Being CR

To Myself,
Bickering & Bitching,
Gratifying my own Vanity…
(…is this surprising? don’t delude yourself!)

I’ve been a good CR (class representative for the uninitiated). Yes, I have been quite an efficient, fair and unbiased CR who’s done his work as conscientiously and honestly as possible. I’ve been democratic and open and have always tried to maintain a balance between the interests of the class, the teachers and myself. Yes, I’ve been a pretty good CR.

But I’ve had my bad points as well. I’ve been too efficient, too caring, too considerate, and in being all of this, I’ve spoilt my class, spoilt the whole blooming lot of them. In telling them each and every thing; in meticulously planning out schedules, carefully arranging classes and religiously sending out messages to every single one of them, I’ve made them complacent, assuming and overbearing…

For example, just because I feel everybody has an equal right to know what is happening shouldn’t make people feel that they have an-equaller-than-thou right to treat me like a bloody (or bloodless!) walking, talking, living timetable! First, they can’t call. No sir, they needs must message you! But do try and understand their situation: poor outstation students from small towns surviving on shoestring budgets, living their miserable life somehow or the other away from their home and family…oh how tragic! How moving! Don’t you see, cruel heart, and still more cruel reader, that they have to save, they have to economise, they have to message? How else will they live their life of utmost drudgery? How else will they survive?

So, they message. And pray, when do they message? At the bewitching hour of 12, at 3 in the morning, at nine in the night! Dinner, lunch, tea, study, do what you will, the messages will follow you like that accursed pug, you and I in this god forsaken world! You might be deep in Indian mythology, you might be going along Chaucer to Canterbury, you might be walking with Socrates, but all in vain! Trrrrrrring-tin-tin! A message out of nowhere, a call back from the twenty-first century, rudely waking you up…

And what do we want to know? “hey!r v hvng d 8:40 cls wth bms tomrrw?”

Bloody hell! First you disturb me, you rudely pull me back to the reality which you poison with your presence and then ask me questions in such a preposterously sickening language! Damn you! You spoil my Romantic/Elizabethan/Medieval/Victorian/Augustan dreams with this! This! THIS!

And what if I reply, which I, out of a sense of duty, always do? What then? Nothing. No sign of gratitude, not a single thank you (or “thanx” as you type it!)!

Then, nobody has any phone etiquette. You call somebody to ask something, your call isn’t taken, you send a message stating your query and expect the person to at least message in reply- after all, we are classmates…

But no. Why the heck should I care? Why should I answer your question? Of course, it doesn’t really matter that I always answer your questions, but then so what? You’re the CR, aren’t you? You’re supposed to answer our questions! You owe it to us, while we, oh, we are divinities on earth, we are answerable to nobody. We’re in a bad mood, and we won’t reply. We sooo hate phone-calls. We suffer from amnesia and forget you even exist…

Forgetfulness was really endemic. You sent a message clearly specifying when which class is going to happen, yet the night before the class some bugger or the other would send a message asking for further clarification. You sent messages asking people to note down and choose any one of the ten presentation topics, yet there will be some chu-chu who will message late in the night before the presentations asking you to message back all ten of the topics. Oh gods, is it so difficult to understand instructions? So difficult to comprehend plain English? Have mercy on me, ye lords of swarga; have more mercy still on these poor dumb animals, these wolf-toothed sheep of your fold!

Well, ok, not really. There were a few well-mannered stalwarts, like Aastha, Ishaan, Prashaste, Abhimanyu, Meenakshi, Mayoura and Kiran, who would nicely thank you whenever their queries would be answered…Jonathon was the only person who really came up to my expectations of phone etiquette, calling back, and not messaging, to enquire why you had called…people like these made you feel the trouble was worth it. Yet, on the whole, the job has been pretty thankless.

Thankless. Yes, thankless. And they expect you to do more and more for them. Just because your system works well, they expect you to tweak it every now and then to suit them. A professor gave essays to be photocopied. You sent a message telling interested people to contact you within a time frame. You got them copied for as many people as approached you with money and gave the essays back to the teacher. But the very next day, you get a message asking you to “gt dem cpied 4 me,& ill pay u later”. Certainly your highness, certainly! As you like it! Ja exzellenz!

