Category: Bloody Opinions

People have critics, who question them and ask them to stick to their principles or explain deviations. Companies have them too, and at one point of time, I was one such critic. I would review products, ponder on the philosophy behind them and wonder what the impact would be on the average customer. Those days are gone, but somewhere inside me, a self-critic still lives. Why else would I always want to justify shifting from one product to another? None of the people I know – my parents, my girlfriend, my co-workers – none of them are least bothered whether I move from one company to another. All they would see is what the quality of the device is, how well it can be handled and what the pricing is. And oh yes, how sexy it looks in your hand. Not for them are the complex debates on product placement and pricing, the competitions in the silicon industry or even the debates on the headphone jack (not yet anyway). So why do I write these articles (refer Transition to MacMania) in the first place? Well, somewhere that critic asks me to explain why I made a shift after passionately holding onto something (or some company) for an eternity. And so here we are again.

This time, the critic is wondering why I moved from Xiaomi to OnePlus. After all, for the past three odd years, I had been a manic fan of Xiaomi. I had cheered their arrival in India, lapped up their first two devices and when the time came for me to shift, I chose another Xiaomi device. Indeed, these phones are among the longest serving devices I’ve had in my lifetime. And  this includes those student years when money was short and getting a cellphone involved a lot of lobbying with the parents. So why did I move to Oneplus, ostensibly Xioami’s biggest rival at the top of the Chinese OEM pile ?

To put things in proper perspective, this is not the first time I’ve used a Oneplus device. Back inearly 2016, when my daily driver was still the redoubtable Mi 3, I decided I’d use my first salary to get my dad a handset. Having heard of the greatness of Oneplus (and  given away no less than three invites on the forums), I decided that the Oneplus X would a) be a great device and b) fit my budget.

The Oneplus X, which neither had a predecessor nor a successor, was a beautiful device. Golden with chamfered edges, the device sat like a lovely little tile in my hand, and my dad too was impressed by the design. All was hunky dory  till he fired up the camera and took a few shots. I must mention here that my dad is a photography enthusiast and understands camera settings better than I do. This understanding caused him to give the OPX an X across the whole marksheet of utility. The images were passable but were nothing that justified the 17K price tag. Disappointed, I returned the OPX. Instead, he settled for a cheaper and on paper, far inferior Samsung Galaxy J7. He still uses it to this day and is satisfied with the camera.

Fast forward to October 2017, and I have no real cause to make a shift to a new handset. Sure, the Redmi Note 3 that I had purchased seemed to be aging a little, but it was aging gracefully. Having been part of the Weekly program almost since the time it was introduced in India, I had just received the MIUI 9 beta update. This added a few useful tweaks to an already useful UI, and made the icons and interface that little bit cooler. Really, I had no complaints and no reason to move to Oneplus, or any phone for that matter.

But in my mind, I’d kind of made up my mind not to go for another Xiaomi handset, regardless of when they came out with a new one. For one thing, I was tired of the substandard camera and the numerous pedestrian offerings that the mid-range phones provided. I’ll swear I wasn’t dissatisfied with the RN3, but honestly, having moved from a true flagship like the Mi 3, it was galling to have to settle for a mid-ranger. Circumstances had forced to me to choose it in mid-2016, and I was looking for a way to go back into the flagship category.

Unfortunately, the flagship category seemed to be something Mi really didn’t care about. They released the Mi 5, and then pretended they had never been a competitor in that segment. Oneplus ran away with the show there, while Xiaomi concentrated on the mid-range segment. Their Redmi series had really proved a showstopper, and perhaps that’s what persuaded them to keep the ambitions in check and the cash flowing.

Take for instance, the case of the Mi 6. Despite repeatedly being assured by Manu Jain, Hugo Barra and others that India was the most important international market (right after the domestic market, China), Indians were simply forgotten when the Mi 6 came out. If it had been released in India, I may well have been rocking a Mi 6 instead. More annoyingly, they didn’t release the Note series, nor the Mi Mix. In short, Xiaomi had an empty shelf in the 20K+ category while it was cramming devices into the sub-10K and 10K+ categories.

They sought to change it recently though, by releasing the Mi Mix 2. A more improved version of the “concept” device that was the Mi Mix, this bezel-less design was popular in its own way. Plus, it had the distinction of having a Snapdragon 835, meaning that once again, Xiaomi was returning to the charge in the premium segment. But it was a little too late, and deeply flawed at that.

For one thing, I really wasn’t looking forward to carrying an actual ceramic tile in my pocket. At 5.99”, it was well in the Mi Max 2 category, and if it hadn’t been for the bezel-less design, may simply have been a buffed up Mi Max 2. This was simply too large for me. The RN3, at 5.5”, had literally torn a hole in my pocket where it rubbed against the inner wall of the buses in which I travelled. I was looking for something thinner, even when I was resigned to accepting that no flagship in 2017 would be actually smaller.

