The Crazy Ones
“You have a body of a 42 year old guy. How old are you exactly?”, inquired the physio.
“21”, I lied. I was at 20 years and 11 months.
“You need to take care of yourself, you know that right?”
“I do.”
It was apparent that the days of past glory were gone when I used to boast about my god-like ability to slice the ball over the net in front of any starry-eyed freshman who’d have been willing to listen. The belly was out proclaiming my entry into the IT world. I was officially a Software Engineer.
“So, when did it all start to go downhill?” after he patiently listened to how I had it all together a few years back with a healthy BMI and a respectable amount of hair on my head. An alarming thing that he mentioned after taking a look at my medical report of the mandatory health checkup that my firm made me go through was my lipid profile. I for some strange reason, was in the danger area.
I couldn’t answer.
It was a tough question that one. If someone was to ask me when exactly I got into the shit-storm, that I had always seem to be into, whenever people saw my face on weekends or on random weekday bustling down from the main-building towards the Multi-activity Centre office, I wouldn’t have been able to answer. On a random day in the Spring semester, I looked something like this:
Maybe it was the phone call on the eve of 7th August with Yash when I confirmed my intention to run for the office. Or the time in 6th semester when I discussed the idea of contesting elections next sem with a college senior. Although some months down the line that wouldn’t have mattered. There were even more gruesome incidents that had disturbed my understanding of the way I thought the world worked.
It could’ve been the day when I failed to get a motion passed across the student senate only due to my inexperience and lamentable negotiation skills and shat on the work done over the first two quarters of my tenure. Or the time when the mother of a guy spoke to me whose son (one of the gentlemen from my senior batch) had decided on one random day to take off from his hostel without a word and never return again? That was March, if I remember correctly. Or the time when I spent an hour in the Main building with a father whose only son had died in a freak accident while playing squash in late February?
I couldn’t say.
A bit of a background here. Like any typical male who ends up at IITR, I had no high school experience. Which meant that I perfectly fit the description of an overly enthusiastic and mildly socially challenged guy who used correct grammar in 95% of his sentences. I also knew at that time that talking about Chetan Bhagat would make me uncool. This made me an alpha at college and almost a right fit for Watch Out, which happens to be a college magazine with a remarkable alumni history of 23 years. I say almost because unlike most members of the group, I was not a creep and (still am) a disappointment in terms of whatever trivia or pop culture reference that was thrown around in the general discussion of first year. I seldom think the reason I became the Chairman of the group was that I was the least weird of them all. I won’t be lying if I told you that I was one of the most outgoing guy of the CS batch of 2016 (which is not a compliment if you’re aiming for Google or Facebook or something like a job) and had a limited interest in programming and everything relevant to growth of mankind. Unlike most of the typical males that you might find in R, I served as the General Secretary, Academics Affairs (UG) and Convener to the Student Senate of IITR for the year 2015–16.
In this duration, I made:
(a)a lot of promises to people
(b)a lot of mistakes, as a human
(c)screwed up pretty badly at places that still keep me awake at night
There were however certain crucial lessons I learnt, most of them the ugly way, which I would like to share with you. Even though I know that this might not add even an ounce of depth to your life without proper context, I’ll go ahead with it nevertheless. Because hedonism, that’s why.
Statutory Warning: The piece is not meant as a guide.
In case you’re wondering why you should read this, I think, if you’re still in college, that this would help you rationally decide on who should be the next person you’d want to see as your representative. If you’re out of that place, then there’s not point actually because I know that you don’t vote.
These are just some findings that you might find useful just in case if you ever become answerable to 8000 people in your life. You can find some life lessons too in here, just in case you’re one of those people who can find inspiration in any random thing you read on internet. I am not going to criticise any particular person or group or my alma mater for that matter, even though I might be itching very badly to do so. I love my Institute. I love my country. Modi Rocks. Bharat Mata ki Jai.
Politics and Masturbation
“I won’t be doing it the next time”
— Every Polybaz in College, ever.
The kind of euphoria that is usually witnessed at the time of elections provides an interesting insight into how human beings function. In general, people who contest elections have absolutely no idea what they’re getting themselves into. If you find a candidate who has seen the cover of the Senate manual or is remotely aware about the constitution of IITR, then it’s real world equivalent of catching a Mewtwo near Solani Aqueduct.
Like a quintessential democratic election of our country, the votes are hardly ever cast on the basis of the ability of the candidates or what their manifesto reads. The campus politics is no alien from linguistic and regional biases. Naturally, everyone here desires to be a godfather of some sort, determined to prove the superiority of his clan.
On a surface it might appear majorly as a dick measuring competition between some totally serious folks, who are ready to go teri ma ka saaki-naka at a moment’s notice but that’d be too naive a description.
