campus diaries - the magazine #1

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issue 1 | april 2013 | `pay what you want

The publishers regret that they cannot accept liability for any errors in this publication. The views and opinions expressed in this magazine may not necessarily be the publishers'. Readers are advised to seek specialist recommendations before acting on information contained in this publication.

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CAMPUSDIARIESTeam Campus DiariesSamata JoShihead, content direction

Sumit Sauravceo

raJ couraSiacto

niShan boSehead, product ops.

Sonic prabhudeSaibusiness head

rahul Sharmadesign

aSmina Shaikhdesign

ShaShank Shekharmarketing & strategy

niveditaeditorial & curation

Business Team

delhi/ncr akshay chandra, nikhil kumar

pune swati Jain

mumbai elvina dsouza, arunima banerJee, suvarna kushal

chennai satakshi pandey

hyderabad kavya elthuri, sonia motwani

kolkatasomaysh sadani

bangalore aditya bhat

chandigarh finney

Yes, all of it. We are on our way to build one of the coolest, biggest and most rewarding platforms ever — for you to publish your stories, ideas and thoughts. Experience the power and brilliance of how stories, people and the awesomest communities around you come together. Express and participate in ways like never before. The best of your stories make it to this magazine.

Want to express your thoughts in words? Create a Word Story

Can’t write? Think in images, photographs and illustrations? Create a Picture Story

Feature your friends and your campus in your stories.

Create your own network and profile. Showcase your ideas, creativity, expressions.

printed at national printing press. no.7, 3rd main road, K.R.GaRden,KoRamanGala,BanGaloRe-95

publiShed by sumit saurav

What iS campuS diarieS?

social netwo

rk friends campuses sto

ry t

elli

ng

p

latform

experien

ce proJect expression cult

ure mas

hu

p

mag

azin

e

blogging and publishing 3.0

issue 1 // APRIL '13

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onsider the theory of knowledge proposed by Bertrand Russell. It’s di-vided into three sections — the definition of knowledge, data and the methods of inference. Content curation on the web works on a similar principle but has failed to find its calling beyond the medium of the web. Until now. Yes! The Campus Diaries Magazine brings to you a

unique medium that hand-picks the best of stories from campusdiaries.com to give you a mix of ideas, stories and pictures into one wholesome entity. And with a pool of content being generated from all over the world on the website, it has been possible for us to curate diverse forms, methods and expressions in the magazine — fiction, experiences, picture stories, art, analysis, letters and more. The Magazine is a national platform for people to express their ideas through a medium they believe is most expressive — in words or through pictures. The discovery and recognition of these stories and the people who tell them, is what ultimately encourages the celebration of storytelling in its spirit. So, with a platform like this, it is possible to get noticed in a crowd, along with being ap-preciated and critiqued. In observation, what is lacking in the current scenario of content curation on the World Wide Web is that of thoughtful curation. Thus, keeping in mind elements like originality, treatment, structure and na-ture that are subjective to each author’s mind space, what turns out to be most exciting, as a curator, is delivering it in relevance to our readers! Having said that, the idea behind this publication is to primarily initiate upon a content culture that is active, relevant and assorted and in the process not overlooking the magnitude of its reach and consumption. On the web, data and content are often, misguidedly and wrongly, confused to be one and what we aspire is to streamline them into different entities alto-gether. But this isn’t possible without the participation of the community that we’re trying to build. Active involvement of this community into making the content democratic and accessible, therefore, is crucial. So to be a part of our experimentation with different genres, styles of writing, clicking and display-ing art through pictures and illustrations, help us include all of it in every issue of the Campus Diaries’ Magazine. We welcome you to our world, all we hope is that you say Hello back.

CuraTOr’s NOTe

Csamata Joshi

CURATOR-in-ChiefcampuS diarieS

Write to us at [email protected] for suggestions, critique, and feedback or maybe just to say Hello.


CONTeNTspeople

campus

society

analysis

people of the pink city

viva woes

brickside depression

brief history of raJu

tarnished

political economy of foodgrain distribution in india

the uprising of women in india

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38

15

34

31

36

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Anubhav V

Akshatha Hegde

Laavanya Sharma

Arjyajyoti Goswami

Vaishali Rao

Rajshree Bedamatta

Tanya Kotnala

festember60Campus Diaries Exclusive

realising your dreams24Abhinav Agarwal

mutual catharsis76Sreepriya Menon

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experiences

city

art

food

cinema

mumbai

a flick of the wrist

point b/w parallels

of bus rides and conversations that follow

strawberry basil forever

nature of 'maya'

from bharat to india

30

41

18

39

70

53

75

Yashowardhan Chaturvedi

Romana Jim Dsouza

Hemanth Itagi

Deepa Ranganathan

Ashmita Sengupta

Vasundhara Anand

Nandini Verma

poetry

screenplay

maria, maria! hasta pronto!78Samata Joshi

sports

Jail bird84Himanshu Goenka

letters

all hands on deck!55Aishwarya Mahurkar

music

why not plough?49Sanika Dhakephalkar

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iN THis issue

A design student from Pune, Laavanya is an ardent photographer and believes in capturing each blissful moment through her lens. Apart from photography, foot-ball drives her nuts. Her warden knows it ain't good to fight over the TV remote if a Chelsea match is on!

Pursuing his PhD from IIT Delhi, Arjyajyoti is trying to make sense of quantam physics. He likes to put the often unexpressed and mostly ignored part of our daily lives into simple words. When he is not in his lab or writing stories, he can be seen playing with a street dog or gorging on butter naan and shahi paneer in a near-by dhaba.

Born in Allahabad, her early schooling was at St. Mary’s Convent. Initiated into writing by her father, who had been writing for the Hindu-stan Times, she wrote her first collection of stories at the age of 10. Nandini is inspired by the events in her life and around the world, and writes from her heart. Her favourite authors are Franz Kafka and Khaled Hosseini.

Akshata is a software professional and media enthusiast from Banga-lore. Having blogged for seven years, her interests range from poetry to cooking and technolo-gy. She hopes to make waves in the world of advertising in the near future.

akshatha hegde accenturebangalore

Tanya is a fashion design student, but her happi-ness sets out afar just garments and showcas-es! Her foremost devo-tion remains to illustra-tions. She gets inspired by how the amazing big world rests on tiny funny stuff. People and culture, social causes, humor, art and crafts enthuses her stories. She finds it amazing – when usual things combine to do something unusual.

An aspiring photogra-pher, designer, mountain climber, dancer, travel-ler, reader, behavioral trainer and entrepre-neur, he wants to do a lot of things before he dies, with most of them being a tinge uncon-ventional. Sure that this would mean resistance from people around he also believes that there is no joy in reaching a goal without opposition.

A poet, writer, drummer and a dog. A literature student in Pune, she writes because it makes her happy. Sunshine and smiles is what her every day is made up of. Music and books are her true loves and dogs, her life. In a crowd, Sanika will be the one being unnecessarily loud and tripping on perfectly flat surfaces. She also loves coffee, rains and old books.

laavanya sharmaSymbiOSiS inSTiTUTe Of deSign pune

yashowardhan chaturvediXlri JamShedpur

arJyaJyoti goswami iitneW delhi

sanika dhakephalkarfeRgUSSOn COllegepune

nandini vermailS laW collegepune

A passionate writer first; an animal lover above all. Aishwarya has been enjoying the art of communicating through words since the age of 10! Be it diaries, short stories or even occa-sional poetry, she enjoys dabbling in every form of writing. Her hobbies include philately as well as the collection of stamps and marbles (yes, you read it right).

aishwarya mahurkarWilSon collegemumbai

vaishali raotiSS mumbai

Vaishali recently moved back to her homeland, traded in her history books for a travel diary and is now rediscover-ing her roots through the arts. Co-founder of Basthi, a social enter-prise that works with traditional Indian crafts.

campusdiaries magazine

tanya kotnalanifT Shillong

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Assistant professor (eco-nomics) at IIT Guwahati, she loves to read, write, reason and argue. She earns her living from academics; teaches and researches in the area of Development Econom-ics.

A 21-year-old final year student from Atria Institute of Technology, Bangalore, Hemanth believes that his images speak for themselves. A serial chips and mayonnaise eater and an active traveller, he loves humans, coffee and football. He listens to all kinds of music and doesn’t sleep well.

hemanth itagiatria bangalore

Sreepriya is a student of psychology, presently in the second year of graduation. She is redis-covering her relationship with people, what it means to be human and experimenting with the interface of writing, spir-ituality and psychology. Dreams about travelling and openly admits to being naively optimistic.

A multimedia journalist with a background in de-sign — Romana is truly passionate about narrating somebody's story creatively and feels that pictures and sound breathe life into her stories. She hopes that someday she will travel around the world, bring-ing out the stories of not places, but its people, and eventually retire into a world of fantasy and fiction.

Ashmita is a food lover, enterprising blogger, budding photographer, compulsive reader and is almost always humming a tune. She has a degree in Civil Engineering from Sardar Patel Col-lege of Engineering and is currently working at Larsen & Toubro. She can be easily found at www.heavenlyhearth.in.

Abhinav is currently a Senior Undergraduate Student pursuing majors in Electronics and Com-munication Engineering from IIT Guwahati. He is the recipient of the prestigious IEEE India Best Student Paper Award 2012. He will join California Institute of Technology (Caltech) as a PhD student in Electrical Engineering in Fall 2013 — his research areas include Energy Aware System Design for Biomedical Applications.

Deepa is a part-time writer, full-time reader, rumoured activist and an alleged feminist. She likes coffee, dark chocolate and books, but not necessarily in that order. An experimental cook and an enthusiastic bathroom singer, she revels in her identity of being a sapiosexual and a librocubicularist. She admits that she hides behind big words.

Born and raised in a small town in Jharkand and educated in Dehra-dun, falling in love with tiny aspects of nature comes quite naturally to Vasundhara. She started doodling as a child and soon realised that sketching had become a medium for her feelings and thoughts. Breaking through different tech-nicalities is what makes her realise why she wants to be an artist. Her works revolve around her emotions trapped in the hustle bustle of life, with her mind dreaming of another side.

anubhav vchriSt univerSitybangalore

sreepriya menonlady Sri ram collegeneW delhi

abhinav agarwaliit guWahati

deepa ranganathan tiSS mumbai

vasundhara ananddelhi univerSityneW delhi

raJshree bedamattaiit guWahati

romana Jim dsouzaindiAn inSTiTUTe Of JournaliSm & neW mediabangalore

ashmita sengupta larSen & toubromumbai

An avid traveller and a photography buff, Anubhav took up BSc in Zoology and Botany to pursue a career in the field of wildlife and nature conservation.He hopes to utilise his skills as a photographer to assist his research work. He enjoys cycling, trekking and drumming along to his favorite metal tracks.

Was born. The other details surrounding his life are hazy, and also unimportant. He says he is a businessman but no one, including himself, believes him. If the world were a stage, he wants to be the green room.

himanshu goenka Write club bangalore

A Journalism Post-Graduate from Indian Institute of Mass Communication and a student-to-be all her life, Samata literally lives to write and writes to live.

samata JoshiWilSon collegemumbai


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18 lives, 13 professions, 1 city. This is the story of survival of people making a living on the streets. This is the story of the people of Jaipur

PeOPLe OF THe piNK CiTY

#pROfeSSiOnS

people

anubhav vchriSt univerSity

bangalore

11issue 1 // APRIL '13

Be ready to be serenaded for an entire hour as you enter the City Palace. The cost? A mere I30

Village boys often run to the nearby Galta Temple for a quick bath

The Artist. She makes three masterpieces in one day, but sales are slow. She hopes to earn at least 40% of what each piece will be sold for

A local seller of bangles and other trinkets. Shot outside the Lake Palace

(L-R)

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A pujari takes time off to gaze at the

passing throng of tourists

Pani puri anyone? Young boys are

often walking advertisements and they entice

their customers by shouting, calling

out loud and even singing!

(L-R)

Although de-fanged, these

Indian cobras still look menacing enough to add

glitz to this snake charmer's

performance

Wrinkles on the keeper of the Fort.

It's his job to ensure smooth running of the palace. He

spends his day doing various

chores and running errands

people


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(L-R)

A Tamilian makes dosas in Jaipur’s famous Bapu Bazaar

Block printing a single bedsheet with upto eight layers — three are made everyday. The final price of each? I600. He makes around I200 a day


With palaces spanning thousands of sq. feet, it’s up to a small team of sweepers to try and clean its dirt and grime

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A lifetime, selling books

Always at the ready? Even the police need

some respite from the heat!

people


campusdiaries.com/picture-stories/people-pink-city

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here is a lot we do not understand. Most of what we do not understand at one point of time becomes clear at some other point of time. But, sediments of disbelief or vague

hints of past lack of understanding, post the (un)specified time of understanding, still remain. If you are wondering that I've started busying myself with Ludlum’s philosophy here, you probably have never stepped into an engine-erring workshop lab.

