Interaction V: Ganja smoking unemployed engineer speaks

The person with whom this interaction has been taken was one of the best students in his school days. Apart from being a good in academics, he was the Captain of a local cricket team. He started taking ganja(weeds), as he says, from highschool. In engineering colleges in Orissa, of which I happen to be a part, there are groups that take ganja regularly. The following is an interaction with a person who has completed his engineering  and is back ‘preparing’ for jobs. He shares, through a narrative of his own, his existential trajectory with an emphasis on ganja. The following are in his own words.

I was introduced to ganja when I was in high school (12^th standard). I was about eighteen years old then. A friend of mine heard about it and asked me and six of my friends that would we like to have a try. We were all tobacco smokers. We said yes and he said that, he would try to find out where it was available. He got one ‘joint’(ganja and tobacco mixed and rolled like a cigarette) for us that cost us Rs.5 and all six of us took a couple drags each approximately. This was the first time we tried ganja. As far as I remember, people who had anxieties in their lives (then that was chiefly related to love) started becoming, sort of, what I would call, paranoid. Others enjoyed it. I was finding it very funny. All of us were laughing. Some of them were trying to get out of the hit as soon as possible.  We were all laughing, at our own condition as well as at others. I remember it like it happened yesterday. I believed the amount that we had taken could produce panic that some others were showing.
Then occasionally we used to take ganja. The usual amount was one ‘joint’ per three people. And usually it was the same effect produced. The second time we noticed the external physical effect. Eyes were red, etc. We enjoyed what we did. We laughed away anything that appeared then. It was a small amount that we took and the effect didn’t last long. In that sense it was better than alcohol. Our beautiful atmosphere was confined to the boundaries of our brain. No one could have any idea of what was going on inside our heads and passerby’s could guess that we are under dope. We realised this after the passing away of the ‘dope mood.’ Unlike after taking alchohol, we could socialize after sometime. We were discussing these things amongst ourselves.
Then some of us went to do our undergraduate degrees. Some were preparing for entrance tests to get into govt. medical colleges(there was tough competition and usually people dropped out of academics in order to prepare for entrance tests). One of my six ganja friends got a seat after dropping out for three years. I too dropped  for a year and went to this coaching centre[1]. I again doped in the later part of this year and it was once or twice that I did it. Unfortunately I did not clear the tests and got into an engineering college. After making friends with them, I asked a few people who were into ganja or not. Few people said that they had tried it and few were acquainted with it. So, I asked if we could do it there. They agreed. We realized it became a ‘symbol of fraternity,’ for those who used ganja. We went on outings there and it was easy to find ganja there. By then, I needed two ‘joints,’ for going high. I felt ganja near the college was a little worse in quality than Cuttack ‘joint’. Then I made joints together with better quality of tobacco mixed.  I have never disappointed myself with the joints that I rolled myself. I could go really ‘high.’
I adored someone who was a very good student and an excellent cricketer. Academically, he was one batch over me. When I discovered that he was also into ganja, we had joints together. He had the craft of an artist in rolling the ‘joints’. We started taking ‘joints’ together, say, about two to three times a week. Then we started using the chillam*. When I first tried ganja in chilam, I threw up but later I got acquainted with and I realized it makes one high quickly. By the time I was in my third year we used to take ‘joints’ or ganja in Chillam regularly in along with freshly admitted juniors into the ‘fraternity.’ Towards the end of final year I can’t recall how many times we doped daily.
In the final year, when there are campus recruitments, my college didn’t bring any core** companies. As I was not interested in software, I didn’t sit for them. Only one core company came later in which I was not eligible because I had a backlog. Only one student out of 318 students could make it through to Vedanta, who, paradoxically wasn’t of core branch. But that is immaterial here. I have left Rayagara since mid 2010. Now I’m back with few of my old friends. We use Chillam rarely but in the evening we get together take joints. Have some good time and get back.
Rest of the day, I study. I am preparing for public sector. My aim in life is satisfaction and not just earning and so I chose private sector over public sector. The lifestyle in public sector is different from private sector where they screw for 12 hours. I’ve been inspired by my father. He does work, takes care of us. I want life to be complete. I rejected software jobs that paid about two lakhs per annum in Bhubaneswar. Though my trade doesn’t allow me to stay near home, given a chance, I would love to stay near home. 

