new stories.

I've a pile of movies sitting around on my hard disk, waiting to be watched. A whole host of story books that I really ought to read, but haven't got around to reading. Bushels of poetry that I have marked out for myself, but haven't read. My usual reason for all of this is the fact that I'm "busy".

But the truth is, that's a lie.

I spend hours re-watching bits of movies that I like, reading parts of books that I already know off by heart, reciting poems that I've known since I was a child. I've spent hours re-visiting all those life affirming moments, while effacing the rest of the story-line. And I've ached, as I watched it. Ached as I watched the last scene from Intouchables, the jubilation of the team from Wiley College, the student clambering onto a table and saying "Oh Captain! My Captain!", the tie of friendship between Miss Daisy and Hoke.

I'm scared of art, suddenly. I'm afraid of the sort of impact it has on me. I am afraid of uncertainties -- I often read the plot of movies/books and watch/read on that basis. Art used to be a revelatory experience. It had the power to reaffirm my faith in relationships and life. Now it seems taunting. And I don't quite know why. I don't know when and why I turned, from a girl who wolved down books at alarming rates, into a person who would much rather live inside her head. A person who is afraid of stories, be it in her own life or otherwise. A person who treats mere friendliness with unqualified suspicion, even hostility. A person who is more accustomed to having people afraid of her than not; indeed, to the extent that she doesn't know how to react to being approached normally. A person who has begun, sometimes, to think of herself in terms of instrumental value, as opposed to merely having a place in the universe. A person who's perpetually on the defensive and sometimes on the offensive, but rarely just being. A person who presumes that the worst opinion delivered is most likely to be the common view of a matter. A person whose instinctive reaction is now to walk away, because anything else is just too exhausting. A person who is reading these very words and thinking that even war veterans seem more optimistic about things, but is writing this nonetheless.

Each time I hear a story, I find more things to be envious of. The ache in me grows. It's almost like I have come to believe that these stories are not for me. That meaningful relationships are beyond me or, perhaps, that there is something inherently repulsive in me that I somehow can't get rid of. And so aches are all that one is left with.

But I watched Sherlock over a few days. And I went back to watch the scene where Sherlock knocks Neilson out and moves swiftly to kneel before Mrs Hudson and reassure her, and the one in which he tries to break the 'ice' with Watson, after having behaved horribly on feeling doubt. I went back and watched those scenes because there is always hope that human relationships can be forged and maintained. There is hope that you can be redeemed, both to yourself and others. And that is why new stories are so important -- they force you to hope when it's easier to just give in to the snarling, stony side of yourself. So I watched that suicide scene and I howled my eyes out and realised, that if art can cause me to feel so deeply about a character that I have only seen through the viewpoint of some director, perhaps I wouldn't want to miss out on the power of real human relationships, despite the pain, the judgement and the disillusionment that often comes gratis.

Of condescension and monopolies.

For the longest time now, I've been trying to be tolerant and remain unshaken by slander. I have tried to work within a system that gave me cause for nothing but disillusionment, for people who perceived a willing worker as a bounden slave, and I have given it everything I had. I have done my best to keep my temper at check, and on the occasions that I failed in that effort, I have felt the need to apologise. I have tried to convince myself that the sense of entitlement with which people approach me is valid. Yesterday, all of this trying ended. I stood for office in the belief that critiquing a system without engaging with it is unfair. I stood, thinking that there is much work that needs to be done, and perhaps I could help do it. I stood, knowing that I had a dream of a law school that stimulated my mind and gave me the freedom to be who I want to be and I didn't think this was an illegitimate end to pursue, for a university. In two years of office, I've realised why nobody with half a brain or any sense of self-preservation would want to put themselves through this grind, if the grind is to be undertaken in earnest.

Yesterday was the fourth election that I contested in NALSAR, and the third that I won (marginally). I wasn't certain whether I ought to have stood or not, but with a system changing by leaps and bounds, I felt that perhaps my previous knowledge of its functioning and my investment in its success would be useful tools to have on board. Yesterday was also the culmination of my tolerance towards comments made without the slightest inclination towards thought, sensitivity or decency. So, I want to address certain longstanding charges against my work in office, and against me. These were well summarised by our present Vice President, in explaining to me why an Executive position for me was undesirable. As I write this, there are those who insist that I resigned from office because I wanted to be on the Exec, and this having not materialised, I chose to walk out. Well, in my experience in NALSAR, it's always easier to believe the worst possible of a person, but I would want to clarify that I resigned because of unsubstantiated, pointed insults to my dignity and the effort I put into these years in office; insults that I felt that I no longer needed to waste my breath tolerating.

Reason Number One: Condescending and Unapproachable
Being a representative has been hard for me. I'm an exceedingly private and hot-tempered person by nature. If there is anything I owe this office, it is the training I've had in biting my tongue and listening to people, regardless of what I feel about them or the point they are making. I am sure I have, now and then, snapped and the person talking to me felt that it was unwarranted, and for the most part I have tried to apologise when those incidents occurred. But what I find interesting is how I am unapproachable, only when I don't need to be approached. When there is something that folk require of me--their grades (in order to pass) or their attendance or medical certificates or bare Acts for examinations or exemptions from exams or reworking of examination schedules or rules they take issue with--they approach me; even when they want to insult the living daylights out of me, they approach me. Otherwise, I am unapproachable. Yes, I have not functioned in the league of my predecessors in terms of speaking to teachers to get marks increased or attendance added, but I have worked in the field of policy to ensure that every person in that situation gets the benefit in question; and this hasn't been for friends (they usually don't fall foul of NALSAR rules anyway) but for a wide assortment of people who are neither close to me nor have any specific reason to find me more approachable than others do. Yet, as a matter of image, I am perennially unapproachable, which begs the question, then why have people been getting so much of their work done through me?