For newbies: Workshop (06WSL18) is a compulsory subject in the first year of any engineering course in Karnataka (and in IITs too, I think) with the exception of a certain autonomous college in Bangalore. The syllabus includes designing fitting models which extract physical labour in alarming quantities and welding models which demand a fumbling ‘freshie’ risk his looks. The warsht that could happen was probably this particular subject carrying 75 marks for the semester exams which includes a 10 mark viva voce (rapid fire question-answer session with the examiner). Why the workshop was made compulsory for all branches, despite it having the least of application in our chosen career stream, has bounced over every student's head from time immemorial.

Circa 2008, January the 18th. We yawn our way to the college workshop at 8:15 AM in half tucked hideous khaki uniforms and leather shoes, carrying a I4 hacksaw blade which serves the purpose of cutting steel (yes, solid steel!). The instructor stands smirking like he has been nominated to be the next Ivan the horrible (or is it Hagar the terrible?) along with the sneaky HOD and the wispy Vice Principal (VP), whom I last remember seeing only on the

An engineering viva in all its glory

ViVa WOes

#engineering

campus

akshatha hegdeaccenturebangalore

first day of college. After a ‘cordial’ welcome of instruction shouting, we are asked to note down the model to be made — a quadrant of a circle which fits neatly into its hollow counterpart, both made from two steel pieces, for 30 marks; a welding joint for 10 marks and a viva for 10 marks, all to be added to our internal assessment, bringing it to a total of 75. VP adds as an afterthought, “Time limit ees two avars. That is exactly 120 minutes.”

Hue and cry greets this announcement.Assuming his words would make things better,

he states something again. This time with a grin, “See two avars more than yenaf if you have a good breakfast and come. You will get full 120 minutes for your work and nobody can take these 120 minutes from you.” His version of a certain ‘sattar-minute-speech’ that made waves some time back.

Thus, we get to work — marking, punching, cutting (the thin blade wobbling dangerously, extracting a work of 317.55 joule/second from yours truly), filing and then welding. I choose to do away with the details because after all the effort, it looked like my strategy paid off and I got soopar looking models!

And just when I thought those marks were in the bag, I hear Hagar call, “Roll numbar threeeeee. Viva!"

Twe yawn our way to the college workshopat8:15aminhalftuckedhideouskhaki uniformsandleathershoes,carryingaD4hacksawbladewhichservesthepurposeofcuttingsteel(yes,solidsteel!)


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Ex: Full Hajara Choudhary manual tip of your tongue aa? *laughs* See ma, in engineering-level, simplification is the key. Why so much technicality for such a simple device? It is a simple divider which children yooze.Me: (Fuming) Yes, Sir. But you said yexplain so… (Yes, with the sarcasm and my best smile).

Ex: Vokay vokay. *looks at VP* This is the interest we expect in the subject, Sir. So Akshatha, what ees yoovar ambition?Me: (Law will sound out of track and might lead to more questions, making me late for coffee. Think… something big and complicated!) Research in Satellite ranging and Nano technology, Sir.

Ex: Oho. What is that?Me: Erm... adopting electronics for research in Satellite ranging and Nano technology. (Source: Elementary Explanation Guide for External Examiners)

Ex: Ees eet? All the best. *takes register* Roll number three...three...three! *scribbles something that looks like a nine* You may go.

Yay! I thanked him and fled. And, it was only after I reached the canteen that I received this SMS forward:‘Trying to argue with your examiner in a viva is like fighting with a pig in mud. After a while, you realize that you are getting dirty and the pig is enjoying it.’

campusdiaries.com/stories/viva-woes

ex:FullHajaraChoudharymanualtipofyour tongue aa? *laughs*see ma,inengineering-level,simplificationisthekey.Whysomuchtechnicalityforsuchasimpledevice?Itisasimpledividerwhichchildrenyooze

I walk nervously to the external examiner, a man in his mid-thirties, wearing a crisp white shirt and sat down when asked.

Ex: Hmm. So, roll number three. What is your name? Me: (Isn’t that on the register next to the roll number, you near-sighted warp?) Akshatha, Sir.

Ex: Hmm. So which branch?Me: Electronics.

Ex: Hmm. Aap kidhar se aaya hai? (I was prepared for this, considering five out of three people take me for a North-ie. I took a second to debate whether to keep the continued amusements by inducing more broken Hindi from him or to get down to business and finish early for my regular dose of caffeine in the canteen).Me: From Bangalore, Sir.

Ex: Oh. Originally from where?Me: Coastal Karnataka. Karwar.

Ex: Ees eet? So Akshatha, can you introduce yourself?Me: (Here’s an alternative: Why don’t you just scroll above and apply simple summation of finite series?) I am Akshatha. Branch, Electronics. From, Bangalore. Roots in Karwar.

Ex: Goooood. So, can you identify this device? (Points to a lethal looking tonged instrument)Me: (Loading...27%...89%. Image of Dad using it to unseal a cough syrup bottle) Cutting plyer, Sir.

Ex: *grins* (Six yellowish teeth on both the jaws visible) See ma, in engineering-level, we expect certain amount of technicality from you. Of course, you are right but even a third standard child can tell me that no?Me: Sir, it is a snipe. Used in sheet metal work. It has two movable jaws attached to the handle and the jaws are shaped for pinpoint precision cutting. Usually, it is made of hardened steel, Grade 4. Specification given by size of jaws, in mm. No operator skill is required. Even a third standard child can handle it. (Without pause. Mujhse panga lega?)

Ex: *looks impressed* Good good. But, I just asked you name no?Me: Grr.

Ex: So, can you identify and yexplain about this device? (Points to a divider from a school kid’s geometry set)Me: (What technicality do you expect from this, human?) Sir, that is a screw-turn marker. Precision measuring instrument which can be used to measure distance between two separated planes, draw parallel lines or locate the center of a circle. It is made of mild steel, has sharp edges and movable legs. Specified by maximum separation measurable in mm. (Now talk about technicality)


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Thoughts, ideasand experiences

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Amid the tall mountains of the Western Ghats, as the train passes through the thick layer of clouds, we hiked in search of a 'white princess' gushing down the mountainside — the Dudhsagar Falls. It is located on the Mandovi river in the state of Goa, India

a POinT B/W paraLLeLs

#trainS

hemanth itagiatria

bangalore

experiences

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Stones, metal and grass under your feet can set up different paths for you

Make way for a WDG4. A goods boy who took half an hour to overtake us


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experiences


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It's a pact between the railways and the miniature waterfalls, to live in harmony

Go where the tracks go. They’ll definitely make you happy

From darkness to light, it’s white, it’s white!

(Clockwise)

his place is a must visit for all nature lovers. It is said to be one of the tallest waterfalls in the country, falling from a height of

600 meters on a vertical cliff to enter the coastal region of Goa. One has to trek the scenic 14 kms (one route) along the railway track to find Dudhsagar Falls. Located in a tropical jungle, this magnificent view is not easily accessible. The water, in these falls, gushes like foam across the borders of Goa and Karnataka.

Our initial plan of camping the entire night next to the waterfalls was hampered by the rain. We had a tough time hiking — walking in the rain through railway tunnels, carrying heavy camping equipment and food. But there was that one thing that kept us going — travelling on the road less travelled. That gave us a high like none other.

Although it is impossible to capture its beauty completely, I have put the best of my efforts to show you everything I have seen. I relive those moments every time I see these pictures.

T


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experiences

Bogies of red, best visible on a cold foggy morning

Take a step, don’t speak. Listen,

locate the honk from a distant

train, freak out and jump away from the tracks.

Or else take another step


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Should I enter or should I run through the tunnel with fear? NO. You gotta wait. There’s still a tomorrow, forget thesorrow. And you can be on the last train home

A photogenic Nature, posing for the best

Look, it’s an adventure involving tracks, train, rain and green colored beautiful things!


campusdiaries.com/picture-stories/point-bw-parallels

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that motivated me to pursue a research career in science. My first exposure to research was during my summer internship after my sophomore year, when I got an opportunity to work on a Mobile Wireless Surveillance System in the Korean Advanced Institute of Science & Technology (KAIST), South Korea. I proposed a design time method to calculate the active time of transmission with high energy savings while satisfying the system constraints. In order to achieve this, I formulated an analytical relationship to predict the energy- optimal encoding bit-rate and modulation level of transmission while accounting for the constraints for encoding distortion and transmission time. The project was mainly responsible for inculcating in me the virtues of team work as it was a large scale project involving many graduate students and interdependent subsystems. It also encouraged the generation of new ideas, creating and sticking to deadlines all of which are essential

s I collected thoughts for this article, I was remembering the last four years of my stay here at IIT Guwahati. It's because of my holistic education that I transformed from

a high school geek to a confident individual who has a broader outlook toward the major challenges faced by our society today. The development of a healthy mind that is neither petrified by custom nor capering at the call of every fancy but is rooted in the past, drawing sustenance from the ennobling elements in the present and striving for academic excellence for the benefit of mankind, is what undergraduate education has imbibed in me. I feel privileged to have studied under a few teachers who perennially encouraged me to push my limits. Upholding high levels of academic integrity and ethics has been a salient feature of my development at IIT. It was my extreme interest in mathematics and physics which I developed over the years

campus

a

“The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas and throw the bad ones away” - Linus Pauling

ReaLising yOuRDreams

abhinav agarwal

iitguWahati

#reSearch


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to research. I went through a gamut of emotions which included excitement, joy and disappointment, marking a particularly decent entry to research. In my third year of course work, I took many courses in Signal Processing, VLSI & Communication Engineering. It was because of my inherent love for mathematics that I was really fascinated by Signal Processing. However, I quickly realised that most of the course textbook focus very briefly on the latest technological advancements. I felt the immense need to go beyond the textbooks and that is when I started following the latest research papers related to bio-medical electronics to remain up to date with the advancements being made in this field. Soon, I became an avid follower of the IEEE (Institute of Electircal and Electronic Engineers) Spectrum and started participating in the interesting weekly research discussions at the IEEE Student Chapter at my institute. I started exploring challenging problems in bio-medical signal processing and discussing plausible research directions with my professors. One of the interesting papers1 that I came across during my reading was one which proposed a low complexity algorithm and architecture for calculating the vector cross product. My elementary knowledge on Random Processes made me wonder if a similar concept can be applied in Blind Source Separation and might possibly reduce the complexity of its hardware implementation. Upon further discussions with one of the professors at my institute I was quite convinced that the strategy should work in principle. As a part of a hardware design project in the third year of my program, I worked on the hardware implementation of cross-product based low complexity Fast Independent Component Analysis Algorithm (FICA) with Prof. Amit Acharyya in the Dept. of EEE, IIT Guwahati. It was exciting to demonstrate that a simple concept of a vector cross product, previously under appreciated by the signal processing community, could be applied to reduce the computational complexity and improve the latency of FICA. After some rigorous theoretical analysis followed by a hardware demonstration of real time ECG signal separation on an FPGA (as a proof of concept), my project supervisor strongly encouraged me to publish and we ended up submitting the detailed results in IEEE Transactions in Biomedical Engineering. The project highlighted the importance of a good grasp on the theoretical concepts and reinforced my belief in the need to excel at course work. Subsequently, we demonstrated near real-time signal separation of ECG signals corrupted by artefacts on FPGA. Rigorous testing on multiple ECG subjects in the medically accepted MIT-BIH database resulted in submitting a short paper in the prestigious MV Chauhan All India Student Paper

