Manaskam_END TERM SUBMISSION _ CONTENTS : Reflective Essay , 2022( Based on a true Incident )

           Answer to prompt no 3.              


                   2022(BASED ON A TRUE STORY)

BY

MANASKAM KAKATI
M.A Film Studies (s173g0004)
SEMESTER III

17^th May ,  2022 : BJP ( Beparwah Janata Paty) re-claimed majority seats in the general elections , for the third consecutive time , “Welcome the 15 years of Right wing rule” is what it got displayed on the headlines , the sound of bursting crackers and I looked around my room , suddenly everything turned saffron for me ,the bedsheets , the curtains , the table cloth and even the oranges on the table , it seemed as if I was hallucinating . Just as I was going deeper into this whole feeling , which probably wouldn’t affect me much , to a student studying in DU and living in a ‘live-in’ relationship at North Delhi’s Old Gupta Colony , my girl-friend interrupted my thoughts . Said she “ Aaj kaha lunch karenge ?” I turned towards her and just replied “ Kahin-bhi” (anywhere) and got glued back to the screen of my 22” LCD screen .
Next thing , I recall , there are a few bangs on my door , I was still under a lot of confusion , and trust me I didn’t take any intoxications the previous night , in fact I woke up two hours earlier than usual  , did my routine work out and was just chilling with her when this entire “saffron re-revolution” news came up . But the texture , the sound and the velocity of the knock somehow told me that something was not right that morning . I walked up to the door, and my absent mindedness did make me hit a few things on my 15 meter journey to the door . I opened the door and to my utter disbelief , there was this angry couple , probably in their 30s staring at me with rage and a shade of confusion . I looked at them and said “ Yes , How may I help you?” . To this the wife replied “ We live in the building next door , in the third floor.” Me “ I see , so what is the issue?” I mean it was pretty obvious that we have done something even if we have not done it literally . Its been five  years living in and around Old Gupta Colony and North Campus and this place and the people  gave me the very good idea that anything that happens in this area from earthquake to robbery, only  the students are to be blamed. Coming back , she replied “Well , there has been a flowerpot misplaced on my terrace , and I believe you guys might have taken it after the Diwali party.” I was taken aback by this gesture and I just replied “ Why on earth will we take your pot ? Where do you think will we hide it ?” This soon turned into an argument and lot of other accusations came in along with the core accusation and finally it ended at a point where the husband talked something about beating both my girl-friend and me into pulp . He even said something about “live-in” relationships and the fact that it is actually hampering the kids in the neighborhood seeing students living together and like any other Delhi neighborhood , people in almost all the buildings gathered in their respective balconies to ‘bitch’ about the students and all the “ashleel” (direty) things we do , as if they never had ‘sex’ to give birth to their own  amazingly irritating kids !
This ‘fish-market brawl’ went up for the next 15 mins and finally it ended up with one old Mr Taneja commenting , “ Ab toh inka ek saath rehna , Modi ji hi bandh karwa sakte hain, puri sabhyata ko bhrasht kar ke rakh diya he in logo ne” ( Only our prime minister Modi can stop these kids from living together and ruining the values) . All of this got over , we grew tired of fighting even before breakfast and hence we decided to go out for a nice brunch . It didn’t matter to me , what they said or accused us of , I mean , seriously , why would somebody steal a flower pot! I didn’t know what kind of obsession the Old Gupta colony residents with moral policing students , it was always out of my capacity to gauge that feeling !
But the thing that kept hitting my head , like the tides hit the rocks at the beach was the remark the old chap left upon the guys and girls living together , and his wish that the government and the prime minister would do something about it was seemingly scary . I mean we all have rights to our own privacy and neither have we done anything anti-social or anti-national! I was travelling in the cab , sitting at the backseat and looking out trying to imagine all the horrors we faced when we were in college , the protests at JNU and Law Faculty , the mobs of right wing students vandalising our colleges , the sudden discontinuation of notes , the insanely high prices of goods , the moral policing at almost each and every place , the valentines day vandalism in the name of culture , the student rapes within campus in the name of party politics! Ohh man, this was just too much to recall right when I imagined a group of people from  the “saffron” brigade , raiding each and every student apartment , beating up each and every girl and guy who lives together , or any girl or guy going over to the other’s apartment may be for a chill or for dinner and right then , the noise from the beating of the dhol on the streets distracted me from this nightmare and when I looked out of the window , this noise was from the same procession which was celebrating the party’s win at the Lok Sabha!
I sighed to myself thinking , what a saffronized day I have had !

