The Case for High RAM, Low(er) Storage

Time and tide, they say, wait for none. Deadlines don’t either, as I have learned the hard way over the better part of the last decade. In fact, sometimes they rush at you so fast that you have to pick up whatever you can find at hand and meet the challenge head-on. Of course, by whatever, I mean an electronic gadget capable of handling a word processor, a spreadsheet application and a web browser. Preferably something that does not run out of battery very fast and can handle multiple tasks at the same time.

Now I will concede this – the battle of the battery is lost. Humanity has failed to create batteries that are better than those that existed ten years ago. You can debate the Li-Po and the Li-Ion with me (don’t!) but it’s a pointless conversation. The real point is, we aren’t going to be able to run a single day of 8-10 active work hours on a single charge. Period.

Which brings me to what has been coursing through these neurons for the past few weeks – what can we do to make sure the deadlines can be defeated when they rush us like Okinawa kamikazes ? We could, in an ideal world, give folks sufficient time to gather the data, arrange and analyze it, and then organize it into something fellow humans can understand. Wouldn’t it be grand ?

More realistically, we can improve the multi-tasking part of that deadline-combating experience. Fire up MS Word (two-three documents please), half a dozen Chrome tabs and then run some music in the background. Get some cofee. Are you getting in the groove?

You are. The bad news though, is that your RAM is running out as you sip the coffee (too much sugar, again), and try to memorize the points that need to be researched. Your six tabs need to stay, but you need to search another keyword. Another Google tab. Another flurry of fingers flying across a black and white landscape. You swap back to Word, and it is slower. Change back to Chrome and open another tab. Slower still. Fire up another program – anything. Your gadget straight up tells you to slow down and take in the view outside your window. Or seems to, because by this time it has slowed down to the point where you are chugging coffee faster than taking in writing points.

Of course you know the reason why your hitherto snappy friend has suddenly aged without grace. It’s RAM, short for Random Access Memory. Yeah, the sticks of green or black that you would push into long slots in your motherboard back when you had the enthusiasm to build your own computer. Your gadget is short on RAM and the processor is starved of this much needed oxygen as it tries to do its best to help you meet that deadline.

Now, if you are one of the lucky ones, you will have a laptop, and it will have expandable RAM. As long as you know how to unscrew the back cover and remove the battery, adding RAM is as simple as figuring out which generation your device needs, buying it and slotting it in. Don’t forget to screw everything back. Voila! Your CPU just got much-needed oxygen. As it takes long deep breaths of fresh silicon, you feel a burden lift off your shoulders.

But what if you are not one of the lucky ones. You fire up Task Manager (or its equivalent) and in the RAM tab, instead of reading “Slots Used”, it reads ROC. Sure, your device probably hails from the Republic of China (Taiwan), but that’s not what ROC means. It’s Row of Chips, computerese for soldered chips of RAM that cannot be added to in any way. Not just quantity, you cannot even bump up the speeds in many cases since there is not much by way of voltage or heating overhead available.

You probably did not need to fire up Task Manager to know this. Your device would have been advertised as LPDDRx (x standing for generation) or something like that. With the coming of DDR5 laptops, the majority of manufacturers seem to have shifted to ROC configurations that make upgrading RAM virtually impossible. You can slot in a Gen4 nVME SSD of your choice (and capacity, subject to a ceiling) but not RAM.

Ironically, most of your work now resides on the cloud. Your organization probably works with Google Workspace, Microsoft Teams or some other “suite” that offers a complete set of workspace tools. Your files reside on the cloud, accessible mostly through privileged access portals. Even if you work freelance, you would still leverage Google, Microsoft, Adobe and perhaps even AWS to store your files and access them as per requirement.

You may want to store large files on your system, especially if you work with video processing or any other field where the files are large and bulky. But for everyone else, the cloud is and will remain the go-to place for accessing files and working on them.

Again, it may be argued that the storage may be used to store personal media (cat photos obviously), movies or games. These are all valid arguments, and if you are stuck on one specific device and there is not differentiation between your work device and your personal one, you may need higher storage. But even in such cases, streaming can be an option (looking at you pirate bro) and personal files can always be stored on the cloud as well.

The most cogent argument against throwing in chunks of blazing fast storage into your laptop is that you can always do that in your home system, or onto an external disk which costs a fraction of what your laptop or tablet costs. When you do need to access it, you can SSH into your home system or just plug in the external HDD/SSD that you can carry with you.

On the other hand, you do need additional RAM. Those Chrome tabs aren’t going to use the sheer force of your deadline-induced panic to open themselves. Laptop manufacturers, however, seem to think exactly the opposite. Why else are they increasingly replacing upgradable RAM slots with ROC configurations? Tablets and smartphones have always had ROC (or rather, soldered) RAM and we have had to lump it.

But how much does a manufacturer save by moving to ROC configs anyway? Most low-end Chromebooks, even the ones with Windows 11, come with just 4GB of RAM. Given that this is below the recommended minimum and amounts to strangling the already weak CPU, the approach is inexplicable. In fact, you can hardly find any 16GB RAM Chromebook on the market today. This, when the original Chromebook guys – Google – had come out with 16GB Chromebooks years ago.

The reason I am ranting about Chromebooks in particular is because they are the quintessential workhorses of the  deadline-haunted corporate and academic world. These, and their other Celeron and Athlon-powered cousins, provide the basic amount of working power for those who need to get work done on the go. These are often the entry-level workers who stand to lose the most if they fail to fight off or meet the deadline. If you cannot provide sufficient RAM at that price, leave the option open for them to upgrade the RAM going forward.

For context, my own i3 powered Realme Slim Book, armed with 8GB of RAM and 256GB or RAM, is by no means a weakling of the Celeron ilk. Yet when I subject it to more than a few tabs, the decline in processing speed starts becoming an impediment to my own pace of work. When I am working on heavy projects that require 12-18 tabs open at any one time (plus other applications), my desktop with a Ryzen 5 5600 processor and 32GB of RAM starts to lag. And yet manufacturers tend to believe (or want you to believe) that it is only the rich gaming kids who need anything more than 8GB of RAM.

This brings me to the fundamental difference between RAM and storage. The real difference between local storage and cloud storage boils down to how much cloud space you have, and how fast your internet is. If you are travelling in rural areas and coverage tends to be spotty, keeping the files in your local storage makes sense. However, working from corporate offices or academic spaces would generally afford you a 50 Mbps internet connection. This is enough to work in the cloud on a regular basis.

Trouble is, there is no RAM in the cloud. What you do on the computer – whether you type, browse, watch or listen, takes up RAM on the local system and the local system only. It doesn’t matter if the Xeon or Threadripper powered server in the cloud has 1TB of RAM or even more. If you cannot keep the tabs open and switch between them efficiently without the computer – cursor and all – freezing for seconds or even a minute at a time – you will lose track of what you are doing and your work will slow down. You don’t need a fast processor – heck, a Raspberry Pi can handle most processing tasks with decent speed – but you do need a good amount of RAM.

The final argument for providing higher RAM – and allowing upgradability – takes me back to the battery. Your battery isn’t going to improve. In fact, with additional usage, actual capacity will steadily go down. To conserve battery, you will use features like battery saver (on Windows and Chrome OS) to eke out more from the limited charge in those Li-Po cells. Battery saver basically reduces the performance of the CPU – tying it down even as it struggles to breathe with limited RAM. This may conserve battery, but it will further drag down your performance, and that deadline isn’t going to go away.

So dear gadget manufacturers – laptop makers in particular – stop trying to cut out upgradability at every possible chance. RAM, more than CPU or storage, is vital to the speed at which work gets done, and there is no cloud alternative to it. Keep the RAM upgrade options open, and those who really need that additional processing speed will thank you and buy from you again.

Why Bother?

Back in school, we were taught the fable of the workaholic demon who would consume its master if he was not constantly kept engaged at work. Eventually, he was given a task he could not complete – straighten the tail of a dog! If there was a moral (can’t remember if there was!) it may be that, some tasks are impossible because what you are trying to do will be undone. Time after time, until the very act of doing becomes a farce, an elaborate ritual that promises, only to deceive.

Back in 2018, we were made one such set of promises. We were told that our existing system of education – the annual system with its outdated syllabi and outmoded systems of examination, was passe. We needed something new, something that would prepare students for the future in a global digital world. We were told that examinations would take place twice a year, that there would be marks for internals, tutorials and even attendance. But most importantly, we were given the promise of a brand-new syllabus that would actually let the students think again.

Of course, this attempt to straighten the proverbial tail was undertaken only when the dog’s financier (UGC) went after the caretakers of the dog with a big birch. After a year of futile resistance, the caretakers yielded in 2018. We had our CBCS syllabus.

UGC did not want to leave the task of establishing the CBCS system entirely to the Universities. These successors of the medieval centers of mediocrity and thought regimentation were known to pour their old wine into new bottles regardless of shape, size, or capacity of the bottle concerned. So we also got a draft syllabus, and boy was it a wonder!

For the first time in about a decade (probably more), new papers were introduced. We were told that instead of the same-old history of Britain, Europe and India (with a smattering of modern Far East), we were to learn the histories of Africa, South America, North America and even journalism! Imagine our wonderment at the thought of actually learning something in order to teach it.

Of course, the caretakers of the dog did not try hard enough to straighten the tail. Perhaps they guessed that it was impossible. Hence, the more “exotic” histories were jettisoned in favour of drawing onboard the flotsam of Bengal, China and Japan. Papers that had been taught for a decade or more were touched up with topics that UGC had suggested. Touched up is a generous term, as in most cases, it was no more than an addition of a phrase here, a term there, etc. etc.  The dog wasn’t going to change its stripes was it now ?

That said though, it was still novel enough. We got the history of medieval Europe (back), along with medieval Arabia and the Near East. America became an option, albeit in direct competition with the beaten-to-death paper on Bengal. If China and Japan returned with a vengeance, they were accompanied by Nelson Mandela, Betty Friedan and Khwame Nkrumah.

Best of all, students could actually be made to think if tutorials were administered properly. With 15 marks on the line, a college insisting on originality in the tutorial was likely to be rewarded with at least some scholarly effort.

Of course, the tail had only partially been straightened, and that too, by temporary devices built on flimsy grounds. CBCS aimed at giving colleges greater autonomy, and colleges loved the UGC for it. Autonomy in plain-speak means the ability to get away with as much as possible while doing as little as possible. As little studying, as little teaching, as little “thinking out of the box.” Same old is comfortable and convenient. Just ask your cat.

Attendance was the first casualty of this autonomous approach to dismantling the innovations of UGC’s road to hell, paved with good intentions of course! Colleges buckled with a rather supine willingness to student pressure on attendance. College after college simply awarded the 10 marks allotted for attendance without so much as a whimper of protest. Those that did protest had their attendance registers cooked the way ballots are cooked during local elections.

But we said, never thee mind! We too did few classes and turned out to be first class scholars. Maybe if the teaching is done right, the students who actually want to learn (as opposed to the degree-hoarders) will learn something. But alas, that was not to be. Colleges whittled down the “choice” in CBCS to the point where only the most common options, tution-centre certified of course, were offered. Anyone wishing to go in for a different option was left to fend for herself, to the point where choosing the America paper over Bengal was akin to academic harakiri.

It did not help that the University, seeing the UGC satisfied with the outward trappings of CBCS, promptly sought to loosen the bonds that held the tail in place. Old questions, repeated year over year until tuition teachers could recite them from memory like shlokas, were brought back. In the name of ensuring that students acclimatized themselves to the new system, the difficulty level of the questions was diluted until you were left with just the tasteless broth of what used to be thought-provoking papers. The food for thought inherent in “would you argue” was replaced by the bland flavorless fare of “discuss in brief.”

To add insult to the multiple wounds inflicted upon the ideals of the CBCS system, textbooks appeared like mushrooms on a decaying corpse. Where earlier writers would write textbooks with the goal of explaining complex topics in simple terms, CBCS specialists wrote textbooks to reduce simple topics to school-level essays that told you just enough to fill out three pages for long answers. When the august authors could not find enough matter for these three long pages, they took ample help from dear ol’ Google, resulting in voodoo becoming part of the topic of magic in medieval Europe!

The third knife in poor CBCS’ torso was the decimation of the tutorial system. Thought provoking tutorial required the teachers to think. If respected college professors were required to think every time they set tutorials, they would be working above their pay grade (which is, by the way, the highest government grade in India). In the spirit of true mediocrity, they thought of the simplest way to get through with the annoyance called tutorial, and stuck to it with a vengeance. Entire batches of students turned out the same topic for their tutorials, which were promptly marked the same, producing the fascinating spectacle of award lists filled top-to-bottom with the same marks. The tail was almost free of its dire straightening bonds.

By the time the pandemic rolled in, everyone was relieved. No longer would the farce of going through rigorous paper-setting, exam-conducting, script-evaluating and marks-uploading have to be gone through. Sure, they would have to be gone through on pen and paper. But when students sat in the lap of verdant nature (and/or their lovers) to fill out answer scripts from pre-formatted WhatsApp forwards, you knew the tail was back to being its ol’ curly self. Did it wag right ? Hell yes! It wagged better than it ever had. Everyone was happy, UGC be damned.

But not all good things last, so they have to be made to last longer than they should. Covid-19 lost the battle against humanity, and threatened to upend the springy tail of WhatsApp-forwarded examinations as it departed. A desperate rear-guard action began to save this cherished examination system. Movements were launched, verbose facebook posts made, media attention sought. The setting sun of “online examinations” was thus made to provide false illumination to the marksheets of CU examinees for another whole year. Then it finally set, and the students went into mourning.