Again, there was the obvious defect shared with the Mi 6 –  lack of a headphone jack. One of the most controversial trends started by Apple with the iPhone 7, the lack of it meant that I had to depend almost exclusively on Bluetooth audio. While I had a decent pair of Plantronics headphones from way back in 2013, I didn’t really fancy losing the security mechanisms associated with having a wire connecting your ears and your device and verifying that you actually still had the phone with you while travelling in a crowded metro. In other words, the top of the line Mi Mix 2 was a no go.

Then there was the question of the camera. Obviously, the camera on the Mi Mix 2 was better than the nameless creature on the RN3. Yet it was not really  top of the line to be honest. Moreover, it lacked the dual  camera goodness of the other flagships since, to be honest, it really wasn’t a flagship. It was catering to a niche market of enthusiasts and others who wanted a large phablet. The Mi 6 was the real flagship, and the Mi Mix 2 was playing the flagship game with its hands tied. Naturally, it wasn’t faring well.

Finally, there was the pricing. Given that the Oneplus 5 had been announced (more on this in a moment), you’d expect the Mi Mix 2 to be competitively priced. Instead, Xiaomi went ahead with a 37,999 price tag, which was at par with the higher storage model of the OP5 but lost out in terms of RAM and camera.

Overall, it seemed Xiaomi had just been given a rude wake-up and they were trying to throw in whatever they could, except the best stuff!

All this considered, I still wasn’t planning on getting a new phone. However, I saw a rather tempting offer which would have given me the iPhone 6 for about 16K after exchange. Then I learnt that the device had a decent but HD display and no water protection. Move to the iPhone 6S and you have a bump of about 10K to about 26K. At that price point, you’d expect a current-gen flagship. So in the end, I decided to wait.

The Puja offers ended, and in the short window between Puja and Diwali offers, I saw an irresistible deal. The OnePlus 5 was on offer for 33K (its MSRP), but I was getting about 5800 off on my RN3. Not just that, there would be another 2K discount after a couple of months. All said, I would be getting a discount of almost 8K on a 33K device, bringing the effective price down to 25K. With no cost EMI on my credit card, this could be stretched into a year’s worth of somewhat lower than 3K payments per month.

I took it.

On some levels, it was not the brightest decision. For one thing, despite implementing Corning Gorilla Glass 5, Oneplus had shown up its manufacturing shoddiness when phones cracked due to moderate falls. Then, there was the question of water protection, which simply wasn’t there. It was water resistant, but not water resistant in the way the iPhone 6S was. Finally, I still hadn’t forgotten the earlier OnePlus fiasco.

But on other levels – a lot of levels – it made sense. Financially, it was the best bet I could get on the old device, given that it was already more than a year old. Further, I was looking for a flagship, and barring the almost last gen LG G6, there wasn’t a flagship in this price bracket. Thirdly, I wanted to have a good camera, and the OP5 was being marketed as such. Reviews were good, and the Sony IMX398 sensor sounded promising. It was anyhow better than the IMX268 being used on the Mi models. Lastly, it had such small but vital amenities like headphone jack and NFC.

So how do I feel about the purchase? To begin with, the device is a sleek beast. I intentionally chose the gold colour, and do not regret my decision one bit. The phone is incredibly thin and even when it is about the same size, the thinness has so far spared my jeans pockets. It feels great to hold, though it is a bit slippery like all metal unibody devices in the market today. Plus, it comes with a pre-applied screen guard. There’s no news on whether it is tempered glass, but it is definitely a small attention to detail that I appreciate very much.

Coming to the display, it is fantastic. The RN3 display was no pushover, but the colour gamut, saturation, details and viewing angles are fantastic. It’s not a QHD display, but then a QHD display on a device this small isn’t something I particularly fancy. The Snapdragon keeps everything snappy, and the generous RAM does its bit as well. I did face some lag when typing very long paragraphs, but deep down I’ve come to accept that no matter how great a phone you have, writing theses on handsets just isn’t my cup of tea.

Coming to the sound, I’d heard a lot about the fact that this unit has mono speakers compared to the by now standard stereo ones. I would agree, given that one of my earliest devices, a Samsung Guru unit, had mindblowing stereo speakers at the back. Back then a rear camera was a luxury, and this unit ditched the camera for the powerful speakers. I’d say  the OP5 compares well to those hoary speakers. In fact, moving up from a device that had rear speakers that had to be cupped to produce sufficient sound, I actually had to turn down the volume a bit on the OP5 to allow my ears to adjust.