*A funnel traditionally used to smoke ganja.

** A term used popularly used to represent mechanical, electrical or construction related studies in  Engineering college. It excludes Computer Science and Information Technology. 

    

[1] There are a number of coaching institutes in Bhubaneswar and Cuttack where tens of thousands of students go to prepare for entrance exams. The coaching includes regular exams and every coaching institute stresses for preparing by intensive study for at least 12-14 hours a day. During the period, this person appeared for his tests, there were about 300 seats and 70,000 aspirants in Orissa.

Interaction III: A household worker speaks of the trajectory of her life

The following is an interaction that I had with a household worker in a residential area in Bhubaneshwar. I asked her to come to my place so that she could share whatever she thought was relevant for her and about her life. I asked her to sit on the sofa beside my chair where I was typing on the computer. She continuously hesitated and said ‘babu, mu tale basibi’(sir, I’ll sit down on the floor.) When I asked her why was she reluctant, she gave a smile that to me appeared that me asking her to sit beside me was sort of absurd. Ultimately, she sat down on the floor and narrated the following. I asked her to pause in between her flow of sentences so that I could translate what she was saying (in Oriya) into English. She ended the conversation/interaction by saying that she had work and was getting late.

I have come from Banki, Cuttack District and it has been ten years since I am in Bhubaneshwar. I had to leave my place because my husband harassed me. He works as an agriculture labourer and we have a house there but I haven’t met him ever since. I meet my ‘jaas’(wives of husbands brothers) though. Initially, when I came to Bhubaneshwar,  I was an attendant in a girls’ hostel for a couple of years. My work, there, included bringing stuff for girls, and attending them if they are ill. In the first year I was paid Rs.1200 and then Rs.1400 for the next year. One girl was ill and I just went out for some time when the supervisor was complained and I was forced to leave the job. Then for two years I worked as a cook in one house. They paid me Rs.1200. Since then I have been working in several households, moving from one to other house if I lose my job. Now I get Rs.2000 per month. I work in five households, two shifts each. My work includes cleaning dishes, washing clothes and other household work.
 Here, in Bhubaneshwar, I stay in Tarini Basti(slum) with about ninety other families in thatched roof or asbestos houses. I stay in a two room asbestos house with two other families. I pay Rs. 600 (will have to pay Rs.700 from next month) to the owner of the house who works as a cook in other households. The house is built on Government land. There are problems in my life but everyone has problems. Who has time to think about them ? And also, it is fruitless.I will have to work as long as my hands allow me to. Then, I’ll have to leave for Banki. I have two children. The younger is ill. I do not know what disease he has. He often vomits blood. He has attended primary school. My elder son hasn’t been to school and is now unemployed. I do not know what will happen after I stop working, but, I guess, things will be sorted out by then.
  

Interaction II: Student of ITER, Bhubaneshwar, speaks of his experience in a protest

Students of Orissa have always been abused by the popular media, especially those studying in private Engineering Colleges and the picture that anyone external to these students get is a view that they are, “bade baap ke bigde hue aulaad” (spoilt children of rich people). On the 20^th of April, Institute of Technical Education and Research, Bhubaneshwar, saw something that can be said to be one of the first concerted protest against the impositions of the institutional bureaucracy on the second year students of the college (B.Tech Programme). Sidharth Mohapatra, one of the protestors shares his experience of how it all began and what all happened.  The following are in his words.