But they were not the only ones who mourned. Teachers found that their pay had to be earned once more. Classes had to be taken on time, papers set and checked in person, and with all this, the spectre of accountability appeared once more. But this spectre was no longer the original ghoul of CBCS. It was a mere shadow, as the UGC itself had moved on from CBCS to grander stuff. Attendance as a metric of students actually attending class was forgotten once and for all. Tutorials as a means of making students do their own study was buried six feet deep with fervent prayers that it may never raise its zombie self again. Internals became a formality. CBCS and its fell host had finally been tamed. The tail remained proudly curled!

But as I said, UGC had moved onto grander things. Nay, the whole country had. This was the national education policy, which sought to give students even more options, including that of moving out at any point in the course of one’s graduation and taking commensurate credits and degrees. Choices were meant to abound, and students were meant to learn a host of skills that would stand them well in the evolving marketplace. Research was made part of the UG curriculum. There would be no attendance, but tutorials were expanded to become a full quarter of the marks in a paper.

Oh, the promises once more! The jaded ranks of CU teachers had seen its predecessor off with much difficulty and braced for another battle to ensure the perennial liberty of the proverbial tail. This time, the government placed itself in the front ranks of the resistance, and then left the battlefield.

Finding themselves suddenly without this important ally, the universities swore not to repeat the mistakes of CBCS. There would be no fancy papers, no original thinking requirements. UGC may have suggested further changes through an LOCF-syllabus, but who cares? We have autonomy right? The tail shall wag!

In fact, why bother with any of the trappings of NEP at all? Why not simply copy and paste the existing CBCS syllabus until we have ticked every box NEP has? Why not forget that a degree has an internal logic, that learning proceeds through logical and chronological development? Why bother with adding anything or removing anything when we already have a syllabus and students are already studying it? Last and most importantly, why upset the tuition centres’ apple cart again? A man has got to eat!

Why bother? Copy and paste, then rinse and repeat the copy and paste until you have a syllabus for every paper required under NEP/CCF/whatever the f they’re calling the system now. If you can’t find a paper that corresponds to one required in the new syllabus, just chop, fry, and serve up the existing papers until you have more of the same ol’, but with rashers this time!

IDC ? What the f is that? Just copy paste part of the old Paper III of the General course. MDC ? Copy paste whatever is given in the Major papers ? Major papers? Copy paste whatever was given in the old core course papers. VAC? Is that short for vacuum? Because the syllabus sure leaves a huge vacuum in the part where UGC envisaged historical awareness would fit in.

Copy and paste until the formatting goes to the dogs and the reference list (not updated for the better part of two decades) becomes unreadable because the Bengali-typing software has been updated in the meantime and the old fonts no longer work as intended. If only technology lent itself to such stagnation!

But dammit! The old syllabus was for three years and the new one involved four. What was to be done with an entire two extra semesters? Copy what and paste what? There was nothing that could be done without putting grey matter to use, and that was not acceptable at a time when so much ATP had been spent hitting Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V repeatedly. Just so the syllabus did not look incomplete, a bunch of random paper names were added. The syllabus? Oh the dog’s tail will grow a few hairs over the years. Best not to make it too bushy for now.

And there you have it! the magnum opus authored by Dr. Why Bother At All, Dr. Grey Matter Wanted and Dr. Is This Lip Service to UGC Enough. It may be technically incomplete, structurally a mess, and contain pages upon pages of unreadable blocks where Bengali references used to be, but it will still get the work done.

Last time, the tail was bound to the straight and narrow and then gradually loosened. This time, the attempt itself has been doomed futile, beyond a few nods to UGC here and there. Why bother with learning at all?

 

Another Long Silence (Apologies!)

Apparently I’ve been silent since March 2021. I say apparently because it has just become apparent to me when I logged into the website after a pretty long time. Why ? Because the annual renewal is coming due and this inevitably makes me come back to the site and admire what I have achieved during the year, in order to justify the next payment.

This year, I haven’t done much. So I must explain to the reader whom I (assume) reads all my posts. I hope you exist, dear Reader!

The main reason is, put simply, that I have been writing for various publications and didn’t have the energy to devote articles to my personal blog. Between May and now, I submitted no less than five articles, and I still have one more due as I write this. That makes it six articles. Add to them two book reviews submitted in the early months of the year, and a book that I published in the same time period, and you have at least a 30,000 words of final writing (the book was already written, just had to be updated a bit – the book itself is 67,000 words in its final shape).

So why was I writing so much all of a sudden ? Firstly, I didn’t write much in 2020, and had to do some serious catching-up in terms of my intellectual output. Considering that that’s all I contribute to society in terms of new knowledge, falling behind was tantamount to just taking a nap. Not something people appreciate (not even my family members).

The second reason is that my promotion will become due next year. It’s still a few months away, but publication is a long-term process and filled with lots of hurdles, seen and unseen. Hence, a few months grace had to be baked into any writing project. Barring the one that is still pending, the rest have been submitted.

Not all will be published, of course. I already have one rude review and accompanying rejection sitting in my inbox. One article has been published in an edited volume. The rest are with the editors and awaiting their decisions. I heard two of them have been accepted in effect (since they were sent for typesetting) but until I get the pie (aka book) in my hand, I can’t say I have the pie (aka book).

So will things change now ? Kind of. I have hopefully written enough to fulfil the requirements of my promotion, and getting some good feedback that will help me work further. On a more prosaic note, I have run out of material on which to write, and must now rush back to the archives for more material if I want to write more. This is easier said than done with each repository having its own requirements and varying timings. But I will try.

In the meantime, I do hope to write more for my blog. It just can’t be that writing for journals and books dries up my (digital) blog pen, and vice versa. Better time management is a resolution we can all take for New Year’s. Hopefully, I can pursue this noble goal before New Year turns up. As of now, I can only apologize profusely once more and hope the reader hasn’t forgotten about me!

An Emptier Future – II

Revisiting a decidedly long-term trend within a span of about a year and a half requires some explanation. When the theme is population change and the growing tendency of countries to increasingly worry about having more old people and less babies in the future, it requires even greater explanation because the intervening period is definitely not one during which any major generational change would have taken place. What did take place, though, was Covid. When I was writing the first part (as I must call it since this is the second part!) we were unknowingly on the cusp of a pandemic that has the potential of changing human history in ways that we cannot even grasp yet. If this sounds like hyperbole, let’s take a bird’s eye view at what happened during the pandemic, and the data that’s been coming in since the pandemic hit.

When the pandemic started out, people were stuck indoors for months. While the duration of the so-called ‘lockdowns’ varied from one country to another, in no country was it less than a few months at the very least. Even when the lockdowns were lifted, reopening was gradual. This meant that most people – bar health workers, emergency responders and a few essential service operators – were stuck indoors with family (or away from them) for months.

This engendered an entire genre of jokes about how couples getting to spend time together would inevitably fornicate, and if they did, there would be a baby boom. Data that has been coming in the last few months suggests that people were indeed spending more time with their near and dear ones. This is evident from the rise in domestic violence cases, the incidents of child abuse and CSAM (Child Sexual Abuse Material) production and distribution and decline in the productivity of female workers who were stuck at home tending to their husbands and kids. But even if we set aside for a moment the effects of all this “we time” that people got, the question remains – what about more children ?

As it turns out, the optimistic expectations of a baby boom have not materialized. Forget a baby boom, we are staring at a baby bust. No, that’s not a sculpture of a baby’s head. Rather, it’s what demographers are calling the acute decline in the number of children produced during the first few months of the pandemic. Why the first few months ? Because children take an average of nine months to develop before being “born” and it has only been so long since the lockdowns began in various parts of the globe.

How acute is this “baby bust” ? Data from South Korea suggests that the total fertility rate of the country has fallen to a historic low of 0.84. Similar reports of decline are coming in from Japan, Taiwan, Singapore and other East Asian tigers. New Zealand, which generally does not report a decline (given how happy they all are under Ardern), has also reported a decline in the number of babies being born.

The Western countries offer a more mixed picture. While fertility rates have tended to be low for a long time, they have made up their looming population deficit with immigration. In 2020, however, it is estimated that between 500,000 and 1,300,000 workers left the country, and coupled with low birth rates, this could prove to be a threat to the workforce of the country in the future. In France, the number of babies born in January 2021 was 13% lower than the number for January 2020. For Italy in December 2020, the fall was 21.6% compared to the data from a year earlier. For Spain, the same figure is about 20%.

Looking elsewhere, similar trends are noticeable. UAE, a country in the Middle East which requires people to have jobs to stay in the country, noted a sharp fall in the number of workers. While this doesn’t automatically suggest a fall in the number of births, it still is a decline in the total population of the country.

Finally, we come to the case of China. Chinese preliminary data suggests that there has been a 15% fall in the number of births in 2020 compared to the previous year. This must be taken with a pinch of salt, since Chinese population data is often skewed to suggest a rosier TFR. However, given that the top decision making body in the country asked for an “appropriate” fertility rate for 2021, it suggests that the Chinese are indeed very worried.

We will return to China in a moment. Before we do, it is important to ask why we are faced with this alarming data when the “conventional” wisdom suggested that people would have more kids when spending time together. As it turns out, people were spending time together out of compulsion and not necessarily passion. Loving couples (and not so loving ones apparently) were stuck together because many jobs that had depended on people going out and working had simply shut down. They were furloughed, retrenched, laid off or fired, and regardless of the terminology, were spending their hours sitting at home and staring at a very uncertain future on their devices.

Further, we need to remember that many people were, in fact, not allowed to be together at all. The lockdowns and travel restrictions kicked in in many parts of the world out of the blue, leaving people stunned and stuck in place. As the now infamous example of Dominic Cummings breaking curfew rules to visit his girlfriend suggests, people did not like being kept away from their loved ones. In the absence of physical contact, no babies are possible. This is perhaps best demonstrated by the falling number of marriages, which suggests that people simply did not feel that they would be able to stay together or be financially secure enough to start a family. No family, no babies.

To be sure, this picture is not something worth writing about simply because of the decline itself. The 2008 recession was followed by a similar baby bust, but it picked up slightly in some parts of the world thereafter. The Spanish Flu a century ago saw a similar trend as far as populations were concerned.

The problem, however, is that this time, the pandemic feeds into an existing state of population decline. A population decline that produced the first article of this two-parter (for now at least). Women are having children later, or not having children at all. They are marrying less, working more and are both more ambitious and less financially secure than their mothers and grandmothers were. All of this suggests that the decline in births and marriages were conscious decisions that had at least some amount of female input.

Given the rationality of not bringing children into a world you are not sure of surviving yourself (both biologically and financially), the question to ask next is how soon can we expect a return to “normal” ? The answer is cliché. There will probably be no return to normal, but only a “new normal”. This is due to the fact that the decline in economic stability and overall output has been more severe than was seen during either the 2008 or 1918 events, and given the existing trend of declining female fertility and fall in the number of children, the pandemic will only feed this downward spiral rather than be an outlier data point.

But it is also true that a good number of women of childbearing age will want to have children. Unfortunately for them, child bearing is not something that can be postponed indefinitely. Female fertility and physical capacity to bear a child begins to decline in the late 30s and dies out in the 40s. Considering the fact that many women – especially in the more educated and advanced countries – had already put off having children till their last possible child-bearing window, it is very likely that many of them would actually find themselves unable to conceive. Given that careers and economic futures are valued more than the ability to bear children, it is unlikely that these women would risk their physical well-being and that of their would-be children by going in for children at an age when their bodies can no longer reproduce optimally. Long story short, some of the children who were not born in 2020 will never be born.

All of this will simply aggravate the trends that have already been noticed with regard to changes in population structure and what is known as the “dependency ratio”. Less children would mean that the proportion of elderly (65 and above) would begin to increase compared to the youth (0-15) and the workers (15-65). This means less workers, soldiers, mothers and intellectuals. Beyond a certain point, these people – who can no longer have children – will become equal to or greater than the 0-15 population segment, thus causing a gradual inversion of the population pyramid. They would need to be taken care of, but the number of people taking care of them and indeed, defending and working for them, would reduce.

This will have profound implications, which I discussed at some length in the first article. In brief, it would make it harder to provide for the elderly through pension funds paid into by the youth and the workers. It would also reduce the economic growth because there are both less workers and less demand since elderly don’t need as many goods as workers in their prime do. Geopolitically, the economic and demographic decline would together ensure that the aspirations for “great power” status of countries like China and India remain mere aspirations.

This brings us to the specific case of China and India. The pandemic has set alarm bells ringing in China. China, like other Asian countries, has been gradually declining in terms of total fertility rate for quite some time now. This decline was masked by the state apparatus, but it appears that Xi Jinping and his cohort are no longer prepared to paper over the yawning gaps in China’s population policy.

The biggest gap is in terms of the children being born. The Chinese population continues to increase, keeping it marginally ahead of India and saving many General Knowledge books from having to be revised ahead of time.  However, such increase is ever-less and we are rapidly approaching the point of stagnation i.e. when births and deaths equal each other and the latter edges past the former. South Korea, another East Asian tiger, witnessed her first decline in population since WWII. China’s day is not far off.

It might be worthwhile to ask why the population keeps growing even as the total number of births keeps falling. The simple answer is that those who bear children were born a generation earlier, and hence, represent an earlier demographic trend. Those bearing children right now would have been born in the late 1980s, 1990s or early 2000s. The number of these women thus represents not the current fertility rate, but the population growth rate of an earlier time.

This is however, small comfort for China. China imposed a harsh one-child policy in the 1970s, and kept it up until 2015. Hence, the mothers of today would have been born during the heyday of the one-child policy in the 1980s and 1990s. Since China shares a patriarchal preference for boys compared to girls, many couples simply opted to have a boy instead of a girl. This sex-selective child-bearing naturally resulted in less women coming of age today. Since those going out of the reproductive age i.e. those in their 40s would have been born in the late 1960s and early 1970s i.e. before the one-child policy was imposed and couples began having only one male child, the number of women entering reproductive age is much lower than the number who are leaving this demographic bracket.

