Perhaps it is again one of my nonsense interpretation of an equally nonsense observation. But I promise that it is an "original nonsense" and I hope you would not find it boring. That qualifies it to be packed in words and presented to you for your cerebral consumption.
*Incoherence, if you could detect, is regretted.
Statement: Connivance in (anti)cheering by an otherwise unpermissive authority in IITD is a cunning maneuver to preclude potential politicization of youth and polarization of power.
Axiom: SAFETY VALVE THEORY.
- Huh!! I am enlightened! What an insightful remark! Man it's a fossilized cliche' for Godssake. - I agree to this point. So what? I agree cliches are not very interesting but anyways the truth doesnt exist for your entertainment. And dismissing a cliche' just for its being a cliche' is not only ultra-cliched but also an indicative of mental indolence.
- But don't you think you are taking it too far?
- Please suspend your judgement for a while. And read on.
The simple idea is to get the extra-curricullar energy of the students drained by allowing nay encouraging them in shouting their throats out for/against something which is absolutely inconsequential. Moreover, this creates an illusory world with an completely erroneous sense of winning, losing and competetion. But it is exciting and it keeps them occupied with the elaborate rules of the game. The observation of these rituals provide them a false sense of integration (and not observing these rituals, in unritualistic way, results in alienation). Every IITian pretends not to know that the distribution of students in various hostels is just a matter of chance and none of the hostels is inherently superior to others. But the more blind mania a hostel-maniac exhibits in his unmitigated pretense, the more flowery laudatory adjectives are showered over him. The award system has been further devised to implement the managerial incentive-punishment trick. Our inherent hankering for glory makes their work even simpler. Lastly the grand exaltation of the purpose provides it a tinge of patriotic loaftiness and makes uttering anything against it almost blasphemous. That's IIT hostel life for you.
Positives: yes there are. This inculcates a team spirit which transcends regional and academic boundaries and provides a platform for cultural-intellectual intermixing that is conducive to the overall growth of an individual. But the reality hardly corresponds to this ideal purpose. Brotherhood developes but not in the way it is desired. Just like drinking together or doing anything 'forbidden', it is developed in the titillation of complicity. It gives you cheap kicks and highs and a misplaced sense of unity and power. Period.
*Incoherence, if you could detect, is regretted.
Statement: Connivance in (anti)cheering by an otherwise unpermissive authority in IITD is a cunning maneuver to preclude potential politicization of youth and polarization of power.
Axiom: SAFETY VALVE THEORY.
- Huh!! I am enlightened! What an insightful remark! Man it's a fossilized cliche' for Godssake. - I agree to this point. So what? I agree cliches are not very interesting but anyways the truth doesnt exist for your entertainment. And dismissing a cliche' just for its being a cliche' is not only ultra-cliched but also an indicative of mental indolence.
- But don't you think you are taking it too far?
- Please suspend your judgement for a while. And read on.
The simple idea is to get the extra-curricullar energy of the students drained by allowing nay encouraging them in shouting their throats out for/against something which is absolutely inconsequential. Moreover, this creates an illusory world with an completely erroneous sense of winning, losing and competetion. But it is exciting and it keeps them occupied with the elaborate rules of the game. The observation of these rituals provide them a false sense of integration (and not observing these rituals, in unritualistic way, results in alienation). Every IITian pretends not to know that the distribution of students in various hostels is just a matter of chance and none of the hostels is inherently superior to others. But the more blind mania a hostel-maniac exhibits in his unmitigated pretense, the more flowery laudatory adjectives are showered over him. The award system has been further devised to implement the managerial incentive-punishment trick. Our inherent hankering for glory makes their work even simpler. Lastly the grand exaltation of the purpose provides it a tinge of patriotic loaftiness and makes uttering anything against it almost blasphemous. That's IIT hostel life for you.
Positives: yes there are. This inculcates a team spirit which transcends regional and academic boundaries and provides a platform for cultural-intellectual intermixing that is conducive to the overall growth of an individual. But the reality hardly corresponds to this ideal purpose. Brotherhood developes but not in the way it is desired. Just like drinking together or doing anything 'forbidden', it is developed in the titillation of complicity. It gives you cheap kicks and highs and a misplaced sense of unity and power. Period.
Negatives: how many do you need to be convinced? I'll talk about the confusion of identity first.