Teachers, of course, can also be high and mighty at times. Dramatic. Goddess-like (we anyways have a matriarchy in our Department of English…). At nine-thirty in the night, you’ll get a message announcing, nay, pronouncing, this shattering judgement- “Class is on”. If I fix tomorrow as the deadline for an assignment, then tomorrow it will unchangeably be. My word is law, my will immutable. What I wish, even the stars shall obey, for I am the liberated woman (no, female- we’re all gender-less in Literature!).

And to add to all of this, we had the Freshers and the Farewell as well. If the third years were prodigiously kind to direct us with the wisdom of their years for the former, the first years are being (it’s still to happen) extraordinarily generous in refreshing our perspective with their pseudo-suicidal/existential/nihilist tendencies. I’ve had a mood swing, so I won’t complete the work assigned to me. We had a meeting today? Oh, but we have a class and we can’t possibly attend- let’s have it later…What? Could’ve informed you we had a class yesterday evening when you sent the message? Well, I’m a little busy these days you know, and I just couldn’t...

Then, there are people who were so very keen to have the Farewell, people who’ve been thinking about it for a year or so. Sure, I appreciate your spirit, but then why the heck weren’t you ready with your plan? Why are you busy getting your act together now? Why, for blessed heaven’s sake, now, when you had the idea in mind for almost a year? Oh, I know you’ll manage to put up something fair in the remaining week, but then most of your work will be last minute preparation with hectic schedules! Why didn’t you plan in advance, so that we wouldn’t have to work at the eleventh hour? Why make my life difficult!

Of course, there were times when you felt everybody was conspiring to make your life difficult. Having an almost non-existent, embarrassingly invisible Dancing Queen as my fellow CR didn’t-doesn’t-help. People don’t expect her to work anyways, and things would inevitably get messy when she would all of a sudden wake up, realise that she had other responsibilities besides giving audience to all the sundry men of her retinue and assert her right to do as she pleased…this the heavy price we humble mortals pay for having thrice-born Queens amongst us…

Oh, I agree, I’m to blame for all of it. I and my stupid ideas about democracy and equality. “The only precondition will be that we do everything by democratic vote and that all of us be as equals.” Thinking that Athenian democratic ideals (yes, you can laugh- somebody already has, and now I’m more or less impervious) would work with a juvenile bunch of college students. What bosh!

Whatever. Que sera sera. It’s been an awfully great adventure being a good CR. It would be an awfully great one being a bad one…

* * *

Actually, I don’t mean all of it…
(Yes, I know: how disappointingly predictable! Yet, I tried my best!)

* * *

Reading Homer: An Amateur’s Account of the Iliad

Homer is disgusting. Homer is fantastic. Homer is horrible. Homer is sublime. Homer narrates horrendously blood chilling violence. Homer evokes beautifully appealing landscapes. Homer…

…to begin with, is marvellously contradictory!

Ok, before you start raising cudgels over the Homer question, let me clarify that I’m not talking of Homer. Here, for convenience’s sake, I’m going to refer to Homer and his (their?) creation (compilation?) Iliad as one and the same thing, inadvisable though it is…

There’s something magically inexplicable about Homer. Oh yes, how uncritical! But that’s true- at least for me! I find it difficult to ‘interpret’ Homer, and to a lesser extent all other Greek literature, in the standard ways taught us in English Hons.- in fact, I find it not just difficult but also demeaning to analyse Homer in any way. To analyse is to see through the text, to break the skilful illusion which the author weaves, spider-life, around it. Sometimes, I think it reduces Homer’s unparalleled majesty when you break him down into different ideologies and schools. I know why we do it, and why it’s necessary, but still…

The first thing which strikes one is the sheer size. By conservative estimates, there must’ve been around 99,000 men on the Achaian side, a 100 men to each of the 990 ships. Imagine! Imagine the colossal amount that would’ve been sent on their maintenance- there is a point in the tale when ships laden with good wine sail in from Lemnos to Ilium, all for the two sons of Atreus. Innumerable oxen and goats are routinely sacrificed, and then consumed- and daily at that. This is Greece (or from Greece), a sparsely wooded land of scanty precipitation and unfertile soil…clearly, Homer’s Heroic Greece was vastly different from, say, Classical Athens- a land much more rich and rewarding…

Then, as the Primal Parent of sorts of Western literature, Homer has everything, from predominant tragedy to occasional comedy and momentary romance. Yet, what impresses one the most is the terrifying violence narrated by him. So much so that one feels like throwing up, or throwing it out of sight as soon as possible. Nothing more ghastly, gory and sickening than Homer when it comes to the “dance of war”.