It’s a beautiful game, highly addictive due to the absolute nature of its results and egotistically satisfying. Generations of poet-turned-engineers-turned-poets have tried to romanticise the intricacies encompassed in politics.
Poly.
The raw, insolent instincts of men engulfing themselves tirelessly and almost involuntarily in the centuries old practice of manipulation, mischief and malice for no common good, but only for a deeper, mysterious pleasure that gets derived out of pure dominance over other men.
Sadly, politics is not my area of expertise. I was a learner during the duration of my campaign, where more experienced men than me took charge of things. This piece, I must add, is not on elections. It’s on life after that.
There is a fundamental difference between the mindset that you need to have while working as a part of the administration and while running a campaign.
Elections are cool. Governance is not
Governance is the real world equivalent of a Test Match. It’s hard-work. It’s tough. It takes an insane amount of energy and patience to work on policy level issues. And the good parts are either too difficult to spot or the match simply ends in draw. Governance involves sitting your ass down into a meeting with people 3 times your age and deliberating over a solution that satisfies the maximum number of people involved in the decision making. And with all due respect, this also includes asking the same people who grade your papers to honorably fuck-off.
There needs to be understanding on when to speak softly and when to use harsh words. A good representative is the one that has the balance of both. Quite ostensibly, due to some reason you might assume that as a representative it becomes an obligation for the person in-charge sitting in front of you to give two fucks to what you’re saying.
It’s not.
All organisations, government or private, have humans at every level and it’s virtually impossible to get anything done if you damage the communication channel between yourself and your senior. This brings me to the next point:
Conduct Matters
When you’re answerable to people you cannot play the victim card. You can’t be sorry. You just cannot give up like most people would do while facing a roadblock.
Think about it this way: You volunteered for this job. And saying that you can’t do it is simply dishonouring your word.
Our country survives on the intellect of people who are answerable to leaders who have a tendency to blab out random things in public. College administration is not like that. You are NOT a politician when you’re in the office. You’re an administrator. Your job is to put your brain into things that matter, come up with tangible solutions and make a sound decision while keeping a straight head. You don’t put down your demands like Student Unions do. A Student Council is rather subtler model of representation and hence it becomes a task that requires patience instead of being the captain of your school’s debate team.
You won’t impress a 50-something prof with an unreasonable argument. Nor you’ll be able to put your point across if the other person assumes you to be an arrogant prick who wears loafers and shorts in the meeting.
People are like that. Deal with it.
It’s difficult balance to strike. The people who can do it at this age are difficult to find, since it takes some maturity to control your tongue and at the same time put your point across.
There were times when I lost my cool too. There were times when I wasn’t strong enough. But as I said. That’s exactly how I learnt that…
It ain’t about how hard you hit
You are entitled to nothing.
Not even a meeting with the Deans. In case you feel that the position you just fought, crawled, bought and puked your way into grants you an access card to every office in the main building, then you are most likely to end up in RP after the 2nd week.
After my 4th week in the office, I, along with a hand-picked team of 12 members, started building up arguments for the removal of timing restrictions for female students . The path ahead seemed pretty straightforward as the premise of the rule only concerned the security inside the campus post a certain time. The change however implied abolition of bio-metric attendance for the females and introduction of cost-effective security solutions at an institute level. And that too after seeking approval of all the people who were involved in the decision making: the Chief Wardens, Security personnel, two Deans and a bunch of people in the higher administration.
After 2 months of work, involving countless meetings with the authorities, where the team worked on both the administrative and the ground level, we ended up proposing solutions to improve the security in the campus in the Student Senate.
The proposal was blasted to shreds in that meeting that stretched for 3.5 hours.
Many things went wrong that day. My inexperience was obvious while putting the proposal across, as I and my team, hadn’t met the Chairman of the meeting beforehand. This meant that all our solutions weren’t in a shape to be sent to the faculty senate for further discussion, as the loopholes pointed out by the Chair were something that I personally didn’t have any answers to.
But that was not the end of it. I followed up, taking into account the reforms as the idea of removing the restrictions went further up in the ladder of decision making. The matter went to the Dean’s Committee meeting, where the decision was postponed. This was because the previous decision of moving the decision from 10 to 11 was still under scrutiny period. This was enumerated in the minutes of the previous meeting which me and my team had conveniently overlooked.
Bottom-line: 3 and a half months were gone, which happened to be half my tenure. Although I hadn’t committed the rookie mistake of putting all the eggs in one basket as there were other things on the Academic front I was working on but still, people around me were disappointed. The team had lost its momentum. Even I had begun to doubt my abilities as a leader.
