The Dreaming Tree

Its been a long time, oh faithful reader who hath stumbled upon my blog (for the first time most probably).

On my recent trip to NITK, Surathkal I learnt quite a few things. But the biggest realization came out of the blue, or , well, black of outer space.
The beach next to which the college is so comfortably parked is a a 5 minute walk from the main gate. A walk that leads through eerie residential colonies, where all Hitchcock's of inspiration lives. On an innocent journey through this very road, our group found themselves in the middle of a blackout. The Karnataka power grid had seemed quite consistent in its inconsistencies and as in the previous occasions the probability that there would be light was, at best, negative.

So what do we do on a moonless night stuck in the middle of nowhere in complete darkness? I looked up at the heavens only to realise why god had created load scheduling and power cuts. It was alive with a million stars twinkling for our attention, another chance to play join the shiny dots and conjure constellations. And then it all came back, like the swat kats were bored of the past master and sent him to me.

I recalled how I once told a debate judge I wanted to be an astronaut. How I watched every moon documentary there is. How my first chemistry lab absolutely fascinated me. How my first physics lab's staff had to throw me out to make sure I did not camp through the night there. How I hated (and still hate) biology. How I wanted to study science and engines and trains and machines and generators and motors and circuits all my life.

Now languishing where I languish I wonder all those ambitons have faded away. Its as if they have been smothered. By an educational system that laughs when you are shocked by 440 V machines. That would trip you rather than warn you to look before you leap. A system where positive means lack of negative.

And most of all by an individual who wishes he was forewarned, who wishes he could sit in an armchair and learn all he wants to without having balding professors with crooked noses and twisted minds glaring down and monitoring every move as if his pupils were sick animals in a rundown zoo.

And here's the KO, an educational system that justifies all of the above and adds a prickly reminder, but no answer, to every question raised. And before you leave the room this cynical system will remind you its core value, change implies rebellion, and rebellion deserves death.