The Young India

Apart from these pseudo-Bengalis, there also existed a Delhiite in our batch who claimed to be dying of a serious disease. If he was saying the truth then he deserves all the sympathy and empathy in the world. However, if he was lying (which is probably the case) then he deserves to be punished (like a night or two in jail can really put the hypochondria, the attention-seeking behaviour and the urban loneliness in place). Because all the drama about this disease and death only added to the negativity on campus and seriously affected my well-being and that of my batch mates while he remained comfortable at his off-campus house in Delhi. 

A place like JNU that is supposed to be a safe haven for students and scholars turned into a breeding ground for negativity, bad behaviour and aggressiveness due to such characters. And the Delhi ‘ka paani’ is such that it can even make the nicest and the gentlest of people turn aggressive and manipulative. Although I am generally a mild mannered person, even I harboured revenge fantasies about taking one of our Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s personal security guards (with whom I am slightly acquainted ,whose number I have and who offered to help if there were any problems in Delhi!) on a weekend to the houses of these hot heads and death-faking johnnies and then make them pee in their pants, crap in their underwear, vomit on their shirt, cough on their ears and other such silly revengeful ( and very unhygienic!) things which Delhiites are famous for saying and doing.

University Pride: Library at JNU   From Photogriefs

If you live in Delhi, you end up speaking Hindi and if you live there long enough, your Hindi improves a lot on its own. So instead of ‘raah’, you say ‘intezaar’ while you’re waiting for something. Your ‘accha’ might turn into ‘badhiya’. And your ‘taklif’ might turn into ‘mushkeel’. So these and many such wonderful Hindi/Urdu words suddenly become a part of your vocabulary. At JNU there was also a healthy population of students from Bihar. And I found that my Hindi also contained inflexions of Bihari. At times, I would end up saying the plural Hum(‘We’) instead of the singular, ‘Main’ (I) while referring to myself. One really cool phrase that I learned from a UP friend of mine is, ‘Aap Load mat Lijye’. Everytime, I or someone around me gets tensed about something, I tell them ‘Aap Load mat Lijye!’.

Back home in Ahmedabad, I had South Indian, Gujarati, Punjabi, Sindhi, Parsi and also a Chinese friend. At JNU, however, people from every region had their own little group and people usually didn’t try much to get out of their regional comfort zone. So according to my experience and to my surprise, Ahmedabad is more cosmopolitan than Delhi! However, in a campus full of students from Bengal, Bihar, Assam, Manipur, Rajasthan, Maharashtra and other states; there were hardly any Gujarati students, which is a bit of a shame. Because having Gujju students in a top academic place like JNU can do a whole lot of good to Gujjuland. 

However, on a lighter note, finally there does exist a place on earth where Gujaratis are very rare. And that is JNU!Some time back, when I read that the centre from where I did my masters in literature was ranked as one of the top 100 English departments in the world, I was really proud of being associated with JNU as a student. I think if we let go off all the pettiness and silly regionalisms then we can go much higher as a university and as a country. However, for that we all have to work together and learn to laugh at ourselves and the places we come from.I am quite an optimist. 

I hope the future will be brighter and the Delhiites and the Bengalis nicer! Bipasha Basu, I hope you’re reading this article!

A silhouette of the Rashtrapati Bhavan (where my security guard friend lives, beware! (Photo: Shaival)