For St Stephen's College, Delhi : Past, Present, and Future

Last night I dreamt that I was once again in my beloved college, St Stephen’s, Delhi. The stinging smell of the parched earth rose to my dry nostrils, and the fierce anger of the Indian summer’s sun rapidly burnt into my bronzed flesh. I willingly stepped into the cool enclaves of Rudra South, and tip-toed down the dark and dank corridor, not wishing to irritate any old souls who might be sleeping upstairs. I could hear a few birds gaily chirping outside, and three curious lizards on the white walls responded readily with their staccato cries.I slithered past the wooden doors blackened with the passage of time, stopping now and then in front of them, wondering if any of my forgotten friends had lived there in the past. A gentle numbness began to sink into my bones, as I began to remember the smells of the smoky evenings at St Stephen’s.Suddenly, one the doors flew open with a burst of electric guitar and drums, and a student sporting long hair ran past me, wildly gesticulating at me and loudly exclaiming something to me which I could not grasp. I walked on slowly until I reached the very end of the corridor, and stood in front of the cracked door which filled me with strange premonitions. I was about to knock on it when it opened outwards onto me, and I saw a row of smartly dressed students sitting on a varnished table.

‘Come in’, a hollow voice bellowed.I gingerly took a step ahead.

‘Your introduction?’

‘What is that?’

‘Sir!’

‘Sir?’

‘No, not that way. It is an exclamation mark, not a question. Don’t they teach you these things in the schools anymore these days? Say something, and then top it with a Sir!’

‘Sir!’

At this point, another student at the end of the table chirped in.

‘Hey you? Are you trying to be smart or something? You from Doon school?’

‘I would rather be damned than go to Doon, Sir!’

A third student now joined in.

‘Hey, smart fellow, do you know that the annual college elections are within a week?’

‘Yes, Sir!’

‘Okay, then, are you voting for the Pinky party?’

‘What is a Pinky, Sir!’?

A fourth student now shouted at me.

‘Man, you got a problem or something, huh? You a bit loose in the head? You are a Pinky yourself and you don’t know what a Pinky is? Am I supposed to find that funny?’

I was about to passionately reiterate that I had absolutely no idea what a Pinky was like when everyone in the room suddenly fell silent. I turned around and saw the imposing figure of the Dean of College towering over us.

‘Dear students, you know that St Stephen’s is the Harvard of the East. Indeed, when I was a student at Harvard during the good old days, the President there called me over one evening after dinner and told me, ‘You know, had it not been for Harvard, I would have been at St Stephen’s by now.’ And you, my dear students, you must live as if you are all Harvardists to the very core of your being.’

At that moment, there was a loud outbreak of jarring music outside the window, and some of us went out with the Dean into Rudra Court. There was a large gathering of students with colourful placards that screamed, ‘Down With Pinky Politics’, ‘Vote Tinkoo’, ‘Tinkoo And St Stephen’s : Bond Stronger Than Fevicol’. There was an impeccably attired student with a black tie who was standing on a raised platform, and was shouting at his audience.

‘Dear Stephanians! Today you stand at a decisive moment in the long history of St Stephen’s. Unless we stem the menacing flow of Pinky politics, the future of Tinkoos in this college looks bleak, and once Tinkoos are voted out of St Stephen’s that will be the beginning of the end for Tinkoos all over India’.

His rousing speech was greeted with a massive applause, with many raucous black ravens enthusiastically joining in for full measure. I went up to him after the speech and asked him, in perfect naivety, what a Tinkoo was supposed to be. He glared at me rather indignantly as if I had just dropped down from Venus or, what was worse, had walked over from the college on the other side of the road : ‘You don’t know what a Tinkoo is? Well, my boy, it so happens that today is your lucky day. The answer to your question is very simple : whoever is not a Pinky is a Tinkoo! There, that’s it. Do you get it?’

‘Sir! But are not all of us Stephanians, Sir?’

‘Well, yes. All Stephanians are equal, but some Tinkoos are more equal than the Pinkies.’

Someone poked me in the side then, and I turned to find my old Physics classmate beckoning to me to join him at the entrance to the main college corridor. I rushed along behind him, and bumped into a gathering of students who were dutifully reading the Principal’s Notice Board as if it were the Gospel message for the day. The note on it was very crisp, clear, and concise; a brevity that masterfully concealed the despair of the long-suffering Principal at his gradual lack of control over his Stephanian flock.