On the 19^th of April, at around 5 p.m. there was a notice on the notice board where the names of students having shortage of attendance and the dates for examinations were given. I had 60% attendance in every subject and expected that I won’t be having any problems of being unable to attend the semesters. But, to my surprise, one of my friends, Raunak Raj, called me up and said that I had attendance shortage in all six subjects that I was to appear in the semesters. At that time I was with one of my friends. We immediately decided to go to college and reached there at about 6. There was a crowd gathered in college and no one was bothered about whether anyone got attendance shortages or not; rather, the question that everyone was asking everyone else, “In how many subjects did you get a shortage of attendance.” There were also jokes as to how the college screwed us. Initially I didn’t want to think any longer about the issue as I wanted to be calm – I thought nothing could be done. I went to my place and picked up a novel to divert my mind from the trouble that lay ahead. Sometime later, I got an SMS from a friend which read, “God curse ITER…Friends, we are heading for a strike tomorrow against the atrocities of the institute regarding attendance problem and exam schedules. So, we expect cordial support from all my friends to support the strike wholeheartedly and reach college gate by 12p.m. Please send this to everyone you know to help the needy.”  My first reaction was something like, analyzing the language and finding flaws in it, and the whole text appeared ridicules to me. Then I moved on with my novel.  Then I got a call from one of my friends called Anshu who asked me to come to the college gate at 12p.m. and asked me to bring as many people I could. I said yes and then I thought of forwarding the SMS I had received to few friends. I forwarded it to three to four friends. I got reply SMSs instantly with questions like, ‘where exactly?’ ‘how many?,’ etc. Now let me tell you something about myself. This had happened to me before in the 1^st year and I was really irritated. I was thinking of dropping out from college. I write poetry and thought I better do that. My parents forced me to stay. Now, moving back to where we were, I called Raunak Raj and started chatting about why the college was upto such things. We discussed we are not at all comfortable with what the college is famous for, namely, discipline. Then the old thought surfaced in my mind – “I should quit.” Then I thought why should I quit. I hung up with rage against college. So I wrote this new message, “guys, we are being fucked because we are lying down with legs wide open and it’s time to use our dicks to fuck them back. If you are a man, be a man and show up at 12 noon and join us in our protest against the college.” I sent the SMS to around twenty boys. I thought that this message might be very inappropriate to girls. So, I forwarded the message I received to the girls I knew. Within an hour or so at around 9:30 in the night, I was receiving the same message from friends and unknown numbers along with eight other messages from friends and unknown numbers. Then I called Pratik Mohapatra who sounded really angry. I found out, he, along with another of his friends, started this SMS thing. We abused the college and we thought it was all because of money that the college does this thing. Then we were talking about problems we might have to face with family when they came to know about what happened. Ultimately we decided to go on a ‘do or die’ move. Then I called a friend of my college after talking to whom, I stopped being impulsive and got down to thinking. Something that this friend was able to explain was that how the compulsory attendance was completely absurd. I hung up and started thinking again. Then I called Pratik again and told him that we needed to organize ourselves. I was hyped that night and on my bed, lying down, I was thinking “tomorrow was the day.” I took up the novel again and was asleep by about 2:30a.m. When I woke up at about in the morning, the passion had all evaporated and I wanted to go back to sleep. Then Pratik called again and I was casual about it. I went to college in a tranquil mood. When I reached there Pratik Mohapatra was the only guy standing there. We were supposed to have at least 500 students. One problem that had taken place earlier was that in our SMSs we had given different places to meet. We did not know where anyone else might be. That might have been a reason why we were alone there.  Then we called people and came to know that some students had their tests and so they would show up at 12 as exactly decided. Some of the students had gone to make fake medical certificates, the name of the source I can’t disclose because that would lead to problems we might face in future. They would return after getting them and join us. After about half an hour, there were five of us standing in front of the college expecting more company when Rahul(name changed), came and informed that there were students inside who were awaiting us. We went in front of the Academic Block of our college from where we expected more students to come out. In an hour we were about sixty only and in rage we decided to go with whatever strength we had. We went to the Dean’s Office where we were not allowed to enter. We started shouting and abusing the institute.