The problem is so acute that by some estimates about  3.4 million women are leaving this bracket every year and much lower numbers are entering it. Given that the next decade will see more one-child generation people enter reproductive age, the problem is set to get steadily worse. Some scholars estimate that it would be beyond 2030 before the demographic imbalance caused by the one-child policy is repaired.

Now that we know that there are less and less women in China to bear children every year, the question of total fertility rate comes in. TFR is the average number of children borne by women every year. If the total number of women is taken to be stable, each woman of reproductive age is expected to bear about 2.1 children to replace the population in a generation’s time. However, we know that the total number of women is not stable, but is declining due to sex-selective procreation. Within this shrinking pool, the number of children that the women are bearing is also declining. The TFR of China as per latest figures is around 1.6, which means that even if there were enough women, the number of children born would not replace the population.

Taken together, the lower number of young women and lower fertility rate pose an existential threat to China. Chinese society is not welcoming of foreigners to a degree the Western societies are, and neither can China offer the lucrative opportunities that the entrepots of global capitalism can. Sure, China is a powerful pole in an increasingly bipolar world, but to expect people swarming into China to redress this looming demographic challenge would be wishful thinking.

In the absence of sufficient in-migration, China faces all the problems listed above. It is now expected that the Chinese would fall behind India by as early as 2027 in terms of population. This population would be increasingly older, requiring more investment and greater outlay in pensions. However, those working and contributing to those pension funds i.e. the younger people, would steadily become less and less. At the current rate of decline, the main state pension fund is expected to run out of money by 2035.

Beyond pensions and caring for the elderly, there would be major ramifications for the economy. An ageing workforce would not be suited for the strenuous manufacturing jobs that are the backbone of China’s prosperity today. There is no indication that China would be able to transition to a high-tech and high-paying economy where the majority of jobs are desk jobs that can be done by the elderly. While the country is gradually exploring relaxing the stringent retirement ages (55 for women and 60 for men) to allow them to work longer, it is a fact that the elderly cannot shoulder the harsh working conditions that are required to keep the Chinese economy well-oiled.

On top of this, there is the problem of debt. The Chinese have taken on record levels of debt, and the pandemic has only worsened the situation by shutting down economic activity over large regions. While the Chinese lockdown of Wuhan was among the harshest but shortest in the world, the economic toll is still noticeable. Even as the economy comes back to life, the debt would have become more unserviceable and would become even more so in the future on the backs of a shrining working age population.

All of this, perhaps, explains the urgency of China’s aggressive foreign policy. For decades, China sought to stay somewhat aloof from the major power struggles of the world. However, ever since Xi Jinping came to power, China’s ambitions appear to have broadened and she is now in conflict with virtually all of her neighbours except Russia. Chinese actions in Hong Kong have drawn international condemnation, and the disputes have rendered China increasingly friendless in a world where the US still dominates.

All of this, on the face of it, would appear hasty and calculated to further the strongman cult of Xi. However, scratch beneath the surface and a different picture emerges. China is ageing, and she has not yet found any magic elixir that would cause more women to appear overnight, or the existing ones to bear a much larger number of children. In fact, given the glacial pace at which the existing outdated demographic policies are being dismantled, it seems that the leadership is at least somewhat resigned to a decline in population in the 2030s and 2040s.

A decline in working age population would also cause the size of the army to decline. This is not merely in terms of the number of soldiers. The economy feeds the military, and a halting economy would have less stomach for a muscular military. Since China – despite being authoritarian – is not in the league of military juntas like Myanmar or North Korea, it would be foolish to assume that China would continue to support a large military at the cost of the basic well-being of the ordinary folks.

Based on that assumption, it would not be fallacious to believe that the Chinese leadership fears that in the course of the next decade, the ability of China to flex her muscles would decline. For the country whose leader Mao Zedong had famously said that even in case of a nuclear war, a few Chinese would be left alive, it is tragically ironic that she must now accept that her geopolitical ambitions are rapidly moving into the realm of fantasy because old people cannot work or fight so well.

Unless she acts fast. Given that China has already achieved a stature next only to the USA, it is imperative for China to leverage every bit of her influence to secure for herself geopolitical domination of Asia and indeed of as much of the globe as possible. No longer is it possible to believe that the Chinese would continue to grow in number and eventually overawe every other population on the planet by their sheer numbers and hardwork. The window of demographic dividends is rapidly closing, and China needs to achieve what she can on the global stage before it shuts her out.

But what of India ? Despite the rosy predictions of the government, India has been badly battered by the pandemic. Her GDP fell drastically in the past year, and it is expected that birth data would not be too rosy either. In the last article, I have already pointed out the geographically skewed distribution of TFR in India. But taken nationally, the numbers are bound to go down because of the pandemic as they have all over the world. One can expect with some certainty that this will be reflected once the Census 2021 data is available before us.

India, like China, also has a major sex ratio problem. This too has some geographic skew but nowhere in India (not even Kerala) is the sex ratio at birth for boys and girls equal. In fact, some recent trends suggest that things have gotten somewhat worse in recent years due to the growing cheapness and prevalence of ultrasound machines. Like China, then, India can expect to have less daughters of reproductive age in a few years’ time (perhaps a decade at most) than we do now.

These suggest that if China’s faces her demographic moment of truth in the 2020s, India will do so in the 2030s and 2040s. The pandemic has only brought us closer to that moment of truth, but it would have come anyway. Given this inevitability, it is pertinent to ask what India can do as a country to survive in the short and the long term.

The answer, it seems, is two fold. Firstly, we must stave off an increasingly desperate China. Secondly, we must prepare for our own China moment. The first is immediate and urgent. China has already weaned off one of our closest allies – Russia, forging an alliance of convenience so close that Russia is increasingly wary of standing by India when China’s interests point in the other direction. Russia’s economy being half the size of China and the country losing a net 800,000 people per year (before the pandemic hit), it is not likely that Russia will either be able to get out of this dependence or forge closer ties with India. Russia, for all intents and purposes, is not very different from Pakistan in terms of its reliance on China for a range of vital goods and services. China, on the other hand, finds Russia’s geopolitical clout and weapons expertise handy.

This reduces Indian leverage in an increasingly bipolar world. The last time there was bipolarism, India could play footsie with both USSR and USA. This time, given the conflicts in Galwan Valley and indeed along the length and breadth of the LAC, it is not likely that India can realistically side with China and still expect to exert influence in Asia. This makes her the travelling companion of the USA, if not a close friend. The compulsion for India is more than it is for the US, even though it is true that US cannot find an alternative of India in South and South East Asia that has such deep interests and geopolitical heft to counter China. Enter the Quad.

But India needs to look beyond her immediate boundaries as well. China is busy establishing a string of client states across the world which are dependent on Chinese capital and companies. This needs to be effectively countered to ensure that a second Cold War does not erupt with the US and China using their proxies to wage war. Given the demographic imperatives of China, one can assume that China would want to establish as much dependence upon herself as possible so that once her military power wanes, she can continue to milk these dependencies to maintain her position. India cannot afford to sit idle as countries as diverse as Nepal, Congo and Russia move steadily closer to China.

However, little can be achieved purely by military posturing. In today’s world, military posturing is only so effective as the engines behind that posturing – the economy. India must get her economy in top shape and running well so that she can seek and bridge the gap between China and herself. China’s demographic difficulties should aid India, since India still has an abundant working age population. However, the more we delay such expansion, the more we can expect that the gap would become unbridgeable.

This ties in with the second requirement – preparing for our own China moment. Sometime in the 2030s or 2040s, our own population would have greyed to the point where we too would have to rely on either past glories or immigration to keep propping ourselves up on the world stage. China is desperate to chalk up as much influence and glory as possible while her sun still shines. In our case, we have gradually moved into China’s shade. This does not mean, of course, that we begin aggressively creating client states and economies the way the String of Pearls envisages.

However, unless we can provide support to countries who are looking for alternatives to China’s dominance, we would have missed our opportunities. For instance, we stayed out of the RCEP led by China, but we have yet to come up with an alternative that would pivot the regional economies towards India. In sheer economic terms, we do not have the economic clout to give out loans and funds on China’s scale, but given India’s history of cooperation and support dating back to the days of NAM, India should dip into the storewell of goodwill and draw out some economic linkages that would serve her well in her own old age.

Finally, we should accept that we are growing old. Our rhetoric continues to date to the 1970s and the thesis of population explosion. This despite it being suggested that India’s schoolgoing population has peaked and no matter how politically unpalatable, we should begin consolidating schools and eventually, colleges. We should strengthen our social security system and provide greater facilities to the elderly. This, especially since children or no children, the elderly are increasingly left to their own devices and faculties to survive in this world. While doing so, we must aggressively address the gender skew and the geographic TFR skew to ensure that declines – as and when they take place – are even and gradual. We should also focus specifically on medical facilities and old-age care.

A lot of this sits in the realm of must and should. Given India’s track record, I am not particularly hopeful that we would achieve what almost no country in the world has managed – gracefully transition to old age. Inevitably, countries keep harping about population booms until the country has more old people than kids, more retirement homes than schools and more pension claims that taxes being paid. However, countries like Japan (probably only Japan) have managed to transition to an aged society gradually. It is to be seen how China manages her own transition. However, we cannot wait for China since by the time China does transition, the silver on our scalps will be too visible to take the measures we can take now.

Hence, to secure our own future and ensure that our country and the world comes to be something we would like to see in our old age, we must act now.

 

In Numbers We Trust

Roughly a year after the Delhi was rocked by violence, Delhi is rocked by violence. Again ? No, a year ago there were riots. This time, there are clashes between the protesters and the police. Clashes between two communities, and clashes by a determined lot to fight against the government and its police apparatus, are not the same. More importantly, dozens died a year ago. This time, there has been only one casualty. Hopefully, there will be no more. But is there nothing common ? Violence, some will say, is common. And violence is, by itself, something that should be condemned. Violence delegitimizes legitimate causes, damages public property and gets people killed. If democracy works, none of this should be required. If it doesn’t work, we must resist the temptation to quick fix it with fire.

But beyond the similarity and the superficial differences lies something fundamentally different. You would argue that it is the issue at stake. A year ago, Shaheen Baug was the symbol of protest against the possible delegitimization and stigmatization of the Muslim community by a government perceived as anti-minority. The protesters knew that they were heavily outnumbered, outmanoeuvred and hiding behind the fleshy shields of old women. It was a desperate stance, and for all its success and failure, the desperation was evident from day one to the day the Covid-emptied stage was unceremoniously pulled down. Repression was postponed by the possible moral cost of attacking old unarmed women, and engagement was out of question.

What followed the Delhi elections, was however, equally desperate. Angry at being challenged by old women of the minority community, politicians with vested interests (communal polarization to prevent a recurrence of Shaheen Baug, obviously) sent goons into Delhi to wreak havoc. For four odd days (or was it five?) the streets of a section of Delhi were given over to wanton carnage and destruction. There was nothing spontaneous about this – it was pre-planned, as evidenced by the overwhelming presence of armed young men and their desire to attack without provocation. Counter-attacks led to pitched battles that took dozens of lives before the police brought the situation under control.

History will judge the effect of this contrived violence on the prospects of the BJP and the AAP, or for that matter, on the social fabric of Delhi. It will, presumably, also judge whether the protests were successful in ensuring that the NRC/CAA business was put off indefinitely or not. But the numbers involved – protesters, rioters and other “interested parties” – were all in the hundreds, or low thousands. This contained the fallout – good, bad and ugly – and ensured that the results, at least in the short term, would also be superficial and meagre.

As the cliché goes, not this time. Since the December passage of three controversial agriculture laws, a protest has been continuing in and near Delhi. The protesters are farmers, primarily from the adjacent states of Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh. They are convinced that the laws will open them up to the corporate hawks, who will eventually exploit them by dictating prices and farming conditions a la indigo planters of yore. The MSP or Minimum Support Price guaranteed by the government, which ensures that the farmers get adequate remuneration for their investment and effort come harvest time, will become a dead letter.

Opinions on the desirability of the farm laws is divided, with some claiming that it will emancipate the farmers to do business with whomever he likes. Others claim it will create oligopolies led by corporates in the farm sector and further depress farm incomes and standard of living in the countryside. Either may be true, or even both. What matters here is not the complex economics of the laws and their possibilities, because, as a section of the media never tires of pointing out, the farmers are simple folk who do not understand the nitty gritty of the laws. But they understand their farms, and for better or worse, are convinced that the government is out to gut the MSP system to favour its corporate backers. It may be that Punjab and Haryana are among the few states where the MSP system actually yields any results, and hence the earlier system was not completely broken. The farmers see these legislations as attempts to finish off what good remains in the system, and they won’t allow it.

The result was a widespread mobilization of support by the kisan (farmer) unions across all districts of Punjab and Haryana. Such mobilization soon occurred in UP, Rajasthan and even other, geographically distant states like Maharashtra and Karnataka. The decision was made to march to Delhi and demand of the rulers that they scrap these laws. So began the fateful chain of events that have led – neither inevitably nor predictably – to this moment.

First, the farmers’ movement was sought to be stopped, or atleast contained, to areas within the BJP ruled state of Haryana. The police massively underestimated the number of farmers and the HP of their tractors. Amid scenes of tractors breaking through barricades and tear gas and water cannons proving ineffectual (consider that these are the coldest months in North India), the obstruction effort failed miserably. By early December, the farmers were pouring across the barricades, closing in on Delhi. The Haryana police gave up the attempt altogether.

The farmers reached Delhi en masse and promptly refused to be corralled into stadia and thus marginalized from public view. Staying in public view was important because, as they knew very well, the farmer is a politically important symbol regardless of the colour of your political flag. Unlike the Muslim protest (as it was made out to be in early 2020), the farmers could not be easily “coloured”. Even the attempt to paint it as a Sikh protest did not achieve the desired effect because the patriotism of the Sikhs is much harder to question, Khalistan bogeys be damned.

