wherever you go. Whether that's a good thing or not (I think it's abominable) is kept for later discussions.

What I argue in this piece is that what is unique to St. Stephen's College is its small size - 1200 students - studying a large number of courses - 10 in total - across a variety of disciplines. What this results in is greater interaction between different ideas, and this is where I believe our college has the most to benefit from. I hence believe that expanding the number of seats might diminish, if not demolish, this unique advantage that we have.

The difference between previous evocations of Stephania and what I propose is that what I propose is tangible - it can very well be replicated by other colleges. I do not pin-point Stephania on intangibles such as the 'spirit', which is impossible to judge anyway. To conclude this point, I think we have a lot to gain by acknowledging that in a fast-changing world, wherein St. Stephen's is no longer considered the undisputed best arts college in India, we have a lot to gain by foregoing the old connotations of 'Stephania' and recognise what we actually have and then create fora for us to exploit it to the fullest.

As an aside, it is true that the pursuit of innovation in St. Stephen's College has been vanishing. In this context, there would be much merit in arguing that being associated with DU is harming St. Stephen's. There has to be greater room for the college to manage its own syllabus and evaluation parameters.

The importance of taking it easy

It is after quite a while that I write in my blog, and what a time it has been! My lost post on 14th Feb corresponds to the times immediately after the F&I fest, and it is actually somewhat sad that I I consider these society events landmarks in my life. And this is where I come to my next thought - that very often, we take life too seriously and give it much more attention than what it actually deserves.

Very often, what we consider as 'life' is a set of discrete points, these 'landmarks'. For example, in my case this would correspond to my topping the boards, COQ experience, coming to St. Stephen's and the like. However, what I now believe is that what is a better way of evaluating life is to view it not as a discrete set of points, but as a continuum of moments and experiences.

What is the marginal benefit of one over the one? Discrete points, of course, are far fewer than a continous range. Hence, there is a greater probability of 'failure', and there is much more scope for disappointment. In contrast, a life viewed as a continuum of experiences is very unlikely to suffer from disappointment, primarily because every moment becomes so trivial in the larger scheme of things, and the law of large numbers ensures that every moment is lost.

The logic that exemplifies this is Robin Sharma, the writer of The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari. He writes that the problem with walking on a path with one eye on the goal is that you have only one eye looking down on the path. Is it not better to first look at the goal, make judgements of which path to take, and then immerse yourself completely in the pursuit of the path? This way, firstly you would be able to enjoy the path completely and also probably do better in pursuit of the goal.

Of course, this all comes with the warning that I haven't tried it myself, and only now do I embark on this path. Hence, try at your own risk!

Banana Republic?

After attending a rather interesting talk by Ms. Elina Singh, wife of imprisoned Dr. Binayak Sen, organised by the Informal Discussion Group (IDG) in college, I was left pondering on essentially two questions - has our judicial system failed us, and if yes, then what can we do about it?

Coming to the first, it is a well-accepted fact, even by members of the judiciary, that the integrity of the lower judiciary has indeed been compromised. Judges at lower courts are known to be prone of both bribery and intimidation. Does this rot reach the higher levels? While there have been cases of corruption in the higher judiciary, I would like to continue to believe that the judiciary High Court onwards is rather unbiased and honest. That said, how many of India's cases are actually heard in High Courts? Do we want to clog our high courts so that everybody gets justice? Well, if we are to make our judicial system work, we need to clear the clutter at the bottom.

This has been adequately represented in movies, Aakrosh being the latest one that I happened to watch. There is a perception, and correct to a great extent, that the role of the investigating agency / police has started to extend into courtrooms. This is a rather worrisome trend, since this means that the judicial process will always be inclined in favour of the prosecuting agency, and hence likely to be a biased process.

There is hence a need to restore the integrity of this third pillar of our democracy, and we need to not look down upon EU sending observers to our trials as interference. As a responsible international power, we need to be transparent, even with regard to what we might perceive as an 'internal matter', but what the world perceives as something of import.