I feel it is a weird amalgamation of lack of awareness and the pseudo idea of culture and religion which plays the game every time for the protectors of the faith , this sudden and radical surge which I have been facing for the past 15 years has pushed me to think so much and go so far , deep inside I was assured that this sense of fake protection won’t go this far at least! And if that happens we as people and as country would be nothing different that the people and the countries we condemn of.

But I was horribly wrong , next and the immediate thing I remember from that day was this another knock , I should rather say a massive bang on the door at around 1:30 am at night . I went out to the balcony , the streets were empty , dogs were sleeping peacefully too and the smog was hovering over the dry winter night in North Delhi . Mira and I both were alarmed at this knock and we initially thought that it might be our neighbour who came to teach us a lesson , it was exam time and most of our friend were staying home and studying so we were pretty surethat it can’t be any of them .

Very hesitantly I got up and opened the door , only thing I recall is a massive hit on my head and a few men wearing kurtas and with saffron scarfs around their necks barging into our house . I hear them yelling at each other to find the girl in  and take her to Mahipalpur , New Delhi near the IGI airport ,where all the girls are kept together . I sensed something very very dirty and fishy .I somehow managed to get up and  asked what was happening around , to which one of the goons replied, a new law has been enforced where the “culture-police” was given the power to raid and find out all the unmarried student couples who were living together under one roof . Further , they would be taken into separate custody ,their parents would be called and they would be branded as “criminals” ! I was shocked, I was surprised ,I was joltd , I could’nt believe what I thought of seating in the back seat of the cab , was actually coming out true . This was a massive step taken by the government with no legal notice and no real announcement , I was sure there was something wrong but to speak a word would be equal to getting mob lynched probably at the middle of Chandni Chowk !

Mira tried to resist , Mira fought back and spat at one of the goons , who sure did man handled her , and held her very unappropriately , the reply was a simple hard slap straight on her left cheek , leaving her lips to only bleed ! His hold was so strong that his nails almost pierced through the sleeves of her top . Three of them had swords and two of them had hockey sticks and one of them had a 9mm Beretta . This seemed to me as if it was a post one of those scenes of Godra riots from the film Kai Po Che . I had no word and suddenly the silence within me broke , I got this unexpected and unprecedented surge of energy within me , I felt the need to stand for my love , for my relationship and specially stand against anarchy and tyranny and stand for my girl-friend who was man-handled by a group of hired goons of the party in power . I fought back one of the guys and almost threw him off the stair case in front of the main door , while the uncles & aunties of the other floors were looking at my struggle with lit and celebratory eyes  and smiles all wide , as if taking me down would mean that Indian culture has been saved and retributed!
It was only when I was about to fight the second guy , I felt a very heavy and hard hit on my head with one of those sticks and everything initially turned blue , then white and finally black , just like it happened at the beginning !
I had no clue what was happening , I couldn’t breather nor could I move or could I see . My chest was heavy and so was my head , and struggling for almost six minutes , I finally opened my eyes !