Contest, 2012. This project led to me winning the IEEE India Best Student Paper Award which was presented to me by none other than IEEE President elected Dr. Peter Staecker at IEEE Indicon 2012. Motivated by the success in my previous projects, I immensely felt the need to expand my horizon of research and make forays into new upcoming areas in biomedical engineering. For my junior research internship (summer after my third year), I was awarded the prestigious Mitacs-Globalink Fellowship to pursue research at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. As an extension of my hardware design project on cross product based FICA, I worked on developing a low complexity algorithm and VLSI architecture for EEG signal compression using FICA as a pre-processing technique in a compressed sensing framework. Later on, one of the graduate students in the lab demonstrated that my work could potentially be applied to improve the classification efficiency in brain computer interface applications. The work has been accepted at IEEE International Conference on Speech Acoustic and Signal Processing (ICASSP) 2013. In addition to the enriching research experience, the internship provided me with an opportunity to interact with renowned researchers and graduate students in Canada. Discussions with fellow interns about their work, projects and graduate student- life helped me reaffirm my conviction of pursuing graduate studies in future. The extensive literature survey that I had conducted during my internship exposed me to potential areas of application for FICA in low power biomedical electronics. I always wanted to get involved in research projects that have the potential to impact human lives. It was because of such a belief that I decided to explore one potential area of application of FICA which is Mobile Ambulatory Health Care. For my Bachelor's thesis in the fourth year of my undergraduate program, I have started working towards developing a Pervasive EEG Machine for 'Remote Health Monitoring of Autistic Children in India'. Autism is classified as a spectrum disorder since the severity and symptoms vary greatly from individual to individual. Contrary to the notion that it is a rare disorder, with newer advances in the field of research in autism, it is proving to be much more common than thought before. It is in fact, the third most common developmental disorder in the world. In the United States, according to a Centre for Disease Control report in 2012 one in every 88 children was autistic. According to a report in an Indian newspaper, from an estimated 20 lakh cases in 2003, there were reportedly 1.36 crore autism patients in India as of April '122. Although autism is increasingly becoming a cause of major concern, there

1Acharyya, A.; Maharatna, K.; Al-Hashimi, B.M.; , ”Algorithm and Architecture for N-D Vector Cross-Product Computation,” Signal Processing, IEEE Transactions on , vol.59, no.2, pp.812-826, Feb. 2011;2Six-fold rise in autism cases in India, Times of India, Apr 1, 2012


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3A stable pattern of EEG spectral coherence distinguishes children with autism from neuro-typical controls — a large case control study, Frank H Duffy and Heidelise Als, BMC Medicine, June 26, 2012

is still no medical test for its diagnosis. Instead, specially trained physicians and psychologists administer autism-specific behavioural evaluations. However, a recent research conducted at Boston Children’s Hospital3

shows encouraging results that indicate the use of EEG-based testing as a successful tool in the diagnosis autism in children and even in infants which would lead to more effective treatments. Therefore, EEG seems to be the most promising tool in the diagnosis and treatment of autism. Since, EEG analysis is poised to be the diagnosis tool for treatment of autism in the near future, our vision is to make it a simple tool that is portable and easily accessible in small hospitals and health camps where parents of children with developmental abnormalities can get their kids diagnosed and also monitor the brain development with the growth of the child. Also, current statistics say that autistic children in countries such as the UK, cost approximately 2.7 billion pounds annually to treat, while adults cost about 25 billion pounds to treat over eight times as much. This suggests that if an autistic child were to be diagnosed early in life, it would help reduce the expenditure incurred in treating him as compared to the expenditure that would be incurred if he were to be treated much later in life. By doing so, government expenditure on the treatment of autistic patients would reduce. Added to this, such children who are given appropriate care and treatment from an early stage in life could be enabled to become a contributing part of society as an adult. Such children would then no longer be dependent on external funding or care. Thus, could also eventually lead to play a much larger and influential role as part of our countries economy. In the Indian scenario, where a large number of families with autistic children either do not have access or cannot afford to avail expensive diagnostic tools like EEG, there is a need to simplify the procedure. The increase in the portability of an EEG device can tremendously impact the degree of penetration of EEG analysis as a diagnosis tool for Autism and other mental developmental disorders in India. By employing a pervasive EEG machine, medical professionals would be allowed to observe their young patients while the patients are at home, in a controlled environment that the patient is accustomed to. By doing so, the patient would remain unconstrained and could be expected to respond very well to stimuli and this would enable his easy diagnosis and treatment. Apart from this, by using a system that requires fewer electrodes, the child would not be burdened by the weight of the head gear that he would

have to wear for monitoring. This too would help in making the patient unconstrained and comfortable in a surrounding that he is familiar with, thus facilitating the process of treatment and diagnosis. I feel that the area is extremely challenging as no one to the best of our knowledge has explored VLSI architectures for Under-determined Blind Source Separation (an essential submodule for developing a pervasive EEG machine). The limited literature available in this field makes it indeed difficult to compare our newly proposed algorithm with very limited benchmark models available. However I believe that any path breaking research will always entail these kind of challenges. The maturity you gain when you successfully overcome these obstacles is immensely satisfying as a budding researcher. Working along with a team of students, we submitted our project idea in the prestigious GE Edison Challenge 2012: An idea for India organised by General Electric’s R&D division in India. Very recently on December 7, 2012, we won the Best Research Project Award in the competition with over 130 participating teams from some of the top institutes in India. 1 million Indian rupees (20,000 USD) was awarded to us as a research grant to further develop this idea into a full fledged market ready product. campusdiaries.com/stories/realising-your-dreams

society


27

The uPRising OF

WOmeN iN iNDia

#Women

tanya kotnalanifT

Shillong

My society and yours lives in shame because of fearless criminal acts against women

that are happening in most parts of our nation. Are we truly a modern society ?

In context of the Delhi Uprising, a story told in sketches

society

Process rape: First rape yourself mentally then physically.The problem with Indian society is its memory. Soon, news about rape will be replaced by a new iPod. So, until a new rape incident is in the news…

“All by herself till 3 AM at night in a city where people believe... you know... you should not be so adventurous”- Sheila Dixit on Soumya Murder Case.Why women? Ban men out of homes after 8 O’ Clock. Problem solved

2

Our society is quite childish; it never seems to grow up. It likes to play Gudda and Guddi ki shadi. They do upgrade their thoughts though — Guddi gets some real flesh and soul

3

1

1

2

3

society


campusdiaries.com/picture-stories/uprising-women-india

What do you learn from the government on rape cases? The art of self-defense. And they are experts at it. This is the primary reason why you should let your daughters learn the productive version of it

How can a tree grow and produce fruits without strong roots? One of the reasons why we need a decentralised child education system in every Indian village

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5

4

5

30 campusdiaries magazine

An effort to capture the "accommodating" Mumbai in fewer than 100 words

#mumbai

city

he narrow roads of Mumbai were narrowed down further by a congregation headed toward the sea to immerse Durga Maa. I could see nothing but human heads, hear nothing but a cocktail of songs, smell nothing but gulal mixed with fireworks fumes, feel nothing but

my sweaty palms, and taste nothing but bitterness. And then I noticed a man fervidly helping people to make their way through this madness. He smiled at me. I wondered why Mumbai was considered the rudest city on earth. I smiled in return and thought — everyone is welcome in Mumbai, at his own risk.

campusdiaries.com/stories/mumbai

Tyashowardhan

chaturvediXlri

JamShedpur

31

readers through a chronology of events that shaped the Indian food policy as we know it today. However, over a period of the last two centuries (19th to the 21st), we have moved from a period of recurrent famines to no-famines, private trading to a State supported foodgrains policy, from war- time rationing to public distribution system, from depiction of food as a private good to food as a merit good and hence the assertion of Right to Food Bill or the Food Security Act.

The pre-independence period: the era of large famines in India Does it come as a mystery that India has been largely successful in averting famines since it gained independence in 1947? Why were famines so common before? Luckily in India, we have a rich documentation about the occurrence of famines in the pre-independence period. The credit for it goes to historians, economists, statisticians, and agricultural scientists, many of whom were British scholars or Indian scholars trained in England. One of the first effects of East India Company’s increasing commercial interests in Indian provinces was in the form of rack-renting and a repressive system of land revenue which broke the backbone of the peasants. This accompanied by inefficient administration resulted in famines and famine-like conditions in almost all parts of British India. The period from 1830s to the 1880s saw the maximum numbers of deaths due to large scale famine related mortality.

n the recent times there has been a spate of discussions regarding the Right to Food Bill, surveys regarding enumeration of the ‘poor’ in India, buffer stocks, food price inflation, food subsidies, food coupons, the public

distribution system and so on. What is important in such discussions is that somewhere we are all analysing the role of the Indian State (or the government) vis-à-vis the food policy. It is a given that the government has something to do about food price inflation and food distribution. But do you know that there was a time in history when government intervention in foodgrains trading, let alone distribution of foodgrains, was forbidden? What this meant was that foodgrains movement from one province to the other or geographical movement of foodgrains was not allowed by the law of the land. It was only in the aftermath of the 1943 Bengal famine that official attention moved toward government intervention in foodgrains movement and distribution. Till the 1940s, foodgrains trading in India was largely in the hands of the private traders and inter-state trading of foodgrains was almost non-existent. In other words, if acute shortage of foodgrains was experienced in any corner of the country, we did not have a law or a policy in place that enabled movement of foodgrains from a surplus region to the deficit region.

In this short article, the political economy of foodgrains distribution in India, I will take the

The Indian State has evolved from a period of recurrent famines to a period of food supply surplus. However, foodgrains distribution continues to be a problem. This article looks at the chronology of events that shaped food policy of India

The POLiTiCaL eCOnOmy OF FOOdgRains disTRiBuTiOn in india

#economicS

analysis

raJshree bedamatta

iit guWahati

i


32

One of the first census enumerations of the population came out in 1871-72 based on field reports by British officials carried out throughout the 1860s. The population enumeration and field surveys provided invaluable information on plights of the famine struck population. These reports formed the basis of discussions for framing of famine relief codes and measures, social and economic policies leading to social protection and social security measures.

From 1890s onwards, although implementation of famine relief codes kept large famines at bay, imperialist policies of the British government continued unabated. When it was thought that famines have already become a nightmare of the past, it raised its ugly head with the Bengal famine of 1943. In the aftermath of the Bengal famine, a large scale sample survey on the after effects of famine was carried out under the auspices of the Indian Statistical Institute. A detailed survey on socio-economic

conditions of households in the whole of Bengal was carried out by P. C. Mahalanobis, R. Mukherjee and A. Ghosh in 1946 which was published in the national journal Sankhya titled Famine Rehabilitation in Bengal —Sample Survey of Effects of the Bengal Famine of 1943. The authors noted that economic inequalities that existed before the period of famine seemed to have accentuated during the famine. They found that individuals and households having land and other assets were in a better position than those who were at the brink of economic deterioration. In their own words, the famine of 1943 was thus not an accident like an earthquake but the culmination of economic changes, which were going on even in normal times (1946, pp. 341-42). It is interesting to note that the surveys preceding Famine Commission Report of the 1880s and the Bengal famine survey reached similar conclusions — poorer sections of the community were worse off in famine conditions than those who have some access to resources.

Many Indians are aware of Amartya Sen being the proud recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1998, for his pioneering work in the areas of welfare economics and social choice theory. However, what many of us perhaps do not know is that Sen spent his lifetime researching on the nature and causes of famines in India vis-à-vis that of the other countries of the world. His research outpourings on

the Great Bengal Famine of 1943 busted the myth that famine is caused only by an overall decline of food availability due to natural shortages. The world began to view famine and famine-like conditions differently, when Sen began explaining, that foodgrains trading and geographical movement of foodgrains played a major role in determining, whether temporary food shortages will lead to a famine condition or not. In Poverty and Famines (1999), Sen provided the entitlement approach to starvation and famines.

A person (household’s) access to resources is guided by an interplay of the endowment set (e.g. a peasant’s land, labour power and other resources) and exchange entitlement (comprising production and trade possibilities, legal rights and social conventions, as also the social security benefits like unemployment benefits) within a given legal, political, social and economic set-up to which a person belongs to. Consequently, any unfavourable shifts in the endowment set or the exchange entitlement of the person (household) will have a direct impact on access to food. Sen’s analysis also brought into focus the relevance of the public policies and State supported welfare mechanisms that provide people access to food during periods of temporary shortages. These shortages may be the result of natural calamities, or food price inflation or simply no access to food due to lowness of incomes and capabilities.

Trend analysis of foodgrains production in India (pre-independence and post-independence) has shown that per capita foodgrains production was higher before independence than after India gained independence. So if per capita foodgrains production was at a comfortable level, what created famines or hunger deaths? What emerged was that there was a massive failure of individual and household entitlements during the pre-independence period. Rising poverty due to British imperialist policies, government apathy in dealing with crisis situations, and hoarding and speculation in a commodity as basic as foodgrains led to the crisis of Bengal Famine of 1943. The culmination of events led to a massive exercise of famine enquiries that brought a shift in the way we understood food policies.

