While I've lived through the worst riots in Indian history, life has been more or less peaceful the last few years.
Then, last Wednesday, the thespian Dr. Rajkumar passed away.
The subsequent riots brought back memories of 2000, when the college admission process, and subsequently, the start of the academic year in Bangalore was delayed because of the riots in Bangalore. It was when Veerappan had kidnapped Dr. Rajkumar, and Bangalore was burning for that. While I was in Mumbai, awaiting the start of the college year, I remember Dr. Rajkumar for having touched my life at that time.
This time around, we headed indoors as soon as we heard the news. However by the middle of the second day indoors, we had run of Maggi, and gas in the cylinder. This brought back hard hitting memories of 1993, and it looked like we had a hard 2-3 days ahead. That and a couple of other factors combined and we made an ad-hoc road-trip to Goa. No offence intended, but we will always remember Dr. Rajkumar for providing us with this opportunity, if only indirectly through his fans.
In other news, I was headed towards my brother's college to meet his HOD regarding some shortage of attendance letters that they had sent to my parents in Lucknow, when I received a call from him, asking me to give the whole thing a miss.
Apparently, everyone in his college was on strike, demanding the dismissal of his college warden on accusations of sexual harrasment. Thankfully, everyone included all the students, the non-teaching staff, and all the teachers, all the way up to the vice-principal. The point in question according to me was, who they were striking against, but my brother was having good fun nevertheless.
I'm almost envious of him, never having been a part of a college strike myself. This, and a couple of other incidents are making us wonder whether we should consider politics as an appropriate career for him.
Monday, April 24, 2006
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5 comments:
we would never have strike in our college on sexual harrasment grnds thanks to our then princi and Dj.oh but the entire electronics class was suspended in 5th semester because we mass bunked.we were suspended for 10 whole days ..
----gayathri
i do wish disasters on a few, deserving ppl...but this is the first time i'm doin it coz i'd like to read an account of whatever Murphy did and what it could do to Murphy...hey its May 10th..none so far?
@gayathri: I don't get it. Do you mean to say that we would never have a sexual harrasment case in our college because of princi and Dj, or do you mean to say that even if it had happened, we wouldn't have striked.
I'm not sure you have understood this, but what happened in my brother's college is that the warden made advances on a girl, who was a hostelite, and by definition under his care. In fact the newspaper (Bangalore Times) reported this as attempted rape. It is hard to imagine the principal of our college doing something like that, but I'm sure these guys didn't imagine something like this could happen before it actually did.
As an update on this issue, the erring warden was dismissed from his post as both warden and professor (yeah, this dude used to teach too. shudder!), but police action/press has been supressed to protect the reputation of the college. If it were up to me, I would have moved my brother out of that college.
@Elz: As usual, the lack of posts indicate lack of time, not lack of disasters. There are several to report, and not enough time to report them in :(
well what i meant to say is there wuldnt be any sexual harassment in our college.i cannot speak for the girls hostel because i havent stayed there .However shouldnt a girl's hostel have a woman warden.I mean i think it would be better that way .
Gayathri
I'm sure that as far as background & past record was concerned, the erring warden/professor that we are talking about must have had a clean slate before the college recruited him. Its tough to imagine that this could have happened.
Even in our college hostels, while I was there, the principal was the warden for both the girls and the guys hostel. Later on, they appointed separate wardens for both hostels, and only then did the girls hostel have a female warden.
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