HYDERABAD : Diary No.1
“A weak foundation”
Every morning, I used to open the newspaper to read film news and crime news. Although I didn’t know the meaning of byline back then, I was quite keen on seeing my name in the newspaper. It was the summer of 2008. I was busy enjoying mangoes on my plate and music on the TV. Two men knocked the door and I welcomed them in, when they said they came from a corporate college to discuss my college admission. Little did I know, they were the predators. It was a fad among all the students who passed out Class X to join one of these corporate colleges.
My parents too fell prey to it and I was admitted. The college opened in June and I was excited aboutwearing funky clothes and of course new books. A week later, I felt like a deer trapped amidst a pack of wolves. Well, they had already finished four chapters in Math and announced that there would be a test. No one bothered if I understood the formulas. Asking doubts meant I was a slow learner and was reprimanded and shamed for it.
For two full years, I woke up at 6 am and came home at 8 pm, fatigued and frustrated. Those 12 hours were all about marks, ranks and results. Those were the keywords hovering around me like wasps and bees. They wanted a loftier building, but they didn’t know, that requires a deeper foundation. The concept of understanding was like air – invisible.
I was asked to learn formulas and problems by rote. I didn’t fare well in my weekly tests. All hell broke loose. I remember a junior lecturer asked me to take my pants off just to whack me with an iron scale. When my parents came to question this act, they were told that this incident will constantly remind me to study well and score well. When my parents opposed to such cruelty, I was shamed in the classroom that I would never succeed in my life because I was being pampered by my parents. Well, they called it pampering.
I felt stifled and I felt like a non-swimmer in an ocean. I was drowning in the pressure and insults. Marks sounded like maut (death in Hindi) to me. I came to a stage where I would say, “Thappad se darr nahi lagta saab, marks se lagta hai.” I couldn’t score the marks they wanted but I did come out of it with a few inerasable marks in my heart. A scar that still scares me. It was not a college but a fire extinguisher to all those who had the fire in them.
— Poonam (name changed), (now a journalist they all laughed at)
Diary No.2
“Sexist? Hell yeah!”
My college had a weird idea of gender equality. They segregated boys and girls and made sure we never made contact with anyone of the opposite gender. The lecturers were blatantly sexist and showed no interest in teaching us. Their idea was that girls anyway will eventually get married and never make use of any of this education. They wanted us to compete with the boys sections in marks, but never took us seriously. However, there was one thing they treated us equally in. Beating us up, if we didn’t perform well.
“Don’t think you won’t get slapped just because you’re a girl,” they said. There is a certain kind of fear that you feel when you see the lecturer is pulling the hair, slapping the girl in the bench in front of you and knowing you are next. It’s a fear that never leaves you.
And the classrooms did not help. There were 60 people crammed into a small room with no ventilation or natural light whatsoever. It was like they were meant to traumatise you. Just speaking of that atmosphere gives me the chills. It’s one place I never want to go back. Those are the two years I have absolutely no good memories attached to.
— Divya (name changed) (now a actor, singer and writer and a talent, they failed to acknowledge)
Diary No.3
“Bottle Neck”
Where did you study your intermediate?” and I hang my head in shame to take the name. How does it feel when an actor doesn’t emote in a movie or when the narration of the movie is disoriented? Those two years of my life felt like that. Unfortunately I stayed in a hostel. They would wake us up by 4.30 and we would have study hours from 5 am to 7.30 am. After breakfast by 8.15 am, the classes would resume by 8.30 am. It would go on till 11.30 pm with two short breaks in between. Having grown up in Bengaluru in a quite free and liberating environment, this space made me claustrophobic.
There was no off on Sunday. We used to have weekly tests, either on the intermediate board syllabus or AIEEE, Eamcet etc. There was a point where we had exams every day and constant pressure from every side.
Those two years supressed my drive and killed my creativity. The timings, the way we were treated felt nothing less than a jail. It was a like a bottleneck traffic jam on the road. Our classes were divided according to our scores, which created a lot of discrimination among the students. Their divide-and-rule policy did play on every student’s psychology. Well, those two years of my life has now inspired me to make a movie with the same backdrop as those oppressing corporates colleges.
— Satish (name changed, a budding filmmaker whose creativity was disregarded)
Diary No.4
“I jumped into it”
My aim is to get into IIT. Although I expected the environment to be pressuring from what I had heard and witnessed, I didn’t expect them to be this tough. Our college began in June and they had finished the first year syllabus by October. They rushed us through all the chapters and our weekly tests were mostly objective based. From November to February second week, they taught us second year syllabus. They made us revise first year subjects again a week before the board exams. Switching between the first and second year syllabus, objective and theory style of tests and exams did hamper our piece of mind. The pressure was too much to handle.
The syllabus is designed in such a way that it should be taught in a clear and in-depth way for 10 months. How fair is it to finish teaching it in three months and teach us the successive year’s curriculum and then evaluate us on first year’s subjects. I could sometimes feel my brain getting heated up. There were so many war of words during our study hours. The junior lecturers who monitor us during the study hours use extremely foul and abusive language infuriating us further. Since, I chose it, I had to bite the bullet without complaining about it.
— Bhanuteja (name changed, a recent pass-out of one the infamous corporate colleges)
purnima@newindianexpress.com @iyer_purnima