St. Stephen's as a deemed University

An idea has recently been floated by the St. Stephen's administration that the college strive for a 'deemed university' status by the period 2025-2050. This article is meant to question what value will this tag add to the college, and whether it is of primary import.

a 'deemed university' tag allows a college to set its own syllabus and admission procedures, its own fee structure and some of them are also allowed to give out degrees. Given that St. Stephen's already has a distinct admission procedure from the rest of Delhi University, and that its fees are also significantly higher than most other DU colleges; this move is meant primarily to enable the college to set its own syllabus.

How important is a different syllabus to an institution? India faces a perennial problem that the syllabus is very rote-learning oriented, and hence does not promote innovation. Again, this probably stems from our attempts to impart 'quality education' to all. If, for once, we acknowledge the impossibility of the task, we can impart 'good quality education' to a few (which will also run into millions, by the way), and provide 'life skills' to the rest. We must free not only St. Stephen's college, but other reputed institutions from the shackles of this attempt at mass quality education.

The only thing I am skeptical about is the undue attention that this proposal has received. It is true that this 'deemed university' recognition will give the college a lot of flexibility to do its own thing. However, there are still many ways we can strive to achieve that aim. For once, the societies in college can, for once, attempt to extend knowledge frontiers rather than just function for the sake of function. Of course, that deserves an entire entry by itself.

Trip to the North East

This post has been some time in the coming now. I got my datacard along on this trip to the North East with an intention to make daily post. Of course, like several other teenage intentions, this too failed. However, the least I can do is to post the details on my last day here, before I get carried away in the tsunami called the DU Jan tests.

First, let me get over the itinery quickly. We came to Guwahati on 29th December and the next day left for Shillong. On 31st, we visited Cherrapunji. On 1st, we left for Tezpur, visited Kaziranga on the 2nd and tomorrow, i.e. the 3rd, we return to our respective 'homes' - mom and dad to Kolkata, bhai to Mumbai and me to Delhi.

So, now to the more subjective components of this post. This trip was surprisingly devoid of hills and mountains, as one would expect from the North East. Of course, that primarily owes to the fact that we did not visit any hilly place, but confined ourselves to the valley and plateaus. So, the only uphill drive was from Guwahati to Shillong. Guwahati is like a typical small Indian city. It doesn't have many charms of its own, except for the Brahmaputra flowing through it.

Shillong was the best part of the trip, especially the drive from Shillong to Cherrapunji. Of course, I always knew that Shillong was on a plateau, but I'd never been on a plateau myself, and hence didn't know what to expect once I reach there. Shillong is so surprisingly spacious for a city at its altitude. It resembles (I suppose) the Scottish countryside, and is hence referred to as the 'scotland of the east'. I wish there were such a place closer to Delhi, because it would be an excellent escape from the city.

Cherrapunji is lacklustre, except for the ride. There is an 'eco park', which is nothing but a park on the edge of the plateau, and a cave. But the drive from Shillong more than makes up for it. I could constantly imagine myself driving on those roads on a lazy sunday afternoon. Oh, those roads! Meghalaya's roads were amazing even when going uphill, and were for most parts broader than roads in Kolkata.

Kaziranga was beautiful, and a good experience, except for that the biodiversity seemed to be extremely restricted. Of course, hoping to see a tiger in the wild is like living in fool's paradise, but what we got was one rhinoceros after the other. Even the wild elephants were shy! Hence, Kaziranga cannot, and should not, be the only destination for any traveller, or else you'll be disappointed.

Throughout this trip, something that was missing was the 'authentic' food. Towards the end we got a taste of it en route from Shillong to Tezpur. My brother tried pigeon curry, but I being as squeamish as I am, did not try to experiment. Assamese food hence seems to be rather bland by the standards of the Punjabi and Bengali food that I'm used to.

This is a rather lacklustre travel diary, I suppose. But I also suppose that the mark of a true traveller in life is to not have enough time to turn back and ponder.

Till then !

Subhashish

(in Tezpur)