“At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, Nathu will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds…” depression. What did you think? So, I, Nathu, found life nowhere but in KGP, the place I thought I had left for good, around 90 years ago.
Ah, those trigger-happy, ruthless brutes. They killed me. I know you feel bad for me, especially considering the fact that my causes for mutiny were noble and just. I was simply fighting for freedom. But, oh dear, as I observe the hustle and bustle of the ‘KGP’ life around me, I suspect that freedom is something that we still haven’t been able to find. It’s apparent that things haven’t evolved too much. The little evolution that has occurred has most definitely not been commensurate with the time.
“…here in the place of that Hijli Detention Camp stands this fine monument of India today representing India’s urges, India’s future in the making. This picture seems to me symbolical of the changes that are coming to India…”
Jawaharlal Nehru
Kharagpur
21.4.1956
Mr Nehru, along with the classic book by Charles Dickens, also had great expectations for Kharagpur and its IIT. However, let’s be honest, do we think our Kharagpur has matched those? If someone were to ask me, I’d say our monument isn’t that fine, and India’s future desperately needs help.
I decided to go to the library to escape the afternoon heat. Initially, I was afraid because I heard new creations called ‘air conditioners’ were installed there. The air conditioners were invented around the time I left Kharagpur last and were quite alien to me.
However, to my relief, the hall where I read my novella had its air condition dysfunctional, making it feel just like home in the 1930s.
The novella read as follows:
There exists a kingdom in a faraway place. A kingdom run by a king and his men. The kingdom is in ruin, and the king’s subjects constantly voice their concerns and complaints that fall on deaf ears.
The king and his men constantly sing praise for the kingdom and its governance, requesting the subjects to change their pessimistic lens and appreciate the benefits of the chaos. A proverb as old as time itself comes to mind, ‘Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder’. However, it seems that those beholders are primarily blind or blinded by money because the kingdom isn’t just ugly; it’s dying.
But before I could read what happened to this kingdom, I was disturbed by the ramblings of couples who were the only demographic in the library at this time of the semester.
“My brother in Christ, we ran out of water in the washrooms.”
“There’s a bunch of students waiting to pee.”
Yet another problem — a water shortage. Did I see it coming? Yes. Do I want to deal with it? No. Looks like the water pumps are malfunctioning. My rebel instincts began to kick in. Can this simply be dealt with by changing a few things? Or was it time to replace some people?
It seems that KGP frequently does run out of water. We may have taken a U-turn in the name of development. Perhaps… Mohenjo Daro (for all history enthusiasts, yes, the same Mohenjo Daro from the Harappan Civilisation) was better off because open drainage is a thing here; it is.
I decided to leave the library and go to my new abode. My ‘Hall of Residence’ is what they call it. I was hungry, but damn. The mess food sucked; chapatis doused in white powder, just the wrong kind. Our freedom struggle was necessary, and in the eyes of these present-day students, I see the same fighting spirit. Brimming with enthusiasm for the right cause. I eavesdropped and inferred that Nehru Ji’s dream had partially come true. The ordeals the students had gone through to reach here often earned them society’s title of the ‘crème de la crème’.
The question that came to my mind was, “What happens to cream when pressed together and heated?” Did it form butter? Whipped cream? It was important to know because considering the living situations of the students in tightly-packed warm rooms, this crème de la crème would transform into something more akin to ‘beurre de la beurre’.
Forget rooms, someone also forgot to check back on the Original Center of Learning. The problem only worsens because the side-kick isn’t a paradise either (for those of you — still stuck at Netaji, the side-kick here is Nalanda). Let some drops of elixir just fall from the heavens (after all, the taps barely supply them), and its corridors overflow. The sad part remains because this side-kick is not even approachable; you will mostly fall or get lost before you meet them in person, thanks to the jam-packed, narrow cycle routes.
However, I am confident that some sort of elixir-harvesting system would work wonders in KGP since rain will never give up on us. After all, even God can not help but weep looking at this.
Jewels remind me the Crown has shifted places only to settle in New Delhi (not in King Charles’ hands, or maybe it did?!), or that is at least what it seems to be. The sepoys protecting the sovereignty of the throne just happen to run educational institutions. In this process, what’s lost is freedom, the freedom to express opinion and the freedom to speak freely. ‘Anti-national elements’ or people with strong opinions, as I like to put it, end up disobeying these guardians of a so-called ‘free state’.
Even those who were supposed to help you at each stage, the torchbearers of the oh-so-bright-orange kindergarten, forgot their batteries this time, and we needed a bunch of Open Houses to get through.
And yes, bringing people together is nice, but doing it in this kindergarten is questionable.
“If you can survive in KGP, you can survive anywhere in the world.” Well, the Di… (add letters at your discretion), too, acknowledged how lamentable life here is and how our parents just “kept” us here. Ironically, he is still in the same position.
Well, oh, well, I just wish I could survive this phase. Likewise, another year will go by, and then a new bunch of inmates will arrive, with some hope to improve their lives, with a paintbrush in hand, only to find no blank canvas. These inmates will keep bringing life back into this otherwise downtrodden place, but for how long? … Only until this place goes lifeless; is that not very close, in time and reality? I’m beginning to think I need a lifetime’s worth of break as remuneration for each year here. However, it’s apparent that I’m not getting more than one; where do I find another three… Forget it; maybe I will just hope to take birth in a better place next time (?).