tOO many alphabets tO speLL (spOil) a gENERAtiON.

I have always pondered over the identity, and motive, of my generation. Gen X, Gen Y, and now it's the Gen N! Too many cliches the media is using it seems. But i sincerely doubt the very genuineness and seriousness of these news paper- TV commercial- coined terms! In fact to be honest, i may sound very discouraging and 'orthodox', ours is a generation which gets carried away with every possible gust of breeze.

We think; yes we think, but on the lines which some very visible, but seemingly invisible forces want us to think. Our thinking is, and i am telling this from my personal experience notwithstanding any co-relation to popular theories, very much conditioned by the media which is around us. By media i don't only mean the TV commercials, or the ads, they are just a part of that construction which forces us to fit in the shapes it creates! The films which we watch every now and then, the kind of products we use- in fact these are inescapable, i agree- the necessities which we believe we have, never really judging their necessity, and even the Orkut and Facebook profiles we have or visit, create a pre-mediated network in which we operate. I am tempted to say that our thinking is just like the working of the Windows; while installing a program or a software we only follow the instructions, never ever trying to realise what makes the program run. In fact this is one aspect of the division of labour- we feel that it is not our job to understand the programing of the OS. Indeed it is true that given the complexities it is quite difficult, and i am not into it myself. It was just an analogy, an example to elucidate that we run like pre-programed softwares with options like RUN OK APPLY CANCEL ACCEPT DECLINE ! To draw an excellent example from The Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys, we are being a victim of obeah, that Caribbean custom where one's spirit is stolen. This in fact is the X, Y, N obeah! We are letting ourselves being renamed by alphabets and images which do not have any meaning once taken out of the aura of moving images, and disturbing music- all with stealthy agendas.

A leftist analysis of the glittering ads and media can very well show how our generation, by naming it GEN X Y N, is being depicted as one which yearns for interest without a bank account; one which wants a degree without hard work; one which believes in the 'inborn' genius, which it has in plenty; one which thinks that life is there in the pub, shopping malls, and one night stands. In short our generation is being made to believe that there is only one, and one one, way to success and that is THE SHORT CUT WAY! So we are no more responsible, no more committed to a cause, no more worried for a completion and perfection which is needed and which is very difficult to attain.

LO! arre yaar perfection ko improve karna kaafi mushkil hain. and we are born with it, JUST CHILL MAN! mentos hain naa? mentos khao dimaag ki batti jalao!

ARISE AWAKE AND SLEEP NO MORE. WITHIN EACH OF YOU THERE IS THE POWER TO REMOVE ALL WANTS AND ALL MISERIES! BELIEVE IN THIS AND THAT POWER WILL BE MANIFESTED! SWAMI VIVEKANANDA

nO EnD to mEmoRIEs !

All i had against Pondicherry University was personal, even now as i listen to Phil Collins and sip Three Roses i can’t but curse the people with higher degrees who are here defacing everything. But having said that i would take an opportunity, the opportunist i am, to admit that i am indebted to this place. If my UG in Calcutta taught me to ask questions, then this place, this undeserving place i sometimes opine in anger, has enabled me to answer them. I am writing this because i got a pretty emotional sms from my friend Dhivya. She has said, and quite rightly she has, that our course is going to end pretty soon and we will be missing everything which this university has given us. Pondering upon it and sitting alone in my room with the doors and windows open my mind is getting carried to the first day i entered the department.

