The cultural and intellectual variation, which I’m quite sure is imaginarily so, is great between those from the Main Building and those from elsewhere in the college. Every time the editorial committees of magazines, newsletters, as well as the drama club, seminar forums, etcetera are formed: I being not a part of the finer grey matter, find that ‘they’ are the ones who walk the red carpet of Literature clutching elbows of great men and women, and I, like the rest of us non-carpet material, are left to scavenge like the desperate paparazzi…trying to cope with both disciplines, I mean the awe of ‘their’ and the load of our own.
It’s an “A-PARA” & “O-PARA” racism that prevails between the two, and mostly the great divide dwells in paper. We find ourselves in the “WHAT NOT TO BE” columns once in a while…not to mention the ‘butt’ of inter-academic jokes. And sometimes the seniors and professors act like KKK catalysts; we have ‘skinheads’ too: ‘they’ are the ones who never mingle outside their class or act out of their state, and smirk on our lesser mortals’ existence out of their extraordinary circle. And we are left to chew on our hats, shoes and cockneyed intellect.
For the greater part of my two and a half years of college life, I have envied their un-cut beards, un-bathed personas, disheveled hair, and those curiously old and patchy paperbacks, clutched tightly in their smelly (but greatly so) armpits, poking out just enough to make me nervous. Yet, I could neither consciously nor purposefully imitate their profound intellect. ‘They’ are the ones I will hate all my college life, and wish my jeans looked as bug-eaten, or my fatua looked as frayed, or I looked as impossibly aantellectual.
Why is it that people like me, who love to play with the simplicity of the language are always lambasted by the self-proclaimed pundits of English Language…while their ornamented presentations win prime pre-dominance…even if half the country cannot even make a sense out of that Swarovsky article? The Pradas and Guccis of this parallel universe are always the ones who edit and process all linguistic manifestations of the college…
…while I, the Phantom of the O-PARA, hover around hallucinating about my own.
‘They’ are the ones who end up behind desks at the offices of New York Post or London Times, while we are left here to pitch sales quotes for baby food that patronize ‘them’…
Address for grievance retrieval, due to the above post:
Presidency College, Kolkata
College Street
darling one, love the o-para
ReplyDeletedo you think they really think about you as much as you think of them! and moreover how do you know that they do not look at YOU with awe and envy?! ultimately we are caught up in our own realities, and the grass is always better in the other joint!
being old as I am i can tell you that guys I was too awed to talk to when I was your age are actually quite floored by awesome coolness now, and apparently always were! who knew!
people who make you uncomfortable are to be banished from your universe...there will always be people who will not like /approve of you (o body pierced one), you knew the risks when you went over to the other side, ki na? the trick is to really love the ones you are with and who are with you!
its a tough life but you can handle it!
xoxo
loved the picture....
ReplyDeletewhy not let them be like they are?im sure that if you lok around will find clean,good dressed normal people like you with the same intellect as those of o para.believe me i know quite a few of them....and yes you can always make out the real o-paraians and people who only try to be part of the o para without any knowledge of things.
ReplyDeletesorry if i was not clear.what i meant was why should you worry about them so much.just be yourself.you dont need to keep long hair or wear dirty clothes to show that you have intellect.
ReplyDelete