Election results

AISA won. So we(?) can all heave a sigh of relief. The university continues to be the bastion of communists. Unlike last time, all the Student Union seats (president, vice-president, secretary) have been won by AISA.
The YFE won as expected the councillor seats in all the science schools. Surprisingly, and this should give Rohan some sleepless nights, ABVP won 4 councillor seats.
My friend Vibha, who is at the German Center, and I discussed the elections in great detail as we took our customary walk yesterday night. She wondered if YFE might be the answer to the Congress and BJP. I do not know. YFE seems to be running on a single point agenda at present: No reservations. I am pretty ambivalent about the entire issue. At one point there is no use of discussing reservations at higher education level unless we ensure good schooling at primary level. But, on the other hand, discriminations exist. Not only at primary school level but even at job level as Surinder Jodhka's research has shown.

Election mayhem

Today we made it to the front page. In The Hindu there is an article about the mayhem created at yesterday's President's debate. The Student Union President, in case anyone is wondering.
It is that time of the year. The student's vote for their representatives today. Some time later it will be the turn of the teachers. Only we are more sophisticated. We make it so that the representatives are elected unanimously. But more about that later.
To get back to the student's election, there is a genuine fear that this time YFE(Youth for Equality) might win, ending the communist monopoly. Last year, there was a fractured mandate with two posts going to SFI-AISA and two posts going to AISF. They kept fighting amongst themselves, wasting away the mandate given to them. It had been a close fight last year with YFE garnering all the votes from the Science schools. For some time it had appeared as though they had won but the Social Science schools ensured that the communists won. This year it appears as though YFE has made tremendous inroads into the Social Science schools too. All the posters from SFI-AISA are targetted towards YFE. Amusingly, considering almost all the YFE students are from science school and I know many of them, the YFE posters are all about drawing tables and pointing out the differences between them and the rest of the parties. It all appears so logical and thoughtful. I just wish they would apply little of that logicality when they are asked analyze their results. Maybe we need to change their Ph.D. topics.
My friend, Rohan, expressed relief that at least the ABVP threat has been nullified. I wanted to tell him that ABVP is capable of decimating themselves without any outside help. Just reading the Hindu article will explain why. Someone should explain to them that Lord Ram can defend himself, thank you.

Flood in the lab

My lab is adjacent to the toilet and thanks to the excellent plumbing system put in place by the CPWD, there is always water in my lab-leakage from the toilet.
So this morning when the security called me up to say there is water in my laboratory, I cursed the plumbing system and ran over. But this time CPWD was innocent of the carnage. It was my student.

Anyway, at 7am in the morning I ran over to the lab, caught hold of the cleaning staff and got the bucketloads of water out of the lab. Fortunately, there is no lab underneath mine so I did not have to worry about leaks. But the student who was responsible for perpetrating the mess got it from me.

That one would think was the end of the story. But apparently today is flood day. Around mid-day, just after I had finished yelling at Mac, the lab gets flooded again. This time it is the plumbing works. Someone had left the tap open in the adjacent toilet and the water spilled over into mine.

It is still wet but at least Pravin ran over to close the taps.

My Mamu's Daughter

That is the name of the story that I submitted to Indian Literature, a publication of Sahitya Akademi,when I was still living in Bangalore. I moved places, I called them up a year later to ask about the status, and they said it will get printed when it does. I gave up but just in case informed them about the change in address.

It was published five years later. The author's copy went to Bangalore from where Uncle (my ex-landlord) redirected it to Madras. Appa found it waiting for him.

All is well that ends well.

On a similar note: I called up NBT about the manuscript I had submitted. It had taken them two years to even accept the manuscript. Last year we finally signed the agreement. And then I waited and waited and waited. Till...They assure me that it is slated for publication next year. They are, apparently, searching for an illustrator.

Amma's dilemma

About two weeks the snake appeared in the Old Transit House. It was calmly sunning itself when a group of human beings arrived on the scene. It is impossible to say who was more alarmed but the upshot of it was that the snake quickly slithered over to a wall of bricks left behind by a thoughtful bunch of CPWD workers. And there it remained, resistant to all attempts to flush it out.
Now amma is petrified of snakes. She is convinced that all of them bite and all of them are poisonous. So she refused to step out unless Ravi, the iron-wallah was there as a protector against the snakes. After all he irons clothes downstairs and if a snake ventures out, he would thrash it.
So here began amma's dilemma. On the 21st October she is due to leave for Madras. The train is at 6.40pm. The taxi is at the door. She has to take the taxi to go to the station. But there is that snake, making its appearance at the most (in)appropriate time. What should amma do?
I posed the problem to my brother who claims that game-theory can solve all problems. He said that amma will cancel the trip. Oh, rubbish. The trip cannot be canceled. Remember, there is the TV (all the idiotic serials) and gossip waiting in Chennai while things at her daughter's place are plain boring. So the ticket cannot be cancelled.
Then my brother said that tell the CPWD to build a staircase from the balcony. Baloney. CPWD with their 150 years of excellent service will tell you that the materials for building the staircase is not in store. It will take six months.
Then my brother, quickly losing patience, said that it was not game-theory problem. Whatever.
Hah!
The perfect solution awaited on Sunday when amma was ready to leave.
We came out of the house, the luggage rolled out, ready to lock the door. The taxi was at the door. Ravi, as I had predicted, had left early because it was Vijayadashmi.
And out on the porch stood the peacock. Her peacock. She adores all the peacocks and runs out, pushing her glasses up her nose, to gaze at them enraptured whenever they make an appearance. She feeds them endless bajra impervious to the fact that the peacocks are a pest who eat up my saplings.
So there was that peacock, saying goodbye to her, protecting her from the snake.
The perfect solution. Say what?

photos

Finally, I got around to it. Or rather Appa did. So the photos of my site visit can be accessed here. I will get around to the captions, promise. Meantime, it is back to teaching. One class every day: Mon, Wed and Fri- M.Phil. And Tue and Thur-M.Sc. To one bunch I teach eukaryotic gene transcription and to the other bunch I teach Human genetics. As different as chalk from cheese. Ugh! The only kind thing I can actually say about Human Genetics is that I have learnt something about a subject that I knew zilch.
Oh, the university has been kind. For days I could not access the blog website. They had put restrictions on which sites we can access. It appears that they came to their senses and lifted up the restriction.

For the want of opportunities

Today I visited a NGO named Udayan Care. It was started by Dr. Kiran Modi after a personal tragedy. One of the schemes launched by Udayan Care is known as Udayan Shalini fellowships. The scheme provides fellowships to young girls who want to pursue higher education but cannot because of circumstances. Very often girls have to drop out of school because they have to add to the family income or the family is pressurizing them to get married or there is no money. Dr. Modi told me how the scheme was initiated. At first the organization was focusing on orphans. They had started homes for these children much like the SOS village. Then one day her driver said to her that he wished he was dead because then the education of his children too would have been taken care by Dr. Modi's organization. And thus was launched the scheme.
I was reminded of my own encounter with a young woman at Bahranpur. Here, Mahila Swarojgar Samiti has organized Self Help groups for women. When we reached the village the women all got together. A young woman sat besides me. She asked me where I was from. I asked her what she was doing.
"I am in the final year Inter," she confided.
Final year Inter is equivalent to 12th class.
"What will you do next?"
"I will have to stop my studies."
"Why?"
"We have no money. I have to start earning."
"What will you do if you had money to go to college?"
Her eyes lit up.
"I would like to become a doctor."