Consider this. A spear hits a warrior in the arse and come out from his navel. One hits another in the base of the neck and come out from his left eye, taking along his eyeball as the trophy: a fountain of blood spurts out from the now empty socket. Another is brought down to die an excruciating death as the merciless spear mines its way to come out of the crotch…

One could go on paraphrasing a seemingly endless number of gruesome incidents from that bloody catalogue of death, but I think this much is enough. The point has been adequately stressed…

On the other hand, His also fantastically beautiful. The picture he paints of Greece is magically alluring. A peaceful land, of wooded mountains, gurgling streams, gleaming lakes and white, shining cities. A land of mountain shepherds and country farmers, busy tending their sheep and bees; simple folk, unambitious, content, happy, at peace with the world. A world of merry dances and festivals, of good natured revelry and light fun…it is difficult, almost impossible, to associate this world and its denizens with high and noble personages, great heroes and god-ordained kings. Perseus, Agamemnon, and Oedipus seem to have little in common with these rustic folk!

Then there the entire ‘heroic’ discourse. A good warrior is one who establishes his arête by killing as many people as possible, without remorse or pity. When angry, Achilleus is as uncontrollable as a ferocious mountain stream: he comes down like doom for the village in the plain and breaks through the banks, sweeping aside many houses- a lifetime of hark work destroyed in the deluge (yes, yes! I am getting the epic simile thing!). Odysseus is, at his best, a malicious trickster, a dishonest, unconscionable manipulator of men and women- wily, sly and worst than the worst of foxes…take him for his word and you will suffer. Fielding’s acute observations on the skulls of military men very much apply to our Homeric Heroes- all action, no deliberation…

Opposed to this rashness of youth is the wisdom of grey-bearded Nestor, a second generation hero. Nestor is always there to guide his proud and generally rowdy “god-ordained” kings, to put them back on track and organise them, to ensure that the Achaians present as a unified front, not as the loosely knit clans as they are, each to his own…

Nestor brings us to another remarkable thing: the Heroic age. The entire heroic age seems to be condensed in just three generations! You have Tantalus and his notorious feast; then Pelops, his two sons Atreus and Thyestes followed by Atreus’ kids, Agamemnon and Menelaus and then kaput! The so-called invasion, the fall of Mycenae, the beginning of the Dark Age…these three generations (Tantalus was no hero!) touch about three Hesiodic ages: the end of the Bronze age, the whole of the Heroic one and the early beginnings of the last, ‘current’ Iron Age. Greek compression at its confusing best!

Finally, Homer’s Gods. The twelve Olympians, with “cloud-bearing” Zeus as their head, exercised great power over mortals without any accountability whatsoever. Well, all Gods do that, you might say. Right, all Gods do that, but not all of them are as fickle, as impulsive, as querulous, as licentious, in fact (which cannot be, because this is mythology!) as unbalanced (big, important word this!) as our motley gang of Olympians- and big daddy Zeus, as the head, is the worst. He’ll do what he wants and is quite blatant about his power- he routinely reminds his rowdy Gods and Goddesses (quite a paradox, eh!) of his power over them, to fling them down to Tartarus and to cage them therein forever more. His will is law, unchallengeable, immutable. If he wants a woman, he will have her by any means, even though she be his sister (and, at one time, mother Rhea). Incest is allowed amongst the Gods; it’s alright to rape your wife, sister, mother…

Yes, it’s so very tragic. That buggers like these should be Gods and not noble men and women like Penelope and Orestes is such a tragedy. Well said noble Pindar: “One is the race of Gods and of men; from one mother we both draw our breath. Yet, our powers are poles apart; for we are nothing, but for them the brazen Heaven endures for ever, their secure abode”…if only, if only we had been them and they us, we who are so much the better in our conduct, if only…yes, quite a tragedy, one which, as Kitto says, runs throughout much of Greek Literature, the tragedy of being men, strong and dignified, yet weak, mortal…