Finally, we come to the camera. Given how I was stunned by the quality of the images on the Mi 3, and was totally let down by those of the RN3, I’d  say the ones of the OP5 are somewhere between. In technical terms, the images are far superior to even the Mi 3, but the novelty of great imagery that the Mi 3 had provided does not make for déjà vu. That said, the level of detail, the colour saturation and the interesting portrait mode (which is actually something I’d seen before on the Google Camera app), make for pretty high quality photography.

Equally impressive are the video capabilities. The unit uses Electronic Image Stabilization or EIS, which is a tad short of Optical IS or OIS, but does a fine job of smoothening out those bumpy steps you took while climbing the stairs to the tourist spots. While I can’t upload videos here, I can say that this, combined with the inclusion of 60fps fullHD recording, make videos look neat and almost professional. You can bump the video capture to 4K but given that I neither  have a 4K display nor the space to fit in genuine 4K recordings (of concerts for instance), that setting is one that will have to wait for the future.

Oh….and  lastly (again!), let me mention the battery. It is a climbdown from the 4000mAh one that sat inside the RN3, but at 3300mAh, it is no featherweight. It lasts the day if you keep the YouTube and gaming within check (ideally less than an hour of each), and don’t keep location services on all the time. Dash charging helps, though it should be remembered that the charger is about as large as the one on my MacBook Air, while the USB-C wire is, as of now, sui generis in my household. In short, dash charging only works its wonders if you have multiple dash chargers and USB-C cables, or are constantly charging the unit at home. Outside, the convenience of using a USB-B cable from a colleague or friend is lost on the altar of tech innovation, and frankly, it is one step of progress I’m not elated about.

So all this brings us back to the question – why did I make the change, and am I justified. I’d say that my grievances with Xiaomi were more than justified, and my appreciation of OP5 is realistic, even if I do get a bit starry-eyed at times. That said, I cannot deny that a sense of ennui was setting in from using the same skin of Android for so long. It was one of the reasons I’d actually contemplated shifting to the iPhone in the first place, and eventually, the Oxygen OS of OP5 (basically a lightly skinned stock Android). When a device and price offer came along that satisfied these criteria while proving usable (aka had a headphone jack) and offering good specs, I took it.

Transitions are full of meanings, and most of them are inferred in retrospect. Some of these meanings are really the ones you wish to use, while others follow them. Still others are created by those around you, creating sense of what you are doing in their own ways. This is not to say that they have nefarious goals, or any goals for that matter. They may just want to make sense of something through their own worldview. And so you have endless meanings, refined and distilled and remixed until you have a coherent narrative that suits everyone and maybe, even you.

Tehatta is one such narrative. More to the point, leaving Tehatta is. What is this narrative ? To put it in brief, it speaks of a boy from a sheltered background who  was sent off to a far off place and managed to get back to Kolkata. In doing so, he ensured that he could do his research, teach at a good institution and generally become part of city life once again. Tehatta was a blip, and now it is over. Aritra is back where he belongs.

That’s the story I seem to subscribe to as well. Yes, I have come from a sheltered background who had no idea about life outside cities and towns. Yes, I had always sought to leave Tehatta because at the end of the day the city was where I belonged and where I felt comfortable. And also yes, one and a half years can be taken as a blip when you think of the 25 odd years you have lived and the years that you will, hopefully, live.

But if I were to simply accept this prima facie, there would be a lot that would be left unsaid. And if there’s one thing I have learned, a good amount of what constitutes memory requires stimulation to bring to the fore after a point of time. So, in order to bring out what Tehatta meant for me, and what coming back to Kolkata means, I will write a series of articles. Some with pictures. The articles will not be pieces worth reading, simply because they aren’t meant for any audience in particular. The pictures won’t be works of art, because they reflect everyday life, which isn’t a work of art. And above all, all of this won’t be written with a specific goal or a point to prove, because life is more about living than proving anything to anyone.

Philosophy and disclaimer done, the autobiography begins.

So let’s go back to the point where I got the job and the posting to Tehatta. Months of waiting amid shrill warnings about postings in strange-sounding places ended in December 2015 when I finally got my appointment letter. It was one of the first times (second actually) that I had gone to Bikash Bhavan, and naively I expected a lot more advice from the staff there. All I was told was, it’s a place in Nadia district and not a bad place at all.

It’d have been fine if I’d taught at a run-of-the-mill college in Kolkata, but where I had taught was BESC, which was average with a lot of pretensions. So much so that people were actually quite surprised I would leave their college for a place like Tehatta (even when they knew that a contractual job was nothing compared to a government job – and a substantial one).

Anyhow, a little research told me that it was about 142 km from Kolkata and would take approximately 3 hours to get there. This would prove to be quite optimistic, since the average time taken was closer to 5. Also, the place wasn’t exactly a city, though it was close to becoming a town. Again, this proved to be optimistic, but I’ll get to it later.