The farmers had also come much better prepared, turning their trailers and tractors into makeshift homes. Since they were farmers, they had also provisioned well for the coming long vigil. Media and social media warriors were surprised – some rather unpleasantly – by the appearance of community kitchens or langars and the variety of food being available there. That this food could not be painted in beefy colours (pun intended) made it that much more visible and difficult to discard on the communal pile. Since the countryside supports people from the countryside, neither were fresh provisions difficult to obtain, and the mini-villages that cropped up soon proved remarkably resilient.

Another vital difference was that the protesters’ numbers soon dwarfed that of any other major protest in recent times. That these protesters were drawing on deep wellsprings of support was evident in farmers joining them from different districts of practically all the adjoining states as the protests went on. The numbers were soon in their thousands. Such huge crowds, if they chose to “press” their case, would become unmanageable.

It was numbers more than anything else that forced the government to the negotiating table. Narendra Singh Tomar, the ill-fated agriculture minister tasked with leading the negotiations, soon found that postponement and procrastination were anathema for those sitting in the biting cold hundreds of miles away from their homes. They demanded nothing short of repeal. The government of the day is not used to backing down, especially when it comes to “big ticket” reforms such as demonetization, NRC/CAA, GST, tax changes, import duty hikes, and now this. Amendments appeared palatable, but the protesters refused to accept this. Negotiations dragged on. The wise men in ivory towers – the politicians and their experts – were being made to look like insensitive fools.

It is the nature of a democratic system that where the executive fails to resolve a crisis, the judiciary steps in. The judiciary – the Supreme Court in this case – was already receiving PILs demanding a range of things, from dispersion of the protesters on Covid prevention grounds to investigation for Khalistani infiltration (by which was meant receiving Canadian and other foreign funds). Eventually, the Court focused on the right cases, pulled up the hapless minister and his bureaucracy for their lackluster progress, and suggested the setting up of a panel to suggest the way forward.

Farmers – no strangers to litigation given the complex land laws of this realm – did not want any truck with another panel. They had not made any such demand, theirs having been repeal pure and simple from day one. More importantly, however, the Court ordered that the laws be kept in abeyance for a year and a half so the panel could do its job. The farmer unions were invited to appear before it and present their case.

Whether they eventually do so remains to be seen. The protesters, however, were neither satisfied by the composition of the panel itself, nor the modus operandi of the government in going about the still-ongoing negotiations. So they stayed put in numbers that continued to raise the hackles of the Delhi police. In fact, they planned a grand tractor rally to press their case into the heart of Delhi on Republic Day 2021.

Such numbers are difficult to control, and violence was always feared. In reality, the farmers started out with remarkable restraint but at the wrong time and through the wrong places. The result was that barricades meant to keep them within the set bounds of time and space – if the most benign police claims are to be believed – were breached. Once more, the clash was in terms of numbers. Hundreds of police versus thousands of farmers and their sturdy tractors. If the police had been apprehensive about stopping such an influx (or onslaught, as some in the media would have you believe), they were proved right. By mid-day, the farmers had reached the symbolic Red Fort and hoisted, among many flags, those of their unions and the Sikh religion.

The path that history takes along the already tortuous course is unpredictable. That the farmers could have stayed non-violent goes without saying. That they could have turned violent given the vitriol being poured at them by sections of the media and the harsh conditions they have had to live under (about a hundred of them have lost their lives, some through suicide), was always a given. That the violence helps the administration paint the protesters as violent intruders bent on subverting peace and order also goes without saying.

But again, hark the numbers. If the administration chooses to clamp down, nothing short of the army would be needed to clear them out. The political costs for the BJP in Punjab and Haryana would be palpable. Already, the BJP leaders are facing significant blowback in both states, and the BJP-JJP government in the latter appears less than rock solid. On the other hand, the taste of violence and the impact it generated in the space of one day would continue to boil the blood of the “youngsters” who were blamed for breaching the barricades and turning up at places they weren’t supposed to go to.

With the benefit of hindsight and limited foresight, it becomes clear that the numbers were at play in places where it was not readily evident. For instance, considering that the Supreme Court gets petition for everything and the kitchen sink, it is remarkable that they took up the matter and pronounced judgment as quickly as they did. In case of other, limited and distant movements, it takes months before the cases come up through the legal pipeline. In this case, however, the court not just took up the matter but exercised its original jurisdiction to set up a panel that would report to it rather than to the government. This step, whose utility will be tested in the coming months, nonetheless was more progress than anything Tomar achieved with his lengthy meetings.

Numbers also ensured that the protests could not easily be maligned. It is easy to call a group of a few hundred as representing a clique. One or two thousand can be called followers of a political party. But many thousands are difficult to characterize, stigmatize and victimize. The social media lackeys of the administration tried their level best, throwing canards and calumny by the dozen and making dark references to Operation Blue Star and the riots in Delhi aimed at the Sikh Community. But numbers proved to be a barrier such slander could not surmount, since they kept on growing even as the protesters grew embittered at being called anti-nationals, agents of foreign interests, Khalistanis, et cetera cetera.

Numbers too, ensured that all all-out attack was not possible through “non-official” means. Sikhs carry weapons and farmers have basic martial training, especially in the Sikh tradition. This aspect of their self-defense was clear through interviews that some of the farmers gave in the early stages of the protests. Any attempt to violently disrupt the protesters would be met with righteous force, law and order be damned. And so non-violence was respected by all because reservoirs of arms guarded ahimsa. By way of comparison, where Shaheen Baug used the frail bodies of aged women, the farmers used the very real and rippling musculature of Nihangs and even ordinary farmers as insurance against physical assault.

But what does the future hold ? Attempts at sowing division have so far failed. The farmers have made it amply clear who they are and aren’t. Attempts by groups associated with Shaheen Baug – such as the students of Jamia Millia Islamia who generally express solidarity with anyone fighting against the government, have been summarily spurned. So have media groups seen as being pets of the government. The farmers make it clear to anyone willing to listen that they are farmers first and last, and their goal is repeal of the farm laws. It is this simplicity that holds them together and ensures that their opponents – the government as well as the political groups aligned with it, have their “divide and conquer” task cut out.

But will this unity hold ? History tells us that violence tends to reduce support, as major political parties like the AAP and AITC are distancing themselves from the violence. Given that these opposition parties have acted as megaphones for the protesters, this support is crucial for garnering sympathy in the face of the continued tirade against them in the government-aligned media. Further, there are arguments gaining ground that the suspension of the laws should be seen as a major victory and with the Rabi crop coming up for harvest in a couple of months’ time, the farmers should return to their fields, undefeated and victorious.

At the same time, the farmer unions appear to be in no mood to back down. They are wary of cooperating with the SC-appointed panel and have promised a foot march to Parliament on Budget Day (February 1, 2021). What matters now, as may be obvious, is whether they can keep their flock with them.

Because if the past few months, years and decades have taught us – numbers count in a democracy.

Mea Culpa (Audiophilia)!

Every assumption we hold is subject to change in the future. I say assumption because facts are supposedly unchangeable, but the facts of today are proven wrong tomorrow and you don’t want to admit that you were holding into lies. Assumptions sounds better, much better. This is all the more true because since I began my journey, I’ve had to change my assumptions again and again, and will probably do again in the future. Change is the only constant, they say, but it still stings when your seemingly-unique beliefs give way to realities (current realities, future assumptions) that  are much closer to what others are doing. But if that’s what it takes to obtain the best aural experience, so be it!

Aural, you ask ? Yes, this particular harangue will be about my journey as a novice audiophile and where it has gotten me two years down the line. I’ve written on phones, on games, even on academics, but ever heard me yap about audio ? Nope. Hence.

Now this isn’t about how I got into audio gear, or the early mistakes that I made that caused me to burn more cash than I should have. Rather, this is about the point where I thought I had finally had it sorted out, and could settle down to incremental upgrades adhering to a core philosophy. However, a little background never hurts so here goes. I had been a IEM (in-ear monitor, aka pointy-tipped earphone) junkie for quite some time. There was a time when I would upgrade whenever Mi released their latest iteration of Piston IEMs, and revel in the supposed glory of the sound quality. Supposed, because it was assumed to be glorious, and as you may have guessed by now, this article is about making and breaking assumptions.

I’m not sure when and why I felt the need to get into “proper” audiophilia. It was July 2018 and I had been eyeing the Asus Xonar DG/DX sound cards for some time. Since I already knew a fair bit about computers, I also knew that the computer had an inbuilt audio converter, and that it was probably not much better than integrated video is for gaming. Since I had upgraded pretty much everything else, perhaps it was time for an audio upgrade. Also, a nice pair of headphones would bring out the true beauty of the card’s caliber.

So I went online and as often happens, chanced on a hardcore (but welcoming!) group called the Indian Audiophile Forum. Quite naively, I put forth my queries, hoping for some amount of agreement. None was forthcoming. The general consensus was that sound cards were somewhat passe. I’d be better off getting a DAC and a good AMP.

DAC ? AMP ? Some googling later, I learnt the meanings of these and realized that the asking price of the cheapest ones from Fiio – 3-5K, was quite high. Respectable desktop setups like the Schiit Modi/Magni commanded prices in excess of 15K in the flea market. Buy them new and you would burn a hole of about 23K. As for headphones, the ones that were suggested to me were around 10K – the M50x.

Now I wasn’t about to burn through so much money all at once. Having been persuaded of the futility of getting a sound card, I decided that getting a DAC would be futile anyway since I would not have the high-quality audio equipment to bring out their true potential. Plus, the sound coming through my headphone jack was loud enough, so no amp required either. I had already ordered a M20x. Now came the turn of M50x.

Did I tell you that I’m quite impressionable when a lot of people tell me that something is uber good ? Well I am, and when the consensus appeared to be that the M50x is awesome, I bought it. Don’t get me wrong – it is awesome. It is just that with no understanding whatever of what sound signatures meant, I was basically going for whatever the crowd chanted. Eventually I’d realize that I would have been better getting the M40x – a slightly cheaper but more neutral sounding monitor HP. But I’d already swallowed a lot of pride and coughed up a lot of cash. No more I said!

Along with this, I was thought I’d up my IEM game as well. Here was a real requirement – since my Mi Pistons were in a declining state of health. I went on the flea market (called the Pre-Loved Gears for Sale group) and decided that I’d get some “good” IEMs from a company called Faaeal. The decision made as much sense as the brand’s name, but I was quite impressed with the heavy metal units of the Datura and the braided cable.

Eventually though, I settled for the Tin T2, and thankfully, began to understand a bit of what makes audio great. You see, the Tin T2 were actually neutral, and allowed you to understand how others were high or low (forward or recessed in audiophile jargon) in specific segments of the spectrum. It was with T2 and M50x that I understood what the difference between low quality MP3 music and higher quality stuff was. I understood how treble helped you enjoy string instruments and classical concerts, while bass was useful for hip hop and newer genres. Mids helped grasp vocals since most singers went neither too high nor too low in the acoustic spectrum.

With this knowledge, I now began to yearn for better gear, and came to appreciate that newer is not always better. Hence, in what would have been a grave affront to my Piston-upgrading former self, I went from M50x to M50. Yes, the older model that was already five years old at that time (mid 2019). I appreciated the slightly warmer (bass-heavy) sound signature and greater resolution (clarity and separation of instruments) of the unit. Plus, the previous owner had added sheepskin earpads. Ah, the comfort!

It’d have been fine if I’d simply upgraded from the M50 to another set of cans, and moved my T2 to a better IEM. That’s what normal people do, including ones who actually understand the music. Better than me anyway. What I did, however, was conclude that headphones were too heavy and unwieldy, and it would be better to go all IEM. I’d keep two IEMs, one for casual use and one for more analytical listening.

One year back – in late 2019 – I acted on my beliefs. The M50, T2 (and BQEYZ KC2) were all sold. In their stead, I got the Audeze iSine 10 and Blon BL-03. The isines were planar magnetic IEMs – virtually the only ones in the market in that price range that were both planar as well as IEMs. They seemed to fit my bill perfectly – portable should I want to carry them, planar so I get good details and excellent range, and light on the ears (in terms of weight). The Blons were dynamic driver carbon diaphragm IEMs that were trying hard to replace the T2.

They would eventually fail – and I would fail in my quest to make this combination the ideal companions for listening. Partially fail that is. The Blons did their job amicably, even after my wife bent the 3.5mm jack! They were light, had good bass and enough volume to hold out in crowded metro trains, and survive rough usage. They became my daily drivers during the 3 hours commutes to and from work that I undertook five days a week.

The isines were not so useful. I learnt that the ear hooks which these oversized IEMs relied upon to cling onto your earlobes, were flimsy. I’m talking snap at a touch level of flimsy. Since the previous seller had misplaced one out of the three pairs included, I was stuck with only two sizes. The larger one seemed to fit my ears, but clearly they didn’t fit well. After some time, my right earlobe began to ache. The fit was also a bit off, so I could hear less in my right ear than in my left. This imbalance, coupled with fatigue, pain and the fact that they needed to be stored carefully in their pouch after every listening session meant that they weren’t the easiest to use. Neither could they be carried around lest a stray push snap one of the brittle hooks.

The result was that I would bring out the isines only when I was at home, listening on my computer. Taking them off was also akin to removing costly earrings, and there were times when I unplugged the jack rather than take off the IEMs since the former was more convenient. Further, they needed some amplification and so I had to use a DAC/AMP whenever I needed to use the isines. All in all, a tall ask that limited my listening sessions on the isines more and more, till I was listening to them once in two months.

Around the same time, I was gradually beginning to reconsider my attitude to DAC/AMPs. So many people were using it that it seemed to be the logical thing to do. Trouble was, the desktop ones limited your headbanging space and were too costly anyway. I decided to go the portable route again. This time, my first choice was actually good, but the ones that followed proved to be less so.

