Life and Suchlike

II

2016 AD.

‘The Seven’ is a Whatsapp group. Is the use of proper nouns in nominal compounds, correct? It doesn’t feel correct, somehow. Changing technology has forced me to reflect upon the rules of grammar, forgotten since the Wren and Martin days; I am not even sure of grammar anymore. Anyway, grammar distracts me from the conversation that was going on between the seven:

Aria: Why does my department not have a Narayan Da?

Ritika: You are a lesser teacher and you teach in a lesser college. You don’t deserve a Narayan da!

Anwesha: Your college doesn’t even have windows, it doesn’t merit this comparison!

Adrita: Why do you need a Naraya Da, anyway?

Aria: Narayan Da, was such a reassuring presence. Okay…er…but was that so for the teachers? 

Mitali: Of course! Do you think cinemawoman could have set up the projector herself; or would have, even if she could?

Ritika: Cinemawoman…ROFL

Adrita: Mitali, you anyway were always her favourite. She selected your ‘paapi gudiya’ story as one of the six degree films to be made in our senior year.

Aaria: ‘Him vs. him’, however scored the best grade. It was the best film. 

Ritika: Let us all take a moment to ponder that even after eight years, living in a different city, having seen two of her friends get married, and becoming a teacher herself, Aria, is still not over the fact that her idea - about two tormented people living on different floors of a building - didn’t get selected, and as a result she couldn’t take that tilt down shot, of them looking down upon the dead body of a person who has just committed suicide; ironic, since the film would have had us believe that it is one of the two protagonists. 

Adrita: Mitali you have a rich husband, why don’t you give Aaria some money so that she can finally make that film. 

Aaria: *Rolling my eyes*

Anwesha: Did you people check-out Pritha’s LA photographs. Major drool. 

Ritika: Yeah! She is doing very well for herself. 

Aaria: And my students can’t even sit through Aawara. What is wrong with today’s generation? 

Mitali: *Ahem* Aaria, do you remember that we ran away from that screening; and in all probability it was your idea.

Adrita: Yeah, I remember slipping through the foyer, and using the pillars to shield ourselves, as the professor was walking towards the department. 

Anwesha: That day we were just running…

Mitali: Guys, I have to go.

Anwesha: G’nite

Ritika: TC

Adrita: Bye 

Anwesha: That was a day of serious fleeing. We escaped the principal and then Gopalan

Ritika: The first time I had come to college and passed by our principal, I mistook him for a peon. 

Adrita: And you were going to ask him for the direction to the MCVV department; yeah we know! Why were we running away from the screening? And we did see it later on, I guess, because I remember answering a question on it.

Aaria: We did, and we prepared an answer on it too, about post-independent India and displacement; and the patriarchal embracing of conventional morality and caste, in the fashion of Ramayana, class distinction…

Ritika: What is with banishing pregnant women? I don’t care how many explanations are invented to exonerate Ram, my point is, he infringed on Sita’s right as a citizen. You can’t banish someone because of alleged infidelity. 

Adrita: Anyway, you can’t be a very good king if you dole out punishment, in response to an allegation, without an inquiry

Anwesha: How exactly would they have inquired into infidelity, when one half of the infidel pair was dead? 

Aaria: Couldn’t have taken his wife’s word for it, right? Anyway, why should infidelity be punishable at all?

Anwesha: It is even today!

Ritika: They say that it is an articulation of the psyche that views women as property; however, I think women were less than property. Property once conquered could be won back and you would be happy with it; hence wife < property. 

Aaria: Infidelity is consensual otherwise it is rape; so you can’t equate it to a conquest. There are narratives where women admit to infidelity and are punished. Say if we lived in a time when the term patriarchy didn’t exist, because people did view the practice as a problem, in that case would Ramayana be a tragedy? 

Ritika: They view Ramayana as a tragedy even now; and we live in that era, when the term exists but people don’t see the practice as a problem.

Aaria: Which is why my students are not interested in such discussions. 

Ritika: Aaria, your students are not listening to you because of karma. You ran away from that class, remember

Anwesha: And she comes back and teaches us, instead. 

Aaria: It helps me think. 

Adrita: We are done with this. Why did you take this up as a career? It was fun once upon a time, but no one can live on a diet of intellectual discourse. 

Aaria: I do get paid, you know. 

Anwesha: *Rolls her eyes*