              Students protesting in front of college administration

After some time Prof. B.K. Sarap, Deputy Chairman of our institute showed up and said that we could talk. We agreed, though not instantly.  There were also about fifteen girls accompanying us though their main grievance was regarding examination rescheduling. Prof. Sarap said: “give me your demands in written. Then I’ll see what can be done.” We wrote an application where we put down our two demands: cut-off of a minimum attendance should be reduced and, exams should be properly rescheduled with gaps between consecutive  exams. One of the girls, who wanted rescheduling threw up that there was a rule in UGC that exam dates are to be announced fifteen days before the commencement of exams. We were all in the peak of our zeal then. While writing the application, we were sixty but the number of signatories became hundred and ninety-eight. Two of us, including me, were sent to submit the application. We were stopped by the guards. I was furious at him and called my friends back who came back yelling. Prof. Sarap came to us and asked for the application. We handed it over to him. We then had a conversation with him. Then, finally he agreed to reschedule the exams and see to it that minimum students get an attendance shortage. There were cries of joy and the crowd dispersed.   

Interaction I: Worker in Atos Origin India Pvt Ltd.

The following is the reflection of a worker (software developer) in Atos Origin India Private Limited(Mumbai), a part of Atos Origin Global , an European MNC. The worker desired to share certain things with other workers and the people in general. The following are in his words:

First of all, I can not disclose my name because I apprehend if this is found out then I’ll be thrown out of the job. What instigated me to stop and reflect on the company was a sudden decision that was imposed on us. We were supposed to work for eight and half hours out of which half an hour was for lunch. One day suddenly, we got instructions that we were to work for nine and half hours. I, and many of my co-workers were really irritated but we couldn’t undo the imposition. This imposition, probably forced my confrontation and reflection of certain other aspects of my work. It takes two hours in transportation (an average for all), even three to four hours for some. We are left with no time to fulfill our basic needs. I don’t know about others, but I feel like being used as if I am not a human being but a machine. Increase the time for which it runs and you obviously don’t ask a machine whether he would like to run or not. After about a month of the imposition, every project manager summoned meetings to ask us about our views on the increase in time of work. The outcome of the meetings was nothing, as is evident from the fact that, in spite of a complete disagreement on our behalf to work for the increased period of time, there were no changes made. It is also notable that we were made to sit in groups of four or five (under project managers) and not together. Any initiative on our behalf to sit together would have eventual results in ousting from jobs. Naturally, no one took the initiative. The meetings fulfilled its duty in handing over to the company the question, “why were the work’s time suddenly raised?” The answers included, increase in profitability and to enable the company to compete better with other IT companies. And yes, no wage increase were there during his period. It is frustrating that still we are unable to even say these in public. And we cheer the fall of some dictatorial empire in some country.       

Black Swan: Explicating a subversive cultural intervention

The world of actors/actresses appears glamorous: wealth, fame, sex. It’s all there, but they are also workers involved in capitalist production. This thought has been haunting me since I was leafing through Stanislavsky’s ‘An Actor Prepares’. I bought the book to gift to a friend who is very interested in films. The book’s memory faded until recently, when it re-appeared, as I ran accidentally into seeing the movie Black Swan (Darren Aronofsky). I have scanty understanding of literary criticism/aesthetics and I am unable to locate the movie in the literary discourses that I am aware of. But of all Hollywood movies that I have watched, this one is worth interpretation (at least I think so).     

