JNU - high time we stop we stop it

The recent series of incidents at JNU has engendered yet another headline hitting controversy. Most of you would know that the president of the student’s association Kanhaiya Kumar has been imprisoned on the grounds of sedation or anti nationalism.
First of all, I would like to tell you all, about some very basic facts about the JNU or the Jawaharlal Nehru University like, it is one of the of the most reputed public university of the country. Students studying there range from being the rich brats of elite bureaucrats to lower middle class still fighting against inflation because its fee is still in hundreds.
It is possibly the only place in the country where a transgender will be given as much respect as much as anyone else and a girl will not be letched at even if she walks around naked in the college. It’s the only place in the country where in students befriend each other beyond social and financial boundaries with democracy and freedom being ingrained in every minute aspect of this college.

Having said that, I would also like to mention that since it’s a college, debates, meetings, speeches are very vital and integral parts of its curriculum. Since, activities like this not only generate confidence and awareness but they also inculcate the habit of listening in a person. Besides, these people are the future bureaucrats, journalists, politicians of the country. It’s very important for them to be educated, socially aware and to know to use the powerful tool of discussing and to have the capability to think out of the box and responsibly.

Now, on the eve of 24^th February, a gathering was organized by the students’ society in the college premises for a protest march against judicial killing of Afzal Guru and Maqbool Bhat and in solidarity with the “struggle” of Kashmiri migrants at the Sabarmati dhaba in the campus through peaceful means such as poetry, art and music. Now, in the process, various incidents took place like students association who organised it was denied the permission at the last moment and then those students began protesting for being denied their right to speak and carried on with their protest march without the permissions. It’s also alleged that in this process some students took to speaking anti national slogans. Since, the videos have reportedly been tempered with, it’s still not clear as to which of the two societies involved in, actually said them.

Let us assume that X party said those slogans and its president was arrested as a consequence. Now, people i.e. the general public of the republic of India have suddenly consolidated together on the grounds of nationalism to protest against such anti-national elements of the society.

I would like to tell that this incident coincides with the jat riot in Haryana where a group of people mercilessly killed people, burned and damaged property to ask for reservations and no major person has been arrested till now and nobody finds that anti national or jarring because apparently killing people is accepted in the second most populated country of the world

We rebuke a bunch of students for shouting anti national slogans in their college campus as a part of their gathering but we patiently see property being dismantled and trains and buses being burnt down to ashes. Suddenly, everyone gets the power to curse the week.

It is also being said that the limits were crossed by these students by shouting such antinational slogans. My point is that the meeting did include Kashmiri migrants, the same migrants who had to incur the wrath of time and were forced to leave their homeland and country. If they feel in a certain way about the country, and if they feel that their problem can be solved through complete Kashmir’s secession, there is no better platform than a debate to dismantle that belief. And where else will the students debate if not in a varsity? I don’t think that imprisoning a few will wash away the stains of the horror they faced. The right way to face this is finding a way to tackle their problem and rather focusing on rehabilitation and reconciliation. If the present government continues to supress and imprison the students I don’t think there would be any difference left between the colonial British raj and the present ‘democratically elected government of India’.    
 
I don’t understand, isn’t this all pretty obvious. But off course, we live in a country where the governments easily succumbs to  the illicit demands of illiterate people of a certain community asked through violence and murder but imprisons the educated peacefully debating over a certain issue in their college campus.

Sanskari Customs of Marriages in India

Since, everybody in India marries at least once in life. This is something which remains same across all social religions and economic statuses. You marry if you earn a lakh a month or even if you are still living off your parents’ money. There are some sanskari customs attached to this khandani culture. I bring you some of them.
People ranging from your far off bua you never meet, your masi you talk to once in a year and some Sharma aunty  invisibly living in the same neighbourhood as you will start getting you marriage offers since you reached the ‘right age’.

 They are the kind of people who give you the right to choose your own clothes based on your own comfort ability, choice, size, etc. But, when it comes to choosing your life partner, they think they are better at that.

 There will be some set parameters to decide the right bride/groom for you like his/ her skin tone, income, caste and sometimes even the taste of the chutney they serve with the samosa. 

At times, you even marry to become mature and responsible or to stop loving the person your family doesn’t approve of.

 Sometimes, you will have to marry for the sake of your younger siblings, since they can only marry after you or no one will marry them as well because people belonging to these species have a unique disease called shadi pox whose antidote is your marriage.

You will be told to decide your life partner while you drink a cup of chai and eat a plate of samosa.

You will finally meet some far off relatives, you only meet twice in your life, once at your wedding and second on their wedding.

There are some below poverty line people who only come to eat. They can afford clothes but not food. Anyways, they are still better than the rest, since they atleast have a purpose in life and they do believe in minding their own business.

 In the middle of all this glitter and shimmer in the wedding, there will be those hot, attractive people of the opposite sex you get to a chance to meet and maybe plan your own with, in the future…

 Basically, marriages are a plethora of colours and feelings and relatives you may or may not enjoy. They happen because the people you don’t even know properly want to see you happy and you can only be happy when you marry at the ‘right time’ with the person they decide or the curse of unhappiness is believed to haunt you for life.  So marry and stay happy.

Multifarious Mind (Our mind is multifarious which means something that can have many forms. It sometimes is your friend trying to make you happy and cheering you up, sometimes your enemy making you feel sad, sometimes some motivator bringing you up, sometimes some conspirator trying to make you nervous just before some important test. At times, it also engenders that effect into things around you i.e. makes things around you look multifarious.)

I was disturbed trying to perhaps solve a meander, turmoil of thoughts going inside, crashing my soul, pucking through my eyes. It did succeed in flowing out once. But, then suddenly I realized how hard had been my journey from the subdued valleys of morose to the plateaus of moderation. How I had pushed myself out of the deepest craters of depression I would have ever been in. I did not want to go back, I determined.

I went to the balcony, stood there, my inside demons still pulling me, banging hard on the resolute doors of my mind. I stood there for a while, as if in a tug of war with the devil, my mind being the rope. Just a little loosening of the grip and I knew I would be swayed into the whirlpool of tears.

I did not realize that till then I had been indirectly staring at a star in the sky. It was the brightest of them all.  It twinkled the most. It was the most beautiful. I wanted to have it. I wanted to touch it. I wanted to captivate it with me. Now, that’s the ugliness of the human mind. It tries to capture the beauty with itself. It doesn’t realize that beauty lies in the colourful wings of a blossoming bud and not in the melancholy of a plucked flower.
Withdrawing myself from this bevy of thoughts, I got back to the star. Now, it appeared to be like a cherry to me. The whole sky as if, was a canopy of trees whose trunks were perhaps invisible or could possibly lie above the canopy. Could there be trees, which have trunks waving up in the sky and branches and leaves supporting the tree spreading their limbs as if to engulf the surface they grew up on.
Or maybe, they could just be a giant monster wearing glittery clothes looking at all of us, searching for its prey for the night extending its invisible, long, dreary lobes. Few people will breathe their last today. This monster will sneak into their room, insinuate its poisonous words of death and suck their soul out of the body.
Or maybe it is just a curtain hiding the chaos of backstage, showcasing talented actors of the universe. The stars acquire it in the night and its mornings are booked for the sun. Or maybe, it’s just the sky and the stars and I need to stop thinking and get enwrapped into the cosy comforts of my warm room. Since, my multifarious mind tends to make everything multifarious.