Reason Number Two: Undemocratic and Oppressive
Here's a rough list of things I have worked towards in the past year in office, because the administration was finally one that was willing to be democratic:

1. Frequent open houses to discuss policy decisions 
2. Attendance being scanned in and sent to students every month
3. All policies being mailed to the student body for comments, before being implemented
4. Decisions like surprise tests being removed, etc. being made after polls by students
5. All existing rules being scanned in and sent to the entire student body for comments, in order to have them re-worked

These were, of course, undemocratic. It is immaterial that barely anybody showed up for open houses and that nobody really bothered to actually send in constructive suggestions on the rules, but I made undemocratic decisions.
I made decisions on the basis of what I wanted. I made the university's timetable, and now I'm told that it was on the basis of the courses I liked (and an effort to ensure they don't clash). The preference forms sent before making the timetable were for fun--you know, my vacation's worth of Excel-playtime while dealing with a painful breakup and being incredibly lonesome in a big city? Nine people chose both Banking and Finance and IoS, seven chose IoS and Cap Marks, while there were clashes ranging up to thirty-six (17 courses more than 10, all of which clashes were avoided) with these subjects and other ones. "Why couldn't Banking and Finance not be made to clash with IoS when over thirty students wanted both?" Here's my answer: "Because when you were asked to give in your preferences, you didn't bother to think it through, but you will not introspect enough to find fault with yourselves, so it's convenient to make me out to be some kind of self-serving bitch who made the timetable only to serve her own ends." Because spending an entire vacation researching timetabling software and learning PHP is totally work one would do while being self-serving.
So I asked the Vice-President which of my decisions he found oppressive and imposed. He said: "So many of them." So I asked, "Which?" And he said, "Erm, the timetable? Last year's timetable." I asked him if he noticed that the schedule that people suggested as an alternative in Semester 5 was the schedule that was followed in Semester 6 (oh no, but that would mean that student opinion had actually been taken seriously, an admission that would really harm the argument at hand), and he blinked and moved on to the other problems with me.

Reason Number Three: Monopoly over Power
This, supposedly, doesn't even require an explanation. I have a monopoly over power in this place and that's just a statement of fact now. I would, however, like to unpack this a tiny bit.
So I was Academic Representative in my second year and the Convenor of the same committee in my third year. I have a tiny group of friends. I have neither tried nor want to try bullying people into voting for me, so Boys' Hostel politics is not my cup of tea. When men have monopolised the political system and positions in the Executive since the existence of the system itself, that doesn't count. There have been two women in Executive positions in the history of NALSAR, and that isn't monopoly over power. One woman, winning three elections consecutively, working her guts out for humane policy in the university and building relationships with people in the administration (though never ceasing to oppose the things she dislikes, hence often being told off by the same members of the administration for 'abusing space') is monopolising power. The first time I spoke to the Vice-Chancellor was when I was asked to convince him into making an exception for a LLM student who could not afford to pay the fees to be admitted into the university, and the VC yelled at me so loudly that the Registrar's office heard. Clearly, 'hotlines to bigshots' involve a good deal of persistence and a much greater amount of work in terms of putting together cogent arguments that are hard to deny. And if you try it out, you might find that you'll have hotlines to bigshots too; even hotter lines, perhaps, given how horribly unlikeable I am.

Reason Number Four (and this is the best): Will Work Anyway
"You can work anyway, even if you're not in the Exec, so..." I mean, you can think it all you want, but at least don't say this to my face! It's not as though I wasn't aware that my batch wanted its personal slave, but was disinclined to consider the slave worthy of any respect. I was. But literally being informed that the reason why you don't merit any consideration is the fact that you'll work anyway was a punch in the face. It is also why I am not going to work. I don't work on policy because I need student validation, but they outlawed slavery a while back and I'd like to remind you of that. If you recognise the fact that the work one does it worth some consideration, then give it that respect, for Christ's sake! In any case, I'm also told that "there is nothing" to all of the timetabling and project bidding and enrollment forms: it's cake walk for some, I guess. It was hard work for me, to take on this work for the whole of the university, and a shitload of pressure, because nobody here really forgives mistakes, and I don't think I'm unjustified in expecting basic decency in being dealt with, after that. "Haan haan, Gen Sec chod do, VP ke liye vote kar rahe ho na?" is not basic decency (especially if you're crooning about how you're trying so hard to get me into the Exec). It's hypocrisy. And it's hypocrisy I'm done with.

I was told by someone else (with a sense of urgency) that the problem with voting for me "is not your work, it's you!" Which, forgive me, I don't understand. I'm guessing he was talking about my image, but I still don't understand it. My work can be divorced from my image, but the negatives can't? And, more importantly, ragging someone into voting for one does no harm to one's image, having no manifesto or plan of action does no harm for one's image, having done no work in all one's time in the university does no harm, having done no work even while holding office does no harm, but perceived condescension (with the humaneness of the person in other situations being completely ignored), despite work being done and a clear plan of action in hand, is good reason to refuse to support a person. Bravo!

I shall condescend, monopolise and oppress no longer.