Special Issue: Part 3
(Un)Common Landscapes and Ruptured Memories: Auto-ethnographies of North Bengal
North Bengal
University Campus As I Saw it
by Sinjini Roy
I was born in
NBU campus and spent the first seventeen years of my life over here. I moved
out of the university campus when I had to go to Kolkata for my graduation
(which I did from St. Xavier’s college) and for my Masters (from JNU). But I am
back again to the campus after a break of five years. My parents were in the
university and I never missed an opportunity to come home in the summer or in puja vacations. Coming home by train or
air has always been a special occasion filled with inexplicable joy.
Early in my
childhood I started noticing the sprawling campus and its serene beauty which
used to change its texture, colour, and flavour every season. Nowhere else I
noticed such distinctive presence of all the six seasons. What left a deep
impression in my mind are thousands of Jonakis
lighting off and on, sheuli-fragrance
in the autumn mornings, the fragrance of kadam
and bakul flowers in the summer
months and in early monsoon, the free-flowing streams descending down from the
hills on the North, flowing through different directions of the campus before
meeting river Magurmari, jarul, sonajhuri, kathalchapa, swarnachapa, kamini, kanakchapa, palash, kurchi, bottle-brush, krishachura, and
many other wild flowers adding colours to campus in different seasons. Sadly,
new buildings have replaced the widespread kashfool
bush, which signalled the approach of Durga puja
in every autumn. Besides, the hills in the background, the saalbagan at the centre of the campus,
Padmaja park and rose-garden in front of the administrative building, the
rubber and tea plantations on the northern outskirt were the other highlights
of the beautiful university campus.
I had a few
friends in the neighbourhood and had a lot of time and opportunity to play with
them. In the summer vacation we used to fix a swing in the hanging branch of a
mango tree close to our house and that was a major point of attraction to my
friends. We also had a huge interest in the raw mangoes that hung over our heads
but we had to take the help of our parents to get hold of them.
Changes in the
campus are difficult to go unnoticed. In my childhood I noticed that a large
majority of the students in NBU used to come from the six districts of North
Bengal and not too many from the hills. A large majority of the students were
from vernacular and rural backgrounds and many bearing traces of poverty in
their appearance and existence. In the 1990s salwar kurta had replaced saree
as the favoured dress. The girls were yet to catch up with jeans and makeovers
in the beauty parlours and were less figure-conscious. These days we get to see
a strong presence of hill students with English medium background and a lot
more students conversing in English and Hindi. Students in general wear jeans,
tea shirts of branded make and look to be in tune with the latest fashions.
They appear figure conscious, if not health conscious; visit to gyms and use of
cosmetics; use of essence is quite common. The number of hill students has
increased over the years and they, with good school and college education, do
very well in terms of academic performance. Quite interestingly they are the
most well dressed section visible on campus with branded clothes, colourful
shoes, varieties of hand bags and unique hair styles. They have become significant
eye catchers in the campus.
Second noticeable
change has been the changing food culture on the campus. Earlier, there was
hardly any food shop, excepting the students’ canteen and the law canteen,
which offered very limited, repetitive snacks like chop, singara, ghugni, and egg omelette. But now, besides the
teachers’ canteen, students’ canteen and employees’ canteen a large number of
mobile snacks shops have come up which offer a large variety of snacks like papri chat, chur mur, jhal muri, phuchka, ghugni, singara, momo, butter-toast,
puri-sabji, chops of different kinds, chowmein, pokoda and the list
continues. Even in the Shibmandir Bazar area which is five minutes’ walk from
the campus one can explore a whole lot of food stalls and street vendors
selling mouth watering snacks, fruit juice, and a whole range of snacks made of
chicken, fish, egg and mutton. Keeping in mind the growing number of hill
students, shops have come up with the delicacies like thuppa, soup, momos, phuyang, and noodles.
Third important
change has been the demise of the adda
culture. I still remember when I was in class seven or eight I used to stroll
around the campus with my friends in the evening. During our leisurely walk I
could see that groups of boys and girls, mostly university students, sitting in
front of hostels or beside Arts faculty busy chatting, gossiping and laughing
their hearts out. Such addas, or public debates continued until dinner time,
when the girls had to return to their hostels. Watching them enjoying hours of adda I used to get jealous. Away from
home and free of parents’ surveillance they could mix freely and talk on any
issue under the sun whereas we did not have that kind of freedom. What made us
more envious is the fact that the students were not under any compulsion to get
back to their rooms and sit down to study at 6:30. Teachers too had their
regular sessions of adda in teachers
canteen; supposedly such addas were
creative and refreshing.
Now when I go
for my evening walk on the campus I don’t see the groups of students and
teachers engrossed in adda. Sal Bagan
is heavily fenced and nobody is allowed an entry inside. The pagoda inside the
Sal Bagan, which was once the epicentre of cultural activities and university
convocation, now appear uncared. Now watching campus evenings minus adda makes me very pensive.
Earlier the
campus inmates were bound by a sense of campus solidarity; the neighbours used
to visit each other on every family occasion, or on weekends for dinner. A lot
of our neighbours used to come to our house spent hours discussing politics,
issues related to university administration, over several rounds of tea. There
was a vibrant women’s association which used to run a library, organize an
annual fete in the Vidyasagar Manch, organise important events like picnic,
Rabindra Jayanti, and so on. Apart from the women members the association was a
huge source of attraction for the campus children. Sadly, the association does
not exist anymore.
I have been a
serious student of Rabindra sangeet right from my early childhood and I used to
participate in Rabindra Jayanti celebrations which were organized with great
enthusiasm. There used to be a Pravat
pheri (morning procession), where the participants had to sing Rabindra sangeet
and recite poems of the Visva Kabi, followed by a cultural programme in the
pagoda inside the Sal Bagan. I used to perform in all these programmes along
with the senior and junior artists carefully selected from within the campus.
But these days such programmes are organized mechanically and I am not even
informed about the programme. These are small changes which hurt me deep.
Fourth, there
has been a clear change of taste which is apparent in selection of items in the
annual cultural programme organized by the Students’ Asssociation. Earlier,
Rabindra Sangeet, Nazrul Geeti, the dance-dramas of Rabindranath, folk songs
and dance, Ganasangeet,, classical vocal and instrumental music, play by
reputed groups (like Tritirtha of Balurghat) used to be a part of all the
annual cultural programmes. But now, one can see the predominance performances
by musical bands, and songs and dance items based on Hindi films. Earlier, not
only the students, even professors across the Departments used to watch these
programmes that ran until late night. But with the change of taste, teachers and
their family members do not attend such cultural events.
Notwithstanding
the negative changes, which are of course man-made, it is difficult not to
remember the sweetest childhood memories and the serene beauty that the campus
and its Himalayan background offer. The natural ambience and all the positive
sides of campus life definitely have left a deep impression on the persona that
I am. Even today when I take a leisurely
walk on the campus I get filled with all positive vibes and feel relieved of
all tensions and anxieties of life. I am not sure if I will be here on the
campus for the rest of my life but I can tell for sure that there will never be
a mental/spiritual break with the life I have lived here and with the memories
which I preserve with greatest care.
Author's Bio- Note:
Sinjini Roy is currently a doctoral fellow at North Bengal University. Earlier, she completed her Masters in Sociology from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.
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