The post-independence period: Building buffer stocks and public distribution of foodThe origins of foodgrains distribution in India can be traced back to 1939, when British India introduced war time rationing in the urban areas of Bombay. However, till as recently as the 1940s, foodgrains trading took place largely through the private traders. India did not even have a foodgrains policy in place. Let us have a look at the timeline of how the institutional framework of food policy in India came into place. In 1943, a Foodgrains Policy Committee was established which was headed by Sir Theodore Gregory who was an economist by profession and educated at the

TrendanalysisoffoodgrainsproductioninIndia(pre-independenceandpostindependence)hasshownthatpercapitafoodgrainsproductionwashigherbeforeindependencethanafterIndiagainedindependence.Soifpercapitafoodgrainsproductionwasatacomfortablelevel,whatcreatedfaminesorhungerdeaths?


33

London School of Economics and Political Science. He, for the first time, underlined the need for government intervention in food trade in India, officially. The idea was simple: intensive procurement of foodgrains in the surplus areas and ensure equitable distribution through rationing, and check on food price rice statutorily. Thus began an era of government controls in food trade. There were gradual changes in the system of procurement and distribution of foodgrains in the urban areas of the country.

However, one must understand that immediately after independence, India was largely dependent on food imports to meet the food needs of its population. For this reason, around 1954, India entered into an agreement with the United States of America through the USAID known as the Public Law 480 Programme. Under this law, India imported foodgrains in the Indian currency instead of US dollars in exchange of export of raw materials and primary agricultural commodities from India which obviously tilted the terms of trade in favour of the US and against India. This was considered to be one of the darkest phases of Indian food policy. In the 1960s the Agricultural Prices Commission (now known as the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices) and the Food Corporation of India was established. In post-independent India informal rationing was first introduced in Kerala in 1964 and then statutory rationing was introduced in 1965 in Calcutta, Madras, Coimbatore and Delhi.

From mid-1960s to the mid-1970s, India’s food policy was directed towards increasing and maintaining the

buffer stocks of the country to avoid mass hunger. It was only from the late 1970s that the focus shifted toward distribution of foodgrains. In 1974-75 the Department of Civil Supplies was established which operated under the Ministry of Industrial Development. The 1980s saw a focus on rural areas of India, spread of ration shops, distribution of ration cards, universal distribution of foodgrains through the PDS and so on. The 1980s also saw the emergence of consumer subsidies on foodgrains — particularly on rice and wheat. Every household in the country was allotted a fixed quota of foodgrains based on the number of adult and child members. The difference between the open market price and retail price of foodgrains was borne by the government in the form of a subsidy. However, in the academic circles, particularly among the economists, not everybody was happy with such a scheme of government support. Some scholars argued that not every person or household in

the population has an equal need as there are differences in household incomes. Therefore, some mechanism should be worked out for minimizing leakages of subsidies to the not-so-poor sections. That initiated economic reforms in the 1990s.

The post-liberalisation era: Food surplus, flawed distribution and rising levels of inequality

By the 1990s, India had built a huge buffer stock of foodgrains and its dependence on food imports for meeting the food needs of its population had drastically declined. However, there was a severe balance-of- payments crisis faced by the Indian government because of which the country heavily depended on conditional loans from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. The loans received from the Bretton Woods Institutions were in the form of a package known as the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP).

As part of SAP, the Indian government was required to reduce expenditure on the social sector — including spending on education, health, and public distribution of food. Because the Indian government was bound by the economic reforms package, the largest cost cutting exercise by bringing down consumer food subsidies began from the middle of 1990s. From a universal system of food distribution we started moving towards a targeted system and the population of the country was now divided based on a poverty line. Those who crossed the poverty line income were known as Above Poverty Line and those who remained below the cut-off came to be known as the Below Poverty Line population. Now we have again reached a stage in public policy, where people have started asking do we even need a public distribution system anymore. But from what we learn from the history of food policy in India, it is too early a stage in the life of nation building to think of reducing the role of the State from the domain of food. The political economy of post-liberalisation era has shown that inequality in the country has risen and gaps in human development indicators have widened. In such a scenario, the State instead of retreating should be playing a more proactive role in ensuring provision of basic needs to its people. And what can be more basic than provision of food?

campusdiaries.com/stories/political-economy-foodgrains-distribution-india

Theideawassimple:intensiveprocurementoffoodgrainsinthesurplusareasandensureequitabledistributionthroughrationing,andcheckonfoodpricericestatutorily

analysis


34

Traditionally, the sky above and the Earth beneath encompassed all things sacred for the adivasis of Jhabua, Madhya Pradesh. They were environmentalists before the term was coined. But we brought them “development” and with it began a journey of change...

vaishali raotiSS

mumbai

TarNisHeD#development

society

35

Representations of the sacred have always been in the form of things and creatures that populate their lives and thus have meaning

All handmade, comes from the Earth and in the end returned to it

Now, we see the emergence of something new...


campusdiaries.com/picture-stories/tarnished

36

April and quickly learnt the ropes of the business very quickly. He could spot people who were gullible enough to overcharge them. He knew all the short cuts and with his jolly nature he quickly made some regular customers. Rohini, Sector 28, was a bit far from the main road and in the mornings many people took the rickshaw to go to the bus stand. He used to take at least six to seven customers daily to the bus stop. At noon when others used to take rest, he would carry on working. The crackling mid-noon heat of Delhi is something which you have to experience before you can begin to imagine what it is like. He would charge I5-10 extra because of the heat and that was okay with the customers. And Raju managed to do all these with a smile on his face. Often he would break into a song while pulling the rickshaw. He was liked by passengers and fellow rickshaw pullers alike. He managed to earn enough to pay the daily cut to the contractor, keep some money for himself and also

he best and the most important invention by mankind was that of fire. It was catalytic in the growth of civilisation or at least that’s what we read in text books. Anyway, Raju

did not have the chance to read text books. He did not even have the chance to go to school. Being the elder brother of three sisters, hailing from a poor labourer family, somewhere in Jharkhand, he did not have the chance to experience childhood either. As a kid he worked at the local shops as a helper. When he was 17 he came to Delhi with few of his village folks to work as human labour.

The contractor of the construction site, where he worked, spotted him and found him suitable for rickshaw-pulling. The contractor had around 30 rickshaws plying on the roads of Rohini. Raju was supposed to give I300 per day to the contractor and the rest was his earnings.

In his first year, as a rickshaw-puller, he was 19 years old. He had started working in the month of

people

T

Raju was lying in a corner, in front of a dead fire. His knees were almost touching his chin. In his hands he had the plastic pouch containing the money and a marigold flower. His face still had that faint hint of a smile...

a BRieF hisTORy OF raju

arJyaJyoti goswami

iit neW delhi

#rickShaW


37

save enough to send back home. His mother was saving to get his three younger sisters married.

He was, in general, a disciplined guy. Though he was chatty with his customers, he did not get pulled into the trappings of the big city. He did not drink, nor did he have any “other” bad habits. The only addiction he had was for marigold flowers. He used to pick up thrown away garlands from the road and keep one flower from the garland in his shirt pocket. He said that back in his village they had a marigold plant right in front of their house. His mother used to tend to it. This flower was like a blessing from his mother.

In the month of October, Raju earned a lot. It was the festive month. Almost the entire day people could be seen at the bus stop, going in and out of Sector 28. Raju was happy. His mother was also very happy. But things started getting tricky when winters started approaching. Earlier, he used to sleep in his rickshaw by the roadside oblivious to the mosquitoes. But the chill in the morning was more pestering than the mosquitoes. You just couldn't ignore it. He managed to get a cheap blanket from a shop. He would light a small fire in a corner of the bus stand and spent the night along with few other rickshaw pullers.

It was the month of January and the western disturbances had come early that year, resulting in rains. Delhi was already shivering and now the city had come to a standstill. Well, at least that’s what appeared to Raju. His customers had decreased in numbers. Earlier, he used to make I100 in the morning hour itself, now he hardly made I50. And the daily cut of the contractor was still the same.

Raju was all alone in this city. He did not have any

other support. His only support was earning enough to pay the contractor , save some for himself and to send to his village. But, now he was crunched, severely crunched.

It was raining intermittently since last evening. The last night had been horrible for Raju. He was alone by the fire in the corner of the bus stand. Occasionally, the rain would stop but then a wind would start blowing, which threatened the fire and also brought a chill to his bones. Raju was practically trembling in his blanket. He kept feeding the fire with plastic and paper in the hope that he would somehow survive the night.

Next morning he was the only rickshaw outside Sector 28. It was drizzling. First customer arrived. Raju was not feeling well. He'd caught a cold and was

sneezing. When the person asked him to go to the bus stand, he refused. But, when the guy offered him I30 for the route which was just I10 otherwise, Raju could not say no.He took the guy to the bus stand. From the bus stand, he got another passenger who offered him I35. The passengers were ready to pay anything just to get to their destination quickly in this weather and there was not a single rickshaw other than Raju’s. I20-30 extra was not a big deal for them, but for Raju it was surreal.

It was drizzling the entire morning and by afternoon

it had started raining. One of Raju’s regular customers got down at the bus stop. He saw Raju and asked if he was willing to go till Sector 28. Though by now he was coughing, Raju was ready. He did not have the time to even grab a bite. The thela where he used to eat kulche from would also not be there, may be, due to the rains. The passenger boarded the rickshaw. He got off at the gate of Sector 28, paid Raju and hurried off towards his flat. Raju took the I50 and kept it inside the plastic pouch where he had kept the day’s earnings to keep them safe from the rains. Raju then got down from the rickshaw, took off his shirt and twisted it so as to squeeze the water out of it, to put it back on and moved his rickshaw toward the bus stand.

Next morning was a bright January morning. The sun was out after a long time. When Raju’s fellow mate came to the bus stop in the early morning, he saw Raju lying in the corner in front of a dead fire. His knees were almost touching his chin. On his blanket they could see some patches of blood and cough. In his hands was the plastic pouch containing the money and the marigold flower. His face still had that faint hint of a smile. The rickshaw pullers got into a fight as to who will take the money and the blanket.

Two hours later Raju’s body was taken away by the MCD.

campusdiaries.com/stories/brief-history-raju

Thoughhewaschattywithhiscustomers,hedidnotgetpulledintothetrappingsofthebigcity.Hedidnotdrink,nordidhehaveany“other”badhabits.Theonlyaddictionhehadwasformarigoldflowers

Hewas,ingeneral,adisciplinedguy.Thoughhewaschattywithhiscustomers,hewasnotpulledintothetrappingsofbigcity.Hedidnotdrink,nordidhehaveany“other”badhabits


38 ”“Sometimes, I worry about my nation — ruled by incompetent, greedy men, and with a generation that doesn't care for its country or its symbols and pride. With a government dedicated to the singular agenda of personal gain, what will happen to us?

BriCKsiDe DepressiON

society

Will the old clowns from these torn up circus posters ever be remembered?

laavanya sharmaSymbioSiS

inSTiTUTe Of deSign

pune

#government

campusdiaries.com/picture-stories/brickside-depression


39

herself as Hamish. Isn’t that a boy’s name, I ask. What does it mean? She says it’s an Arabic word and she has no idea what it means. She isn’t particularly curious either. How can that be, I wonder. I remember bugging my mother to tell me the story of my nomenclature, only to be disappointed when she said they just wanted a name that matched my sister’s name, Rupa.

Hamish begins the conversation by asking where I work, where I come from, whether I like Madurai etc. I answer her inquisitiveness. I am even quite flattered at a complete stranger’s interest in what I perceive as a very mundane and ordinary life. She seems visibly amused that Madurai is the fourth place of my existence (after Jamshedpur, New Delhi and Bangalore) given that I am “only 23 years old.”

I ask her about her schooling and education. I assume it’s safe to do so. Her eyes, the only part of her body that I can look at owing to her attire, light up instantly at that question. She says she is a second year student at Madurai Kamarajar

Iwonderwhythoseschoolboysarestaringatme.didIputthebindi the other wayround,Ipanic.Icatchaquickglimpseatmytiredfaceonmycellphone. Ilookfine,Itellmyself

y office is in Madurai, also known as Temple Town. I wonder why they call it so — it isn’t as small or as insignificant as a town. I wonder why an agnostic like

me landed in one of the most religious places in the country. I wonder what I shall have for lunch tonight; groceries need to be bought too. I wonder why I wonder so much.

I catch a bus every day from Periyar bus stand to my office — a 45 minute ride, inclusive of all its stops. I now wonder why I never manage to get a seat. I wonder why those school boys are staring at me. Did I put the bindi the other way round, I panic. I catch a quick glimpse at my tired face on my cell phone. I look fine, I tell myself. Better than I anticipated. I even manage a smug smile. The school boys are still staring. Oh to hell with them, I scold myself as I struggle to find some space to stand in the bus.

