Kamla Nagar Days

(Source: Saving the Cycle Rickshaw- Sravya Garladenne)

You can hear the whistle blow 500 miles, and you know you’re far away from home when you wake up each day to the unfamiliarity of a relentlessly fast moving city. Every morning there’s a huge rush of students in the north campus, and consequently you can find a rickshaw puller reaching out to you at almost every turn made, greeting you with, “Bhaiyya metro?”

As you politely decline and resume your journey to college, you glance at your watch and wonder where the older edition of you that used to wake up at 6 every morning for school vanished.

Being from the north east, I’ll admit my weakness with the Hindi language and also the everyday tussle that comes due to it. Nevertheless, it’s something I expect the city will take care of. Now, being a residence of Kamla Nagar as well as a student of Ramjas College, (and also a terribly lazy person) I am an almost daily passenger of the illegal shortcut that goes through Kirori Mal College- well, unless of course there’s a guard standing on the back gate asking for an ID card.

Kamla Nagar happens to be a really unique place with deep sense of irony lurking beneath the surface. Kamla Nagar may not appear appealing to one when you hear its name for the first time, but I assure you, the number of brands, the fast food chains and the Spark Mall at the heart of Kamla will change your perspective. With room rents soaring sky high, it’s really incongruous when you see the poor in Kamla; the feeling only grows when you hear them saying, “Yeh desh garibo ke liye kaha hai.”

Twisted bylanes, tangled shortcuts, dirty alleys, premium brands, speeding Scootys, the engine noise of Royal Enfields’, the incessant howling of dogs at night- Kamla Nagar does have its charm. There’s something about the place that never ceases to amaze, and if you think about it on a deeper level, (and this might end up being philosophical) Kamla Nagar could serve as a microcosm of India.

A new leaf turns over the face of life, a new leash of life found in that leaf, love for home – conceived 2000 miles away from it, craving for Bengali literature, my mother tongue- after years of neglect, rediscovered in a land not known for it.  Delhi, and in particular Kamla Nagar, has proved to strangely beautiful.

I have been here for six months, yet it seems just like yesterday I got down from the flight and stepped into an unknown city. Then again, like Salman Rushdie point out in his book Midnight’s Children, “‎No people whose word for ‘yesterday’ is the same as their word for ‘tomorrow’ can be said to have a firm grip on the time,” can they?

Six months in Kamla and it’s evident that there are more things to come, more people to meet , places to go, sights to see- and perhaps, when the next set of exams arrive, even study.

© Jnanajyoti Bhaumik

(Math Honours, 1st Year)

Him

(Source: The Luteplayer- Caravaggio)

 

He could just lie in bed all day listening to songs, the meaning to which he does not understand. He would never talk to you, but would always want to sit beside you. He’s always around. He wouldn’t complain about anything, would cheer merrily one moment and cry unexpectedly the very next, and you will never know why. When you watch TV, he would just hold his ears close to the speakers and feel the vibrations. He would do the same with the fridge. He’d never sit idle. You’d either see him holding his mp3 player close to his ears and listening to the music, or outside on the porch, on his swing. He loves things that can move.

He only grows taller and taller, never growing  an inch of fat on his body. His ribs show through his skin, his legs long and growing, although slender; with the layer of flesh on his bones not even an inch thick, and veins showing. He wouldn’t walk but stagger, because his left foot isn’t in line with his right, and is tilted inward. He would laugh when you play with him, and cheer merrily and clap his hands when he is happy. He doesn’t speak, but one would always know what he’s feeling.

 

He is autistic.

 

We can all speak, talk in multi-languages, and yet, a number of times, keep our emotions buried deep inside. We have the ability to actually be able to choose what to say, and when to say it, because a sound mind can usually anticipate the consequences. He, on the other hand, wasn’t blessed with this ability. He is the most transparent human, his face itself giving everything away. Such, is the innocence of truthfulness.

One would say he isn’t blessed enough. True, he isn’t blessed with a good hearing, eyesight, or the ability to speak, but with things more special and rare. Innocence, unconditional love for everyone who is nice to him, and the same kind of love back; naivety, credulity, childishness, a pure heart and the cutest and sweetest way of hugging. Who’s winning the game now?

When one looks around themselves today, at the more common and clever humans that surround them, with fully grown, “sound” minds and bodies, one wishes they were more like him. I wish I were like him too; carefree, innocent, and pure. People like him are fighting their constant battles against their own physical selves, and us, the cleverer and plotting ones, are either struggling with our own intellectual evils, or involved in fighting with the rest of the humans.

Maybe if we were more like him, and less like the aggressive, intolerant and strategist humans we are becoming, the world would’ve been a better place.

 

© Nandini Malik

Math Honors (Second Year)

Are you Charlie Hebdo?

Are you Charlie Hebdo?

Because I am not.