Homer’s Greece is very much a land of flux, not so much in economic and political flux as in a slow process of societal transformation, from semi-civilised barbarism to the balanced Classicism of Pericles. It is this spirit of flux, and so, imperfection, which Homer’s heroes embody. A tragedy, but much much more than that- Homer stands eternal, forever…

Wild Ducks

Why? Why did I go to that protest? How did it help me? Why did I fight with my parents and grandparents to be part of that demonstration? Did I think it would make a difference, would be an affirmative step forward towards positive change? Did I believe that it was my duty as a responsible citizen to register my disapproval of (rising) intolerance and extremism? To come forward and protest against infringement of my, and my fellow citizens’, fundamental, constitutional rights by groups with retrograde ideologies? To stand up for our right to do as we like and please, as long as it’s under the law?

Well, no, not really.

I don’t think protests of this sort make any effective change. A sustained number of them over a long period of time might just bring about some sort of change, but a single protest of, as this was, less than 25 people has, I think, no effect on either state policy or ideology. Protests in general don’t really affect things- when a rare one succeeds, the system soon reverts back to its old status quo in some new form. Protests of this sort, apolitical, essentially urban middle class, with high, lofty (and, to many, ambiguous) aims like civil liberties are nobody’s concern except few intellectual zealots in Universities and some sections of the largely inarticulate, indifferent urban middle class. Yes, a bunch of college students and young amateurs with simple placards standing silently in one inconspicuous corner of a bylane of a major artery make good centre page bylines and off-peak TV news, but that’s about it- five minutes on TV and then off the fickle public consciousness for the latest on Rakhi Sawant’s antics in some brand new reality show.

As far as fundamental rights and things like equality and liberty which the Indian Constitution and its solemn Preamble so magnificently announce and guarantee, well, everybody knows how the real world works. It’s all very nice and proper on paper, but when it comes to life in the real world, then there are people who are more equal, who are, by virtue of their might, of their ‘power’, first amongst equals. There will always be ‘big’ people and ‘small’ people; the big ones will always have their way with small ones, regardless of the political institutions of that particular society. Indian democracy is in itself a conglomeration of feudal parties, veiled patriarchies or one-(wo)man systems. Indian bureaucracy is a highly stratified structure where, given the rigid hierarchies, it’s almost impossible to have any sort of ‘democratic’ discourse…

The law too is different for different people. You can, of course, sight the odd example and cry yourself hoarse about its impartiality, but everybody knows how easy it is to get around our judiciary. If you have the resources, then it’s very easy to impose your will on people- for one, the state, wherever it’s strong and whenever it feels like it, does that regularly. One of our basic desires as a nation is to be above the law, to show people who we are (tu jaanta nahi main kon hun?): being romantic and claiming that nobody’s above it is just being delusional, not accepting reality as it is. Some people, in fact quite a lot of them actually, can get away with almost anything…

So, why did I go?

I think it was because I don’t wish to let go of my wild ducks.

We all need illusions in life, what Ibsen called “life lies”. For one, they make life incredibly and comfortably simple, give you aims and purposes which you otherwise might not even bother about. The idea that there is God, some divinity which sees that ‘good’ is rewarded and ‘evil’ punished, even if that be in the ‘afterlife’ as eternal glory or damnation, has held together the human race, given a majority of it the tolerance and patience to endure all sorts of sufferings which a minority, taking advantage of these beliefs, has inflicted, directly as well as deviously, upon it. Indeed, the very idea that there is an unchanging, (divinely) sanctioned, and so permanent, ‘good’ and ‘evil’ is one of the primary illusions of this race, as is the idea of monolithic identity: his(and her!)story is witness to umpteen catastrophes which have been consequences of changes which have shattered these illusions…

Our lives are full of all sorts of illusions, all of them vital in their own right. The truth might be something else, but we like to believe otherwise. We don’t know whether ghosts exist or not: science, or at least mainstream science, tells us that they don’t. Yet, most of us, in our heart of heart, do believe in them, not just because the idea is so deeply ingrained in our consciousness as individuals and a collective but also because (as Saurav said) it’s fun to believe in them. We know the knight-and-lady-in-distress idea is a romantic exaggeration, yet it appeals to a majority of us. Most of us get up early in the morning, rush to college, attend classes and go back home, all without knowing where we’re moving towards, or why we’re doing it all…