A fair and handsome (self proclaimed) Bengali boy, in blue wrangler and black DJ n C, with hair spiked up in a mow hawk, sporting brown shoes and a sling bag from Ruggers, walks slowly up the stair case. He sees two girls: one in a green salwar suit with brown stripes, the other in a brownishly blue salwar suit and boring specs- Anju and Samhati. Entering the class room the boy is perplexed to find people who look so different. He scans the class and sits at the back. This was to be his place throughout the course! He gets nudged by a fellow Bengali whom he has earlier suspected of being a thief. This ‘thief’ was to become one of his closest mates in the campus, and his gadget guru, and ghatak too! Arijit, later Arijith! The thief opines that the class is full of ‘yea s’. A surreptitious Bengali term which can mean anything derogatory. Quite condescendingly he nods an assent. He looks puzzled to find a short man, with his face ‘over-powdered’ and badly in need of Fair and Handsome, enter the class. A joker, may be the clerk. He thinks. NN. Nalla Natarajan- the HOD. ‘This class(aa) is yea myini Yindia!’ and a lot! All to come in the following semesters. Crapanan! The hour does not turn sour as he lets the class off within half an hour such that they can explore the campus. Pshew! Exclaims the boy. What a place! Yuck! As the folks gather around the desks a guy busies himself in collecting phone numbers from the girls: Jubin. Bloody flirt thinks the superior fellow! (Me) This flirt was to be the most innocent person he would ever see in the campus. A good person who would waste money in writing Public Exams! As the class moves out he goes and asks the only fair complexioned girl ‘Bengali?’ Oeendrila. The first girl to whom he gives a lift. (That very day.) The day ends as he smokes a cigarette in desperation, a habit which was to be discontinued later.

This was just the beginning. The days which followed brought me close to many and also took me far from them. The place to which i was biased was to tell me that i am a racist! Here i was to learn how to apologise and say sorry. Here i was to find the love of my life. Here i was to realise how difficult it is to accept the fact that other cultures exist. Here i was to get a feel of what India is. And many more.

Indeed we people from the other part of the nation, North as it is called here, have many false reasons to dislike this place; but this university campus to me has started to mean a lot. I can now say that i have friends, and in every honest implications of the word, who speak Tamil, Malayalam, Telegu, Oriya, Marathi and English. In fact this not so urban place has taught me to be cosmopolitan. Indeed i have my own reservations regarding my taste for food, music, and films, and buses; but nevertheless to acknowledge that there are other ways to say ‘hello’ is not worthless at all!

I AM HERE TOO... too Mean!?

Indeed it is now very common: people are writing blogs. In the words of the media, popular media to be precise, it is here that people blog out their 'personal space'. I am also a construction of this media, as all of us are in some way or the other. So why not blog my personal space out? in fact I have always wanted to be a writer, a poet living in poverty: very much like the Oscar Wildes and Keats, to give examples which are common; canonically common- once again to be precise! Precision. A devil damn word it is. (i don't always prefer using god damn!) Indeed it is very difficult to be precise, to say what you want to mean, and to mean what you want to mean. Yes the double emphasis. It is very naive of us when we say that we mean this or 'so you mean this!?' We can never mean anything because there is no meaning without being precise, and vice versa. Yes if you are thinking I have read Derrida then you are not totally wrong. But i will take it a bit forward. Precision comes only when we are aware, when we are conscious rather, what do we want to mean. When we understand what is the argument we want to put forward, and what is the objective behind putting forward this argument- this is what I mean when I say we must be conscious of what we want to mean! It is because of this ignorance that we tend to use too many words, and especially too many dots these days. In fact i get flustered when i read the messages which drop in my inbox everyday. I will give you one example: 'hey... bonjour... gotta know that you were in town last night... ' Now my simple and humble question is this. Does not my friend know that the three dots (...) make a punctuation mark, especially when the sense is left incomplete, and that too in literature? In fact using these three dots is technically called ellipsis. Just as you have the ! and ? marks. Now what does one claim when these are used? Is s/he trying to subvert the common and simple grammar of a language and trying to purport a post post-modern version of grammar? or is it some kind of an alankaram? Whatever may be the case it is surely a popular innovation, but ironically it's a one which makes our work more complicated and subverts the whole notion of innovation. A post modern innovation may be, if i can call it innovation at all. So long for now, i will get back with ideas and opinions later. As of now good bye . . . oops! i'm a construction too!