Today I stand united with people who mourn the death of people who were brutally killed, I stand united with people who are fighting for the freedom of expression, I stand united with people who believe that violence is not the solution but I refuse to chant along with the rest of the world that ‘I am Charlie’ because I can’t bring myself to support what the cartoons depicted.

Some of Charlie Hebdo’s most offensive cartoons often represent racist stereotypes. While they are known to claim that they ‘attack everyone equally’, the cartoons they publish are intentionally anti-Islam’ and frequently sexist and homophobic. They were openly testing freedom of expression to its limit, it’s not like they didn’t know that these cartoons would hurt people’s faith, they did and that’s how they wanted it to be.

In a country like India, where a world renowned painter, M.F Hussain was hounded out of the country he loved because he made paintings that depicted the sexual union of Hindu Gods, how can people spout the words “Jes Suis Charlie-I am Charlie” like its nothing? Fighting for Freedom of Expression is different but defending people who create cartoons that publically humiliate people is wrong on so many levels.

Sudhir Dhar, an eminent cartoonist in a recent interview at a news channel said that for his generation of cartoonists R.K Laxman , Abid Surti, Mario Miranda spoofs on religion were an absolute taboo. There are a thousand things to draw and laugh at, it doesn’t have to be someone’s religious faith. The cartoonists at Charlie Hebdo were treading on dangerous ground and they knew it.

Even as the shocking tragedy of Charlie Hebdo is reported most eminent news channels and newspapers even American and British have chosen to blur out the images of the published cartoons or abstain from publishing them, such is the senseless depiction of humourless humour in them. The content is insensitive and can create unrest and hurt.

Of course what happened is terrible, violence is never the solution. By killing the cartoonists, the terrorists only killed the man but created an idea, the cartoonists working at a French magazine with moderate readership could never have dreamt that their works are searched, read and immortalised the world over.

A good British saying goes “your freedom ends where my nose begins”. Humour alleviates people of suffering , making them laugh. It does not make murderers and corpses.

That’s the thing, people don’t understand the fact that there is a fine line between freedom of Expression and anarchism, that people frequently cross without even caring.

Dr Strangehate or: How I dropped Hitler once and for all

(Artwork by Zach Johnsen)

Person: “…and what about your opinion on Hitler? What do you think of him?”

Me: “Well to start off with..”

Person: “I feel, keeping aside the fact that he brutally tortured and massacred millions of innocents; he was a very capable, influential and charismatic leader who saved Germany from the absolute mayhem it was in during that period… “

Pause

Me: “Oh. That’s great.”

Walks away

I’ve been at the receiving end of countless one-sided conversations like this, where the individuals voicing this opinion are people whose viewpoint I usually respect. Either it has recently become a fad to support and admire Hitler’s methods and leadership, or I have been turning a blind eye to a long standing opinion. Nevertheless, I need to voice my thoughts on this- so here goes nothing.

The bandwagon argument is this: Hitler’s effective oratory skills, good decision making and a strong will made him a great leader, which brought Germany out of the post-war ruin that it was in.

Due to the simple reason that leadership in general exists as a concept separated from good and evil, it becomes difficult to find faults in this line of reasoning, since it is factually correct that he did mobilise a large mass of people to follow him on an ideological path no matter how fundamentally fucked up it was.

The first logical timeline to use as a counterargument is Hitler’s initial rise to power in Germany after the First World War. History is an eye-witness of his influence on the people of the country, where he was successful in re-instigating a much needed hope for the future of the nation. This definitely is evidence of his above average allure, but was it the only reason for his popularity? I feel, and many historians agree, that it was majorly the dire post War conditions of Germany that fuelled his rise to power. When the general morale of the nation was depressed, it was easy for this particular prosaic showman to rise

Then as we entered the Second World War, Hitler’s style of leadership became apparent. Aptly named Führerprinzip (German for ‘leader principle’), Hitler became the ultimate authority on everything; every decision had to pass through him before it could be implemented. This in particular was a major military obstacle, as micro management of specific contingents made them less effective and caused more to rely solely on the Fuhrer’s war expertise. His goals and directions for the German troops had many a times proved to be extremely damaging (Operation Barbarossa being an example). Moreover, his distrust in subordinate generals for decision making was not helpful in their quest of winning the war. Add to this his high reliance on instinct rather than logic and will rather than pragmatism; things that are not good indicators of quality leadership.

In my point of view, leadership is not only characterized by good rhetoric or charisma. While these are important features, being inclusive of the majority’s opinion should be a top priority for any leader. While trusting nobody and taking decisions without second opinions may be quick and painless, it isn’t healthy for the group as a whole in the long scheme of things. No leader should work in isolation, no matter how absolute his/her power is, and Hitler did just that.

Hitler’s will and vision brought Germany only to a certain high point in its history, which soon ebbed away and turned into destruction and despair for the country. Even after ignoring his anti-Semitism, racism, and general genocidal tendencies, Hitler did not have a positive impact on any sort of entity in the long run.

Therefore, your argument is invalid.

© Arbab Ahmad

(English Hons 1st Year)