The first DACAMP I got was the Audioquest Dragonfly Black 1.5. If you think I’m writing this whole name unnecessarily (after all I didn’t write Audio Technical M50x Studio Monitor Headphones did I ?), know that there’s a reason. The Dragonfly has a bigger brother called Red, and the Black itself has two iterations – 1.2 and 1.5. Now the one I got was decidedly pre-loved (lingo for second-hand) but it was built like a rock. With its single 3.55mm port and USB male interface, it was the epitome of simplicity.

In fact, it was the first and last unit that I could plug into a USB C to USB A dongle and carry with me on bus journeys. It would drive the Blons, and then the isines, and improve sound quality through its integrated DAC. Amplification was also good. Most vitally, it gave me access to MQA (Master Quality Audio) music that provided music in the same quality as it was recorded in. Sweet huh ?

It was so sweet that I eventually decided to look for options that disposed of the dongle/adapter. I was looking for smaller, lighter and less battery-guzzling USB-C options. I didn’t expect them to compete with the Dragonfly, since most options were only a fraction of the price and specifications of the Dragonfly anyway. Truth be told, I wasn’t sure what I expected from these cheaper options, since they wouldn’t be able to play the highest bitrate options anyway with their smaller and weaker DACs, nor amp larger HPs (not that I had any at that point).

Anyhow, I assumed (again) that they would improve sound. I got the Tempotec Sonata HD (not Pro) and the VE Odyssey. The Sonata was something of a flyweight champion among DACs, while the Odyssey was getting some favourable reviews. The reviews were wrong, and the Odyssey heated up and didn’t provide any major improvement. When I finally sold it, the buyer ( a veteran user himself) told me there was something wrong with my USB C DAC. Mercifully he didn’t ask for a refund.

The Sonata did its job, but soon I was wondering what job that exactly was. It stuck out in an ungainly way from my jeans pocket, and could easily catch a bus handle on my way out. Further, while it allowed me to play Tidal through UAPP, it didn’t allow use of Apple Music where I had a good part of my Indian music collection. So using an additional wire basically limited my options instead of expanding them. On the sound front, the Tempotec did improve things, adding that little extra bit of amp and depth to the music that reminded me of the Dragonfly back home.

But the emphasis on portability meant that it would get me only so far. And so far became not very far when the pandemic hit. I was stuck at home with a number of portable options and nowhere to go. It would be logical to hold onto them and wait for the pandemic to wear itself out (still hasn’t), but the added thinking time made me do a rethink. My isines were sitting uncomfortably on my ears or gathering dust in the desk drawer. My portable DACAMP options were either heating up my private parts or just plain proving to be a hindrance to smooth movement, and none were allowing me to enjoy the high-quality yet ergonomic travel experience I had hoped for. I had options, but the question had changed. Was portability really to be found in tapered down versions of bigger and better stuff like the isines and portable DACAMPs essentially were ? Or should I simply split the portable and high-end options once and for all ?

That’s what I did. Mea culpa to anyone to whom I’ve preached the glories of portable Hi-Fi audio. I’m sorry, I didn’t know what a pain it would be straddling both boats. Instead, I’ve chosen to focus on portability alone when I go portable, and audio quality alone when I go for audio quality. It seems stereotypical, but I guess the road less travelled required one too many detours for me to continue on it.

The portable option is, simply put, as minimal as possible without being totally crap in the audio department. I’ve currently settled on Creative Outlier Air. They are TWS (Truly Wireless) Bluetooth earphones that allow me to walk, run, headbang (not too much) and clean the house without falling off. Anytime I’m on the move, I slip them into my ears and I’m enjoying music on the go. Not the quality I would like, but if you have to navigate crowded bazaars, you would focus more on having the music with you rather than picking one note from another.

My high-end setup, on the other hand, has become much bulkier and desktop-bound. After a long and arduous search, I chanced upon a Schiit stack on Headphonezone. Whoever had put it up didn’t list it in the flea markets I frequent, because I’d have noticed too late and lost my chance. They cost me around 15K, which isn’t cheap but the lowest you can go for quality discrete DAC and AMP stacks. Remember the Schiit stack I’d checked out as too costly when I began my journey with the M20x and M50x ? Yeah, I’m using it now.

What about my earphone ? Well, it’s a headphone now. Once I’d decided to go for quality, a headphone made more sense than a compromise like the isine 10. I initially decided to go for the Hifiman Sundara, but the 28K asking price for a new one was too much. Since Hifiman is unwilling to offer warranty on second-hand goods and  Sundaras have been known to go wonky at times, I chose a cheaper HE400i (older model) pre-loved from the flea market. They’re planar magnetic, have large and powerful open-back drivers and tick all the boxes required for a comfortable analytical listening session.

Is it my endgame ? No, because even these setups have some assumptions. For instance, I’m assuming right now that I’ll eventually upgrade to the Sundara. Perhaps I’ll go for the Audeze LCD-1 or something completely different. Maybe I won’t upgrade in the near future at all. Too many assumptions of mine have been proved wrong, and at this stage, I’m only hoping for more to break. The journey, as they say, is more beautiful than the destination!

The “Invoice” Moment

It has been months, nay, the better part of the year, since the pandemic began. The pandemic keeps rolling on, changing the world as we know, it, and our excuses within it. There are large excuses – cover-ups for policy failures and grave mistakes that cost lives, and then there are the little ones. Today, when the big ones are up in the air and damaging the political lives of some and wrecking those of others, let’s talk about the little ones. Like the ones where you feel you don’t, can’t, shouldn’t need to do something, but someone still expects it of you. What’s your alibi ?

I’m not talking about something grand – nobody is asking you to lead a country or take over the World Bank or WHO. Rather, someone is asking you to do your job, and do it well. At one time, before the pandemic wrecked everything, alibis for not doing your job could range from bandhs, natural disasters and other impediments to getting to work, to illnesses, children’s needs and even inclement weather. But now you’re at home. WFH right ? No need to travel. Buses are metro railways run empty, or less crowded anyway. Brew some decaf, open your laptop, fire up your Gmail/G Suite/Meet and you’re earning your bread right ? So what’s your excuse now ?

Your excuse probably lies in the terms separated by slashes in the penultimate sentence of the last paragraph. Yeah, software, and technology, and complicated bits of code that appear as words and messages and menus to make your stone-age mind oh so muddled. Weren’t you the one who took unholy amounts of stationery from the office and then laboriously got down to writing everything, and by everything, we mean only as much as would pass muster with your colleagues, and by colleagues we mean only those above you who hold the keys to your promotion ? What became of turning up late to office with a traffic-related excuse every day, and running off because you had an important social function to attend ? What happened to dropping off your kid when you were supposed to be taking class for others’ kids ? No, all that has been replaced by LED screens, keyboards, webcams and endless streams of disembodied voices and datasheets.

So it’s not fun anymore, and it’s not convenient anymore. Not when your kid is home all day and becomes a real problem to deal with. Not when you can’t cut corners at home or in your work life, and must actually balance it rather than pretending to so you could play each against the other to your benefit. Nope, it’s not fun anymore. Especially not, if you enjoy a cushy government job where technology is only introduced through kicks of the boss’ polished shoes, and stays as long as it is monitored. Yes, nobody likes the complicated world of technology when it robs you of those little economies of effort, and instead demands what they are actually paying you for. You either go downhill and become a wage slave (oh so Marxist!) or fight tooth and nail with all the collective you and your sympathizers can muster against the omnipresent world of tech.

So when you are asked to mail someone, you pretend you typed the wrong address. When asked to collaborate over Google Drive, the result is you create a doc that no one else can access because you didn’t give any access. When asked to livestream, you muddle your way through half an hour before your kid makes a cameo in real time and then your data plan (1GB a day, seriously?) gives up the ghost. All the while you loudly and very piously wish for a return to the good old days. When all this doesn’t work, you hide behind your clients, your students, that one colleague who can’t handle that one file, or even the tribals in the forests. The encroachment of tech must be stopped at any cost!

For a while, it seems to work. Yes, that spreadsheet you were supposed to make was given to someone else, someone less skilled in pretended or actual ignorance. That Google Meet you left halfway was completed by someone else. Your collaboration was not required because the cells you were supposed to fill up were done by someone else. Life becomes convenient, and as it become convenient, what started out as an occasional complaint against tech becomes an ideology in itself. Sprinkled of course, with generous amounts of wisdom about how you will retire long before tech has made much headway, and anyway the younger generation knows its tech better and has to learn for the future. Big words, hollow claims, more time for you and whatever the hell you do when not doing actual work. Convenient.

But karma is a bitch, and in the age of Covid, karma can kick ass faster than you can pronounce Google Workspace. A certain time, a certain event, a certain conjunction of the stars – something happens that drags you out of your convenient utopia and then you are six feet under because you never learnt to swim. I see it happening all around me. Given that I’m the Social Media Champion, the head technical committee dude and everything techie in my institution, there should be a certain sense of schadenfreude in all of this, especially when I’m suddenly in demand for something as random as a misspelt email address. But instead, the dominant feeling is one of nostalgia and a calm realization that where I was, they are today and others will be tomorrow. But let’s start with me.

It was 2014, and I was well-settled into my short-lived career as a content writer. I had found this lucrative client who paid good money for quality articles related to tech. What attracted me to the client was that he didn’t require me to write ordinary tech reviews, but quirky pieces aimed at an audience that knows its tech a bit, and can enjoy a tech joke once in a while. The work included various types of writing, from short pieces to longer ones. The per word pay varied as well, creating a somewhat complex mosaic of payment tiers.

For the first few weeks, I was given the more standard stuff, and the pay calculations were simple. X words multiplied by Y rate and Z is what I get. The client (let’s call him T), didn’t haggle, though he did correct my math even when I under-calculated my dues. I would marvel at the efficiency with which he would do his math, and how he always provided these neat tables for any invoices that I might have required.

But marveling and admiring isn’t the same as being efficient. So when the workload became more complex, I began to face difficulties in totaling my dues. T helped me out as much as he could, but there’s a saying that God helps those who make their own invoices. There came a time when I had gone a month without pay, all the while working on a range of articles with varying levels of pay. That XYZ formula didn’t work anymore. The back of the envelope filled up, and I was getting perplexed.

Eventually, T asked me to tell me how much he owed me. I knew he would not haggle, even if the amount was big (it eventually ran into around $200 plus, which was big for me then). But he would also be meticulous about the calculations. I had to impress him with something more structured.

Out came my exercise book. I opened the last two pages, and made careful tables of the dues. My best handwriting, numbers rounded off carefully to avoid any under or over-charging and labeling of categories so there is no confusion. The whole tabling, plus the math, took me the better part of two hours. But hey, I was being systematic right ? Finally, when I was confident that my tables looked professional, I took some well-lit photos and fired them off into the work stream.

My reward may have been a chuckle or a ROFL moment on T’s side, but I’ll never know. He was too professional to ever poke fun at me. But my swollen pride came crashing down when, in as many words, he asked me to send the invoice in an excel sheet. Yep, apparently, 25 odd years after Microsoft first introduced office, drawing tables on paper was no longer the hip thing to do.

This was my “Invoice” moment of 2013, and of the rest of my life.

My initial annoyance at this reaction gave way to slow realization that his calculations were accurate because he wasn’t the one doing them. Excel did them for him. You put in a formula, drag them to the relevant boxes and ding! You have all the math you need. What stung was that I already knew this, or believed I did. I had a decent computer science education in high school, and Excel was taught there. We were taught how to populate cells, put in sum commands, etc etc. We knew that this was used to generate invoices manually, simply because our textbook exercises included such examples.

But lo, when the time came, I sent my first complex invoice in the form of hand-drawn tables that would embarrass someone a quarter century older. Meekly, I opened Excel and began to re-learn the ways in which Excel worked. I googled formulae, and learnt that you can’t simply drag rows the way you can drag and rearrange columns. Eventually when the data was put in, calculations happened faster than I could blink, and the invoice was ready far faster than when I had made it by hand. I was now officially part of the 21st Century!

Apparently, I did a half-decent job. T made some changes and sent me the corrected invoice. The final amount was accurate as I’d sent it, but there were some stylistic and other modifications that he advised me to do from next time onwards. I had passed the invoice test, and took his feedback seriously. From then on, anything that involved calculations saw me fire up Excel (or Google Sheets nowadays) and hammer the keypad until the work was done.

During that eventful day (and night), I learnt some valuable lessons. The first one was that technology will catch up with you, and then block your path until you learn its ways and methods. It is just too convenient, too fast and too widely used for anyone to shield themselves from it. Secondly, we have some idea of technology ourselves. We have learnt it in school, during workshops or even while doing petty tasks. We just never apply it in situations where we really need to. Our education system asks us to rote learn rather than learn by application, and so when people learn Excel, they learn it to get good grades rather than apply it to situations where they can actually generate a workable invoice.

Finally, and most importantly, I learnt that these realizations would not come until you were pushed into a corner. If T had accepted my paper tables and had merely suggested that I use excel, I probably would not have bothered. I was too puffed up about my paper tables to take his advice. But when technology becomes a non-negotiable minimum for progress, for payment, for getting the basics done, that’s when you realize all this and learn in earnest. That is when the knowledge you get stays with you, and you begin applying it to myriad situations that you would till that day have tried to overcome without using tech. That’s when karma, smiling at you for all the times you avoided tech and made life harder for yourself – but probably more for your colleagues – smiles as she takes you to the cleaners.

But even as I changed, the world around me did not. I belong to academia, which is notorious for using old tech and older notions of how to get work done. Nary a day passes when some academic’s wizened computer doesn’t give up the ghost, an overextended license doesn’t expire or something involving frantic calls to those better tech-endowed doesn’t take place. All of this passes because the fundamental tasks – teaching, research and application – can still be done without tech. Can still be done inefficiently and with huge wastage of manpower, paper and other resources, but when that professor says that he doesn’t do Google Drive, you don’t really have an option.