Today, I’m probably luckier than ever. A burqa clad woman calls out to me and offers to squeeze in to accommodate my lean body in a seat that’s meant for two, and not three. I’m amused. Not at the thought of squeezing in, but at the thought of her consideration to somehow accommodate me. My legs silently bless her humble soul. As I sit beside her, she instantly begins a conversation.

She speaks in clear, non-accented English. Strange, unique and rare in a city like Madurai that boasts of pure Tamil dialects. She introduces

Another sunrise, another day. Another 24 hours of waking up, cleaning, cooking, heading to office, feeling fatigued and coming back home

OF Bus Rides and CONversaTiONs ThaT FOLLOW

#converSationS

experiences

deepa ranganathan

tiSS mumbai

m


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community to have been blessed with the opportunity of pursuing graduation. Her parents are in the process of looking for a groom for her. She’s 19 years old already. That’s just a year late than the legal age to marry, I fume to myself. “If such is the case, how did your parents agree to you pursuing BA in the first place?” I ask.“I fought for it,” she replies.

In the middle of this chat, she asks if I like Madurai. I duck the question by asking her about the places that she has visited/lived in apart from Madurai. She names a few and confesses that she has never been outside the state of Tamil Nadu, though she has always wanted to. I happen to reveal that I’m currently in the process of getting admission for MA in Mumbai.

“You’re so lucky! And brave. You’ve lived in the nastiest places that I know and have read about in newspapers,” she says. Nasty? Is that a reference to the rape capital of India? I hope not.

My stop arrives and I have to get down. I wonder who the lucky and brave one is. Me who has survived (for lack of a better word) four cities (and counting) and is practically a nomad or she who has survived the ire of her community and continues to do so.

campusdiaries.com/stories/bus-rides-and-conversations-follow

University and pursuing a Bachelor's degree in Social Work. She describes at length how much she loves going to college and how “relieved” it makes her feel. She narrates the story of how she was never confident of her English speaking abilities until she entered 11th grade and enrolled in an English medium school; her schooling earlier had been in a Tamil medium school where English was a third language that was learned by rote but never spoken. She says she is proud of the fact that she can speak English and Tamil fluently now. I

smile humbly at her achievement. Since education seems to be a topic that interests

her immensely, I decide to take it further. I ask about her future plans of post-graduation, since she doesn’t seem too keen to quit academics. She laughs, as if what I asked was the most ridiculous question to pose. After what seems like several minutes of (forced) laughter, she admits that it is already a rarity for a woman from her

“You’resolucky!andbrave.You’velivedinthenastiestplacesthatIknowandhavereadaboutinnewspapers,”shesays.nasty?IsthatareferencetotherapecapitalofIndia?i hope not


41

The journey of Chinappa — once an artist who created iconic hand-painted posters — now left behind by the Indian film industry

romana Jim dsouza

indiAn inSTiTUTe Of JournaliSm & neW

mediabangalore

a FLiCK .OF THe WrisT

#change

cinema

42

In India, an element of pop culture dies when technology takes over.

We remain oblivious to this transition, but if

you look close enough, you’ll see some people whose lives have been

affected by this forever. Most would stand by digital art because it

is undeniably realistic and detailed. Though

what about the detailing that goes into hand-painted art? In fact,

hand-painted art, even when hastily finished, is

emotionally raw and can still capture remarkably

vivid expressions.


43

cinema

This morning when Chinappa woke up, like every morning since many years, he hoped that the day would be different. We find him here, working in his dimly lit workshop, where decades ago his hands were full painting posters of Bollywood’s biggest superstars. Today, he faces near unemployment, getting a few small-time deals for low-budget movies.


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“I’ve been in the business for 66 years.

I’ve painted movie posters of the best —

Raj Kapoor, Meena Kumari, Amitabh

Bachchan,” says Chinappa. “It was

exciting in those days. Now, the film industry and people’s taste has

changed. My life’s gone by hoping that

things might turn around for us.”


45

cinema

Chinappa started working in this workshop with his father when he was nine. Today, his son Vishnuvardhan also works with him. Finding himself mostly out of work now, he paints on canvas. He hopes his paintings will at least adorn the walls of someone’s home. His journey from being an artist to a painter, who works only to make ends meet, has brought him here today. But he isn’t alone.


46

There are a number of artists who

continue living with disappointment, yet hope that someday

there will be a revival of this art form.

Even Chinappa’s employer, Ram

Krishna, manager of a movie theater,

prefers digitally-made movie posters. He, like most people, feels that hand-painted posters

can never match up to what digital art has

to offer.


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cinema

Payments by filmmakers are almost always delayed, and if the movie tanks at the box office the money doesn’t even make it to the artists. The demand for these posters thrives in cities like Mumbai, Delhi and even London, where they’re sold as collector’s items. Yet, the men who created them remain forgotten.


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They’ve come to terms with the fact that they

may never be able to compete with digital art. For now they are

trying to keep their heads above water,

hoping that the journey won’t end and a day will come when

we’ll need them again.


campusdiaries.com/picture-stories/flick-wrist

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n alternative/funk/whatever-you'd-like-to call-it band from Pune, What Plough? was spotted at every band competition across all the colleges festivals in the city. Strangely,

they were also seen giving out biscuits to people in the crowd — Parle-G to the audience and a packet of Bourbon to the judges. And that is exactly how they ended up being the finalists and in fact even winners of a number of prestigious band events! (Or it could have been the great music and the general awesomeness too, you never know).

With Tanay Apte as the vocalist, Akshay Gaikwad as lead guitarist, Siddharth Merchant (Machi) as bassist and Armando Khan as drummer, comes together some really amazing music. And

An interview with, What Plough? — a brand new and upcoming band. Still in their first year, they are already making waves in the Pune music scene. So, the question remains, why not plough?!

Why NOT PLOugh?

#upcoming

music

sanika dhakephalkar

feRgUSSOn COllegepune

1

a adding to that are the crazy innuendos, puns and general perverseness of the whole lot, resulting in this great band that I promise will make you sit up and take notice.

In only a few months, they have managed to win a truckload of prizes:Winners, VRock 2013, VITWinners, Crescendo 2013, ISB&MFinalists, Decibels, Saarang 2013, IIT MadrasFinalists, Symbhav 2013, SSLAFinalists, Sympulse 2013, SCMS3rd Place, Synesthesia 2013, AFMCIn conversation with What Plough?, they tell us stories about their music and more :


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add a hint of metal which makes them kinda groovy.Machi: The music we play, does have a bit of those heavy, let’s say, a headbang-ish kind of parts here and there, Like the Djent riff in Come To The Basement or the end section of All Hands on Dick, they’re a direct influence of our metal backgrounds.Akshay: Like we said, our influences are pretty vast. I was trained as a classical pianist for years, but I still make my own eletronica music. They’re all part of our sound in small ways. But sure, all of us do enjoy a good metal riff. If you’ve ever seen Apte (Tanay) in a mosh pit you’dknow.

I have seen you guys perform and noticed that your bassist has a more lead-guitarist approach. There is definitely more importance than usual, and the bass is seen to be more than just a backing instrument. Could you talk about that?Armando: Well, that was the idea behind this band. To create music that was an alternative to regular musical approaches. So, what we have is bass that takes the song forward and leads from the front, but at the same time provides the backbone like it’s supposed to. And that’s the real tricky part, for him, finding that balance between lead and backing because sometimes Machi plays bass better than some people play guitar, but he

First off, I have to ask, where did the name come from? Why ‘What Plough?’ All: Why NOT Plough? Akshay: Haha, well, it was the result of an early morning half-awake text that was asking the question, “Can you give us that slot?” but instead ended up saying “Can you give us what plow?” For some reason that really caught on, and all of us being able to relate to that situation decided that it was just the right name to go with.

How would you define the kind of music you guys play?Armando: When people ask me that, I usually say Alternative Rock, but it’s actually a lot more than that, it’s whatever we want it to be. We’re not confined to a particular genre.Machi: We really cannot define the music we play. The music defines us. Basically, it is a product of our personalities — fun, entertaining, groovy, trippy and sometimes even complicated.Tanay: I wouldn’t like to classify our music under any genre as that does not allow us to experiment with our sound. I’d define it as ‘fun’ music!

All of you come from a metal background. How does that affect the music you play with What Plough?Armando: Personally, I wouldn’t say I come from a metal background per se. I am a fan of metal but I play in a cover band as well, so I’ve had to play tons of genres. I’m more of a progressive, jazz and funk fan so I wouldn’t call my musical style anywhere near metal. Tanay and Machi are from a thrash metal band and Akshay is heavily into Djent and electronic music. We all encompass different musical palettes but come together in that middle ground of mutual taste. What Plough? is the result of this interaction of tastes influenced by many genres and that really comes out in our sound.Tanay: Though our songs are not metal, our backgrounds

machi:Wereallycannotdefinethemusicweplay.Themusicdefinesus.Basically,itisaproductofourpersonalities— fun,entertaining,groovy,trippyandsometimesevencomplicated

(L-R) Armando, Siddharth, Tanay, Akshay


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does get it right and the result is What Plough?!Machi: I always felt that a bass guitar is very, very under-rated and thrown in the background, bass players are just thrown in the corner and I always felt that a bass could be the driving instrument in a band. And, I always work around that thought.Akshay: I remember at ISBM when Machi broke his string right before we played and he asked me if he should play guitar and I should play bass and I said, “Isn’t that what we normally do?”Tanay: Whatever anyone says, bassists in Pune, at least, are overlooked which I feel is an absolute crime. Bass is the backbone that holds the music together and we give it the space that it needs to work its magic.

Tell me about your hilarious lyrical concepts. How do they come to you?Armando: Our lyrical concepts so far have come from nowhere. I guess that’s the cool part when you can put randomness together like and make it something real.Akshay: Most of our lyrics are inside jokes. I don’t think we’ve ever written any serious lyrics.Tanay: Utter randomness.Machi: Lyrical concepts, hmm, they come to us in strange ways. Akshay and I would be sitting around and talking about absolute random stuff, and suddenly out of nowhere someone would say something hilarious. And there you go! A song title and then the lyrics are written around it. Sometimes it may be individual or we could go with a round robin approach where we’d pass the sheet around and everyone would write one part.

Come To The Basement and All Hands On Dick are quite

heavy on innuendo. Are all your future songs going to be like that too?Armando: Haha, no, but so far it has worked out that way.Tanay: Can’t say for sure right now, but we don’t like to keep our songs very lightweight!Machi: Well, most of them are. Okay fine, ALL of them are.Akshay: Me being in the band, all of it is always heavy.

I’d like to get some insight into the writing process of the songs. How do you go about it?Machi: The lyrics are pretty much written around the title. The music, however, is a very different machine. Basically, I may have a set of riffs, which I show to the guys in the jam, and they jam over it and then those jams become the actual parts. There are no pre-written parts for each person; everyone’s free to do what they want. Then comes the cut-paste part where we basically just put everything in the right order.Armando: It’s all pretty much a collaborative writing process. So far, Machi’s created the starting riffs and Akshay, Tanay and I formed all those parts around and

armando: Weallencompassdifferentmusicalpalettesbutwecometogetherinthatmiddlegroundofmutualtaste.What Plough?istheresultofthisinteractionoftastesinfluencedbymanygenresandthatreallycomesoutinoursound.

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with it. We did not expect someone to actually ask for biscuits, given that we’re not exactly a huge name, but we definitely couldn’t afford to disappoint, so biscuits were given that day.

You’ve reached the finals of or finished first in quite a few competitions lately. What does the future of What Plough? look like? Should we expect an Extended Play or a full album soon?Armando: Yeah, we are happy to have done decently well, but we want to keep moving forward and getting better. An EP has been discussed. We are still in the process of deciding how and when to go about that, if we are going to come out with one at all. We’re weighing our options but we should definitely have something out very soon.Tanay: Still working on some good material right now but we could have something in store in the next few months.Akshay: Without giving too much away, I’m just gonna say: Don’t take your eyes off What Plough?Machi: Uri Jigeum Manna!

campusdiaries.com/stories/why-not-plough?

in between the songs. It all starts out with a jam, and as it turns into something cohesive we implement a structure around that original jam. It differs from song to song when it comes to who exactly creates the structure, melody and lyrics. It’s a free and open space. We can create whatever we feel is right. It’s an environment that helps our creativity.Akshay: Most of it is really trial and error. In some parts we try our best to make sure the music really fits the lyrical concepts of the song and we change things around till it feels right.

What bands/musicians are your major influences?All: Kasabian, Primus, Fishbone, Panzerballet, System of a down, Tool, A Perfect Circle, Dream Theater. And The Family Cheese, we do luuurrrve that breakfast.