No, you’ll say: we want to get good marks, and a paying job- earn money and be happy. But then, that is absurd also- money and happiness don’t necessarily go together. Indeed, more often than not, the former doesn’t guarantee the latter. Even when they do, then happiness is usually a nice house with a decent garden, somewhere in a quiet suburb: a little paradise of one’s own to mellow away into the seventh age…yet, this too is a sort of an isolationist illusion- cut off from the hustle-bustle of the world, pretending that one’s own little sphere is immutable, happy in ignorance…

Ignorance, of course, is bliss. It really is, no pun intended. But then, knowledge suddenly thrust upon ignorance is one of the causes behind all tragedies. Desdemona didn’t know a thing about Othello’s suspicions, and so she died. Chamberlain thought Hitler wanted peace, and so came the Munich Agreement, and consequently the War. Nehru thought Hindi-Chini were bhai-bhai, but Mao didn’t, and the ’62 fiasco occurred… clearly, there must be a balance between ignorance and knowledge...

So while things like nationhood and nationality are ideas, they’re also ground realities which just cannot be ignored, as Ghosh seeks to do in The Shadow Lines. Ideas bind individual humans into groups: the idea of family, of belonging and of ownership. Ideas join together those small groups into organised societies- democracies, tyrannies, have what you will. They made Hindustan into the Republic of India, and they keep this Republic from sliding back into Hindustan. Everybody knows things don’t always work according to the ideal, yet the idea that a day will come when they will still continues to inspire and move us all…

I think all of us who went there know all of this: in our heart we all know that there are people who’re more equal. Yet, we, or at least I, wouldn’t have admitted that out there before the cameras and the journalists. Not just because it would’ve been bad publicity to have said that, but also because in spite of being fully aware of the ‘reality’-which is quite illusionary-I also realise the importance of upholding ideas, without which the whole superstructure of society would fall to pieces. Reality without the illusion of these ideas is a brutish beast: ignorance must be tempered with knowledge, reality must be softened with illusions.

And that is why I went to that protest.

The Council

I

Every Duke and Earl and Peer was there
Everyone who could be there was there!
Kings and Queens, Monarchs wise,
All lined up for this great enterprise.
First to come were the Scions of Kullu:
Noble, wise, loyal and true!
Then came the Chieftains from Axom’s rarefied heights,
Queen-mothers and Ladies of warrior tribes!
From Awadh, Doon and the Desert Land of Thar,
Mallu Backwaters and Lallu’s Bihar,
From all these lands, and a few other more-
Notably the ancient Oriyan jungles and Dhillika, upon Jamuna’s shore-
There came the select, the chosen, the ordained, the sceptred few:
Knights, Esquires, Marquises and a Damsel new.
Noble and high, eager to decide,
The Fate of this Land unendingly wide!
Last to come were the Bangla hordes;
Shepherds of their peoples, true bhadraloks.
Leading them, of course-
The Elder; wisest, immortal, fairest of them all!
Handsome and tall, exceeding all others in his wherewithal.
By His side His Subversive Wife,
Betwixt the Twain, Young Master Turee!
Regally progressing up the stairs
All others fawning and bowing to this pair!
This then the family, this then the assemblage,
This then that galaxy of stars, taare zameen pe!

II

Everyone assembled, everyone settled,
The noise subsided, the din fettered,
The Elder rose, a statuesque figure-
On his head that sybillic hanky,
In his hand that potent ale.
Fully erect, in total control, thus he spake-
“Friends, Ramjasians, Countrymen!
(Stay! Not countrymen!- they are but shadow lines!)
We are in this silvery sandy land amassed,
To deliberate, opine, declaim, decide,
By blessed rhetoric’s charms untwine,
A momentous skein of Herculean size!
A matter upon which rests the fate of sundry souls,
No easy task, difficult to endure!
So hark to my words, listen carefully now,
‘Tis this-
To dance or not to dance?
To party or not to party?
To move around in high Bacchic revelry or
Sit, ordained, in solemn state?
This the crisis to be solved,
This the matter to be resolved!”

