Young college awareness

Young man Rohan has just turned nineteen. He tells me he sometimes forgets that he’s still a teen, he feels so grown up. Stepping into college portals clearly signals the outgrowing of the cocooned shelter of home.

It seems adult characters are being chiseled out of the undifferentiated child block. Within months of entry, the college student is actively shedding puppy fat. His fond mother tells me a little wanly that he’s stopped eating.  He is going through the lean-and-mean phase in the search for individual identity, which needs must include the physical. Besides, there are girls to impress at the college.

Quite recently, I visit their home, and see the college newbie looking exhausted, but elated all the same. What’s up? I ask. He has been walking miles, he says, and is just back from a student rally. We hear that thousands of students of different colleges cut classes to march from their institutions to another to express solidarity with the student body there. This rally is against police action against their protest against official inaction against student demands against the molestation of a girl-student earlier. It all seems a little complicated to me, but essentially, the student body is riled up.

I ask the question that probably keeps his parents awake at night, have you become a political activist? No, no, he says, we joined in only because it (the protest rally) was apolitical. For children born into the traditional family system in India, breaking bounds in such a way is an awesome feeling. What is important is the realization that in a democracy protest is a right, and they begin to understand the value of the adult franchise they gain at age eighteen. 

In the college world, political awareness is imbibed from the environment. In our time, decades ago, the campus was the hotbed of political activities. Political parties would run their recruitment drives through the student unions dependent on their patronage. Thousands of young people fell victims to their machinations, during the Naxalbari movement in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. Some political people had wanted to ‘lead’ the rally, Rohan informs us, but were asked to leave. These students want no such overtones, or to have their opinions hijacked by party organizers.  

We tune into the news channel on television and find coverage of rally. We see the students marching along, and Rohan is a little disappointed that he is indistinguishable in the crowd. The elders around him though, are secretly relieved that he is not identifiable; nobody wants to be the unwitting recipient of political ire. 

Many of the young marchers clearly perceive the rally as some sort of college excursion or picnic. The musically inclined have taken along their guitars. They gather en masse to sing songs and join into street plays. It was peaceful, entirely peaceful, the young man insists, and it quite seems that way.   

Then the state minister comes on view, and he is like an aggrieved, martyred parent bemoaning bad behaviour of unruly children. He says that he was saddened by the videos shown to him of the incidents - aggressive students on a rampage, destroying property, beating up unarmed police personnel, abusing elders and so on. Lies, all lies, says our young man excitedly, nothing like that happened. I tell him to calm down and that ‘democracy’ means the other side too must be heard.  

It gets too much for him. We were there; we saw it all, he insists, everything was peaceful. I remind him that the incidents in question happened before their rally. Yes, yes, he says, but we saw the unedited videos. The police put 35 students in hospital, how come that is not being mentioned or shown on tv? The students involved in the fracas had recorded the police actions, and displayed them at the rally. Well, I counter, these could have been edited as well to show the authorities in a bad light, no? 

 

Or it just might be that outside influences did come in, in the guise of the students, to make mischief. Do you know, says Rohan, some ruling party goons locked students in at a college, so they could not participate in the rally! In volatile situations, anything is possible, and the young people are yet too naive to understand their implications. Small wonder then that parents that have suffered in the past are at pains to ensure that their children focus on studies and stay away from anything that might be deemed political. 

Memories of past times resurface in the elders, and they are fearful for the children. Remember those times, one tells me, how thousands were made to just disappear? Indeed, student unrest had been quelled with an iron hand in the past. We had heard little about that on news waves then officially censored. We had felt their effects however, with academic sessions completely disrupted in the ‘70s, and students unable to graduate because examinations were cancelled.

That government was voted out, and the Left Front came to power as the people’s party, and ruled for over three decades. Ironically, the present state administration in Bengal won the elections against all odds, sweeping them aside. The incumbent chief minister had been much admired for her grit and tenacity in standing up to their political stranglehold. It reflected in her party’s success in the elections, which had been once deemed unthinkable.

However, winning elections is one thing and governance is quite another. Despite election promises and good intentions, political mistakes seem to pile up. Anybody that doesn’t agree with them is now branded ‘maoist’ Rohan tells me, so we started to shout that we were Maoists! The point is the present administrative incumbent is fast losing the support of youth. In India, they are the new voting public, and now a sizeable demographic group. 

Most recently, the social activism against corruption carried by students in Delhi contributed to bringing down the entrenched state government. I suppose the political elders had forgotten that the young people are far more adept with technology and social networks. State machineries cannot even hope to control their communications through the informal grapevine. Political heavyweights need to learn from the past to respect the future.

Be a little mad

 Although it is a common assumption that women cannot drive, the very, very few female drivers out and about in Kolkata are particularly mindful of rules, and of doing things right. The overwhelming majority of drivers on the road are men, and the art is assumed to come to them naturally. Yet many of them have the most appalling road sense.

Compared to the planned road networks in cities around the world, many of those in Kolkata seem to remain the narrow village streets they once were. Worse, they are often in poor condition. Although the business of building construction is booming in the city, the access points have changed little. More traffic in the same space is the major problem yet to be adequately addressed in the city. From having to maneuver in small spaces, one could expect greater skills, but often the driving is with no sense at all.

It reinforces my belief that mothers in India spoil their sons. How does that follow, one might ask. Fact is these chaps are raised with the belief that they are the cat’s whiskers. Secure in doting maternal indulgences, the little emperors are able to get away with anything. And as grown men in the driver’s seat, they expect similar deference from the environment around them, and for traffic to part before them like the sea did for Moses. Like little boys with toys, thoughtless about consequences, they just want to go vroom!

