Nav-wronged: a Tale of Trust and Betrayal
A few things I want you to know before reading my story:
- I’m a third-year, possibly in my last semester ever at Ashoka.
- I’ve been in isolation for a week, and as I write this, it is my last day in quarantine.
- Navrang, the Film Society of Ashoka, has owed me a Rs. 80 Dosai coupon since November 24th 2018.
So I’m looking around this room, right? The one I’ve spent the last six days in and managed to empty out all my bags and take up every corner of in the short time I’ve been here. I almost feel bittersweet knowing that in less than 24 hours my Covid test results will come back, in all likelihood negative, and I will be released like a bird from a cage, onto the campus I’ve missed dearly for almost an entire year, ready to spend possibly my last two and a half months ever inside these red brick walls before my convocation.
Anyway, I’m looking around and I’m thinking about creating impressions, about legacies, and I can’t help but feel a little humbled by the place I have in the history of this still-young university. Of circles completing and character arcs resolving, of all of us inheriting this place from our seniors and giving something we can hopefully be proud of to first years who are yet to arrive. But something haunts this imagination of a perfect world I so lovingly constructed, a spectre that takes on eerily familiar shapes, voices that sound like men who show up in classes they aren’t enrolled in to tell you they have seen that movie the professor is referencing and did you know about the composer?
The chorus of film bros got louder in my head, taunting me, refusing to let me sleep; they babbled about screenings and Stanley Kubrick and the 180° rule, and piercing through it all was the low, villainous cackle of everyone’s favourite meme-er, my arch nemesis of almost three years: Mijan Minha (name changed to preserve his identity). The erstwhile head (or something, I am personally not up-to-date with the hierarchy and designations of every Ashokan club) of Narvrang: the embodiment of all that is evil, parading as a lovable group of cinema enthusiasts.
Some of you may have heard this story before, I don’t want to be presumptuous, but I imagine it’s turned into something of Ashokan Lore. I was in my first year, excited and naïve- I trusted the student clubs, the events they hosted, the trinkets they dangled in front of my eyes. I attended FilmCon at the behest of my friend who was a Navrang underling at the time, excited for a night of games, popcorn, and good-natured fun. I entered myself into a movie trivia contest, and what do you know, I won! I won, and the feeling of victory was overwhelming.
This moment was pivotal in my feeling like I was getting initiated into campus culture, a rite of passage that could only be completed when I redeemed my reward and used the 80 rupee Dosai coupon to avail myself a discount on the Chicken curry dosa after a triumphant trek to the sports block. The very sports block that looms in front of me now, as I look out the window in isolation, in my sixth and final semester. It’s been two years since I even ate a Dosa, a vow I took when I began my quest for justice.
Over the years I’ve tried appealing to Narang, to Mijan personally, and even through social media campaigns from my own Instagram. None of them seemed to have worked. So finally, last sem, I made a decision. I applied to the one campus publication I thought could help me and give me a platform to speak. Yes, that’s right, I joined Kalinga, for this very purpose. And I hope when you read this, you will see that at the end of the day, I’m just a girl, writing to a historically apathetic student body, and asking them to use their voice for something that matters. Help me finish what I started before it’s too late. Help me defeat Mijan, and complete my path.
Of course, some of you may ask the question, why should I care? I don’t know Mijan, or even, Mijan is my friend! Why would I help you defeat him? But the truth is, Mijan Minha is but a façade, a name to represent a far greater evil, a microcosm of the entity that threatens to destroy the illusion of profundity I am granting myself in these final moments of college: Navrang. Mijan may be my battle to fight, but Navrang is The Great War, and we must band together, to defeat them. Not just for me and my Dosa, but for all Ashokans, and the future of this great institution.
**Kalinga doesn’t endorse or represent the views presented in this article. Kiana has mentioned on numerous occasions that she will be doing the fourth year, undermining certain grand claims she made in this article she forced us to publish. Moreover, we have definitive proof she has eaten several Dosas in the last two years, a considerable number of which were consumed at Dosai.