To start with, IITians are talented students and they are expected to be responsible citizens and proficient engineers of wherever they choose to live. This opinion and expectation doesnt always allign with their self-images and youthful aspirations. Fine. They want to dudify themselves and blot out the stigma of nerd often attached to them by some nobodies. Above all, they are human before anything else and their individuality should be respected by all. Fair enough. But in the campus their primary identity (what are they there for?) is that of a student of engineering or of anything they like to pursue in academics. The other things come later, including their hostel identity which dominates their minds for most of the time.
My straightforward opinion (not very flattering!) about the 'confusion quotient' of those students who ostensibly got admission in IITD for the higher purposes of playing and 'pataoing' females used to enrage them. These people pretended as if their being sportsmen par excellence secured them rooms in IITD hostels and they wanted me to buy this! Give me a break! And females! Only a major hormonal imbalance in their bodies or an absence of line-of-luck on their palms could draw them to these morons.
The confusion in the identity also takes its toll in intra-departmental activities (for example-departmental elections!). As soon as the feeling of esprit de corps is attached with the hostel and not with the department, the academics loses to mass-hysteria, the significant prostrates before the trivial. This pathetic level of awareness, interest and participation of students is plaguing most of the deprtments in IITs. The young and energetic students can help re-creating the image of IITs and shape it as per the demands of the present technological and industrial environment. But I see the death of dynamism in IIT. They teach the same musty books with mythological technology everywhere. There is hardly any interface with the industry. Science, it seems, is the latest superstition, and is in vogue too. I wonder why I didnt observe this then? Why didnt we make a team and arrange seminars, presentations, trainings, projects for ourselves? No matter what your career goals are, these things always pay. Perhaps I am talking too much. Perhaps I have not said enough. Who knows? The possibilities are only limited by one's faculty of imagination. And the senile profs know it very well. But these losers! They dont want to project that what they teach is redundant or obsolete or even incomplete. I knew it was useless but I couldnt find out the right way. I didnt participate in departmental activities. There is no such thing as departmental alumni e-group or something like that. I dont know if it exists coz I've never come across any such thing. IITs have deteriorated into places predominantly for playing AOE, practising cheap politics, preparing for CAT and selling infamous MMS! Thanks to the crew the ship is heading straight towards the iceberg. And these morons attribute this downfall to the JEE and the coaching institutes (as if they are the prime threat to the national security! Read this) whereas they know too well that they are the ones who should be held culprit for incompetent managemant and outdated pedagogy. They know that sooner than later the students, who in their ignorance or naivete' take them for God, would come to know about their reality. The way out: keep them away from reality. In the rage of hostel wars the students might acquire skills unknown to them but the intentions of the authority is not beyond suspicion. My rhetorics and your credulity is not needed to appreciate this simple point that the people who know what is to be done are not doing anything what is to be done and at the same time doing everything what is not to be done. They give us freedom to fling filthy phrases at one another in the seminar hall but rigidly exercise 'thought-control' in the matters which matter, by the various weapons they possess.
Talking about cheering per se, I would say that I found cheering absolutely ludicrous at most of the places. And anti-cheering UNACCEPTABLE. But in IITs it seems that every contestant needs cheering no matter whether he is a football player or violin player. You can easily find these retarted bipods bellowing outside the debate hall too! Moreover the excessive anti-cheering changes the very nature of game being played. For an instance a match of badminton is decided more on one's thick-skinned immunity to the torrent of oral filth rather than his(sometimes her too) atheletic skills. True, psychological strength should be tested but it is anyways tested in cheering-less matches too. If the IIT- sophomores were given freedom, they would gleefully pack their bags to go and cheer for Vishwanathan Anand! And what this cheering does anyways? I remember a TT match where an over-enthusiastic player used to hit the ball so hard (perhaps with added enthusiasm) that it hardly ever fell on the table. He was not that incompetent but he did so coz he was playing in his own hostel and was surrounded by hundreds of bawling inmates. And the dude desperately wanted 'to beat the shit outta that fuckin bastard'! Only he didnt know how to do it. :)
The students of IITs would not, in my opinion, make a union and negotiate for their rights with the authority. I won't take this that far keeping the brittleness of your imagination in mind. I can contrive reasons to support my belief too. Even you can. So lets spare each other and lets not play the reason-reason game here. But we can never rule out the possibility that the students can participate more meaningfully in the things that actually matter and can subtly alter the power structure within the academic system. The recent initiative by some awakened and sensibly enthusiastic students in the placement cell highlights this point. I will attribute your incredulity, if still there, to the fact that you might be one of those who don't believe that the earth revolves around the sun simply because you have not seen this happening!
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