Waiting out a summer of longing.

Countless times I have thought to myself - over the last year, and especially over this summer - that I would return to this little oasis of chaos amidst all the plans and schemes and order and regulation that litter the RTU. It is true. I have returned. My tongue, however, is no longer in my cheek.

I agree, I have been a rotten correspondent, and those who primarily reserve interest in my misadventures on the RTU shall no doubt have (or indeed, have had) many reasons for premature festivity. Yes, I have endured the insufferable ignominy of the limelight, the ceaseless and interminable glut of good wishes, and as the circle of celebration closed, I found myself on the outside, without the slightest inclination to join the ranks.

All that passed in my experience for the last 16 months need not warrant description. I did attend the seminar in DC, passed French (mais, bien sûr!), danced at a wedding, lost love, and came to the first major crossing on the RTU. However, to use the words of Coldplay, I was both lost and incomplete, and the palpable need to search my soul incontrovertible. What I expected to find or rediscover I did not know, yet the search symbolised locomotion and I attempted to physically mirror the movement by relocating to Delhi in March.

Lest I wane insolent any further, let me declare that what should have been a personally and professionally rewarding experience turned out, instead, to be an exercise in despondence, drudgery and depression, marked by a mirthless frivolity. I was neither armed with a copy of City of Djinns, nor given a free hand at the tasks that were set for me, and I struggled in the lap of loneliness. This was no solitude of desire or the pallid seclusion of the uninhabited, but the unbearable state of being alone whilst surrounded by patronising extended family, enthusiastic acquaintances, genuinely loving friends, and a disgruntled and curiously confused workplace.

The days consisted of work that no longer interested me, reading texts that no longer captivated me, and spending time with people whose company I desperately tried to enjoy but very rarely met success in doing so. Very soon, I was confronted with a painful fact: I did not know what I was looking for; I was a forlorn face in the crowd, with a lack of objective that was most unexciting. I had thought that a life of un-encumbrance should be a happy development, but it filled me with a weightlessness sprung on which I seemingly floated about, with only the past as the remains of my tether to the earth. And just when I thought my despair was irreparable, my situation beyond rescue, came a chance encounter that flattered to lift the murky clouds obscuring any sense of direction in my pitiful misadventure.

***

The experience of feeling blood course through the veins should be reserved for the finest moments of one's life: it is the only bodily sensation that captures unqualified exhilaration. This expression of the body---normally in the manner of goosebumps, pins and needles, or the quickening or skipping of heartbeats---makes us aware of our own being and caps the completion of an act which finds a coincidence of extraordinary intent and miraculous outcome.

***

I sat, beside myself with surprise, as she tore the piece of paper and handed it to me. “But I'm very busy,” she said without pretence, and indeed she was. Following a personal tragedy which brought me back home for 3 weeks, I returned to Delhi and was granted an audience lasting close to 7 glorious and blissful hours. That night, the fall of the Safavid empire (in the pages of After Tamerlane) suddenly became more engaging, and as I drifted into that wonderful state of suspension between book and sleep, I realised that this endowment of clarity was but the door to a world of inspiration that only awaited a determined explorer.

But how elusive that door turned out to be during the course of the summer! Her departure the next day was met with my own (coincidental, yet willed) pursuit. I understood, however, that the rules of the game, so to say, had been established over our long conversation: the way forward was paved by volition and choice and, therefore, in equal measure (as it were) by chance and circumstance. Long-time readers should remember my, um, loving relationship with that celestial oddity called luck (though things have been a little better, admittedly); this time, too, it smiled radiantly in the opposite direction. Later, as she boarded a flight bound towards the Orient and flew into the night, I was left only with my longing to stare at the stars on the lonely walk back to my flat.