You always talk about biscuits and I heard you actually handed them out at your VIT gig. What’s the story behind that?Akshay: Well, we were just about making our Facebook page, and I didn’t know what we wanted for our biography really, so I asked Machi, what do you want to see in the Biography? He said, let’s write about biscuits. At first I thought he was joking, so I went ahead and did it. As it turned out everyone kinda liked it, so we stuck


A mortal journey is crafted on this stage of nature. Look closely, and you will find it’s amusing, yet powerful. From our birth, we evolve like the cycle of moon. It is pure, innocent. The endless journey we are to take, is full of ups and downs. However, a cloud of delusional desires, shackles us away from ourselves. In the end can you help but wonder, was it all worth it?“The taste of growth, which overcomes to evolve” — Maya (temptations), a delusional poison

#canvaS

vasundhara ananddelhi univerSity

neW delhi

NaTure OF ‘maYa’

art

Oorja-The birth of energy. Sunset in the forest. Sun vanishes

but leaves its warmth to the nocturnals

Technique: Acrylic on Canvas

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Maya- Are the luxuries freeing

us or making us their slaves?

Birth of Lily - The way the sun goes through

the phases and a pure full moon appears, similarly a

mother is blessed with a child

Technique: Lithograph

Technique: Mixed Media on paper


campusdiaries.com/picture-stories/nature-maya

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aLL hands On DeCK !Fitness can be a habit, it can be something one’s conscious about or get obsessed about a lot. But in this interview with Deckline Leitao, it is the first time you see it as a passion. A sensational tale about a man who held his horses in tough times and still made it through the finish line#fiTneSS

aishwarya mahurkarWilSon college

mumbai

sports

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eckline Leitao, a man who made fitness literally his way of life, saw the science of exercise as an integral aspect that got him where he is. Before I met him, I wondered a lot about the kind of a

person he will be. I wondered if he would be finicky about where we met, what we eat. Would he ogle at the people who were indulging in greasy goodness, look down at them and their lack of concern over their health? I certainly thought he would. But the meeting turned out to be completely different! Deckline Leitao is a man of the moment with a friendly air and genuine eagerness to have a laidback conversation. The first thing I notice about him is the first thing he says to me — his love for fitness and staying healthy.

Having been an extremely skinny teenager, he was sick and tired of being always told that he’s just not eating enough. “I was as skinny as this,” he says, holding up a fork. “They kept telling me ‘why don’t you eat more?’ and it used to irritate the hell out of me.” To get himself out of the rut of being skinny, Deckline started studying martial arts. Taekwondo was his choice and he dedicated himself to it completely. Although be-coming a state level champion, winning several awards, still didn’t help him put on weight. The training was so strenuous that the martial art in fact had a complete op-posite effect. “My brother was into body-building,” Deck-line states. “He had a good physique and for me he was

“I think I was a fanatic about them,” he says. Muscle and Fitness initially sparked such an interest that it spouted off the direction of his current career. His thirst to stay fit and gain weight made him walk nearly two kms ev-ery day to the nearest gym in the locality. "Navi Mumbai then used to be a quite a lonely area and travelling so far in the rains, used to be quite an adventure," he says. When his parents nudged him to pursue the Science stream, his best option for studying turned out to be a college located in Fort, Mumbai. Deckline’s antics and time spent in this college makes him thank the stars even today that he wasn’t put behind bars. In the pres-ence of people who could have pushed him in a com-

like the ideal male. I wanted to be like him.” And that’s how the magazine Muscle and Fitness entered his life. He started reading these American magazines out of curiosity first and then out of a sheer interest in the science of exercise that they valuably preached. He would read them all the time, even hiding them be-tween his textbooks when he was supposed to study!

d


“Iwasasskinnyasthis,”hesays,holdingupafork.“Theykepttellingme‘whydon’tyoueatmore?’anditusedtoirritatethehelloutofme.”Togethimselfoutoftherutofbeingskinny,decklinestartedstudyingmartialarts

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Finally when he arrived back in India, he reckoned he had enough money to set himself up. After undergoing a thorough course, Deckline became a certified trainer. Working as an instructor in what used to be one of the most happening names of gyms (by the name of Zaf); Deckline touched base with several celebrities he met in his way. After working at Zaf for a while, he realised that this was the career path he wanted to choose. This time it was his brother who persuaded him into studying a Bachelor’s in the science of what was his passion. After much urging and convincing, Deckline finally agreed that it would be wise to study a Bachelor’s of Sports and Exercise Science in South Africa, where his brother lived. “He even paid for my entire course and also got me an admission,” he adds, remembering what he sees as a turning point in his life. He claims that South Africa taught him the truly interesting aspects of fitness. Deckline saw a completely new side to exercise compared to what he had learnt in India. To what seemed like deriving a completely appearance-based exercise regime in his own country, South Africa turned out to be inclined toward performance-based exercise. According to him, watching shirtless Indian heroes dancing across the screen in Hindi movies was just plain embarrassing. “My instructor used to love Hindi films and would always tell me, ‘Indian women are so

pletely different direction from what he’s achieved today, he explains that his love for fitness was the only reason he got through a phase that spelt more than just trou-ble. Considering his ‘gang’ included boys who were murder suspects and had several court cases pending against them, it’s a relief for Deckline that he made it through this phase without committing any serious folly himself. “I never really smoked nor drank,” says Deckline, a satisfied smile on his face. “I did try smoking because I had to look cool,” he confesses. “But then, I realised that my stamina was going down. [During] Martial arts, I used to feel down. So I stopped. Exercise really was my saviour.” He said it, and I knew he meant it in every way.But there was a time when all the resolve was challenged. Deckline had decided that he would swear vengeance on the driver who was responsible for the hit and run case that took his father’s life. He even planned, with his extremely resourceful friends, how to carry it out. A twist of fate, destiny perhaps had something else in mind, and his plan was foiled by ill-timing and sensible reasoning. “I thought I’d teach that guy a lesson. But thank God, because I don’t know where I would be now if...” He looks genuinely relieved at his younger self’s failures and adds, “When you’re young, you just don’t

realise what you’re doing.” After which, emanated the spell of St. Xavier’s College. Wearied at the thought of studying Political Science and starting a career path he thought would only lead to teaching, Deckline decided to take matters into his own hands. He wanted to get into the shipping industry. Thanks to a lot of his Goan relatives already involved in the shipping business, his parents supported him completely. “My elder brother those days was working in the IT sector. But, he was earning almost one third of what my cousins were making. So, I knew how much money [there was]. My parents also said, ‘Okay, he’s interested, it’s his decision.” Thusly, within sometime Deckline started working as a chef on board his sailing ship. Making up his mind that it wasn’t worth going back to look his same old skinny self when he got on the ship, he decided to put on weight consciously. What amazed me was the technique he chose. “I would take one tablespoon of butter, put some sugar on top and eat it five to six times a day!”


atwistoffate,destinyperhapshadsomethingelseinmind,andhisplanwasfoiledbyill-timingandsensiblereasoning.“IthoughtI’dteachthatguyalesson.ButthankGod,becauseIdon’tknowwhereIwouldbe nowif...”

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beautiful but Indian men are so vain!’” Laughing, he continues to tell me that he finds it ridiculous that every entry of a Hindi film actor is a spectacle. Explaining how he studied this phenomenon when he studied psychology in South Africa, Deckline informs me it’s not something that’s followed in any other film industry in the world. After his stint in South Africa, Deckline moved to the UK to pursue a postgraduate in Sports Science from the University of Roehampton, London. He worked there as a trainer, as well as in Surrey for many months before he finally moved back to India. His training experiences taught him a lot in these places. Having the mandatory insurance that every trainer has to have meant that you were covered against any lawsuit a client could throw at you for incidents like a sprained neck or a pulled ankle. All the fitness instructors having compulsory training meant that everybody had a qualification and a definite idea of what they were doing. “So many people get injured because there are no answers from anyone. If something happens, what do you do?” His question was aimed at the fitness instructors who were answerable to none.

This is what brings him to an observation he made during graduate studies — the lack of a guru-shishya equation in Indian education. He feels that students should communicate more, question more and in the process learn a lot more without being expected to be in awe of their teachers all the time. According to him, personal trainers in India could be unqualified and still move CEOs of large corporates to shivers. “They dictate the rules in the gym and nobody questions their judgment, or whether they knew what they are doing,” he says.


Havingthemandatoryinsurancethateverytrainerhastohavemeantthatyouwerecoveredagainstanylawsuitaclientcouldthrowatyouforincidentslikeasprainedneckorapulledankle.allthefitnessinstructorshavingcompulsorytrainingmeantthateverybodyhadaqualificationandadefiniteideaofwhattheyweredoing

The easy acceptance of this kind of quality means that nobody knows the benefits or drawbacks the exercise was having on their body and thus often these personal trainers ended up doing more harm than good, he says. “There are so many people whose knees go wrong because the trainers are literally breaking them,” he adds, referring to the hard regimes that personal trainers put their clients through without knowing any of their histories. When asked about his views on the use of steroids, Deckline has varied opinions. Agreeing wholeheartedly that steroids have side effects on everybody that uses them, he says there are several ways that they can be avoided. However, far worse for him is a person who uses steroids that have no use for him in any way. “If you’re making crores, it’s fine. You know there are risks in every job. But if it’s a boy in college who takes [steroids], walking around the canteen in his tight t-shirt while his liver is getting packed inside, what is he bringing home?” he asks. Sailing through a difficult tide in life and coming ashore, Deckline Leitao now lives a happy married life. He works as a Sports Performance Specialist at Tata Prakash Padukone Badminton Academy, ardently following his childhood passion till date. In his free time, he also writes for men’s health magazines — which I’m sure, reminds him very often of Muscle and Fitness that he himself used to read as a child.

campusdiaries.com/stories/all-hands-deck

want to get featured here?

create & publish at campusdiaries.com

the best make it to this

The Magazinecampusdiaries


want to get featured here?

create & publish at campusdiaries.com

the best make it to this

The Magazinecampusdiaries

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The joy of bringing the madness of a festival together and celebrating its patchwork and little successes is after all what college is about, yes?Assembling pictures from festivals of a few colleges across the country - NIT Calicut’s Ragam, IIT Guwahati’s Alcheringa, Ramjas College’s Focus, Daulat Ram College’s Manjari, IIT KGP’s Springfest, IIM Bangalore’s Unmaad and BITS Pilani Hyderabad’s Pearl — we bring to you a memory lane packed with jubilant colours and thrill!

Festember!#feSTS

a cd eXcluSive

campus

Nritta at Christ University In-Bloom '13

Photo: Madhu M.V.

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In smoke and music

Mohit Chauhan enchants the crowd at IIT Guwahati's Alcheringa - Crescendo

Photo: Montage - Photography Club, IITG

Photo: Unmaad, IIMB


62converge // APRIL 2013

Tara Breen from Ciorras — a young Irish band —

performing at IIT Guwahati's Alcheringa

Photo: Montage - Photography Club, IITG

campus

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Every cloud has a glowing lantern — the Lantern Fest at Ragam '13

Hold your breath and count to ten

Photo: Jishnu S, NIT Calicut

Photo: Hariskrishna KM, NIT Calicut


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Breathless? — The Nataraja Ragam trophy


campus


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The perks of being a sunflower — at the Choreo Nite

Reflections of Society —Street play



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Take a step, don’t speak, listen, locate the honk from a distant train, freak out and jump away from the tracks, else take another step

Two words: Hard work and Sunburn! At IIMB Unmaad '13

campus


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Are we only a few faces in the crowd? — Nukkad Natak at Daulat Ram College Manjari '13


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“Pearl ’13 was a truly surreal experience — the energy, the

sleepless nights, the creative events, spec-

tacular late night proshows, the capti-vating performances and so much more I

simply cannot put in words...”

campus


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“...Organising an event during Pearl was simply overwhelming; the sense of responsibility you get contributing to something as big as Pearl. Being a die hard rock fan, I knew Ampli-fier’s live concert had to be the showstopper. And it did not disappoint."- Harsh Seksaria, BITS Pilani Hyderabad

Photo: Department of Photography, BITS Hyd


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A journey of soft and fluffy basil leaves taken along with sweet and luscious strawberries, yes. When boredom and the desire to cook strikes, a glass of bubbly appears on the table. Here’s my story and a look into the joys of cooking, love/obsession for/with food, hot Indian summers and everything else in between

sTraWBerrY BasiL FOrever

food

ver since I can remember, I have divided my days into six parts. While most people identify instances of their day by the time-stamp of their occurrence, I use a more

crude method — pre or post breakfast, pre or post lunch, and pre dinner or post dinner. Yes, my days are identified by the meals I ingest in a day, where days get tagged with “special” or “boring” with just a small change in my day’s food menu. If you think about it, you’ll begin to

#innovation

ashmita sengupta larSen & toubro

mumbai

e notice you do this too. No? Are you sure? Okay, FINE.