But karma, karma doesn’t spare anyone. The day comes when that professor retires, and then find that the entire service book and pension papers need to be digitized for him to claim the money needed to survive. Chances are that he still has a young assistant to help him out. But what if he doesn’t? That’s when, after a career made out of avoiding tech to the greatest degree possible, he finally succumbs. He calls his kids settled comfortably abroad, or his students, or his neigbours, or even the guy running the cyber café, so he can figure out how to upload a few documents and claim his pension. In his old age, tech has finally caught up with him, and boy is it kicking ass!

But the pandemic has made life miserable even for those who don’t yet need to draw their pensions. Online classes, online attendance, online research, online this and online that…. All of it has ensured that the pen and paper people are finally being kicked by karma into the digital age. Their phones now contain more than Facebook and WhatsApp- they contain Adobe Lens, Microsoft Word, Google Docs, and if I have anything to say, Google Sheets as well. They are learning the hard way that unless they collaborate digitally, they will get left behind .Their classes will not take place, their students will be dissatisfied, and their performance metrics will begin to suffer. Pushed to the wall, as I was in 2013-14, they are imbibing tech faster than if they were induced to take a dozen tech workshops to aid their career advancement.

Every day, thus, a new Google Sheet or doc is being created. One which these technologically handicapped people must edit with data only they can gather and which only they have. Oftentimes, it still leads to printouts and use of paper to fill data, which is then uploaded by hapless underlings. But these cases are becoming fewer. For one thing, the budgets of institutions are going downhill at a time when prices are rising, and economy in office costs and stationery is now mandatory. On the other hand, it is becoming clear that when you work from home, you can’t simply call upon another person to do it because what if he’s not available or not willing or not able to do the work? You don’t have the common framework of the college anymore to ensure that you get some support from somewhere. So you have to do it yourself at some stage, or get called out for your inefficiency. If there is one thing that professionals hate being called out for, it is inefficiency.

But it’s not enough that those who hit the tech wall today learn it the hard way. Tomorrow’s workers- our students today – must also learn, whichever way they want. Jobs in the moth-eaten world of academia are becoming scarcer by the budget session, and more and more privatization is taking place. Those entering private spaces will have to adapt rapidly to an already highly digitized world. They would have to start using G Suite and its myriad apps from Day One, or get kicked out on Day Two.

In their interest, we need to not just make the students of today use tech to learn, but learn to do tech for their own needs. I’m talking Excel and Google Sheets for things like attendance, course selection and other calculations. I’m talking Google Forms for surveys that they may take for practicals. I’m talking Google Docs for typing – yes, typing on a keyboard – matter that tomorrow they may need to send to their bosses. If today they face their “invoice” moment when a professor makes them fill out a Sheet or a Form to mark their attendance, tomorrow they will be able to do so much more easily when handling professional workflows. It may even be doing them a service, since a professor can at least show a little empathy to a student using a tool for the first time, which a corporate overlord may well not.

So to wrap up, it’s clear that everyone will face their “invoice” moment and face the reality that either they use tech, or get thrown into the Recycle Bin of organizations that no longer countenance alibis, excuses and made-up stories about “tech issues”. It is incumbent upon those who faced their moments before to prepare the younger generation for the time when they may face theirs, so they are prepared and can quickly adapt. Because let’s face it – the pace at which tech is evolving, it will catch up with everyone over and over again, and there will be multiple “invoice” moments before we can hang up your laptop bags. But if we prepare them today, perhaps they will be better prepared for the initial few such moments, and who knows, might actually prosper when faced with such adversities.

As for those academics who continue to be tag-teamed by the formidable pair of Karma and Tech, it can be safely expected that they will lag behind the others. In doing so, they will make their own lives miserable and that of their colleagues, even more so. But you can only afford to be miserable, if you can afford to be inefficient, and inefficiency is something that is being removed with every financial haircut. A day will come when they will get the choice of taking their alibis with them into an early retirement, or become true members of the digital community. When that time comes, all of those who faced their moments and learnt for the better, and continue to learn, can afford to crack a wistful smile – for the bygone times when the inefficient could still make life miserable for those who actually got the work done!

Radicals Don’t Change Their Puritanical Stripes

Going by the title, you’d be forgiven for thinking this article is about Protestant groups in the 16th to 17th Century Europe. After all, radicals were often puritans, and puritans espoused Radical causes of the day and….wait, that isn’t at all what this article is about. We aren’t living in 17th Century Europe, and anyone who has been reading my blog would know that I don’t write about history here. Unless it has an implication on the present. Well, what I would like to speak about is deeply historical, but also deeply rooted in the present. Just not that history, or the Protestant present.

Okay, so why is it that I invoke the radical and the puritan ? Well, it so happens that one of the most radical ladies in all of India at the moment – Arundhati Roy – is getting some stick from the puritans in the radical camp. Personally, I don’t agree with most of what Roy says, and I don’t find her to be the demigod of the Left that some people make her out to be. Or did until she was “called out”. But the way in which she was called out deserves attention, both for the sheer irony of the whodunnit and the deeper message that this act is shouting out to us all.

First off, the context and the act. Roy has been a staunch critic of the present Modi government. This is entirely by choice, and one has to admire the tenacity and dedication with which she has stuck to her guns. Whether it’s JNU, or lynchings, or the Bhima Koregaon/Elgar Parishad case, Roy is always at the forefront of protests. Not unnaturally, she is a darling of the Left and the Liberals (they are not the same). Time and time again, she has braved the wrath of the state and the Right-wing organizations to ensure that her voice is heard, and very often, it has been heard. Credit where credit is due.

Now we come the act. A couple of days ago, she was attending an online webinar/meeting/conference/discussion on some liberal issue with some liberal elites from foreign shores. I fail to recollect what the issue was, since I am not the most avid admirer of the avant garde in Leftist issue-picking. Neither is it pertinent to note who the other panelists were, since there isn’t exactly a whole lot of variety in their ideas anyway. What is worthy of my digital pen, though, is that one of the panelists called out Arundhati Roy for her surname.

In any other context, shaming someone for being called something would be anathema. You call out someone with a Tamil surname for being Tamil, and all hell would break loose. You call out a Christian surname for being Christian, and you would be picketed for your prejudices and stereotypes. Rightly so. Your name is your identity, and unless you have an issue with it, no one else should. That’s just basic respect for each and every person for who they are.

But Roy was called out for her surname, and now she’s the one being attacked for her defense. You see, Roy is a Brahmanical surname. Brahmanical ? It appears to be a surname used by Brahmins, though it would be important to point out here that many castes have Roy as their surnames. I personally know of people outside the so-called creamy layer of society who are Roys. This is similar to how Ghosh can be an upper-caste surname and also refer to the cow-herder caste, which is definitely not part of the creamy layer.

But the foreign panelist rightly guessed that in Arundhati’s case, Roy was a Brahmin surname. Perhaps the fact that Roy has never claimed to be an SC or ST made it pretty obvious, because in the world of leftism and so-called progressive politics, if you have even an iota of anything unprivileged or exploited about you, you milk that to maximum advantage. Since Roy has not done this, it is amply clear that she is an upper-caste.

So what’s her defense for being upper-caste? A Brahmin to boot in a world that considers every Brahmin to be Brahminical and thus worthy of derision. Hence, a progressive who wishes to be considered one has to explain how she is progressive while carrying a Brahmin surname.

Considering how much she has already done for the Leftist causes, it was well within her right to flatly refuse to explain this. Instead, and again to her credit, she did give something of an explanation. Her explanation, in a nutshell, was that she was raised by a Syriac Christian mother and a Brahmo father, who later converted to Christianity. The import of her argument was that she has a progressive lineage, and she was never part of the Brahminical orthodoxy to begin with. After all, neither Christian nor Brahmo is Brahmin! Ergo, she is not a Brahmin.

Further, she reiterated that she didn’t fit into any historical categorization due to her upbringing, and while Syrian Christians and Brahmos may have had their conservative sides, she herself was not part of any such grouping. She went on to argue that caste is not about being Brahmin or not, and not about a specific set of arguments for or about Brahmins alone. Rather, Brahminism is about a social stratification that is present in other religions as well, and is part of a complex socio-religious rubric. Previously, she had argued that Dalits alone should not have the right to speak about caste, and in my limited understanding, it was implied that caste was everyone’s cup of tea and not just a dalit samosa.

This didn’t find muster with the puritans among the radicals (see where my title is coming from ?) She was called out in a number of Twitter posts, most notably by those going by handles like Dalit Chef, Dalit something-or-the-other, etc. They wondered why she had tried to claim that she was not a Brahmin when it was clear that her father came from a Brahmin background and her mother was part of a social grouping which was traditionally known to be conservative and elitist ? Why did she try to claim that she was not a Brahmin when by blood, she was ? And what was all this “whataboutery” about caste being present in other religions, or that caste is not about Brahmins per se but about social and religious stratification in general ?

To sum up, why is Roy trying to act “casteless”, as one Scroll.in commentator put it, when it is patently evident to all and sundry that she was, is and will be a Brahmin until she….well….does something or says something or acknowledges something.

Thus, it is not enough that someone repudiate their personal caste category (whatever it may be), and then write extensively about caste prejudices and structural violence against the under privileged in society in her works. It’s not enough that she even writes a foreword to Ambedkar’s Annihilation of Caste, and cooperates with Dalit intellectuals and activists, giving their voice a mainstream respectability through her own reputation as a best-selling author. It is not enough that she has consciously sought to work for Dalit causes with no personal benefit and great personal risk and discomfiture.

In fact, nothing is enough. You see, the argument here is not what Roy has done but what she is. This existential question is narrowed down to a black and white palette where black stands for the darkness of Brahminism and white stands for the narrow definition of liberalism that is tom-tommed by the radical purists. She is Brahmin by blood, since lineage flows from the father (patriarchy anyone?) and her father was Brahmin. So if your parents were, at some point in their lives – usually by virtue of who they were born as – Brahmins, then you are damned and doomed to ashamedly admit that you are a Brahmin even if everything your parents and you have done your entire lives militates against such a categorization.

This is basically the argument of dwija or twice-born, but inverted in significance. Hindu scriptures argue that the twice-born are born and stay in this state unless they commit some unspeakable act which strips them of this status and damns them. For instance, dining with the a dalit. Here, the argument is accepted, but virtue and sin are inverted. You are a dwija if you are born one, or your parents are born one, and you have nothing to be proud of. You are part of the problem from the moment of your birth, and nothing you do in the normal course of things (in fact, anything and everything) will wipe that primordial sin off your record. Hence, a radical like Arundhati Roy would still be asked if she is a Brahmin by a foreign somebody who wants to earn some extra brownie points with the puritans. Your only hope of redemption is if you accept that you are a Brahmin, and then atone for being a Brahmin despite not being a Brahmin. Basically, mess up your identity to stay on the right side of the picket line.

To deconstruct (as breaking it down into digestible morsels of information is fashionably called) all of this, let’s start with the assumption that someone is Brahmin. What is wrong with saying so ? Nothing, since one’s caste is not who they are. It is who they were born as, and the actions and lineages of their parents and grandparents before them. The question, however, is why someone should be asked if they were Brahmin. To return to a previously stated analogy, would you call out a Tamil for being a Tamil ? This would only expose your own prejudices about Tamils. Similarly, Brahmins – like any and every other caste in India today – are a varied lot. Some are very orthodox and conservative, some are very liberal, and some are radical. Some may accept that they are Brahmins by accepting that it is part of their identity, and proceed accordingly. There is nothing so diabolical about being a Brahmin that you can’t espouse a liberal cause or fight for justice while being a Brahmin.

In fact, Brahmins were at the forefront of major social reform movements throughout the colonial and even the post-colonial period. The progressive movements of today often ignore the pioneering actions of these stalwarts in favour of an excessive and sometimes historically distorted deification of Ambedkar and his followers. It is rare to find a Rammohun Roy Study Circle or a Vidyasagar Study Circle created and run solely by Dalits, but Ambedkar Study Circles are dime a dozen. If Christians have their Jesus, Muslims have their Muhammad and Marxists have their Lenin and Mao, Dalits have their Ambedkar. No one else matters.

But what if you are not a Brahmin ? What if you consciously chose a different path for yourself and your children, and your children moved further down the road away from the identity of the Brahmin. What if the child does not see anything in herself that relates with what she understands – rightly or wrongly – to be a Brahmin ? Does she still need to accept that she is a Brahmin because of a random collection of letters appended to the end of her name ? Would it not go against what the person believes she is, and what she is fighting for ? Does anyone have the right to define a person based on just a three-letter word that has some specific historical or sociological connotation ?

If yes, then what is the point of fighting against caste, because most of us carry a caste surname ? If you will force even the most radical and most rebellious person into the straitjacket of your caste-based definition of who a person is, what is the point of fighting for annihilation of caste in the first place ? Let us all define ourselves by our castes, and take sides accordingly. The Brahmins, by this token, would have been wrong to usher in the Bengal Renaissance and the other social reform movements. They should have stuck to their privileges, and kept Brahmin as their primary and only identity.

Further, what is the point of fighting for individual rights then? What is the point of fighting for the woman who has divorced her husband, is estranged from her parents, and does not wish to have a surname at all ? What is the point of fighting for the people who refuse to conform and strive to give every person their due in a democratic society that is pluralist without stereotypes ? Because if you define yourself by your caste – or are forced to do so in the most progressive or liberal of settings – why bother in fighting for preservation of such open spaces ? We could just as well settle for khap panchayats where judgments are handed down based on the caste of the offenders. Then we would have erased two centuries of struggle against social orthodoxy, because if in the end the fighters themselves have to defend against accusations of hiding castes they refuse to belong to, why bother at all with any social progress ?