And then there was the waiting: for an update, for an e-mail, a text message. Those few hours in June were seemingly woven into a stream of time that I revisited over and over again, and it kept playing like a strip of film caught cycling in the bioscope of a vacant and restive summer. As the days wore on, the hopes of rain dissipated and the fears of a drought became reality; the oppressive heat of Delhi put a hazy veneer of sultriness in every activity of every lengthy day, slowing things down to a soporific crawl. Waiting had become the zeitgeist of my long summer in the capital, and it conspired to obviate all my attempts to change the pulse of this dreary existence.

Increasingly, I started to evaluate my time in Delhi with its many opportunity costs: the conference in Chicago, the workshop in Berkeley, the discussion group in Toronto. But, perhaps, the biggest disappointment of the summer was being hamstrung by some intractable paperwork and failing to make a trip through tribal Himachal Pradesh and eastern Ladakh into Tibet. Weighed down by the clerical fetish and incessant idiocy of bureaucratic processes, I was left to weather a rainless July that I can now safely claim to be one of the worst months of my life.

I had moved into a house vacated temporarily by its hitherto welcoming occupants, and was suddenly confronted by a tangible representation of the emptiness that had all but consumed me. The waiting resumed unabated and, for someone whose life has been one hospital visit after another since 2002, what followed was not particularly endearing. I had come to a toll booth on the RTU and fulfilling the obligations entailed all manner of medical examinations at government hospitals.

Though I had endured much worse before, the repeated early-morning assault of pestilence as I waited in line or sat in anticipation of receiving results broke the last remaining threads of my already savaged spirit. My loneliness was complete, my isolation impenetrable. My soul was possessed of an epic wait that had pervaded every sinew of my body. I realised that there was nothing more for me to do in that city of cities and packed my bags. Unceremoniously paying my dues, I advanced homeward, and as the massive urban sprawl of Delhi receded into the distance, I sighed in the relief of knowing that, at the very least, I had the steadfast comforts of Calcutta to look forward to.

So what did I learn from this season of misadventures? I learnt that I had gone to Delhi to look for love, but found it sitting on the fence. I am sure, too, that when love found me, I intentionally turned away. I also learnt that I was unprepared for the unreasonableness and conditionality of love. I finally fully understood what Kundera meant by The Unbearable Lightness of Being, and how painful the oscillation between weightlessness and heaviness can be. And I learnt that if one's willing to hope, a piece of paper is all the fortitude one needs.

I learnt that very old lessons are not meant to be passed along as proverbs but lived to be truly understood. I learnt that experience trumps intuition. I learnt that unusual perseverance requires unusual patience. I learnt that patience is not a trait but a habit, which, over lengthy demonstration, is incorrectly identified as a trait. I learnt to distinguish between situations that require giving things a go and those which demand giving things time. Most importantly, I learnt once more to wait; and, as ever throughout the summer, I continue waiting. Because good things take their own sweet time.

Will I wait a lonely lifetime?

If you want me to, I will.

A requiem for a great man.

On the 29th of April, it was 19 years to the day when my maternal grandfather left this world, leaving his family to mourn his death, yet many more to celebrate his life. At the time, he was my best friend, my teacher and my go-to guy for any reason permitted within the subjectivities of this universe. That I'm so curious about the oddest of things has a lot to do with the encouragement (and patronage, even) I received from Dadu.

Growing up, he'd spend one month of his summer holidays at his maternal grandparents' in the country. He'd save money through the year - amounting to no more than a couple of rupees, if that - to buy chhola and gur once there. Then, in the sweltering heat, he'd distribute the chhola, gur and water to weary travellers from morning till evening. He did this every day, for thirty days, every year for close to a decade.

After the Partition, he became the head of an inordinately large family. Instead of buckling under the myriad pressures of such a huge responsibility, he made sure that his brothers and sisters, infinite cousins, other distant relatives, and even friends (or relations of friends and/or their friends) from the East received the best possible schooling, and arranged for all their marriages. He did this without arrogance and sought, instead, to infuse all those he'd cared for with the confidence which would supply the strength to stand on their feet.