Although, I’m quite sure that you get excited when you hear that the mother is making her signature Chicken Curry for dinner or that you are going out to dine in that restaurant which makes that perfect cheesecake? See! I told you.

How much ever we try to think and want to believe otherwise, food remains an integral part


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of our lives — the butter to our bread, the cheese to our pasta, the sukha puri to our plate of pani puri — it isn’t just a means to an existence, but in fact is a gateway to a colourful life.

Even though the love for food has always been there (c’mon, which Indian does not love eating?), my passion for cooking hadn’t had its humble beginning until a bored Sunday afternoon. Thusly, baking a batch of Chocolate Chip Cookies escalated the need to experiment with food beyond putting a jeera tadka in my bowl of Maggi. Soon enough, this experimentation led to the inception of my food blog The Heavenly Hearth. It encompasses step by step photo recipes, lyrics to songs from the 90s and a whole lot of chocolate chips. After all, cooking is all about losing your inhibitions — it’s like painting on a canvas. Unless you take that leap of faith and fearlessly surge ahead with your ideas, brilliance would always fall short.

pomegranate in your vegetable raita has the pow-er of making the good even better. It’s true. With time, though, I’ve realised that cooking for me is therapy. It is that sort of unwinding that I look forward to after a long, stressful week. Because when you come to think of it, you won’t deny it either — there is the furious chopping to release my frustration, the slow stirring to calms down my nerves and then the perfect result giving me a satisfaction the rest of the week might have left me without. Weekends have since become my days of indulgence in the kitchen. And of course, the parents are the guinea pigs. What once be-gan as humouring a child on a Sunday morning, slowly became a ritual of “What's on the special menu today, kiddo?” So, once in a blue moon, I surprise them with a full continental spread for lunch (with some brilliant Pomegranate Sangria, yes). Or perhaps recreate my late

And this, is a very important lesson that I learnt while pursuing my food blog and of course Julia Child. (Julie & Julia, anyone? No? Go watch that movie right now!) Mixing and matching your way around with even the simplest of flavours and ingredients can lead to some very pleasantly surprising discoveries. Some of those discoveries lead you scrubbing the pan clean for an hour, true, but some of those discoveries also lead you to virgin flavours, happy taste buds and a steady stream of compliments! Some days you just want to take that road not taken, wondering if you can change that “boring” menu to a “special” one by just adding or subtracting one or two ingredients from your usual list — a shot of espresso in your chocolate cake batter or a few seeds of

grandmother’s signature dessert (malpua) for the father, or help the mother indulge in her pasta craze. The time investment in creating something from scratch and then experiencing the glee of taking the first bite myself or watching the folks or friends enjoy it, is why I cook. Even though these moments do last only for a few seconds, they’re worth every spoon of butter that goes into the dish. “Non-cooks think it’s silly to invest two hours’ work in two minutes’ enjoyment; but if cooking is evanescent, so is the ballet.”So, on this glorious occasion of the onset of the Indian summer, which can also be recognised by the sudden rise in fights with the air-conditioner and steady decline


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of talcum powder levels, I tried my hand at being that eccentric innovator and putting two totally different things together. Strawberries?Strawberries with Nutella. Yum. Strawberries with Peanut Butter Waffles. Heaven. Strawberries with Cream. A classic. Basil? Chunky Tomato Basil Sauce. Divine.Basil Pesto. A heartbreaker. Bruschetta with strips of basil. The BEST.… Strawberries AND Basil?

At first, it seems off — mixing a dessert fruit with an Italian fresh herb famous for garnishing your pizzas and pastas. But, the more you think about it, the more it makes sense: The sweetness of the basil, the tart of the strawberry and the cold soda led to one of the most refreshing drinks you could recreate this summer.

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ingRedienTssTraWBerrY

BasiL sODa

sTePs

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8-10 strawberries4-5 basil leaves1/3 cup of sugar1 tablespoon of lemon juiceWaterA bottle of Sprite (as needed)

Hull the strawberries (hull = cutting out the stems and leaves, leaving you a beautiful strawberry)

Drop all the hulled strawberries in a blender/juicer/mixer and pulse till smooth.

Strain the strawberry puree through a sieve to remove the strawberry seeds.

In a liquid measuring cup, pour out this puree. Add water to reach one cup.

In a saucepan, add the strawberry puree, water, sugar, lemon juice, roughly chopped basil leaves and place it on the stove over low heat.

Keep stirring from time to time. Make sure all the sugar dissolves. Once this mixture starts bubbling from the sides, remove from heat. Let it cool.


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Strain this mixture to get a smooth strawberry basil syrup.

Bottle this syrup. (It can be refrigerated for about a week)

When in need of a drink, add two tablespoons of syrup into a tall glass.

Add freshly sliced strawberries, chopped basil and ice into the glass. (optional) Top with Sprite and serve chilled.

There are very few things in the world that are as refreshing as this recipe on a sunny afternoon. A tall chilled glass of a Strawberry Basil Soda, flipping through an absorbing magazine in the comfort of your room and listening to some Norah Jones: perfect way to spend a summer’s day, if you ask me.

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campusdiaries.com/stories/strawberry-basil-forever

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FRoM BHaraT To iNDia

#india

nandini vermailS laW college

pune

poetry

(1)

Before the False IncognitoHis first cries,Whimpers and squealsLittle unexposed flesh and forty winksAgainst the light, deep reddish pink

A baby strolls in the arms of the oldInto the world, with sharps and trebles, With all of its symphonies, Dwarfing the world outside the cradle

Waves burstAnd the blue sky laid,He sees a different crimson lightThe shade that hardly escapes unscathed

Bathed, bathed in the sporadic blues,Before the tiny feet couldn’t feel the song,Blind to blue and numb to warmthWhile the crimson rags still floated along

(2)

No shadows, none leftBodies washed awayLike there wasn’t any note leftNo sharps, no trebles, no chords felt

Against the wallNot across the wiresWithin one nationThey fell into the same mire

Buried beneath the gravel and mossCrushed and far from the Bharat that it wasFlags torn in half and a broken songWhile the rags continued to float along

With dirty soul and dirty heartA country lay from country apartAway from sun, away from skyWhere the dust and insects lie

campusdiaries.com/stories/bharat-india

When Bharat is born only to see itself soon get washed away by a false glory in the name of India


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A tale of a therapeutic bond set in the backdrop of metropolitan Delhi. A beginner in the “trade” of psychology questions the authority of a discipline born completely out of the Indian context and of its practitioners. In her attempt to share an experience of the girl at the other end of the therapeutic relationship, she comes to terms with the kind of choices and doubts she will face in her career ahead

muTuaL CaTHarsis

#pSychology

sreepriya menon

lady Sri ram college

neW delhi

he’s walking down the corridor, looking past the shoulders of the moving crowd. Her pace isn’t fast, in fact it’s slow enough to bother the girl walking behind her that

she snapped past with an “Excuse me?” She stopped and thought about the awkward conversation that she knew she would later regret. “Why did I agree? After all, how is she different from the others? What if everyone in my college got to know? What will I do then!? This time I can’t even go away… maybe I should just say I can’t… but…” I am excited, hopeful and nervous. I feel like I’m facing reality for the first time. She walks in and smiles a shy smile. I am revising in my head, repeatedly, all the pointers my supervisor gave me to conduct an effective interview session. So, I begin with the usual, “How are you feeling today?” She talks about the nitty-gritties of her everyday life as a paying guest, food troubles and cleanliness obsessions. Initially, I am itching to take notes furiously. But, I realise that it might make her uncomfortable. So, I take a deep breath and as she also starts relaxing, it dawns on me that it is perfectly natural and common if I just listen and reciprocate. I use a recorder to document her session. And she haunts me with questions I find little courage to answer…

“To have a beautiful voice is inspiring, but what if you lacked the courage to speak?To know what you want, to know what you feel, with the greatest conviction is incredible…But what would you do if all your conviction was thwarted by someone else’s thoughtless impulsion?

What if the person you trusted the most called you a cheat? How do you recover? What if your body, supposedly a temple of beauty, was desecrated by its own worshipper? How do you retain the faith?How do you find words for a story that describes your own defamation?How do you act out your own reality when the reason you live is to hide it in the actor’s mask?How do you smile when you constantly check if someone is waiting for you to cry?How do you win when where it mattered most you lost?How do you accept brilliance when you alone stand in the face of your coarse shame?How do you be angry at your violator when you know it was all your fault???How do you call yourself pure, when you betrayed, you defiled your conscience?How do you educate yourself in fact and science and verity when you lie to yourself to be alive?How can you dream? How can you expect? How can you demand? When you have nothing to give back…”

As I attempt to gather glimpses of the intense conflicting dialogue within her, I start panicking. I was only listening, but every time she paused, I felt like she required answers and urgently. I was clueless. I forgot all about my training because of how hollow all the guidelines felt all of a sudden. I was supposed to be saying things like:“Both of us will work on your esteem issues, you need

people

s


77

to achieve certain targets that we’ll make for you… See, there are a lot of negative cognitive distortions…. What we’ll unfold during our time here is the logic of how they are irrational…We’ll build on your resilience.We’ll make it clear how it was not your fault.The incident took place a long time back; a lot of time has passed. We’ll see what your support systems are.Purity and chastity are constructed concepts,Your flashbacks are ways in which you cope, so is your compulsive lying under stress. You’ll be ready to face life after your self-worth develops and for that, we’ll work on how to be sure of your talents. We’ll see how some of your fears are illusions and we’ll learn to overcome the rest.You will be whole again… ready to give back out of your experience. Your life will have meaning.”

What I really wanted to say was, ‘I’m just like you. I freak out sometimes. If I obsess, I don’t want a diagnosis for it! I might be doing something wrong in handling my experiences!’ I couldn’t tell her this if I was to be an objective, scientific practitioner. I couldn’t deviate from the model. I had to be distant with my own emotions. But could I? Ever? She and I came from a similar kind of family; we lived in similar cities. We were writers, art lovers, “dramatizers”. What expertise would I ever gain to chart out a plan towards healthy lifestyle for her? If I assume that role, wouldn’t it be hypocrisy? So, I decided

to make her a friend instead, take the journey with her. Reveal my doubts and inhibitions. I told her instead, “I understand… sometimes shit happensLife screws us overBut then we find things worth fighting forPeople remind us that we are lovable and breakable That it’s not always about us and a meaning is found in a stranger’s life. That even if we aren’t good actors, sometimes being the witness, the spectator, is more rewarding.Balance is hard to achieve.Sometimes, we try and make do with only breathing and making it out alive at the end of the day.Sometimes all we can do is cry and let goSometimes we believe in miraclesSometimes we let time do its work and healSometimes irrational thoughts become protectiveSometimes being incomplete makes more sense than being whole and alone…Sometimes the best medicine is to do things without a purpose.Sometimes accepting your weakness is the best strengthI do my bet and then I hope… that you feel better, that I feel better…”

Am I making the job of a psychologist redundant? Maybe. I hope so.

campusdiaries.com/stories/mutual-catharsis


78

A screenplay for a short film about Maria and her journey to what she calls her 'wonderland', her love for movies and drama. And her never-exhausting pursuit of truth

maRia, maRia! HasTa prONTO!

screenplay

#identity

samata JoshiWilSon college

mumbai

SCENE HEADING: EXT.A SNOWY ROAD – DAY

ACtIoN:Silence and snow, with car tracks down the road, somewhere in the winters of Shimla, India. A girl is standing at the edge of the road, frozen to her bone.

CHArACtEr: Maria, a teenage girl, with flowing jet black hair and a sharp angular face, is standing like a snow man waiting for her companion to arrive and rescue her.

(DIAlOguE)MARIA(PARENThETIcAl: through gritted teeth)

I am going to kill Kaka. Shit.

INtErCUt: A MAN WAlKINg ON ThE OThER SIDE

On the other end of the road, a small tumbling figure emerges slowly. The figure is walking between short runs. Everything in the background is white as a sheet.

Kaka, a 48-year-old, is a modern chai-stall owner. He’s Maria’s companion in Shimla. And a part-time postcard maker.

KAKA(casual demeanor)

I am sorry I got tied up at theshop. Why do you look like this?

MARIA(bellows)

WHY DO YOU THINK?!