It took me a few minutes to realise what was happening and where was I at but what I saw after that hit kind of surprised me with happiness ! I saw white light , sun rays seeping through my window , Netflix on the laptop, books by my side and Mira walking in with a hot cup of coffee for both of us , complaining how difficult it is to sleep with me specially when I get nightmares . She told me I moved and kicked in my slept which eventually woke her up . Here she was semi-pissed at my and there I was being happy at the fact that it was still 2018 and we have four more years to find out the results of the 2022 elections .
But this dream , this nightmare did forced me to put serious thoughts on certain notions being practiced in our country off late and if things continue to progress at the similar pace , its not very late to see and experience all of these nightmares coming true in real life . Student hostility in places like Old Gupta Colony or Kamla Nagar is a burning issue and is increasing day by day , year by year !
I am sure someday with all these values intact , Indian youth would surely be scared to fall in love or has the fear set it already!??

REFLECTIVE ESSAY : WAYS OF READING

Submitted by :
Manaskam Kakati (s173g0004)
M.A Film Studies (III sem)

Ways of reading seemed pretty interesting to me the moment I heard of it at the first place. I was indeed a little hesitant thinking it might give me a lot of work to accomplish but what happened was something totally unexpected. Every semester I make it a point to keep a practice based course else it gets a little too demanding for me and this semester, Ways of Reading gave me this opportunity. To be very honest, I was not very regular to the class and deeply regret it as I would have gotten to know and learn much more about writing. Being in a band and late night practices kept me far away from waking up on time but I would always remember the class where we discussed the poems of Agha Shahid Ali, the marriage across the border and the differences and similarities we posses across the border. I remember the personal anecdotes that the students in class talked about and that's when I realised that I would be using most of my personal experiences in this paper. I tried to approach various technical and creative aspects, that's when I ended up thinking to do something different and ended doing my first self written rap in between a poem.

I have always been in love with monochrome, I believe monochrome is the best gift of camera to us. We as humans always see colors around us, the beauty lies in playing with only two major colors: black and white and using them to bring out emotions is one artistic boundary that I feel we should push . Monochrome allows the creator to focus on certain aspects of expression and get them out only by working through the camera is an experience that I absolutely love. Hence my visual work has had a lot of monochromatic photos of various places En route to AUD, KG campus, the elements that I see on my way to this beautiful little campus can be best expressed through black and white. Also the using of personal anecdotes has been a thing for me for a long time, I like and love to explore and find out fiction which occur naturally, which as a creator I don't have to sit and brain storm to produce. The kind of stories and incidents that occur around me and make me go bonkers about are the kind of story lines I like to develop upon and I later add my own elements to them. '2022' which I submitted recently is about one such incident, it addresses the problem that we as outstation students face living in Delhi, the kind of disguised hostility and  unprecedented inferiority we face has just increased over time and I believe it's high time we start writing, singing, talking, photographing or shooting them! If artistic mediums don't speak about them nobody ever would, novel body will ever care except us ourselves. I could related myself a lot with the last class, the kind of hostility we were discussing towards the black Americans, towards anybody in general, it's also something I worked with in my CCT class while discovering and understanding the ideas of Fanon and Dubois. This inferiority is not just in between blacks and white, rich or poor, India or Pakistan. It's  present in every naturally existing and man-made binary of the world. The problems of outstation students and the locals is one such incident which I wrote about. As outstation students we are always looked down upon, we are labeled as party animals, spoilt brats, north-eastern hooligans, Anti-social etc etc and it's not something which is direct, the sad fact it it's indirect. All these don't come out when you go searching for an apartment but these terms and words do come out when one plays the guitar with friends on a Saturday night or when something I bad in the neighbourhood happens and all of them blame the students living on third floor of say house no 149 etc etc etc. These things are to be talked about and explained to people, so that these notions do change,if not today may be some day, sometime.

Ways of reading gave me the  capacity to use my words, use my imagination and use my surrounding to create something exceptionally new, exceptionally musical (music here is not used in a literal sense) and exceptionally beautiful. Those stories that Akhil would narrate to us in the class did help me related with the text a lot and the flow of the whole course has been an amazing experience for me even though I was less regular.