Outlook – July 28, 2019

29 July 2019 OutlOOk 87

geois rule. One time, we were

reliably informed by our sen-

iors, chain-smoking jho-

la-wallahs who were cynical

as hell, that a professor had

complained to the principal

that students were routinely

bunking his lectures. he

wanted something to be done

about it. To this, the principal

is reported to have responded

icily, “If the students are not

coming to class, then you

must not be engaging them.

You probably need to do

something about your teach-

ing.” (This story might seem

apocryphal, but it had been

later confirmed to me by then

principal Dr Amitava

Chatterjee.) Liberated by this

story, I bunked most pass

classes for the next year-and-

a-half. The teachers, to be fair,

were pretty engaging.

In fact, this situation —the

bunking—came to be neces-

sary rather than casual since

I had far more important

things to do with my time

than take notes in class. In

my enthusiasm to genuinely

embrace the mores of our

college, where politics and

prem were foundational re-

quirements, I had fallen irre-

trievably in love. he was a

year senior and studied eco-

nomics. (If you are wonder-

ing, the hoop earrings were

part of the mis en scene.) And

presaging the oddness of our

future life together as writ-

ers—which neither of us

could have had the faintest

clue about at the time—the

early rites of our relationship

featured my publishing him,

in a monthly newspaper that

my friends and I had started

in the second week of college.

I know, I know, I haven’t been

able to summon up the kind

of energy and enterprise I

displayed in the first few

months of college in later life.

We named the newspaper,

with the unbridled arrogance

of youth, UnPresiDented.

In 2017, exactly a decade-

and-a-half after I’d started

college, I found myself teach-

ing first-year undergrads at a

new liberal arts university

that had come up on the out-

skirts of Delhi. The kids were

bright-eyed and sparky and

funny, and by the second

semester, once we’d both

overcome our initial shy-

ness—despite having spent

years in JNU in pursuit of a

PhD I had spent most of my

time writing books and not

teaching—it was established

that I was a dinosaur, a lova-

ble dinosaur they clarified,

but a dinosaur nonetheless.

So they would take my

re-edu cation in contempo-

rary mores of the young in

their capable hands: how to

read memes, how not to be

on Facebook but on

Instagram, how ‘leaving you

on read’ on WhatsApp was

the worst thing ever, how you

didn’t say ‘as hell’ anymore

but said AF, how punctuation

was everything in texting be-

tween lovers—a full-stop

could even be considered a

tantrum—and how it was bet-

ter to break up than take a

rel ationship long-distance.

I often laughed and rolled

my eyes. They did the same.

In return, though, I would

have to honestly answer their

questions on the dinosaurian

subject of love. (Turns out, if

you’ve spent a decade writing

confessional essays and

part-autobiographical fiction,

your students will dig

everything out, read them all,

and throw forgotten facts at

your face.) They had an an-

thropologist’s curiosity about

the fact that I had decided to

spend my life with someone

I’d met in college—that is, if,

as an anthropologist you ran

into cannibals and though

you judged them you also

found them oddly fascinating.

They couldn’t imagine it, they

assured me in their worldly

wise ways, they were in col-

lege now, they had so many

things to do, so many differ-

ent versions of themselves to

follow —and yet, for all their

urbane post-normative

stands, they kept circling

back to the territory of col-

lege life.

W

hAT does it all mean?

They seemed to be

asking me, beneath all

the clever banter. This

wracked feeling? These re-

lentless highs and lows? This

uncertainty? This tiredness?

“It’s youth,” I want to tell

them. “We all waste it, don’t

worry. It’s going to be fine.

You’re going to be fine.”

Instead, though, we talk

about You’ve Got Mail—

which they haven’t seen—and

crossover memes – which I

haven’t the foggiest about.

The next year, I don’t go

back to teach. Instead, I

spend it writing a novel about

a group of people who went

to college together in the late

nineties and who have, for

one reason or another,

re-convened in Calcutta

again. It is, perhaps, a long

explanation to my students

about my youth and theirs,

and the worlds in between,

which, for all their differ-

ences are more similar than

they seem. We burned and

breathed and made mistakes

and felt immortal. It’s all

there is, it’s enough. O

y Dinosaur

Presidency in sepia with ganja, jhola, coke, beer, hoop earrings, first love, PDA...Swoon.