III

Tell me now, O Muse, who amongst that august gathering
Was the first to speak?
‘Twas you, High Prince of Loony Doon,
The Elder’s equal in your liver’s resource,
Blessed, beloved of the Gods,
Who first addressed them thus-
“Listen to me now, O thou worthy Peers of mine!
Long ago in Thrace was our wild Madcap God born,
He came dancing down to Helas, O beauteous Helas, and
Swept through it! Swept as do
These waves in this silvery sandy realm!
None could before him withstand, none now really can,
To bow down in reverence is all we can!”
So spake he, that heir of Moony Doon, and
Many were his admirers, specially
Those Warrior Monarchs of the East:
“Well said, well said!” they all cried,
“That is the Word of the Council, and
We shall abide!”

IV

At this did our Esquire of Dhillika stand
Adjusted his thoughts, and so began-
“’Tis folly, my Lords (Ladies implied!), this sage’s advice:
To Apollo I recommend ye, to that Delphic far-shooter wise.
Learn ye from him, from his restraint be advised-
Our own self is most precious, better than any ring yet devised.
Be not solemn; certainly enjoy and dance,
Yet let not maenadic fury mingle in your prance.
To loosen a little is alright,
To loose completely prefect blight.”
At this there was uproar, shouting, wails;
(Brazen Ares would’ve had competition great!)
“Nay, nay!” cried the sovereigns, and
Their dissent decried.
“Kiss my ass” quoth one, and to wrangling slide.

V

Fearing infighting and war’s dance grim,
Stood up the Elder, and thus begin-
“Listen ye now, O friends of old,
To me and mine, my words so sure.
We are of one family, of one larger fold,
Separate, yes, but united by lore.
I have heard you speak, all of you opine,
Yet I am your superior, your senior exceedingly fine!
So cease now this clashing, these quarrels base,
And abide by my words, of wisdom great!”

VI

Then was there silence, deadly still,
The Sovereigns sat afraid, and listened to Him.
“There is a time for everything, for everything a phase,
To do as one pleases is folly grave.
Modesty and balance, harmony brave-
These are the Virtues that They to us gave.
These are my words, my views confirmed,
And you’ll follow them all, for
I am the Elder still!”

VII

At this they were stunned, bamboozled, amazed,
Unbelieving, shaking, they blankly gazed.
From his stony lined face took hints and
Stood up to leave, dismayed.
“Cease” cried the Elder, and they fearing stopped.
On his face suddenly broke a grin so broad,
“Hahaha! I was just joking guys!
Let’s all go party, and dance all night!”

We Don’t Need No Examinations

Exams don’t make any sense. No, no, don’t get me wrong. I don’t mean it in that sense, that we shouldn’t have exams at all. We do need exams: virtue, as old Milton so rightly declared, can only be known when tested. Exams help you realise your capacity, and your capability: as far as self-realisation/assessment goes, nothing beats a test, or exam.

What I’m against is the current system of examination in our Delhi University, a system which, for all we know and do, ultimately, because of its inherent flaws, defeats the very purpose of examinations. Giving exams in DU under the existing system, and that too in Literature in English, doesn’t make sense: exams are redundant.

We have all the exams lined up one after the other, especially in the college mid-terms, so that it’s quite difficult to break away yourself from one age to land in the other. One day you’re going along that motley gang of pilgrims to Canterbury and, suddenly, on the very next you’re supposed to come right down to the Restoration and see the Prince of Dullness crowned. Then, immediately after, you have to go back in antiquity and then oscillate between Achilles and Dushyanta, both of them two humongous continents and ages apart. Somewhere in between, you also have to divine why the heck would Kevin be just as happy with 20 units of food as he’d be with 40 of them and why on earth Tenali Raman cracked so many jokes. If this is not confusion incarnate, if this does not lead to dislocation, then what will?

Then, sometimes, you just don’t feel like giving exams- the weather might be too nice, you might be in mood for a getaway-break, or somebody might be getting married, or you might be sick, or somebody might’ve died, or anything...but no, you don’t have an option. You have to give them when the big bossy authorities want you to. No free will here (hopefully the radicals amongst us will be reading this…) – you either tow the line, or give your papers next year.

