State of Siege
Written on January 19th, 2022 by {"login"=>"jcbphc21", "email"=>"f20181005@hyderabad.bits-pilani.ac.in", "display_name"=>"Journal Club, BPHC", "first_name"=>"Journal Club", "last_name"=>"BPHC"}Mathuresh Kadam looks up before he starts talking; his shoulders are hunched in a defeated position. “We were promised to be let out by 17th, but no response has come yet. I’ve stayed in this room for the past five days and my legs have begun to go numb. I came back with so many promises and dreams about roaming around the campus and enjoying the outdo...” Mathuresh’s voice breaks off as a single solitary tear starts to run down his cheeks. He looks down again and tries to take a spoonful of the delivered mess food, just rice and no curry. Mathuresh is one of many such victims who have been affected by the ongoing quarantine crisis that has plagued the student body.
Not far from Mathuresh’s room lives Venkat. Venkat is a Litesian to the core, meaning that the only thing lower than his CG is his attendance. The journal club spoke to Venkat in an exclusive interview from his dorm room. Readers are advised that he was in a very weak mental and emotional state when we talked to him.
“So Venkat, in what way do you think the Litesian community has been affected during these times.”
Sobbing into a blanket, “The situation has turned very serious for us.... sniff..... We were lured here expecting to be free and unrestricted, but it has only affected us negatively.... sobbing continues..... but now we find that there is too much time and nothing to do. Yesterday.... sobbing intensifies.... yesterday, I-I couldn’t help myself and... starts crying uncontrollably.... I watched a live lecture class.”
We try to comfort Venkat as he cries incoherently and keeps shouting “I’m sorry” over and over again.
“I fear how many will survive this phase,” he finally says before we leave him.
For some people, this quarantine has become a very sad reality. Students such as Akshay Kathura, a 2nd yearite, have resorted to using much more self-destructive methods to pass their free time.
“Akshay, can you tell us how you’ve been coping during these times?”
Akshay (smiling): “I started an Instagram meme page last week. It’s not much but it’s honest work.”
“Where do you think you will go with this Akshay?”
“Oh, I’ve already gotten 200 followers until now. I hope to drop my degree and go full time soon.”
When asked how his parents felt about him choosing this career path, Akshay replies with a smile.
“My parents? Oh, they haven’t talked to me for three days now. Even my friends have stopped responding to my shares of my posts. They said I was annoying but who doesn’t have haters these days? Am I right?”
We try to leave as fast as possible before we catch something infectious. Soon, we alert the hostel warden to supply psychiatric help to Akshay.
Our next stop is Prithvi Gorla, a resident foodie who was not pleased about the current circumstances.
“This state of affairs is ridiculous! Every day is just this cold-packed mess food that is barely edible. They handle it so roughly as well that everything is mashed up. I can’t tell the difference between the curry and the dal. Sometimes there is curry but no rice and sometimes rice but no curry. For three months of hostel life the only thing that kept me alive was Agarwal’s and Maggi Hotspot. What do you think I’m supposed to do now that they’re gone?”
Exhausted, he puts his head in his hands. I motion to my partner that I think it’s time to leave. We start getting up when suddenly he speaks again.
“My mother.... sh-she asks me every day.... what fruits I am having.” He looks up, staring right at us, “What am I supposed to tell her, huh? I can’t keep lying for much longer, you know?”
We say that we’re sorry and make our way towards the door when suddenly Prithvi grabs my hand.
“Please don’t go without giving something. You guys must have some fruits, right? My fructose levels are so low. I would love some fruits.”
“Sir, we are just overworked and understaffed club members. We don’t have anything.” I turn to my partner for help as Prithvi’s grip tightens.
We wrestle as we manage to pull a screaming Prithvi off my hand; quarantine has taken its toll on this one. With one last cry of “FRUIIIIITSSSS,” we close the door to his room. Exhausted and out of breath, we look at the next person on our list.
As we approach the interviewee’s room we have to knock five times because the occupant was playing Sunn Raha Hai Na Tu at full blast. When he opens the door, we catch our first sight of the man - Jignesh Das.
As Jignesh tells us, “its impossible to talk about Jignesh without talking about Tina.” So we decided to talk about Tina.
“What can I say,” Jignesh says, “Tina and I are meant to be. I knew it the day I saw her. I asked her Dad for her hand in marriage during winter break, but he said that it was too early. Too early? That’s just an excuse. True love knows no time or season.”