In the end, this attack on Arundhati Roy exposes a fundamental facet of the movements for the oppressed. Like all good movements, this one also proceeds with a binary assumption that one group is progressive based on their caste, while the other is regressive based on their caste. Progressives will win against regressives, or continue to fight. The problem here is that the definition of progressive is so narrow and so tone-deaf that it keeps cannibalizing those who have given their everything for the cause. If today Arundhati Roy is rendered illegitimate because of what her three-letter surname stands for – or is assumed to stand for – then what hope do lesser mortals have that one day, after they have sacrificed everything, they too will not be rendered illegitimate because of something they have consistently rejected ?

There are those who will claim that Roy is a sensationalist who goes after avant garde causes. While this is true to some extent, it is also true that the puritans demand a lot of sacrifice from anyone who wishes to walk the path of “progress” shoulder to shoulder with them. You have to start by identifying the inherent privileges you enjoy, such as good vegetarian food, or cultural festivals that may be rooted in tradition, or participation in social circles and organizations that are not considered liberal enough. All of this must go. Next, you must find how your social relations – your friends, your family, your neighbours and friends – are part of the caste nexus and how you don’t have enough Dalit friends, or Muslim friends, or some other acceptable category of friends. So you have to diversify your friend circle. Next, you must participate in each and every movement that is launched. You may have your own more conservative opinion about certain movements, but nope, nothing doing until you give your full-throated support to all of it. Finally, you must look within yourself and change your fundamental character, habits and beliefs until they conform to the high standards of the priests of progress. Finally, you must chop off undesirable parts of your name whether or not you actively identify with them or not.

But once you do all that, and Roy is pronounced guilty of not taking that last step – they will find something else to demand. Another sacrifice, another change in your life and your relations that would keep you in sync with the marchers. Falling behind is not an option, because everything that is left behind is regressive by the very definition of the march of progress.

All of this holds a vital lesson for any and every wannabe Leftist and/or liberal. If you choose to go with the flow, you will change yourself so fundamentally that you will not be able to go back. Then you will be called out when the movement takes yet another unexpected turn. A new cancel culture, a new something something matters, something will throw you off balance. Yesterday it was JK Rowling, who believed that (primarily) women menstruate. Today, it is Arundhati Roy, who didn’t provide enough justification for not being a Brahmin. Tomorrow, it could be you or me.

In the specific context of progressive politics in India, this challenge is all the more difficult. This is because while the conservative bloc demands adherence to rigid ideas of caste, religion and nationalism, the liberals are becoming no less dogmatic. Or should we say, those fighting about caste are becoming no less dogmatic. The liberal ideal of championing specific causes based on your own beliefs, and not changing them based on any one belief or movement, finds few takers today. As the Arundhati Roy episode reminds us, identity politics, no matter how progressive it may look, end up wrecking your identity or subsuming it in a specific context from which there is no escape. Are we ready to surrender the better part of who we are, who our friends and family are, and what our social moorings are, to keep up with the marching band ? We must choose wisely, because a sudden turn of the road may put us at the wrong end of their bayonets!

The Rot in Academia – as told Through Two Short Emails

They say hindsight is 20/20. Not surprisingly, the mistakes we made seem idiotic in retrospect, and the mistakes made by others that we may have made at that stage of our lives, seem moronic as well. This is not to justify what was done, or even to sympathize more than one would ordinarily do. Rather, this realization that what was done and what is being done is moronic, carries with it an uncomfortable realization that we are part of a system that produces such mistakes. And more uncomfortably, we are perpetuating it.

Academics call it systemic injustice, or systemic bias, or systemic something. When things get really bad and people go into depression, it’s systemic violence. Then many people use it to shift the blame from themselves onto whatever is the current state of society and state. Individual culpability changes into a more comfortable collective culpability, and like public property, nobody bothers to take the blame for it.

All of this makes headlines if the issue takes on a violent form. A suicide, a rape or denial of opportunity. We discover that behind a suicide lay an abusive relationship, behind a rape a rape script and toxic masculinity, and behind denied opportunity, cynical caste-class nexuses. But this article is not about these. I have nothing in my past, nor my present (and hope to God, nor in my future) that warrants such Marxist analysis.

Instead, I want to speak about an article that was rejected, and what followed thereafter. Yes, I wasn’t bluffing when I wrote the previous paragraph – it is really just an article and correspondence between the editor (me) and the author. Before you write me off as an academic dotard residing in his chosen ivory tower, let me add some context.

It so happens that many moons ago, when I was still a student and an acolyte in the world of academics, I’d taken up content writing as a freelancer. It provided much needed pocket-change to impress my girlfriend, and allowed me to fund some of my geeky passions. But every job, every occupation, no matter how freelance or part-time, comes with its own ideological baggage. Content development had its own fair share of predatory contractors and clients. These guys went the extra mile to drill into you that capitalism of the freelance kind was the ultimate mantra for success. Real research was research done for producing content, because that was what people read and used to make informed decisions. Who reads academic articles in pricey journals anyway ?

It is not difficult to become enamoured of this ideology. It was amply evident that working for some of these clients would not get me anywhere near where they themselves were. One of them would sign his emails with “Sent from an iPad”. I did some simple math, and realized that it would take years, working 24 hours a day, to make enough to afford even the last generation iPad. But then I would persuade myself that if I did gather that much experience, I would become a contractor myself. Exploited would become exploiter and dream-seller in turn.

What is safe to say is that all of this created a disdain for academics, and a deep cynicism about the high-brow Marxist and Leftist debates that surrounded me in my university and even outside it. But it also made me wonder if research really was so difficult. After all, research articles are content right ? So if I’m researching for a treadmill review, I can also research for the Palestine crisis and write an article. What difference did it make as long as I maintained quality and adhered to the TAT ?

I never took this line of thought far enough to actually produce academic articles. But I did write essays, SOPs and question banks, all of which were close enough to the world of academia that the distinction between academics and content writing would get blurred. I was confident that I could quote some of this work when asked about my academic output, even if I had to add a caveat that it was done freelance and not as part of a reputed institution.

Fast forward to the present, and I have left those pastures behind. I still carry some of that cynicism towards research, especially when I see the same concepts about spread of Christianity in Meghalaya in the colonial period taking up the vast majority of at least half a dozen papers in one of a dozen parallel sessions of the Indian History Congress. Or the latest opinion about how academics would be forever changed in the post-Covid world, which incidentally matches the previous five opinions I’ve cared to listen to.

But I’ve also realized that research needs to be done not because it brings any specific profit, but because you need truth and facts to make any sort of progress. Ignorance causes us to make the same mistakes again and again, and demagogues promote whatever they like while profiting from the misery that inevitably results. Thus, today when I work on the role of newspapers and the ways in which editors and the powers that be crossed paths, I do so not because I’m going to make loose change in the off chance that some newspaper editor approaches me with the request to write a guest piece, but because these interactions have a direct implication on how free and fair our access to information is, and how our identities, ideas and emotions are shaped.

But my ideals aren’t what this article is about. To return to the topic at hand, my academic wanderings have resulted in me taking up the editorship of a small journal. It’s not important to note the name, nor is it important to note that I am part of the editorial board and not the Chief Editor. I’m the one who gets the work done, and that’s what matters. Me and another person. But on my blog and in my words, I’ll allow myself some hubris.

In course of our latest call for papers, we received a paper. The subject or field doesn’t matter – suffice it to say that it was related to my field but outside my area of expertise. I really don’t enjoy reading articles with Sherlock’s looking glass, and used the subject matter as an excuse to send it to the relevant editor.

Scrutiny and then review proceeded over the course of the next few months. During this time, the author wrote to me multiple times, inquiring about the status of the journal. By me, I mean the official mail of the journal. So she wrote to the official mail of the journal, and the editorial board (aka me and the other person) wrote back that things were being processed.

It was processed, and thrown out. The review turned out to be unfavourable, and was recommended for rejection. This was duly intimated. Now I’ll be honest – I’m not someone with a lot of experience sending rejection mails. But I did try to be as polite and professional as possible.

The author wrote back inquiring about reasons for rejection. It is a standard practice that reasons given for rejection are never too specific. No one wants to become the middleman between a reviewer and an author forwarding one’s comments to the other. At a more ideal level, rejections are supposed to be final to maintain the sanctity of the review process itself. Hence, asking for reasons beyond what was provided is an exercise in futility.

But it wasn’t inherently wrong. What was more problematic, however, was her second query. To quote her –

“what is the academic grounds (sic) ? Is it regarding my job position factor/qualifications ? As it is saying there are no scope for modifications ?”

Ehh what ?? How does her job position (about which I gave a rat’s ass anyway) affect her ability to publish in a journal ? Rather surprisingly (or unsurprisingly), this mail was followed by one I received today –

(see attached image).

I was dumbfounded by the mail. It was bad enough that she should assume that publishing in a journal was only for those with specific job positions. But what was even more alarming was that she would consider a content development position as eligible! As she clearly mentions, she considers this job to be “academic” in nature!

To begin with the most obvious problem – she is trying to persuade the editor that her paper deserves a second chance due to changed circumstances. What those circumstances are is secondary, but to believe that she could just ask for the article to be considered again when it has already been rejected points to some deep rot in our academic mindset.

From a very young age, we are taught that if you can carry enough recommendations and have enough connections (including degrees, certificates and job titles), it will matter more than the actual content you produce (I use “content” on purpose here). This mindset is carried as one gathers more and more baggage rather than improving intrinsic writing and analytical skills. Not surprisingly, when she did ask for a reconsideration, it was not a review due to any possible angles or matter that may have been overlooked or missed, but because she did not have the relevant job position!

This was followed up by the claim that she was working in content development. I have washed out the name of the company because I am sure it is one of the many exploitative ones that give you anywhere between 30 to 40 cents for every dollar you make for them. But be that as it may, she followed it up with the idiotic claim that it was an academic job.

This harks back to my own content writing days. As I mentioned earlier, I definitely did consider quoting more than one of my content development positions when applying for academic jobs. But the “ideology” of content development did not permeate deep enough into me for me to forget that the world of academia does not consider these to be academic in nature, whatever be my own opinions. Maybe, just maybe, she was persuaded that her position as a freelance content developer for a random firm would help her academic career.

She took it, hook, line and sinker, and ran with it to my inbox, claiming that she now had the qualifications for her paper to be considered! This, as would be clear by now, would make her a victim of both the exploitative promises of the world of content writing, and the mindset of adding degrees and positions rather than capacity that is the Indian education system.

There is, however, one more disturbing possibility. Given that she mentions that she got the job recently, it is possible that she sought a job such as this simply to get her article passed. Assuming she is being honest, this would only make it clearer how much people value the importance of titles and job positions (even if in this case they won’t really matter) than actually reworking and rewriting and re-researching the matter.

Finally, she displays utter ignorance about the way journals work. This itself is a tragedy, since Indians are taught that journals are only for those who are pretty high up in the academic ladder that starts with a Bachelor’s degree and ends with Ph.D. I remember being told in college that even reading journal articles was not required until you reached your final year, and then only for specific papers where books were scarce or not up to date. This mindset inhibits exploration of journals during the green days of a scholar’s career. Later, when they do need to get publications, they have no idea how these are to be obtained. They then either go for predatory journals, or try to persuade editors using any and all arguments, including ones about job positions.

In the end, it is obvious that her naïve attempts to persuade me to reconsider her article will be the subject of academic derision at the next editorial board meeting. It is also obvious that she will not make any progress with this – or any – line of persuasion given that the current issue is almost at the printer’s doorstep. But when I ponder on her actions, it becomes clear that she is the product of two systems – one of freelance content writing and the other of academia itself – which make it immensely difficult for a young scholar/freelancer to understand what really matters, and how to go about achieving what is truly important.

It is not for me to assume what she thinks of this rejection. She had earlier mentioned that this was her first submission. Rejection at the first attempt is always a learning experience, but what would she learn? That she needs to gather more freelancing “academic” experience ? That she can continue to try and persuade editors until snubbed ? Or that her freelance and academic worlds are essentially separate for career purposes, and she should focus on producing quality in both fields without trying to make one stand in for the failings in another.

One can just hope that she does not take the message that publishing original work (of whatever quality) is a matter of forming connections and getting job titles and it’s too much of a bother. Because then we will end up with someone in her stead who does have the connections and is more confident than her that they can muscle or sweet talk their way through academic scrutiny.

But whatever happens, it won’t make the headlines. Not until someone decides to quit academia entirely, or commits a truly egregious act of plagiarism in an extremely reputed journal, or publishes fake degrees, or collects money for giving out academic positions, or…..Perhaps she will do no such thing, but actually improve the article and resubmit to our journal, or another one.

But what really stings – more than all of this – is that sitting comfortably in my own position, I can neither warn nor help her. My reply will be an anodyne one in a specific template meant to be as inoffensive as possible to all concerned. Anything more will result in questions about what an editor should do, or say, and how that itself compromises the impartiality clause. I know that someday I too will receive (another) such anodyne rejection mail. And so regardless of what I write here, the circle continues….

In Memoriam of Prof. Hari Shankar Vasudevan (HSV Sir)

When does a virus become personal? When do numbers become real people, and these people never come back? These questions seem to be straight out of a novel about pandemics. Except this one is still being written, the ink still fresh and the wounds that they leave, still to close. In fact, the wounds are just opening up, telling us that the story to be written will be personal for all of us, whether we like it or not. That when the pontificating and high-brow arguments come to an end, the limelight dims and the facts and figures are studied threadbare, the pain will remain. Perhaps that’s why novels are novels, and not just dry historical commentaries.

