Transient Reflections--Part 1

I walk my way past the gates everyday amid the cacophony of the pavement, past a road streaked with mud. Everything here has a tale of its own. Trees dot the landscape, the view interspersed with graffiti having a range of limericks, blending everything from Fyataru to Kabi Sukanto.

There are occasional passages to dimly-lit large hallways, leading to departments of the arts faculty, a mythical place where Chaucer and Chandidas live in harmony. A crowd of students, bubbling over with discussions, many sporting trendy wears while some dressed in the traditional ‘bhodrolok’ dress of punjabi and pajama, presumably belonging to the arts section, make their way past me.

A little way ahead of the famous gate number four, and the air is heavy with the smell of soggy grass of Green Zone. The forlorn benches, bearing witness to countless tales of lifetime romances, would-be romances and failed romances, many as intense as a Shakespearean love story, blur out in the morning mist. Gandhi Bhavan stands like a sphinx, an ever alert sentinel.

Cover some more distance, and bordered on one side by the clanks of machines in Blue Earth, a vast expanse of pristine green greets, soon to be deflowered by the spirit of exuberant youth who will either hit a leather ball with a willow or kick a football with enthusiasm and passion.

Jadavpur University has just woken up. It is stretching its limbs.

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Event Name: Open Counselling for Admission to Vacant Seats in Engineering Discipline

Date: 01 September 2014

Current Status: CSE in IIEST Shibpur

Wanted Status: ETCE in JU (as a safety measure -àwill be elaborated in a later post)

Status of Wanted Status: Unknown

Time:  12 Noon

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Time: 1:25 pm

Status of Wanted Status: Successful

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Date: 02 September 2014

Time: 11 am

Location: TEQIP building Room 101

Sample Conversation with a classmate I have never met before

Soumik Ghosh (my co-author): Take the notes. You have missed quite a few classes. People here are friendly. You will feel at home. Welcome to JU J

Me: Thank you, thanks a lot. J

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Net result: JU ETCE student, 1^st year, 1^st Semester, Batch of 2014-18

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The best thing about this place is that there is never a dearth of stories to tell. The classroom is luridly well-lit and modern for a place generally marked starkly by damp corridors and sooty, darkened rooms taken straight out of the 80s. The blackboard, more often than not, assumes the behaviour of a static variable. Meaning, as I walk past the door early in the morning, the board fixates a cold gaze, residues of the previous day, from quantum mechanical equations to multi variable calculus, staring from the interstices of an otherwise hastily cleaned surface.

Punctuality is not the norm here and probably never has been. Yes, occasionally there are full day classes which turn us into tired sleepyheads by the time we reach home, but more often than not, timings are malleable and class schedules fluid. Jadavpur University is somewhat like the old heritage buildings of Old Goa. New, yet Old. Old, yet New. Corridors in the department building retain the potential to act as shooting spots for horror movies, and as such, walking through the unusually inclined passage instills a sense of fear, a coldness which is there to stay. It has been like this all along.

Time rolls, and in comes a figure, clad in a mundane, crumpled saree in most days, with an oblivious, detached gaze fixed at eternity, perhaps as ideal a person as can be to be teaching us the microcosm of all things quantum and its broader implications for semiconductors. In the beginning, Physical Electronics classes caused more pain than those Physical Education classes in primary school. But, as time passed, we accepted the subject and we are sure that after a prolonged love-hate relationship and countless unhappy hours spent with the notes open and an unforgiving Fermi Level sentencing us to dangerous black holes filled with deadly beasts by the name of electrons, many fell in love with the subject. We did anyway, to a great extent.

Mathematics, as always, had some interesting characters, as quirky as the subject itself. One, who spent two hours every week explaining to us the intricacies surrounding calculus but being the Professor Calculus we are, we interpreted those as case studies in adoxography. The other was mercurial and restless, with illegibly fast writing skills that made for many a good laugh. He, apparently, did research on black holes and time travel, could finish teaching gigantic chapters within minutes (time dilation?), and pumped a nauseatingly contagious energy into the class. Two characters, representing two different shades of mathematical thought.

Computer programming classes were hated by many, and they had their reasons. We loved them though. None of the other subjects were taught with such magnitude of sincerity. The degree of sophistication and planning which accompanied each lecture was breathtakingly refreshing, though, ultimately, with an acute paucity of time, not everything worked according to the plan. But, despite the lectures often turning out to be mass snore-fests, the Professor was a wonderful person. In many ways, he resembled a resurgent Jadavpur, one which is planning for a future free of the past shackles. It is only fitting that the last class, before the maelstrom, on the 16^th of September was taken by him.

Many other characters come to mind, from the Physics professor whose ‘dengue’ got cured in a day to a grumpy, pot-bellied sociology teacher with whom we had a bittersweet relation. Each tale is unique in its own way, a single tile in one infinite mosaic which was the first semester. A time of new journeys, friendships and discoveries. A time of a clean slate and a new beginning for all.

(Jointly written by Soumik Ghosh and Chandrashis Mazumdar, 1^st year ETCE students of Jadavpur University)