Oridathoridathe oru samara nayakan...

Wuz reading abt the flash strike by Air India employees when I got the inspiration for this post. There were days when I was a kid and greeted strikes, bandhs & hartals with happiness and pleaded for more. Then there were the days in college I was a mute spectator and active participant in many mindless strikes that our campus politics have thrown up as a demonstration of party power inside campuses. And now these are the days when I see from the eyes of a "responsible" adult the damages they cause to our economy and educational system and the number of young people who waste their lives fighting for ideologies that serve to divide. And to think of this the first man who employed these measures was the Father of our Nation! I wonder if he ever thought Netaji's militiary approach to independence was better. Well strikes have taken up reams of newspaper space...so no more discourse...but being part of one...things can feel different...read on!

I would have been inescapably sucked into being one of these sinners if not for the violent nature campus politics took in my college. I forget their slogans but i remember feeling ashamed to heve been shouting that and asking my classmates to cooperate....once i even got into a verbal argument with some of the gals in my class who wouldnt leave the class. A menacing threat from an ABVP senior in college wuz enuf to drain the development of the pseudo-radical in me(i shrunk away from the SFI movement and restricted myself to giving them vocal support and moral courage in their fight to bring in a" socialist and secular" country). Well there were a lot of comic incidents these strikes produced. Once an SFI leader asked my chum Viswan, to come for a strike but the way Viswan excused himself wuz unforgettable..."eda njan innale dumbell pokkiyappam ente triceps onne ulukki, enikke athu kaaranam oru adi ondaayaal onnum cheyyan pattilla"...leaving the chota neta flummoxed! And very serious, almost tragic incidents too...

We had organized Dishaa'02, an inter collegiate technical fest and despite the presence of a minister on the stage our principal didnt come bcoz we had violated protocol in not carrying the thappana along when we went to invite him! The savages(our gang) and the rest of our class and the entire CS dept was enraged and we decided to gherao the princi. Being seniors our guys took the lead...we stormed into his office...and the next one hour is a maze...for the first time in life me and friends was affected by mob psychology. viswan at pointe blanke range tells him "iyaale aaruva...thanikke onnu avidam vare vannaal entha"...and to rub it in i said "thaan ivide koode okke nadakkunnathe naatukaare kandallo". we proceeded to disrupt classes and i even gave a couple of fiery speeches...the first and last in my college life just weeks before college was ending. But then disaster struck. We evicted a class where the teacher had gone out and seeing his class empty approached us in a fit of rage and started bad-mouthing us. Suddenly from nowhere some guys came in and unthum thallum aayi. Things had gotten out of hand. The sir was very popular amongst the automobile-branch and the abvp guys finally got their chance to hit back. Viswan, Shinoj and I were suspended after they put pressure. We had to offer a public apology or face dismissal. That day we didnt apologize. On reaching home and waiting there for me was the result of almost 6-7 months of a very focussed, methodical and dedicated phase in my undergraduate academic life... my acceptance letter from USC for my MS and an hour of indiscretion threatened everything. I told pappa but he wuz surprisingly cool abt it maybe coz he had been thru these things in college. We finally mumbled out the apology surrounded by our enemies. A year later Viswan and I visited college during our summer break from the US and the princi ushered us into his office...the same old place where we sparred...talked to us very courteously...requested us to join the alumni association and wished us luck. Time heals....

The humiliation I felt then turned to aversion for myself and then to contemplation...I have since thought wht a strike can achieve...a day of college wasted...a day spent away from what young boys normally do and into spending that with fanatics, idealogues & drifters of these parties. When I read news abt young boys getting caught copying, stealing question papers, indulging in violence, driving accidents, etc I think I could very well have been one of them. Recently Jisha told me how she saw a young boy in tvm driving a car overtaking a bus rather closely and when the driver honked, the boy flipped the birdie and then pumped his fist into the air celebrating his act of chivalry! I was "too" quick to remark...dang! these kids of today show too much attitude when jisha reminded me an incident 4-5 yrs back...i was driving and a woman ran across the road in front of me...it was close but i only neeed to slow down but i shouted out to her...thalle ningalke nere chovve onnum veetil ponde". My dad was ashamed at my behavior and he made sure with his rebuke that i felt shamed too. A little inconvenience had caused me to heap abuse on a poor woman. There are so many people we hurt when we are young...and I still shake to think abt those moments of chora-thilappu which cud have scarred me but only scraped me instead!