Strangely, the transition from “facts and figures” to the realm of the personal begins with someone who is, or was, a historian. It is true that some historians write dry and purely factual histories, other bring life and blood to the stories they tell. In which category did this man fall ? Or could he be categorized at all ? I can’t tell, because – and I don’t hesitate to admit it – I barely read any of his historical works. Or any that made him the revered scholar that he already was when I first saw him. Nevertheless, his impact upon me and my life has been enough for me to write this. So perhaps history isn’t all there is to the historian.

Who was this historian ? His name is Dr. Hari Shankar Vasudevan. Dr. Vasudevan, or HSV as we came to call him, was already a well-renowned historian in his field when I had the chance to become his student. His field, as I had heard, was Russia. That in itself was rare, since students of Russia rarely make India their home, and few in India bother to study Russia. I suspected that part of this may have had to do with Communism, but I did not bother to delve further. Russia may be interesting, but it was not the subject that drew me to the man. It was the man who took me towards a better appreciation of Russia, and history itself.

A proper obituary will probably start with recollections that go back to my earliest days, and these would probably involve a class of the special paper on Russia in M.A. First Year. To be perfectly honest, his classes were not the most remarkable. He came into class, greeted us and promptly began to write. Beginning meticulously on the left side of the board, he would complete a column, then move onto the next column, and then the next. We, the students, would peer over his shoulder and that of those in front of us, to be the first to jot down the next line. I’ll be honest – this was painfully boring work, especially since the notes were themselves just bland summaries. Where was the story in all of this ?

Once he had written enough (and it was a lot, given that he would oftentimes complete three to four columns, erase the first and continue writing), he would pause and begin explaining. For someone explaining a topic about a country that was as fundamentally different as Russia, the explanations were quite simple. Too simple, since his efforts to reach out to the Bengali speaking students resulted in some oversimplifications that I now appreciate (and indulge in) myself as a teacher.

His tone was calm and none too hurried. Not for him the strictures of syllabus completion. He spoke with authority of a land and a people whose customs and actions were difficult to understand at first, but eventually made sense. He happily took questions, but smartasses were not tolerated. Too much unasked for theory, too “advanced” an answer, and you would be shown your place fairly quickly. That said, he had ample patience and enough forbearance to never walk out of a class no matter how unruly it was.

Yet, at the end of the day, his class was hardly the most lively. If anything, it created a gentle stirring of interest in the minds of those willing to listen to his relaxed yet firm narrative, until you found yourself doing your own reading, looking up your own books and asking questions on your own. Perhaps he knew that given what he taught, a faster pace would just create exhaustion and leave the more “note-minded” folks behind. Make no mistake, an uninterested person would soon become lost, but this would be no forced march.

While he did specialize on Russia, he did teach a lot else. He was the one who taught the topic that would go onto become the cornerstone of my M.Phil. dissertation – planning in India. His teaching – now on a much smaller white board- brought to light the connections between Russia and India in the early days of planning and helped shape the first chapter long before I had actually prepared the proposal. Only when it was finally written and I was perusing through my old notes did his influence become clear.

But I would be lying if I said that my fondest memories involved his lectures. They were great, they did influence me in ways I did not realize until much later, but all that said, his teaching does not evoke the strong emotions that memories of personal interactions do. Before I go into these interactions, it would be pertinent to mention that the professors of CU are constantly surrounded by students whose one goal in life is to coax out “suggestions” for the end-year (now end-semester) examinations. Most professors don’t enjoy this sort of cynical attention. HSV was definitely one of them, though his questions were none too difficult to guess, but quite difficult to answer in a way that would truly please him.

Perhaps my earliest queries were not very difficult from the rank-and-file questions about syllabus and what would come in the exams. Having been bred in the CU school of “prepare for the exam” mentality, I instinctively looked out for any hints that may help me narrow down the wide buffet of options laid out by him. Yet as I mentioned, his teaching created interest through gentle nudges and quiet appreciation. Very soon, I found myself going beyond the standard readings on 19th Century Russia and looking into books that would provide a fuller view. Looking back at my 21 year old self, I realize that part of this was to impress him, and boy was it hard to do so without gaining a good understanding yourself.

I remember one such interaction vividly, if only because it definitely did not go according to plan. The topic being taught was the development of radical ideas in the late 19th Century in the lead-up to the development of the Communist and Social Democratic and Revolutionary parties. I had obtained a book by a scholar called Alexander Polunov and unearthed some new terms. Among them was one called studenty – to refer to students with radical ideas. Or so I understood it. Upon my broaching this term on the landing between the third and fourth floors though, his expression told me quite clearly that he did not appreciate random use of Russianized terms just for the heck of it. I wasn’t told off, but simply asked to go through the standard readings before I went off on my own adventures. Needless to say, studenty was replaced by radical students in my final answer. More than the term though, the interaction taught me how one should handle unnecessary but earnest attempts at going beyond the textbook – with a firm but constructive smile and a suggestion to go back to the basics.

When he wasn’t in class or dealing with the myriad mysteries of the various Centres associated with the Department, he could be found in his room, one he shared with Prof. Kingshuk Chatterjee during my days as an M.A. and M.Phil. student there. He would sit at a large desk, framed by a large portrait of something in Russian. Waiting for him to finish speaking to someone else, I often tried to decipher the Cyrillic letters. I daresay I had some success, but never could make out the meaning. Never did ask either. One of my regrets now.

Anyway, as I was saying, he would be found sitting, enjoying the all too generous sunshine that differentiated the professors’ rooms from the eternally tubelit corridor. He would generally be found having a conversation or reading something. In him, more than anyone else, the general social behaviour of a professor came to be epitomized. I don’t recall ever seeing him agitated, or storming about, or getting into an argument. Well, I did once. He was speaking on the phone about some serviceman who simply wouldn’t turn up, and how it was inconveniencing him. But yes, that was the only instance.

Students of the Department often had the chance to observe their professors conversing with one another. To their credit, these professors were never to self-conscious before us, and as we eased ourselves out of M.A. and into M.Phil., this sense of ease grew. Or so we felt. HSV, even when conversing informally, would maintain perfect language and a perfect tenor. He had a sense of humour, but did not try to force a joke on those who did not get it. And he would not be harried into any conversation.

This brings me to another memory, which again, did not go according to script. One day I was roaming the corridors of history seeking questions (examination ones specifically). Those who seek such jewels in the sea of historical knowledge rarely ever do so alone, and those who are seen as the most adventurous, the most foolish or the most likely to succeed, almost always obtain an entourage whose sole task is to inspire the leadership to perspire for the worthy cause. I will not claim to have been the leader. Nor will I be so humble as to claim that I was a mere bystander to the eternal quest to figure out the question paper in advance.

Something between these two extremes led me to HSV’s chamber, and I found him working on the computer. Sir preferred physical copies of essays, articles, etc. but was sufficiently computer savvy to get his work done. At this moment, he calmly looked up from his computer and asked me to what pleasure he should owe my presence. The sailors in the sea of (exam) suggestions are rarely a serene lot, and I admit I was not in that frame of mind either. I began blabbing about how I had studied this, prepared that and what should I focus on now.

I will never know if he saw through this ill-designed façade. But he did stop me with a “Woah ho, calm down. You’re going too fast young man.” He had clearly been disturbed by my torrent of words, and did not find them particularly enlightening. On slower exposition, it became clear to both of us what my true purposes were, and when he replied, I got the distinct sense that I had gone to ask for something without covering what I already had. Again, however, I wasn’t told off. Rather, he asked me to come again sometime after. I can’t recall what I actually got from him and my comrades-in-arms were disappointed, but I did learn to always compose myself before approaching anyone. A strange lesson from an unexpected source, but once that has served me well.

But with the harder lessons did come the softer appreciation. I was one of the few students who would regularly get answers checked by the professors. He was known to be one of the more lenient professors who would give as much as 75% marks for a good answer. This was partially why a 60% made me want to work harder, since his comments always told me that he expected more. Of course, satisfying a man of his erudition was not an easy task, but I will be arrogant enough to claim I did manage it once.

It was in the paper on 20th Century USSR I believe. I had written an answer in the final exam and had promptly forgotten about it. After the results came out, I happened to visit his room for an unrelated matter. To my surprise (and unmitigated happiness) he started the conversation by stating how he was impressed by my answer. He even pointed it out to the other professors, and suggested that I had improved. Unlike his reproach, his appreciation was unreserved and heartfelt, and it made me want to jump for joy. More than the marks themselves, it was this personal appreciation that will remain a fond memory forever.

But HSV gave to the Department much more than lectures and advice. He practically lent out a good part of his own collection of books to the Seminar Library. The Librarian – who himself passed away sometime back – was especially wary of lending out to us these books. One in particular stands out. It was Alec Nove’s Economic History of the USSR. The book was yellow and worn, and most assumed this was simply because generations of CU students had held it in their tender mercies. The truth was that it was HSV Sir’s personal copy, lent out in perpetuity for students to use because the book was not easily available.

Ditto for articles. There was (perhaps still is) a venerable old folder full of articles that seemed to have been photocopied during the Soviet era. Some of them definitely dated to a period when I was still in school. The top covers were in Russian, and the ink was faded, telling us of wondrous Russian scholars who must have handled the originals. Again, I never really did try to find out the story behind the xeroxes. But it was amply clear that these were HSV’s own copies which were also lent out to the Seminar Library. In short, he not only taught Russian history with all his heart, but ensured that those few who wanted to study it in detail could do so without burning through a minor fortune.

Eventually, I would move on from M.A. and into M.Phil. My research topic was fine-tuned in consultation with Prof. Bhaskar Chakrabarti, though I did take ample advice from HSV Sir as well. In hindsight, when I see the bitter egotistical rivalries that plague departments across the globe, the warm relations between professors of the Department of History, Calcutta University, where students were at liberty to consult whom they liked and mix and match ideas without stepping on anyone’s toes, seems like a utopia. Credit is as much due to every professor as to HSV Sir, but this is about him in particular. As a teacher myself, I realize how hard it is to appreciate ideas of other professors while giving one’s own suggestions. Yet when I approached him with ideas of another professor, it never seemed as if he was either trying to impose his own ideas on me, or giving way. A simple synthesis took place, and I came out with better developed concepts and a better approach to my research questions in general.

Fortune smiled upon me and HSV and BC were made my Co-supervisors for my M.Phil. dissertation. To be perfectly honest, I consulted BC Sir primarily, and HSV only occasionally. But the trend that had begun during the days of topic formulation continued, and my thesis was substantially enriched due to his suggestions.

By the time I finished my M.Phil., Sir’s “professional” career as a tenured teacher in the Department was in its twilight. There was of course no doubt in anyone’s mind that he would continue to be intellectually and physically active in all his pursuits. Indeed, he positively looked forward to devoting more time and energy once the constraints of the job fell away. We would miss him, and future batches of M.A. and M.Phil. would not be able to get as many lectures as we did. It would be their loss, but HSV Sir would continue to enrich the landscapes of Russian history, foreign policy, and much else.

And he did. Our meetings became infrequent, partly because he came to the department less and mainly because I visited the Department very rarely. Yet surprisingly, he always remembered what I had worked on, and where I was teaching. On meeting him randomly one day, he told me that he may begin working on an edited volume (or was it a series of articles?) of ideas relating to planning. Would I be ready to contribute something ? By this time my research interests had moved away from planning, but I dared to think that I would be capable of writing something that would pass muster. I said as much. We parted on a hopeful note.

Time went by and the project never did materialize. Or perhaps it did and I just wasn’t there when it did. I continued meeting Sir on and off in the Department, or at a seminar in the CSSS, or someplace similar. He didn’t seem to age more than he had during my M.A. days, and his energy and devotion to the discipline remained intact. Once in a while, I would come across an article by him on a topic of general interest, and would appreciate his flair for writing history. But that was it.

The last time I met him was purely by chance. I was getting married and was inviting the professors who had and influenced me to my wedding reception. Almost all the professors had been invited, but I wasn’t sure how I would approach HSV Sir. I had never been one to call professors up, preferring to fix appointments in the Department and meeting them as per their schedule. Neither did I have the courage to take his address from a third party and turn up at his door one fine day.

In the end, neither was required. I was waiting with my friend Bibek outside KC Sir’s room (we had taken to calling it that since HSV retired) when time seemed to have been dialed back several years. Sitting in the room was HSV Sir, and I suddenly felt like I was back in my M.A. days. Not having any clue as to why he had come or whether it was a good idea to disturb him, we waited for quite some time. Eventually he emerged, preparing to leave. Egged by Bibek, I finally approached him, and with all the composure I had had in my M.A. days, I explained the reason for obstructing his departure from the Department.

If he was taken aback by the sudden invitation, he did not show it, as I knew he wouldn’t. Instead, he inquired how I was doing, how my research was progressing etc. Then he turned to the question at hand, and told me that he would be travelling and would not be able to make it on either the day of my marriage or my reception. But he would keep my card nonetheless. I was a bit disappointed, but happy that I had managed to invite him at all. I wasn’t sure when I would meet him again, but I was sure I would meet him someday.

The pandemic is breaking all that seemed so sure. The confidence with which we would wake up, get to work and move on with our lives. The confidence with which we would say that we would meet again, collaborate again, learn again from those who still had so much to teach us. By nature I am not one to inquire about professors’ personal lives, their families and how they live their lives when they aren’t teaching or doing research. Now my social media pages are filled with obituaries that talk of a man about whom I feel I knew very little. This makes me fundamentally unfit to write an obituary, and hence this is not one. It does not extol the man, nor point out his flaws. It is just a memoir, to set in ink what mind’s leaky vessel will not hold forever.

Perhaps, in his own indomitable but quiet, dignified manner, he would have appreciated this. Perhaps asked that it be made more concise, and a little less verbose. Perhaps the events need to be more structured, a common thread made to bind it together lest it fall apart. Sir, I do not know how to do so, for you have taught so much in your own unassuming manner. For emotions are getting the better of my writing skills. But I know I must not keep rambling on.

You will always be cherished Sir. Rest in peace.