86 OutlOOk 29 July 2019
T
he August I joined Pres-
idency College to study
english literature, hoop
earrings had just made
a comeback in Calcutta. The
rain had left the city damp
with optimism, and I found
myself newly released into
its streets, into the world in
fact, a born-again of sorts,
freed not only from the
technicalities of calculus and
chemistry and the
burdens of growing
up an ever-chap-
eroned only-child,
but also from the
proprieties of my
all-girls’ Methodist
school—the skirt
had to be at least
two inches below
the knee, if one’s
hair surpassed
one’s ears by two
inches it had to be
tied into a ponytail,
and earrings, if
at all, should be at most a
comma punctuating the
earlobe, nothing dangly or
fiddly or dressy was to be
countenanced. Naturally, the
many freedoms of my new
institution dazzled me at first.
Sprawling, and a little ecc-
entric, with just the right
amount of dust to cast my
memories in sepia—“Uff, our
college had so much charac-
ter,” I would tell my own stu-
dents years later—Presidency
loomed over College Street,
which was memorable in its-
elf, with its book stalls and
ins ane traffic and the pros-
pect of the iconic Coffee
house two minutes away on
Bankim Chatterjee Street. In
the college canteen, tucked
away from the comings and
goings of professors, boys and
girls sang and argued and
read Milan Kundera and
Jibananda Das and Paul
Ricœur and bantered cease-
lessly, guzzling coke—the
coke machine had been
fought for and the war
against sugar hadn’t reachednorth Calcutta as yet—and
chicken samosas. On occa-
sion, a high-as-a-kite senior
might be sent to take a bath
in the adjoining facilities, to
cool down, after which he’d
walk around amiably in a
towel borrowed from one of
the hindu hostel boys. (Now
why he couldn’t be sent to the
hostel in the first place, to
take a damn bath there, esc-
aped me. But one
learnt to keep a
poker face.)
Couples kissed in
the corridors, stu-
dents could smoke
with their profes-
sors, the science
lib rary with its
wooden partitions
was known as a
popular spot for
lovers to work out
their differences,
and the college had
an official gan-
ja-supplier called Bhetki Da.
The plenitude made us giddy.
It was 2002. A decade after
liberalisation, even the hard-
ened commies had somewhat
relaxed their rant against the
cultural ruination, and the
SFI, which had just won the
college union elections—I
would soon be drafted into
the Independents’
Consolidation, the
Opposition, which would def-
eat SFI in my second year—
were planning to throw a big
freshers party, with a big
Bengali band, and were look-
ing around for corporate
sponsorships. There would
be dancing, we were told. The
canteen fridge was going to
be stocked with beer, and
there might be orgies werepossibly planned on the can-
teen-roof at night. The air
was thick with rumours.
“What are the classes like?”
my mother asked, interrupt-
ing my glowing reports,
minus the orgies and the beer,
that is. “They’re great,” I said,
truthfully of course, without
the addendum that had by
now been embraced by most
of us: classes don’t really mat-ter, education in college hap-
pens outside the classroom.
(My father belonged to this
school of philosophy; my
mother would have had a
heart attack. Sometimes I
wonder how they even met in
college, my parents, given
that one was always in the
classroom while the other
was perennially mounting
theatre productions or play-
ing sports or taking on lead-
ership roles in social work.)
In Presidency, it was
quickly established that
while the University of
Calcutta, at large, had an at-
tendance policy, our college—
frankly—looked down upon it
as yet another tiresome bour-If you’ve spent a decade writing
part-autobiographical fiction,
your students will dig all out, and
throw forgotten facts at your face.Devapriya Roy
A Delhi-based
writer, her latest
novel Friends from
College has just
been publishedThe BaBy Dinosaur
Presidency in sepia with ganja, jhola, coke, beer, hoop earrings, first love, PDA...Swoon.
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specialIllustration by rajat baran