But for now in our hearts — what can we say?
Sacrifice, sacrifice — the longing for sacrifice
Vice-Chancellor Ashok Kumar Agnihotri, after a long period of slogan chanting by the students, finally emerged from his residence. He’d called the police. Soon they arrived and took away Lacchu Guru and his four wounded associates.
He promised that the university would beef up security in the student hostels. The students shouldn’t take the law into their own hands. He had information that weapons had been stockpiled in some students’ rooms. This was illegal. He’d used his influence to dissuade the superintendent of police, who otherwise would have already raided and searched several rooms in the hostel.
The VC added he’d also received information about the indecent conduct of a few students. Students should focus their entire concentration on building their futures. If you asked him, he was against the type of higher education that was unrelated to the question of job salary or earning potential. We are living through such wonderful times, with endless career opportunities. Short-term courses were now offered. Why waste your time with dead-end pursuits? Take a diploma and fly to America, the vice-chancellor advised with a laugh.
“Sir, the criminals that were just now apprehended were exactly those ones who beat Sapam Tomba within an inch of his life. .”
“They tried to sodomize him. . and they made him urinate on the heater and it was the shock from that which. .”
Rahul and Dinamani tried to interrupt the VC. “Sir, the Sapam Tomba who committed suicide!”
“Oh!” Ashok Agnihotri exclaimed, his tone turning serious. “I will look into it. What a tragedy. I have a lot of sympathy for his father. Poor chap. . I called the governor and chief secretary of Manipur. They had his father informed. You know, that’s why the fashion show and cultural program of September 10 was postponed. Because of it, the university took an 800,000-rupee loss. We’ve talked with the sponsors. It would have been an excellent source of revenue. I had made such grand plans. I realized we need to generate extra funds on our own. What does the UGC give us? Everything goes to staff salaries. I want to develop a park here. I want to computerize the entire administration. I want to provide twenty-four-hour net-surfing access in all student hostels, for a nominal and reasonable fee.”
“Your security officers are mixed up with the local goondas and criminals, sir!”
“And the postman tells all of them which students are getting how much money sent. .”
“The hostel warden is bungling the job terribly, sir!”
“There’s rampant cheating in the admission process, sir!”
“The dining hall food’s not even fit for a dog, sir!”
“There’s no doctor and no medicine in the dispensary. .”
“The Hindi department’s a den of Brahmanists, sir.”
“Teachers don’t teach classes and are always on strike. It’s a big loss for students, sir!”
Everyone watched as the smile from Agnihotri’s face suddenly disappeared, replaced by anger and annoyance. He marched back inside his bungalow with his four security guards.
Back in the Max Cyber Cafe, information about Vice-Chancellor Ashok Agnihotri was fed into the de facto file and came out like this:
The Vice-Chancellor is so technically dexterous and cunning in constructing a web of fiscal duplicity and abusing monetary funds to suit his purposes that there is no chance he’ll be caught for his corruption. During his tenure as VC he’s promoted only his yes-men, family members, and love interests. Ignoring wholesale the rules and regulations of the University Grants Commission, and without advertising the positions, Mr. Ashok Agnihotri appointed his flunkeys and in-laws, who had no proper academic qualifications, to various posts, totally at his whim, and then put them in charge of various projects, awarded them grants and fellowships, and sent them abroad. The person whom Agnihotri appointed as editor of the English list of the university press had a degree in Hindi, and couldn’t write a complete sentence in English. An individual made professor of psychology had received his degree from Pantnagar Technical Community College in horticulture. The new professor of mathematics had been in the bottom third of his graduating class in botany. But despite all this, no one dared open their mouths to speak against Agnihotri because most of them were greedy, cunning cohorts who’d been pressed into compliance by Agnihotri’s favors. Another main power base of his derived from the deep connections and caste ties he maintained inside the range of educational institutions and cultural foundations. To mark the occasion of his sixtieth birthday, a local institution used university money to publish a special commemorative volume on Agnihotri in which testimonials from twenty-eight writers — twenty-one Brahmins, three Baniyas, one Kayastha, two Thakurs, and one foreigner — proved that his fame had spread more widely throughout the world than even that of Emperor Ashoka, Akbar the Great, or Alexander.
According to the de facto file, he’d received a nice commission from a secret deal to lease a few hundred acres of university land to some local real estate developers and businessmen. He considers university funds to be his own private bank account, and to drink a glass of water he goes to London, and to piss he goes to America. This corrupt vice-chancellor is allowed to be so powerful because the system itself is corrupt through and through.
Kartikeya Kajle said, “Look, if nothing is done, this country will turn into another Haiti, Panama, Colombia, or Dubai. The Mafia Raj will take over, and come Gandhi’s birthday on October 2, they’ll be the only ones permitted at Rajghat. All other citizens will not be allowed to enter.”
“Why are you talking about this in the future tense?” Pratap said, laughing. “It’s already happened, or about to.” Pratap may have been joking, but a sense of real distress hid behind the laughter. The darkness of the days to come flashed before his eyes.
“I’ve been thinking,” O.P. said. “Maybe I should throw myself at the feet of the vice-chancellor, wrap my arms around his ankles, and say, ‘O invincible Satan of our times, I rub my nose on the soles of your feet and beseech you to find a place for me just as you’ve found a place for your lapdogs and concubines.’ I’m scared, Rahul!” he said. He was always laughing and garrulous. But the dark shadow of despair and defeat crept into his voice.
Rahul, Hemant, O.P., Kartikeya, Praveen, Niketan, Parvez, Imroz, Masood, Ramesh Ataluri, Dinamani, Ravi, Madhusudan — all of these young men, age eighteen to twenty-four, had come here to study from various states, towns, and villages all over the country. Their parents weren’t the big businessmen, real estate developers, property agents, middlemen, or corrupt bureaucrats who trafficked in undeclared black money and lived in big metropolitan cities like Delhi-Bangalore-Chennai-Calcutta, but rather came from honest, hardworking families of farmers, small businessmen, and low-grade civil servants. Every month they’d cut corners and borrow money from somewhere so they could send money to their children, money steeped in their families’ tears, sweat, and dreams.
These weren’t the people seen with great regularity on TV and in newspapers. When they watched the colorful, well-off Indian Middle Class on TV, with their living room, dining room, terrace, car in garage, cell phone in hand — their eyes nearly popped out of their sockets. Meanwhile, the plaster is peeling off the walls, the roof is cracked, the doors creak, the dal needs to be cleaned and cooked and flour kneaded into roti for lunch or dinner, all the while calculating the ever-rising cost of living, and interest on the money they’ve borrowed. Without dowry, their daughters remain at home, unmarried, and their sons, unemployed, are so ashamed they stay away from the house all day long. These sons can be found in groups hanging around railway platforms, standing on the side of the road, sitting near cramped workmen’s quarters or in a storefront with a public payphone or in some vacant, empty place, lost in wait for a miracle.