As the president of the now-defunct Parents' Council of the school in which I spent 15 years of my life, he voluntarily helped an uncountable number of people through their years in school, from getting them in to providing career advice. His famous wit, which sliced like a knife I'm told, flowed from a natural ease and a readiness to look at the bright side of the world.

I don't remember much of him, though. I can only faintly recollect his voice and the memory of his face is now lost to the few pictures that are left hanging on the walls of his loved ones. What I've received from him, though, I hold very close to my heart: the pursuit of truth. I wish that when I've paid my dues and am ready to set sail, the world is closer to how Dadu envisioned it - more peaceful, more hopeful and filled with the sounds of laughter.

Note of absence.

It's been a while since I've had the freedom to indulge in giving vent to my thoughts on the intrawebs. For those that stare at this blog as their sole means of entertainment through the day, I duly apologise. For those who hardly stop by (or not at all), well, fuck you. One should also notice that I use "intrawebs" instead of "internet." Yeah, I'm cool like that.

For those still in doubt, let me assure you that a lot was happening in the last 6 weeks which kept this blogger away. Firstly, there were term papers to be submitted: 7 of them, all around 5,000 words (give or take a few) of original research, I kid you not! By the time I emerged from the ordeal of reading, writing, rewriting, footnoting, reading some more and throwing my hands up in despair having discovered that there was so much I'd failed to include in my papers, I'd learnt to tell time in three exciting new ways, and my pinkies were twitching with the sensation of a cell-phone vibration.

Secondly, I had exams to take, and they magically commenced a week from the day that term-paper madness was resolved. All's well that ends well, though, and so I know that my finals have been horrible. They ended today with a train-wreck of a French paper which has left me with thoughts of my first ever F and a supplementary to take in August. I wish I could say that what did me in were the fine points of Camus' philosophy which are, indeed, hard to decipher in English, much less elaborate in French. However, it was only a regulation, elementary French exam, in which I could not even differentiate between a pronom possessif and a pronom demonstratif.

There were interesting developments too. An organisation in DC to which I'd forgotten I'd applied for an internship had conveniently forgotten to let me know that they "can't accommodate me this summer." Bah, what else is new? I did get in touch with a very nice professor in California as part of the APSA Mentoring Initiative who should, over the coming months, sugar-coat all my failures to traverse the RTU. I signed up for the UGC's NET, which is a written exam that qualifies test-takers to teach in Indian universities should they pass: so, if you qualify for Lecturership, you've got some slick jizz, and if you also qualify for a Junior Research Fellowship, you're hot piss! The test's on the 29th of June, so I've got some time to underprepare for it. I was also invited to a seminar in DC, which I should be able to attend if some generous benefactors purchase a ticket for me.

Finally, I'm thankful to the great archiving efforts of Google, which have now allowed for this blog to be returned through searches, though one must take care to use quotes. And with that, I'm back to confer my deference to theory and my condescension to the world. Ciao!

Hook, line and stinker.

I've only ever endured the misadventure of going fishing once or twice in my life. Notwithstanding the environmental affronts to the "philosophical pastime" which array themselves before someone who by design or compulsion has spent his whole life in Calcutta, I found out very early in the exercise of baiting a fishing rod, configuring tangents of pivot and the general good feeling of standing under the beastly summer sun of West Bengal that I wasn't particularly suited to such pursuits. Never mind the fact that I was desperately overcome by clumsiness each time I'd to cast the rod, the simple fact was (and remains) that I'm extremely unlucky in these ventures, as it were. I've never caught fish in my life. Thus, I've never had curry.

Therefore, for those astute readers pondering how this impoverished blogger shall sustain his quest of retaking tests, ordering 50 sets of (undergraduate and graduate) transcripts, pay application fees and mail supplementary materials, don't think that that's a headache which doesn't consume many afternoons of thought. When one needs something close to a hundred thousand Indian curries, even the paucity of good fortune isn't a strong enough discouragement from going fishing again.

