rants

Sad is the day, I suppose, when I visit my journal (my former Internet domicile, my preciousss) for no other reason than that I hadn't visited it in a long time, and didn't want the month of February to go by without my having posted a single journal entry. Incidentally, February 2011 was a month that went by in exactly that manner. What makes Feburary so special, I wonder? Does it have anything to do with the fact that its being the shortest month reduces the likelihood of anything interesting happening during that period? Or is it simply because nothing interesting happens at this time of the year? Probably the latter. Back in high school, Febraury was the month of calm before the storm - the final exams, the Board Exams, the travesty of education - call them whatever you like. And as every student with a scintillating academic record of the type that I had in my high school years (that was sarcasm) knows, consciously or unconsciously, interesting things tend not to happen before exams. Things happen, of course, with their usual frequency, but we are loath to label them interesting, for we don't have time for much besides studying.

The problem, I think, with Indian universities (or at least with those of them I've heard more than two sentences about) today is that they act as "extensions of high school". That phrase, by the way, was first used by the immortal Vajay Wiggeray in an attempt to defend FIITJEE's indefensible fascist disciplinary policies, not to mention the disgrace of making students wear that horrid school uniform - dissembled gaol clothes for the boys, and the same for the girls, minus the dissemblance. Attentive readers (to use a favorite phrase of the authors of my linguistics textbook) will have guessed that the professors and teachers are themselves exempt from this appraisal, and it's only the administrations I'm criticizing - again, with my limited, second-hand knowledge of them. Indian universities don't treat their students like adults. They place too many restrictions on them, and take them through a regimental course that offers them little opportunity to explore their interests fully. The rest is captured more than adequately in 3 idiots. I'm sure Kapil Sibal, ever mesmerized by the meretricious and the superficial, has no opinions in this regard. The Indian government, clearly, shares the blame, and needs to be dealt with accordingly.

How many of you remember that old adage - "Spare the rod, spoil the country"? The biggest problem with Indian politics is the fact that politicians are exalted and held in awe by the ignorant, and democracy in a country like India implicitly means rule of the ignorant. Instead, being a politician needs to become taboo. People must impose social sanctions on the knaves who choose to take that debauched path. Ostracize them. Don't treat theirs as human souls deserving of the same sort of right to life as yours. Flog them mercilessly with heavy iron rods till all that remains of them is a bloody smear in the street. That's what the government today is, anyway, metaphorically: an unsightly smear on the pages of history - the fly squashed between the pages of that noble tome. Or not so noble: in point of fact, history has betrayed herself by immortalizing the names of the avaricious traitors who operated in pre-Independence India. Their politics don't become any the nobler for the presence of the British menace. They served a purpose - a necessary purpose - but the veneer of nobility was shed - blown off, rather, by reality - once the British had fled. Now all it deserves is condemnation. Here ends another of my political rants.

Bleach has entered its last arc. In a few short months, my journey that began in January 2009 will officially be over. Not that the said journey was roses, roses all the way, of course. Bleach has been unkind to me. It was responsible for my having become hopelessly distracted during the tenth-grade Board Exams, and doing considerably worse in them than I and everyone else had expected me to do, and continued exercising its insidious influence over me throughout the eleventh grade. It was only when, fortuitously, Kubo Tite lost his head and started printing garbage that I became disillusioned - snapped out of the trance, as it were - and came to my senses. My interest in Bleach steadily declined from that point on. But it began rising again, once Kubo began showing signs of having snapped out of his trance, and plateaued at a healthy stage of moderate, controlled enjoyment. The final arc looks promising. I should hope that it won't disappoint. We shall find out, I suppose, as we go on.