 

Vehicles are positioned just about anywhere, in the fight for space.  Racing to get ahead, a driver that needs to turn right next may come up on the extreme left, and then suddenly sticking his arm out of the window as signal, attempt to make his turn, cutting clean across the paths of all the other vehicles behind. Scratched, scraped and dented car bodies are testimony to what invariably follows. Stalled traffic because two drivers are locked in altercation, is a common sight on the road. 

Small cars, the vehicles of choice for most women drivers, are like tin cans. Though they may negotiate the narrow roads better, and leave a smaller carbon footprint, they damage easily and generally come off second best in even minor collisions. Their repair has to be mostly out of pocket, since insurance payouts for bodywork are meagre. Knowing full well that the litigation process is too cumbersome to pursue, the other side gleefully gets away scot-free.

Moreover, women drivers are in a minority, and traditionally they are not expected to play men’s games, nor are they taught to be overtly aggressive in public. The odds stack against gender on Indian roads. Men tend to hit and run, the general public stares rather than supports, and the police are inert. I’ve learned to be theatrical in such situations. Being perceived a little ‘mad’ seems to work – nothing hurts the male ego more than being held up to public ridicule! 

 

My car has recently returned from the garage, and I am being extra careful. If a couple of weeks go by without incident, it is cause for joy. At a crossing, the signal lights change to amber just as I approach the stop line. Seeing no point in trying to beat the red light, I slow to a stop. Almost immediately I feel the nudge from behind, rear-ended by the yellow cab following. Really? I jump out and throw my hands up and out in the classic gesture of What?! The driver stays put inside his cab. His passengers too are quiet, embarrassed at being in the public spotlight.

Pointing dramatically at the man behind the wheel, I jab two fingers towards my eyes, up towards the lights and then at my car, indicating that he should keep alert and eyes front while driving. The man pokes his head out of the window and says, I saw the lights, I saw the red, so see, I stopped. How? I retort loudly, by hitting me? No, no, he says placatingly, I hit the brake, but see, it just slipped. Bystanders testify that no damage is done; it is only a light tap, let him go. I wave my hand imperiously for him to back off, and he complies at once. 

Non-resident Indians visiting the country, consider it quite an experience to ride passenger in the front seat. Drivers themselves in the West, they shut their eyes, or exclaim in horror at vehicles passing inches away. A friend and I are looking for a particular road leading off from the main road. I indicate the rather narrow opening we have just gone past as probably it. I decide to come around again and take it on the next pass. She stares in surprise - that is a road for traffic going both ways? Well, it is broader than many others in the city, where one has to back up to some siding to let another get by! Rejoining the flow of traffic, I position rightmost, in preparation for the U-turn. 

Nearing the crossing, I turn on the right indicator. Three lights begin to flash at once, at the front, the back and on the side - essentially, leaving no room for doubt for anybody following as to the directional intent. A couple of motorcyclists move up further to my right. They both turn right and roar away, and as I begin to follow on the turn I noticed a third motorcyclist gunning his vehicle to catch up.  Aha! I thought, he’s decided he must go first too, he’s not about to let me beat him to it. Two-wheeler riders seem always on the go, and see even half a metre of available space as ample opportunity to zip by. They look pretty unstable to me, and I give them a wide berth.

 

The turn road is up a little incline and I slow down further to accommodate. To my surprise, on coming alongside, the rider suddenly throws up his hands and lets go of the handlebars altogether! The motorcycle dashes into the bumper of my car, and then away, with him trying desperately to stay on.  A low boundary wall across the turn road stops them from hitting oncoming traffic. Immediately a crowd gathers around.

I drive up the incline and out of the main traffic flow before turning off my car’s engine. Within a month, the car body looks damaged again! Meanwhile, the man has struggled to his feet. As he spots a couple of women emerge from the car, his fear turns to belligerence. He decides it is safe to go on the offensive. He accuses me of speeding, and turning without any indicator lights. 

His bluster, though annoying, makes the actual picture clear.  The fellow had accelerated before the intersection not to turn, but to zigzag past me and get ahead on the straight road. I suppose the sudden incline that he would have to zig up first, and then zag down, fazes him at the end. Losing his nerve at the crucial juncture, he abandons both his own daring plan and his ‘bike control. Somebody has to be blamed for the failure, and who better scapegoat than two innocuous-looking women! 

Bystanders usually like to side with the ‘little guy’ in the two-wheeler versus four-wheeler fracas. But with us in the fray, they decided to just watch the drama. The biker is asked if he is hurt. Immediately he tries to locate some cut or bruise to draw public sympathy with!  Stop pretending, I say in strident tones, you are not hurt at all and neither is your brand new bike. Look instead at the damage your stupidity caused my car. I draw attention to the front bumper that dangles loose and forlorn with the force of the impact.

I wag a stern finger in his face to emphasize his ineptitude - You were on the wrong side, you were speeding to overtake at the intersection, and you lost control. For a moment he is nonplussed at being yelled at. Then perhaps realizing that public opinion too might soon indict him, and who knows, they could drag him to the police station for further humiliation, he wordlessly picks up his bike and quickly exits the scene.

As we inspect the damage left behind, people come over to help. One knowledgeable person pushes the bumper back into place. He assures me that damage is just the dent on its side, and the car’s road running ability is unaffected. As I turn on the ignition, we see the indicator lights are still on, and they begin to blink cheerily again. I point it out to the bystanders and they nod in agreement. That chap, say a couple of teenaged boys, shaking their heads and laughing. They point in the direction in which he made off as they relate the story to curious latecomers that might have missed the show.

If women are to fend for themselves, they must be assertive. They need to confront the perpetrators, if only for the satisfaction of the last word, and to dispel the widely held notion of them being pushovers. Hopefully, some men will now think twice before taking punga (liberties) with women drivers on the road in Kolkata.