I already had the hook, though. During my sojourn last year, it was recommended that I apply for a well-regarded internship. The line was drawn in that I had, for whatever my beliefs are worth, excellent credentials. But after applying and waiting on it for quite some time came the stinker. I got a mail last night, which read:

"Unfortunately, we are not able to offer you a position. I wanted to let you know that your application was very good; you were very close to being a finalist. So I hope that you will keep the program in mind for the summer of 2008."

Thank you very much. One thing though: I did think that I'd kept the program in mind for the summer of 2008!! Fucking idiots, using year-old form mails. And I'm not even good enough to get in there.

And just a footnote: the money from the internship would've paid for my ticket to ride on the RTU. To manage the significant setbacks this accrues, I'll have to import yet another change to my character and become something I've never been: stingy. Don't me get wrong, I hardly spend on myself except when indulging in books. But based on my calculations last night, I'll have the benefit of $10/month for the rest of the year, if I get a raise in May. Jeez, reel me in already!

Waiting for inspiration.

Even now, as I labour to come up with something clever, I'm waiting for that one moment of inspiration, which shall infuse some life into my mind. Something intelligent. Something fascinating. Something simple.

For what it's worth, I feel like I've been on this never-ending quest to pawn ideas with tenure-track professors, something to attract them to my e-mails so that they're tempted enough to respond. And the more I try, the less I succeed. Well, obviously. Like that'll ever change in the history of humanity. I'm down to the small change of all my ideas, and in the history of ideas, that's absolutely, pun-intended-positively pathetic!

I remember a time when ideas weren't a problem. They just flew at my face, and from my mouth to everyone else's face. (And sometimes to their minds, and ever so rarely, their hearts.) Sadly, I'm no longer able to do that. Posited against the current of mediocrity and loud-mouthed propaganda, I've for some reason reasoned to keep quiet. Let things slide. Let assholes get their way. Y'know, to be sociable, like. I made peace with the fact that I can let my mind unwind as and when I get into a PhD program - oxygen to the brain; a (huge) sigh of relief, et cetera. I wonder now, if the cause has become the effect. I wonder why I wonder, because I know I need to clear my head.

A creative mind doesn't think about inspiration. (Most Langabaga discussions about The Beatles conclude that they never thought about what they were doing.) There's no supreme force that'll suddenly turn a benefactor and throw a bone of inspiration in someone's direction. There's inspiration in a cool glass of water and in the notes of a distant melody, as in the unexpected words of an unknown poet and the eyes of someone in the mirror we know only too well. When I'm teaching the history of ideas, I certainly won't be pawning inspiration for performance; I'll be opening doors. And if someone needs to be inspired, they need only look within.

Corollary: Oxymoron

Just to prove how much of a wise-ass I am, right after I published the previous post, I left home and got on a 13C bound for Jadavpur and L'Atelier's concert on Sunday.

And just to prove that my existence isn't consumed by worrying about PhD applications, I'm publishing the current post to determine that I do have a life.

For those of you who're missing my rants, rest assured that the same shall follow very soon.

Missed the bus, again.

Anonymous blogs on the intrawebs are a great resource for finding all things relevant 5 months too late. I was advised in one of these aforementioned retreats for the apparent crème de la crème of (presumably American) political theorists that I should seriously consider an MPhil at Cambridge, given my interests in political theory and the history of political thought.

England's always appealed to me in ways that a humble, pie-eating, red-nosed Scouser would surely discern, but not so much for academics, even though I've always known the country to be doing some of the finest work in my fields of interest. I guess I'll go my-head-corkscrewed-up-my-butt insane if I were to land in England, watch football on the telly, and never have the comfort of looking forward to visiting Anfield because I'd be in a line of work already established to be leading to unemployment.