Winter was here.
In retrospect, it sounds very convenient when I say that I started all over after the November debacle.
It is still one of the hardest things I ever experienced in life: Putting my gloves back on and venturing out again towards the main-building for another bout. Even the authorities were a little surprised to see me on 4th of January, with a shameless smile and a tentative plan of next 4 months in my hand.
Taming the Beast
Truth is that, students in general, can never really understand the extent of the reach of the Students’ Affairs Council, how hard they might cry on social media and to whatever extent their posts might get viral on Scoopwhoop.
SAC is a democratic advisory body. It’s similar to a country’s parliament house. It has a well-defined function, along with enumerated procedures to be followed during the course of discussions. It’s a body meant for smart people who can understand the intricacies involved in a decision. It’s a body meant for students to be a part of a bigger picture, something that they might’ve never experienced in their lives.
In an abstract sense, structurally SAC is perhaps the most beautiful entity that I have ever been a part of as a student.
I have seen it breathing. I have seen it fall. I have seen it roaring out to life at moments when I had given up all hope. It can be marvelous in ways unimaginable.
The work of an organisation like that of SAC is defined by its leader. The efficiency is only as good as the people holding the top job. I grasped it too late but this is an inherent bug that the administration always takes advantage off.
How? Eventually, every committee serving as an advisory body to the central senate sees the GenSec or his/her nominated member as a participant. So the entire conduct of the Council falls upon the shoulders of the leader since it becomes the GenSec’s responsibility to balance the load and ensure that both factions, running at the Hostel level and the Central level are fine-tuned to complete their goals.
It’s a herculean task, almost impossible without a team. And going lone wolf is just inviting the hunters to eat you up piece by piece.
But even after the presence of a team of advisors/motivators/life-supports, there are plenty of things where you’ve got to go alone. The meetings meant for institute level decisions, new initiatives, unprecedented accidents, unexpected controversies, (seemingly) unsolvable student issues, and academic woes — all of this falls upon your shoulders at the nth hour.
The Crazy One
We live in a strange world with stranger people making the strangest of the decisions everyday without thinking. Not that I have met a lot of people in the past 21 years of my existence but this fact becomes apparent after you are down by 50 pages in Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow.
There were choices that I faced everyday.
Some difficult ones. Some easier than the most.
Of course, there’s simply no way to open a pub in college and legalise marijuana for medicinal purposes. Of course, there’s no way that authorities will remove the 75% attendance rule. Of course, you won’t be allowed to interfere in academic matters, beyond a certain extent precisely defined in the functions of Institute Academic Committee by the prof in whose classes you doze off.
If you end up doing everything the admins and the students ask you to do, then only a little of your social life gets left since the time you get becomes necessary for catching up on sleep. Your health, both physical and mental deteriorates. You might even develop anxiety issues, if you get too obsessed.
Lesson Learnt: If you can do everything, then you’re probably Superman. Don’t. Be. Superman.
In April, I was one step away from seeing the student counsellor. I had started to experience sleep issues and insufferable headaches in the evenings. In one of the morning lectures (Yes. I attended each one of those fuckers), I had to leave in between because my hands wouldn’t stop shaking. That was because I had conveniently missed the last 3 meals so as to prepare and attend an arbit meeting with the Dean Admin on some random issue that I didn’t remember.
Insanity.
It was a lesson well learnt. Productivity increases exponentially when you’re healthy and are not fighting a relentless battle against the clock on the wall chiming “Fuck you” every 4th hour. Madness towards your idea, your goal or your target, sounds quite enthralling when you read those blogs of suit-wearing consultants and dark knight entrepreneurs going 24x7 with their lives.
That’s bull, imho.
The best output only comes out of you when you do justice to yourself first and to others later. Life is too short to stay in a hospital. And definitely too short if you’re in IITR’s.
Epilogue
It’s not as if I did not remember those night outs in Ravindra Bhawan, testing my limits of handling an insolent amount of bullshit every day for an entire year. Honestly, I didn’t remember when was the last time I had breakfast in college. Going to mess was a ritual that I neglected out of all the things I had got myself into, and that held true at times for dinner and lunch too.
The aftermath, dear reader, if you are following the aforementioned routine in any format or in any manner, is not exactly a pretty picture.
The Physio has given me an exercise and diet regimen. I am supposed to follow it religiously otherwise I will die at an early age.
I am sort of concerned because I don’t want to die at an early age.
Let peace be upon earth. Will update more on life in Bangalore. It’s quite fun, actually since I don’t get calls at 2AM anymore on how the universe has screwed with people. It’s definitely two notch easier than the one I had made for myself in R.
It’s kind of like a vacation, except for the fact that it’s paid.
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