The movie revolves around the life of Nina(Natali Portman), who is a dancer in a company. She has the morality of a ‘adolescent girl’ that she is unable to transcend because of the circumstances in her family. Her mother is a neurotic seen from the eyes of Nina, but it is never concluded that she is one. The beauty lies in the fact that there is no conceptualization of neurosis in the movie -- only its occasional  perception by Nina. Sometimes, this perception is also challenged. There is no neurosis. Nina is depicted as the best dancer in the company with her articulated movements. Nina is the best because her labor process is completely in harmony with the requirement of the company. Her product, “commodity” of dancing, that is left to consumption to the consumers who applaud seeing her performance throughout the movie, hides the Nina’s multiple ‘alienations’. The movie begins with this “commodity” and moves to an anthropocentric problematic through an engagement with Nina and her labour process.

Nina had been playing ‘the white swan’ who is “innocent” and whose morale is located in platonic love(both on and off stage). Now the company requires her to play ‘the black swan’ who seduces(on stage). The change in requirement of her company, over which she has no control, requires her to change the articulations of her labour process. This manifests into her very material being: Into her body and psyche and her articulations of both outside her work. She wants to “be perfect” and yet wants her morality to restructure itself with the requirements of her time. She finds one opponent and one veteran. She admires her veteran but is not close to her because competing, she overthrew her. She is close to her opponent in spite of a lot of differences because competition requires that of her.

The audience shall articulate many things that Nina experiences as schizophrenic only to be challenged later by the logic of her/his own judgment. In the end Nina becomes ‘the black swan’ but while trying to  return to the state of  ‘white swan’, that is required in the dance, she finds she had already killed ‘the white swan’. In the end Nina gazes at the audience, and then at the lights, creating a sensation of addressing anyone watching or not watching the movie. She speaks in a soft voice, “I am perfect.” But it is not ‘the white swan’ or ‘the black swan’ that dies. It is Nina who bleeds to death while the consuming world taking joy in the “commodity”.

I am no aesthetician and hence would like to keep myself limited to explicating my articulation of the harmony of the “form” of the movie with its content. There were two ‘movies’ running at the same time. One, which the audience(me) desires to see haunted by passive bourgeois consumerism. This is constantly subverted to come up with the “other text,” the “repressed” to present the real film in its absurdity. The mind dominated by bourgeois hegemony is forced to link the two to make some sense of it. In this sense the movie can be said to be a counter-capitalist intervention (may be it is not intended to be one which makes me more fascinated: ‘spontaneity’!) in that it is “progressively disturbing” especially for those engaged with (located in or aspire to be a part of) the concrete process of “dancing” in the big screen.

Technical Students' Politics in Orissa: Problems and Prospects

Technical Universities(which include about a hundred colleges in private sector and only three in public sector) in Orissa are not allowed to have any official students’ Unions. There were, and still are, long debates on whether students should “enter” politics or not among the bourgeois intellectuals and politicians. This, ridiculous notion of “entering” politics is popular among the masses in front of whom, the State, through its Ideological Apparatuses, has been able to pose politics as something external to the very being of the masses, creating an impasse for many issues to be interiorised and keeping in-tact the politics of re-presentation.

The months of January and February are months of ‘festivals’ in Universities. Students organize and participate in cultural events. What is seen there clearly, is a domination of bourgeois hegemony. Capital articulates dissent so as to atomise individuals lending them the spirit of capitalism – competition. Consciousness of class is, through various means, attempted to be de-limited. The less articulated finds its expression in the totality of cultural formation in these Universities which include alcoholism and dope.

‘Primitive accumulation of capital’ at the moment of reproduction of labour-power is the subsumption of labour by capital at these concrete instances. Labour’s cry against this subsumption cannot be articulated by the morality of the working class at other subaltern locations but this cry is being commodified and sold at other loci of capital’s extraction of surplus value. (Several companies fund these Jan-Feb events in order to get advertised and consumerise the University more and more). The media also does the dual task – extraction of surplus value from the cry of labour and fragmenting labour into sociological antagonists.