We nodded.
“And after that, the fire only grew. I could not stay away from my Tina, so I decided to meet her on her balcony at one every night.”
“Why so late, Jignesh?”
He looked outside his window, smiled, and slowly said, “I love the look of her face in the moonlight.”
We nodded again.
“Her father stopped her from meeting me, you know? He said I had become a nuisance to them. There was no way I could meet her outside, so we decided to come to the campus. We had planned to meet every evening in RnT, but....”
Jignesh tells us how these days he just stares outside his window hoping to catch a glimpse of Tina, but the only thing he catches is the security guard’s eyes.
‘I have a plan, you know, of breaking out of here. Before anyone knows it, Tina and I will get away from everything, from these people that don’t accept us.”
When asked where he would escape to and how he would survive, Jignesh looked into my colleague’s eyes and replied
“Love will always find a way.”
As we left Jignesh’s room, he was shouting through his window, “THESE WALLS ARE NOT STRONG ENOUGH TO CAGE MY LOVE.”
Meanwhile, not satisfied with the administration’s efforts, there are quells of an uprising in BPHC. The Keyboard Warrior’s guild is recruiting people to fight against the admin. We managed to secure an interview and were told to come to the north corner of the QT. Here, two people met and gave us blindfolds before agreeing to lead us to their leader. My partner and I were scared, but we knew if we backed out, our editor wouldn’t pay us. As we made our way deeper into the hostel, the smell got worse. Finally, we reached a room where we were forced into chairs before removing the blindfolds from our eyes. We were shocked by what we saw. Twenty or thirty people crowded the entire room in a circle. At the center, sitting opposite us, was someone with a massive keyboard in his hand and a stern expression on his face.
Soon we got to know that his name was Parmesh Choubey, the guild leader.
“The admin has stopped listening to the student’s request,” he said slowly, “and if they don’t listen to pleas, then...”
He takes two AAA batteries, loads them into the keyboard, and turns it on.
“Then they will listen to force.”
All the thirty people in the room start chanting a singular war cry in unison.
Parmesh raises his hand for them to stop.
“We have an army,” he continued, “some of us here fought in the Great War last year during the COVID second wave. Those were grave times, the community needed to write posts every day to force the admin to do anything. We live in similar times now. Look at this young boy here, for example,” he said as he motioned for a lanky young man to come to the front.
“This is Abhishek. He is just one of many that are willing to skip classes and write Facebook posts for us,” he looked at Abhishek smiling and asked, “On how many posts have you commented CFBR today?”
“15, sahib”
“Good, good”
As Abhishek goes back, Parmesh announces proudly, “We are capable of making close to 15 FEG posts in a day. The admin doesn’t stand a chance.”
More war cries.
My colleague finally musters up the courage and asks Parmesh, “why Facebook posts, though? What importance do you think Facebook posts have?”
“Let me tell you, the solution to all international matters like politics, religion, the cure to cancer etc., can be achieved by arguing with people in a Facebook comment section or making an unnecessarily long FEG post for it. Hell, it is a tradition in BITS, and who can deny that?”
“But you do realize that people don’t take anything on social media platforms seriously?”
Parmesh’s smile disappeared, and his expression hardened. I knew my partner had touched a nerve he shouldn’t have.
“Which club did you guys say you were from again?”
“J-Journal Club”
One of the men surrounding us spoke up, “if these are spies, then just give the word sahib. We will dispose of them.”
The tension in the room began to grow until I finally got up and spoke, “Sir, I am very sorry, but we are just here for an interview. We aren’t paid enough to get into any trouble. If you would excuse us, then we would make our way back.”
After a lot of coaxing, we finally made it out but not before being held at gunpoint and forced to like every post that they had put out.
We rounded the corner and made it to our wing. While walking towards our room, we passed Venkat’s door. The words “GHOT” were painted in giant black letters with ink. Finding another Litesian loitering nearby, we asked him what had happened.
“He just.... snapped,” the Litesian replied, “started sending course handouts to everyone on Whatsapp and talking about how “Agla Sem Phodenge” was a never-ending lie.”
“Who vandalized his door, though?”
“Who else,” he snickered, “it was the other Litesians, me included. We can’t have ghot traitors with our tag roaming around.”
As we walked back, we heard him say one last sentence behind us.
“You can’t trust anyone these days.”
This is the Journal Club, reporting on campus.