Mala Majumder (English department, 1982)
Thirty years is a lot of time, yet it seems only the other day that we were a part of so much that happened. When I sit to recollect, memories flood my mind and I almost choke with emotions. Memories of experiences which later on helped to shape my perception of life. Memories of a timid, nervous teenager just out of school and not at all ready for college in a metro city, suffering from terrible identity crisis and a host of other confusions, and feeling very homesick.
I happened to be in Jadavpur University very recently, and standing on the wooden bridge beside the Arts Faculty, noticed some apparent changes The faculty buildings looked cleaner, a lot of beautification projects had been executed-the flower beds, the manicured lawns, the metalled lanes of the campus all bore testimony to the government aids that were pouring in. Even the bridge, I was standing on, had been replaced. The previous one was rickety with planks missing here and there, and one had to be careful while crossing it. There were less posters on the walls of the faculty buildings, unlike years back when posters of various student unions belonging to various political organizations, federations indiscriminately occupied large spaces on the walls. Everyone had a right to express his opinion on the wall! Even the main gate of Arts Faculty, old and rusty, was plastered with posters mostly hand written.
The Amenity Centre (A.C.) looked nice and clean too. It was quiet and had few students, so unlike the way it was when we were there. Students these days don't bunk classes to sit in the AC and waste time, I thought to myself. Or perhaps they flock to multiplexes and malls, since they have that option too. The AC in those days, was the heart of the campus. Always buzzing with activity, it was here that our emotions found expression, and many gave away their hearts to each other. It was also a place where students bunked classes and sat for hours discussing or debating politics and philosophy, over endless cups of tea. It was a place frequented mostly by liberal minded people, pro - Marxist or people who made a statement. Others, very few in number, came for a quick cuppa and pushed off soon. And almost everyone claimed to be a Marxist, it was the in thing, you were considered laid back if you weren't one.
Initially, having been brought up in a steel township, I was bewildered and awed by the permissive atmosphere. Though I had been exposed to western culture in school by Australian Jesuit Fathers and a host of European teachers who used to come on Exchange Programmes over the years, my middle class mentality was unaffected. After a few months in JU, I was swept off my feet, and my middle class values came to be questioned. I was influenced by what I saw and heard. I started to think differently. During this time I came across people who influenced me to read, and I started reading. I read Baudelaire and a lot of Russian Literature among Tolstoy and Trotsky, the lives of Che Guevara and Mao Tse-tung, and Chinese other things and wanted to read more. I met seniors and batch mates who had read poems and debated on Dialectic Materialism or the mistakes of Naxalbari Movement. They raised storms over cups of tea, sang inspiring songs and made us like Bandi Mukti Andolan or Communist Reformation in Soviet Union or believe that it was our moral duty to fight for social justice. Whether it was issues to students, we would assemble at the shortest notice, and shout slogans till y became hoarse. It was not foisted on us, we participated with great enthusiasm. It I was fun to be with these people with so much gusto and confidence. Their fiery speeches made us critical about institutionalised dogmas and we were hell bent on protest. The synergy it created was amazing. In later years, I tried analysing the cause for so much expostulation and realized that it was not due to allegiance towards any political ideology in particular, but a new awareness of the unequal society we live in, and the institutions that have cleverly maintained this status quo, that spurred so much anger. We needed a platform to vent out our anger at a society which was apathetic to the needs of the poor, and the college union gave us that platform, of course it did not remain at that, but that was the basic sentiment that worked. Very few among us in later years have chosen the 'untrodden 'path, most of us are in the mainstream of life, and busy with the common chores. We have become a part of the system which we had once criticized.
We lost some valuable time and academics took a back seat and many promising careers did not turn out to be as promising in the years to come. What we gained however is our way of thinking, our value system, social awareness, sympathy for the under privileged, a free and inclusive mind and over and above - we learnt to value democracy.