‘Dear students of St Stephen’s. As you approach the historic date of the college elections for this year, the occasion for the manifestation of your heroic individuality, I must remind you that the corridor of Saint Stephen’s does not lead to the dungeon of Secular Parliament. There shall be no discussion of Pinky Policy, Tinkoo Tantrum, or Women Wisdom in the sanctified corridors of St Stephen’s which have always remained, and will remain under me as well, strictly apolitical.’

I had by then formed a vague notion of who or what the Pinkies and the Tinkoos were about, but was quite puzzled by that cryptic reference to ‘Women Wisdom’ in the Principal’s curt notice, and requested my classmate to enlighten me in this matter.He replied very nonchalantly : ‘Oh, that one is about the women residents in St Stephen’s. Around this time of the year, these Stephanian females always develop an attitude problem.’

‘What is an attitude problem?’

‘Oh, you know, the usual nonsense. As if we have not done the females enough favours by allowing them a place in Residence! I don’t quite understand them, really. Whenever it is time for the election campaigning, all the females in college start acting so pricey. Now one of them even wants to become President of college. A woman for Prez? Attitude and all, hah?!’

I was pondering over his reply when I heard a loud noise, this time on Andrews' Court, and stepped out of the corridor in that direction. I saw some students, with plenty of those maligned females in their midst, sitting on the green grass glistening in the late afternoon sun and straining their ears to the rasping voice of a stout speaker.

‘Friends, Females, and Stephanians --- lend me your genders. I come in harmony to resurrect the repressed Pinky, not damn the honourable Tinkoo. The Tinkoo is long dead in St Stephen’s, and all we can do now is to give the Tinkoo a honourable burial and sing a dolorous elegy over the Tinkoo’s death. We are all Stephanians, my brothers and my sisters, and let gender not get in the way in our joint fight to keep the Tinkoo where the Tinkoo should remain --- that honourable grave behind the chapel!’

By now I was feeling bloated with all this talk of the Pinky, the Tinkoo and the attitudinal Females, and rather exasperated as well since nobody seemed to be able to tell me what they were fighting for anyway. At that very moment, I was shocked to find one of my old friends from Economics sitting beside me, calmly repeating something to herself as if she was chanting some arcane mantra. Wearing a spotless white T-shirt that shouted 'Nestle Kills Children', black jeans that were tattered at the ends, and blue floaters that threatened to split apart, she was placidly smoking a Marlboro cigarette without exhibiting the slightest indication of living through a contradiction. ‘All of this needs to be deconstructed. This entire putrid mess. Yes, the whole of it’, she was steadily murmuring to herself.

I looked at the thick smoke rings, and above them I saw the orange sun going down behind the majestic towers of St Stephen’s and setting the red bricks ablaze with its setting glory. I was suddenly seized by an inexplicable sadness which seemed to tell me that my life in St Stephen’s was going to end someday in the future, and that I would wake up one morning to find myself in a place far away from the dreaming spires of St Stephen’s.

‘Yes, I knew it. I should have gone to that party in South Extension instead of loitering around in college listening to these depressing morons. I mean, how sad can you be? By the way, are you thinking what I am thinking?’, she asked me.

‘No?’

‘Good. You don’t want to know what I am thinking right now, anyway. I have had enough of the Pinkies, the Tinkoos, and these female thingies. They all need a bit of dissolving in my black coffee, and everything will turn out all right tomorrow morning.’

I tried my best to grasp what she was throwing at me when the main gates of St Stephen’s were thrown open, a row of shining silver cars politely glided in, and three men in black rushed towards them to open the car doors.My Economics friend was helpful once again, and she kindly informed me that the Home Minister of India, himself a former Stephanian during the halcyon days of the 1960s, had been invited by the most informal club of St Stephen’s, The Formal Time-Pass Group, to comment on the possible repercussions of the college elections on the state of the Indian polity. The Honourable Minister boldly laid bare the threads that were precariously holding together the delicate tapestry of Stephanian existence, pointing out that the rise of Pinky-identity was a salutary signal for the oppressed communities of India, and that the vigorous Tinkoo reaction augured well for the vibrancy of Indian democracy. As for the college females with attitudes, well, they were quite all right, he said, if only they would tone down their attitude a bit. At this stage, I began to feel really tired, and was thinking of going back to my room in Rudra North when my Chemistry friend reminded me that I was supposed to wake him up at 5 : 30 the next morning for his basketball practice.

I woke up this morning in Cambridge just as the minute hand of my small clock was striking 5:30, and looked through my window at the morning sun gently rising like a swan raising its head from its sleep. It is weird, really. It is weird how so much of my years at St Stephen’s college, Delhi, continues surreptitiously to live on in and through me, in clandestine ways perhaps unknown to me, and perhaps unrecoverable as well though definitely unforgettable.