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cONTINuED: 2.

KAKASuch drama, it’s just 3 degrees.

You look funny (sniggers)

MARIAI am going to kill you.

KAKAYou’ll have to move first for that.

MARIAhaha. SO funnay. You could make for a comedian!

KAKASuch a child. But, like Stand-Up?

I’ve never watched one; these kids at the shop keep discussing…

MARIAYes, why don’t you stand on the

middle of a deserted ankle-deep snowy road and discuss about Stan-Up when I am noticeably dying?

KAKAYou’re not dying.

MARIAugh.

KAKAlet’s move forward, chalo. One stepat a time. Don’t walk too quickly,the cold will make your legs pain.

(TRANSITION)DISSOlVE TO:

INtErCUt: KAKA’S CHAI ShOP – DAY

ACtIoN: Many children and women are taking refuge inside thewarm chai shop. There is a lot of racket and noise.

KAKAHave you found out what makes you

so impossible sometimes?

MARIAgive me a break. I have never livedin such a weather before. I likesnow, but it makes me fall sick.


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CONTINUED: 3.

KAKAAh, you poor thing. Chai shouldhelp. Should we talk more aboutwhat we started off last night?

MARIAYes. I was thinking about what yousaid and how people are losing

meaning from everything, aestheticsto common sense. But do you blamedevelopment for it? Don’t you think

development is progression?

KAKADevelopment is good for the

soul,yes. But whatever happened tosustainable development? Why can’twe preserve, respect, believe and

flourish at the same time?

MARIABut who said you cannot flourish?

Who or what stops you?

KAKAThe mind. The mental state. The being.

I am reaching the age of 50, I have no children, no responsibility,

just one passion. And I dobelieve technology makes for

good platforms, but what do I do with these postcards I hand-make?

MARIAYou have to lose something to find

something.

A child waltzes around Maria and pulls her overcoat playfully.

INtErCUt: chIlD lOOKS AT MARIA hAPPIlY

She holds him by the ear and gives him a kiss on the cheek.

KAKAThat’s ridiculous. If this is your

age and experience talking, I forgive you. But what does yourmind tell you? What do you think?You have not been affected by

family, society at large, or forthat matter even emotionally. Is that what brings you here?


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cONTINuED: 4.

MARIAI have told you before, I am still

figuring it out. I don’t have a family, yes. But I have a pen pal and I really like her.

I think that accounts for family. She’s from Germany and she thinks it’s

ridiculous that I am so affected by the cold.

KAKAYou’re deviating. How do you have apen pal at this time and age? I

thought that went out of “fashion”?

MARIALook at you being skeptical of mygeneration. It’s cute. But noteverybody is like everybody. And

writing and friendship can never goout of “fashion”.

KAKA(breaks away suddenly)

Would you like to learn more? Icould teach you the concept of

parallels and (smiles) the idea oftaking a journey with art today.

MARIAYes!I was good at structures andpainting when I was younger. Neverused a scale in my life though.

KAKA(smiles)

Sarita! You’re in luck!(exclaims loudly)

I don’t use a scale either!

DISSOlVE TO:

INtErCUt: AN AcTOR’S STuDIO – DAY

People are reading scripts out of hard bound bundles. A hot winter day in Chen-nai, India. Men are dressed in lungi’s and women in sari’s and frocks. Focus is on the receptionist.She’s smoking a light cigarette and reading a script.

Toyesh, a 24-year-old Post-Graduate Psychology student at an affluent Delhi col-lege, is in search of a girl called Maria, his thesis. he is a well-behaved, well-dressed, well-cultured boy who happens to be unaware of his disposition around women.


screenplay

82

cONTINuED: 5.

Sangeeta, the receptionist, a 36-year-old potter, knows something about the whereabouts of Maria, a girl she met a few months ago at her part-time job in the acting studio.

TOYESh(shuffles his feet, looking anxiously at the crowd)

Excuse me, are you Sangeeta?

SANgEETA(speaks dryly in a monotone)Yes, darling. Are you here for

’Kaali Raat - A night to remember’or the remake of ’Daag- The Fire?’in Tamil?

TOYEShNone of the above, sorry. I was wondering if we could

speak in private.

SANgEETAThis is private, boy. My life is an open book.

A confused Toyesh manages to look down for a few seconds while Sangeeta peers hard at his face. he shifts a chair next to the table and reaches for his bag and takes a seat. He pulls out a photo and clutches it in his hand. Suddenly a lady in pink reaches up to him from behind.

lADY IN PINKYou look too handsome for any of

the roles today. I am sure you’re acasting director.(giggles)

Can I get your number?

Toyesh stands up and fumbling for words, he straightens up to face the woman.

TOYESh(In a clear voice)

No, Thank you. I am not a castingdirector. Please, leave us alone.

Sangeeta looks on curiously, motions the girl to hurry away and focuses on Toyesh.

SANgEETAWhat do you want boy?

TOYEShI am looking for Maria.

I have heard that she was last seen here.


83

CONTINUED: 6.

SANgEETASee, if this is some lover-actor

break-up nonsense, I don’t have the time for this!

TOYEShNo, Ma’am. This isn’t! I heard she was on the road,

and she’s... well, my friend. And she’s been gone a long time; I don’t know how to find her. Maybe you’d be kind

enough and help.

Sangeeta, thinking hard, gets out of the chair and starts pacing.

DOOR OPENS IN FRONT

The casting director calls out from the door for the next girl in queue.

SANgEETAI don’t know any Maria. Why would

you come to me?

TOYESh(shows her the photograph)

You’re my first lead. Take a look.Do you know her?

SANgEETA(breathes heavily and looks sharply at Toyesh)

What do you want from her?! She’s agood girl!

TOYEShI told you, she’s, well, my friend.

I am looking for her, I need her help.

SANgEETAYou’re lying! I can see it in your

eyes! And besides, her name is not Maria. her name is laxmi. laxmi Nair.

A CHAI-WAllAh ENTERS.He looks oddly at the two gaping faces in front of him, puts down a cup for Sangeeta and leaves looking worried.

(to be continued in ISSuE #2) campusdiaries.com/stories/maria-maria-hasta-pronto


screenplay

84

February 24

Dear Antoshka

I can’t tell you how relieved I was to hear about your escape from the prison where those dastardly pompous officials had wrongfully confined you. Every minute you spent in that hell, my pained pining soul agonised itself, feeling powerless at being unable to get you out. Our other comrades, who have been incarcerated before, told me stories of horror that made me shudder and fear frightfully about your well-being. But now you are free, and I hope we will meet soon. I miss you terribly, and know you miss me too. Oh Antoshka, won’t you come and see me? I know I shouldn’t be selfish, and that you have bigger concerns to take care of, but I can’t help loving you.

I don’t even know where you are, and I have to leave this letter with Ilya because he is the only one you have trusted with the knowledge of your whereabouts. I don’t know when he will meet you, so I will leave out all the unnecessary trivia of what is going with my life presently. All you need to know is that I love you, and I miss you, and wish you well with whatever you are trying to do. I am sure you have good reason to stay hidden. I just want you to finish it up quickly and get back to me, in to my waiting arms.

Undying love, Elena

February 29

My lovely Elena

It saddens me deeply to break my promise (that I made to myself) of meeting you before this cursed month was over. As you probably know by now, Ilya betrayed me worse than Judas did in that big book of lies. If you see that wretched bastard again, you must swear to me, dear Elena, that you will rip his throat out with your bare hands. I would have done it myself, but it is somewhat difficult to manage sitting in this small cell back in the prison while he roams the country, a free and rich man.

He led them to me yesterday, while I was still sleeping and he had gone to attend to “a call of nature”. By the time I got my hands on my scabbard, it was too late. And this time, they treated me very differently from the first time. I will spare you the details, lest they bring tears to your eyes but after resting for 36 hours, I have the strength to at least write this letter to you.

My cause is just, and I am ready to die for it. I just wish I could spend more time with you before that happened. Elena, you must live for the both of us. And insofar as that one man goes, kill too.I hate Februarys.

Yours forever,Anton

A betrayed revolutionary loses everything for love. Someone else’s love

jaiL BirD #fiCTiOn

himanshu goenkaWrite clubbangalore


letters

85

March5

Oh Antoshka!

Why are you talking about dreadful things such as death with so much certainty? There is no knowing what tomorrow holds and if we lose hope, what else do we have to go on with? They may hurt your body but they can’t break your spirit! Ilya tells me that he has already spoken to an official to secure your release. “Don’t worry, Elena. I will make sure he is free of all his troubles soon. And there will be much time for you two to raise many fine children,” he said. Did you know he knows the provincial officer personally?

Ilya is such a nice and helpful man. I wonder where you ever found him! He has not only promised to sec-

March 15

My poor dear ElenaWhat am I going to do with you now? I feel like the knight who arrived too late, long after the princess has already fallen in the trap laid out by the magician in his castle, and now the castle, magician and princess are all nothing more than thin air. But a drowning man will clutch at any straw, so Elena, pay attention now. Read first. Only the First. Then all of it, but it won’t matter.

Don’t give in to despair; you were right in telling me that. I was sitting here alone, not willing to believe that I could yet be saved. But I have you to watch over me, and to lend me strength. And Ilya, of course, who will do everything he can to get me out of here. After all, I trusted that man with my life, and he is very reliable. Do not hesitate to ask him if you need help with something, anything at all. The provincial officer, you say? I did know that Ilya had connections, but not that he was so well connected! Now that I am tangled in this web of intrigue and don’t know who betrayed who any more, I am sure this official connection of his will be a source of great help to me.

Now, dear Elena, my princess, if you paid attention, I will probably be able to save at least one of us.Okay, I don’t hate Februarys. I hate them in leap years. Your fallen knight,Anton

ure your release but also to find that wretched man who had you arrested again. He said, and I agree, that it would have been much simpler to do just that, and then punish him in the manner you said, had the prison officials not blacked out half your letter, including the vile knave’s name.I don’t know how I would have stood through this had it not been for your love, and of course, Ilya’s help. He is in a rush right now, so I have to stop this letter here, but I must remember to thank him properly later.Must you hate Februarys? I was born in February too, you know.

Waiting to see you.Elena

March 21

Antoshka, my hero, my knight

Why do you despair so? Your letter was ever so confusing. You jump from being anguished to being a beacon of light and hope, before you again start talking about death as if it already has you in its talons. What was that about reading first, and all of it not mattering? And since when did you start using fairytale characters? I thought you hated them all! I hope they haven’t been giving you strange drugs in the prison, which Ilya tells me they sometimes use to break the spirit.

It has been a month already since I last saw you. I asked Ilya if he had made any progress with the provincial officer, and he said that there had been

a complication because of that first letter you sent asking me to kill the man responsible for your renewed detention. The officer believes that it may not yet be safe to let you out. He wants you to calm down first, and promise, in writing, to not indulge in violence against anyone, including the man you want to kill. Please Anton, do that, won’t you?

What’s important is that you and I will be back together. We can forget all about that man, whoever he is, and start a new life in a new place. Ilya says he will be happy to help us move. With you so far away, I really don’t know how I would have managed without him here.Looking forward to a new future.

Yours, Elena


letters

86

April 12Anton

Why haven’t you replied to my last letter? Ilya tells me that you refused to make any promises to give up violence. If that was your decision, you could have told me yourself too. Why did I have to hear it from a third person? I mean, I know that Ilya and you are very close, but am I not close to you too? How could you be so cruel as to tell him you didn’t care about the bright and happy future we could have lived together?

If you don’t love me, Anton, you should have just said so. Why write in metaphors of fairy tales and make my heart go aflutter? Ever since I met you, I have lived my life only for you, and this is how you reward my dedication to you and your cause? If Ilya hadn’t told me, I would have never known that you called me “that woman half-mad in love who is totally clueless about the world right in front of her own bloody eyes”.

I am glad I have Ilya to lean on. You have left me very hurt at a time I was vulnerable. I still can’t wish you harm, but Anton, know this. I don’t wish you well either.

Elena

May 2

I thought you would have had the decency to reply to at least my last letter. But I suppose the prison has hardened you. Ilya tells me it is commonplace for prisoners to lose touch with their more pleasant emotions.

Anyway, I am writing to tell you that you won’t be able to write to me any more even if you wanted to. I am leaving this house full of memories that you and me built together, because they all seem to be so meaningless now. I am moving to a new place that Ilya has found for us, and I am not leaving you an address. Ilya thinks it is for the best, and I agree.

At the end, I only have one thing to thank you for. And that is for giving me Ilya.

Good luck, Anton. May you find peace, and may your cause go to hell.

Elena.


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