Why can’t we give exams as and when we want to? Why can’t DU, like a few Open Universities in India and some universities aboard have exams more often, every quarter so that the student can choose and give exams at his/her convenience? Surely such a thing can be implemented in a phased manner? There will be logistic and administrative challenges in this, but the University is, at least in theory, supposed to be for us, the students. As it is, it’s so unfair slogging when you don’t feel like it…

Then, there’s luck. You might get stuck in a terrific traffic jam and be half an hour late, or the ignoramus behind, in front, or besides you might keep pestering you with whyfores all through the paper, or you might start feeling sleepy or, worse still, sick, or your invigilator might be a boisterous, ne’er-to-do-well type who’ll go around passing loud comments, or, you know, anything…you came prepared, but wretched luck got you. And you can’t help it too, and have to abide by the results, because there’s just one chance! How unfair to be judged through a system so open to the vagaries of Fortune!

Coming back to Literature in English, what’s the point of having RTCS-reference to context for the uninitiated-in our papers? What are the long-lasting merits of knowing who said what where, when and why? This art is more suited to ingenious trainers of parrots and other dumb beasts, not to us literature students. As you read new texts you forget the old ones, or consign them to not-so-conscious, non-everyday-usage parts of your brain. Most of us cannot remember each and every story we’ve read- I certainly don’t remember the plot of any of the scores of Enid Blytons I read some five to seven years ago. All I have is a faint inkling of a few of the great amount I devoured and I guess so will be the case with the prescribed texts in our syllabus: as and when I read new things, which I, and many of us, do unfailingly, the memory of these old ones will start fading. In fact, the process has already started; I don’t remember what happens in many of the innumerable poems in our first year…

The examination strategy of asking RTCs, therefore, is redundant. Time will make me, and others, forget. Does it even matter whether Faustus said such and such thing in Act 2, Scene 1 or in Act 1, Scene 4? By thundering Jove it really does not!

What matters is how much of the text you’re able to understand, how much of its ideology you’re able to analyse and see critically from an unbiased, rational and historical as well as universal point of view (i.e. whether or not you can understand the text in its and your own milieu).

Sadly, the current system does not even ensure that.

There’re stock questions to which are expected stock answers. There’s a mixture of stock interpretations, “readings” as we’re fond of calling them in our own literary jargon, which you can safely apply to all your questions and get fairly good marks. What’s more, any guide in the cheap markets, on the pavements or in Grub Street bookstores will, or so I’m told, give you a fair enough idea of what stock reading to apply when and where. True, you won’t score excellently, but you can still get something in the late fifties and that fair enough in English hons. Exam-oriented strategies, therefore, can get you good marks. No need of studying through the year, or devoting hours to thinking about the text. Our system is so accommodating that the dullest dunce can, with luck and a RamjiLal, score well.

Oh, did I miss something? I think I did. You can cheat too y’know! Yes, cheat, that too in Literature, wherein it is so very redundant to cheat. So, even if you do work hard and well with a clean conscience, there’ll always be unconscionable rascals who’ll cheat and, since most invigilators are just not up the job, get away quite, quite easily with it.

Finally, even if you tow the line, put in all that hard work and give your exams like the good, diligent student you are, you’re still at the mercy of the whims and fancies of faceless sarkari babus and still more faceless examiners. First, (in the finals that is) you don’t know the quality of the examiners, the procedure by which they’re selected, whether or not they’re even qualified enough to check your answer sheets. A bad, unqualified examiner and whoop! there goes all your hard work! Then, you never know whether the result in the finals is yours or somebody else’s: the Examination Office can very easily, and does with disgraceful regularity, fudge results and fumble over mark-sheets. A friend of mine witnessed something of the sort: the third, and final, term is about to start and his final, re-evaluated, or re-processed (or whatever they call it in the high mysterious language of babudom) results are yet to come out.

Of course, you do need that degree with the first division on it- it looks so nice and proper. And of course you will work, or cheat, hard to get it. But then, that’s what it is- a nice and proper document for most with nothing substantial but fragmented and confused ideas and notions behind it. What will ultimately matter is the knowledge you gain for its own blessed sake and how you let that make yourself an altogether better human being, not, certainly not, the facts and readings you memorise to spit out on answer sheets,

And since the system as it is doesn’t inspire the majority to do that, exams really don’t matter…