There have been, but, attempts by groups to form associations in these Universities and these attempts crop up every now and then. There have been the Technical Students’ Federation by students of Biju Pattanayak University of Technology and most recently, students of Siksha ‘o’ Anusandhan University tried to associate (with leaders of former movement against the Government’s declaration to withdraw deemed University status taking the lead) and had their elections. In the light of re-presentative democratic politics, these can be seen as being infiltrated by political parties and individual aspirations of leaders of the movements – something that the bourgeois Ideology has as its problematic; but to see through the prism of politics of class, these are spontaneous anti-capitalist outbursts of labour. These

“engender(s) splendid shoots of idealism, comradely solidarity and self-sacrifice but at the same time individual struggle for existence[…]and the corrupting influence of the bourgeois parties do not permit these splendid shoots to develop fully. For all that, in spite of his remaining philistinely egoistic, and without exceeding in ‘human’ worth the average representative of the bourgeois classes, the average worker knows from experience that his simplest and natural desires can be satisfied only on the ruins of the capitalist system. ”[1]

[1] Trotsky, Leon. The Permanent Revolution and Results and Prospects, Aakar Books, 2005, New Delhi, Pp. 76. 

School Culture and Capitalism in Orissa

When in my teens, I was a part of the National Cadet Corps(NCC) in which we were taught how to use some of army skills including the use of rifle. NCC was an extra-curricular activity offered in all schools in India. Textbooks don’t say of ‘class divisions’ and speak of National unity and its diversity (not heterogeneity and hierarchy). It is obvious that hundreds enroll themselves as Nationalists into this organization of counter-revolutionary despair, a term I have borrowed from Trotsky to use for the NCC now. The despair to express individuality, atomized in anti-dialogic education, that existed in school students was properly articulated by the educational apparatus without their getting any hint of being instrumentalised. School students still sing with heads high, “Hum sab Bharatiya hain.”

Probably, the instrument is visible in popular cultural formation that is Indophilic. When capital confronts the working class in its three forms – commodity, money and labour-power, in both urban and rural regions, anti-capitalist movements are not allowed to move or be internalised as progressive, beyond their local rural spaces where they majorly exist. The agrarian tribal movement largely known as the Naxalite movement is posed as a threat to National security by the same larger apparatus which has kept in hiding from its masses the fundamental contradiction in India, that between capital and the working class.

Being sympathetic or apathetic to Naxalism appears as a matter of mere choice offered by capitalism in urban areas which are not ‘infiltrated’ by Maoists. If one discerns through this appearance one will find the ‘generalising drive of capital’ that forges itself through the popular cultural formation. The urban working class, largely, is under the hegemony of Indian capitalism, and this is something that both communists and workers have as a problem to be faced, if not fought immediately, when fascism will come up with large masses of proletariat in the times of crises. For the ongoing struggles in rural regions there are two choices, either to allow history to later romanticise their defeat or to understand and fight back Indian capitalism that is equally rooted in urban locations.

   

'Elite' Students: a view from within

Institute of Technical Education and Research is an engineering college based in Bhubaneshwar, Orissa. It is one of those colleges, which in popular communist theoretical discourse in Orissa, known to be ‘elitist’. Students pay from around Rs.1,10,000 to Rs.1,65,000 as their per annum tuition fees. Of course they are from an ‘elite background’. In a recent interaction with students they come up and say: “We want a job for a good living though we are not interested in technology. The most fertile labour-market welcomes B.Tech pass outs. We can pursue our interests after we are stable.” This, of course, is ‘consumerism’. One student says, “My father works in a bank and I have taken loans so that I can complete my B.Tech and take a job. I love literature but that, I can keep, as a hobby to be pursued later.” ‘Petty bourgeois tendency’ of course.

What would Marx say! Maybe this:

“The less you eat, drink and buy books; the less you think, love, theorise, sing, paint, fence, etc., the more you save – the greater becomes your treasure which neither moths nor rust will devour – your capital. The less you are, the greater is your alienated life, the greater is the store of your estranged being.”[1] 

And this he would, probably, say to the students and maybe 'staff.'

Notes: 

1. Marx, Karl. Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Pp. 112, Progress Publishers, Moscow