Anywho, I Googled for Cambridge, such being my temerity, and found the Faculty of History offering an MPhil in Political Thought and Intellectual History. The moment I read those words to myself, my ears pricked up (as if they could any further), and I couldn't deny the slight excitement in my search for more information. And then it came - the ritual kick up the back side. Could I still apply to the program? Yes. Was I still eligible for funding? No, of course not. Do I have money to finance the course, should I get admitted? Um, does the Pope shit in the woods?

So, yay, I've found another back-up plan for the future, if I were to strike out again next year. But since I'm applying across the board, big and small, I wonder if there's a point in exercising this option any longer. You see, sometimes it's better to have missed a bus, than to have boarded a 13C.

A moment of panic.

With what has now become a characteristic second second-thought, I almost applied to an MA program at the New School for Social Research. I figured that with one quasi-Marxist-approaching-Hitler already occupying the basement, I might as well carry the fight to the same turf. Right on cue, Pink Floyd played on the radio and a Kantian turn infused reason into my noumenal self which had been momentarily Earth-bound. So, um, Dr. Hobswam, I've gotta give you a miss for now.

I hate this. It's March of 2008, and I'll be biting my nails till the March (April, even) of 2009. I find myself constantly thinking about this nonsensical process of having to prove my academic potential to a committee of clueless, overworked, dreary-eyed objectivists, who'd play it safe by relying on GRE percentiles. I'm not saying I'm something like the best thing to happen to moral philosophy since John Rawls, but I'm an honest student of politics: I debate without provocation, I listen without hesitation, I read without prejudice. I think from things. Or, at least, I used to.

The last few days have been an exercise in trying to will my concentration to last longer than that fleeting second, in evaluating and re-evaluating my readiness and competence in doing doctoral work, on jotting down ideas/thoughts so as not to forget them (yep, it's that bad) and dreaming of a time when I'll be reading these words and smiling to myself.

In reality, I think it'll be easier for me once I get into a program - I got sick as balls just to pass outta high school, had to make my pet cow climb trees to get into college, but once in there, I made progress. I learnt things. Subsequently, I was swept into my MA program by the general inertia of things happening around me. I'm not suggesting that gradschool shall be a breeze, but for me, I believe it'll be the getting in (a.k.a. me throwing off the yoke of negativity which I've left hanging around myself for far too long) which'll be more difficult. In any case, it shan't happen in a moment of panic.

So it begins.

Well yeah, I've always wanted to quote Morpheus' famous middle-of-his-life words. (If you don't know who he is or when he said this, it's a good indication that you shouldn't be here. Avast, freshwater swab!)

Yesterday I received a rejection from Brown. In the process, I struck out for the first year of my PhD applications. Duke and Brown - yeah, apple and orange - both didn't want any more of yours truly than an application form. Goodbye, blue sky. :-(

I'm now at a point in my life where I'll have to do what I've dreaded for the last three years: make several applications, take tests, fill out forms, e-mail professors, write my proposal/SOP several gazillion times, make hundreds of photocopies of inconsequential papers (and some, absent-mindedly, of my butt) and haggle the oh-so-considerate folk at the holy grail of human niceties i.e., the administrative building of Jadavpur University - and all in a few months' time. Oh, fuck me silly!

Let's face it - everyone wants to go to Harvard and brag about it; to be taught in a group of five by Michael Sandel or be advised by Stephen Walt and then go home to mesmerise a crowd of young 'uns with stories of oak-wooden lecture halls and air-conditioned dorms. I'm one in the crowd. I'm taken in by all the hogwash, regardless of how poor the job market in political theory is, and without care for how hot it'll be in India when I've to return after six years with nothing to show for the time but a degree soaking in my sweat. Yes, let's face it - that PhD is surely the road to unemployment (RTU).

On my journey to find the RTU, I shall take with me the unfortunate reader of this excrutiatingly artificial and painful blog. (The self-disdain and mockery works for me. See if my blogging doesn't improve by the next month.) When I'm there, I shall continue as your humble correspondent, reporting all the unserviceables in lieu of the payment of my taxes. Right now, I must conclude this confused first post. Ta!