Finally, I was told that given the distance, I would probably have to live there. And here is where the meaning of the posting really sank in. For one thing, this would be my first full salary job, as against the guest lecturerships and contractual jobs I’d held earlier (one of each, so the plurals aren’t justified). I’d finally be considered, in American terms, a “tenured” assistant professor and wouldn’t have to depend on the whims of HODs and whatever the fuck was the name of the head of the institution (Principal ? Teacher in Charge ? Rector ?).

More importantly, I’d  be living on my own. From childhood, I’d always dreamt of living on my own, with a job and a comfortable home. “On my own”, of course, precluded wife and kids, and usually involved a small house with a single room , a bathroom and kitchen and sometimes, a balcony. I’d stay up late smoking and having the occasional drink, I’d head out with friends and think about life, and above all, would know what I was and what I could do. I’d be, to repeat a cliché, be a man.

A man in a city with neon lights and easily accessible resources. Food, clothes, etc etc. Perhaps not a ton of money, or else where would be the fun in discovering what working life meant. But some money yeah. Slumming isn’t exactly an ideal outside communist circles you know.

Arriving in Tehatta, the first thing I had to cross out was, you guessed it, the city. The website had described it as scenic (or was it picturesque ?), and scenic it was. With as little human habitation around as could possibly be. The building itself was brand new, the gate was a sorry agglomeration of cement and brick, and signs of life mimicked Chernobyl.

I’d talked to two teachers, the HODs of History and English, before turning up, and had brought the documents necessary. But the OIC (officer-in-charge, get ready for a lot of acronyms) wasn’t there. The next day was a holiday, so I’d have to stay on at least for three days. In the time, I could do two things – get to know the college better, and find someplace to stay.

The first proved to be a rather short experience. The entire college – both floors – had little signs of life. Whereas I’d come from colleges where you’d have to navigate crowds of students to get anywhere, here the halls were empty. There were no sounds of laughter, of chattering youth, of music blaring from an audiophile’s speakers. Neither were the desks written over,  or the blackboards much abused, nor the walls showing any signs of wear and tear. It was all new, and deserted. I told myself that this was just the beginning, that one day these halls would be bustling with students and teachers would actually be asking them to keep the volume low. But I asked myself – would I be there to see this ?

I remember my first class, in Room No 3. For those who have studied in Presidency, the room has special significance. It was – and is – the signature room of the History Department. To be asked to take a class in a room of the same number seemed to hold a special significance. What ? I don’t know, but it stuck with me.

The class itself had very poor attendance. Honours classes are notorious for this, but only four (or was it five) students was a low for a first class. A few introductions later, I had marked the attendance and had left. It was time to find a place to stay.

I’d been accompanied by a man from my father’s office who knew the environs of Tehatta somewhat better. He also knew a person at the local office. Through their joint efforts, I got hold of a room at the local cooperative guest house. Or as it is called, Tehatta-I Block Cooperative Society. The guest house was the first floor of the building housing the society offices, and also the society godowns. So as I settled in, the sound of trucks coming and dumping all sorts of produce became commonplace.

I requested my companion to return, since Tehatta was my place of posting and for better or worse, the sooner I got to know it on my terms, the better. I’d brought clothing  and other necessities with me, and once I’d set up a half-decent living space, it was time to clean oneself. The bathrooms were common, akin to the ones I’d seen in hostels I’d visited, never lived in and heartily despised. But again, these were empty since the other rooms were unoccupied.

Once I’d navigated the complex mechanisms of drawing water (a switch that was followed by a blast of ice cold water), keeping my belongings (wallet, spectacles and keys on a single soap rack) and the yoga associated with answering nature’s call (they call it Indian style for a reason I think), I had some major epiphanies. One, I’d need a bucket of my own. Two, I’d need a bathroom of my own. Three, the two could only be combined if I had a place of my own.

Linkin Park is coming out with another album. Like every time, I’m eagerly following the developments, including the release of singles that would eventually be part of the entire album. And like every time, I’m comparing the tracks with what we know to be LP. Or think we do. Because this time they’ve released tracks that don’t seem like LP, don’t feel like LP, and include a female “feat.” Did LP too give in to the pop/rap or nothing phenomenon or are we too addicted to knowing a certain screaming Chester Bennigton ? Both maybe, but what is certain is that these tracks are a good point to look back on what I, as an individual, connected with. I connected with the idea of pain and bitterness that the music seemed to express. And like everything in life, it had its stereotypes.

Let’s fall back a little bit. I’m in Class VIII, in my final days in Meerut. I’ve just discovered the utility of cassettes, and have purchased, along with a lot of Bollywood music, two albums of LP – Reanimation and Meteora. Reanimation, as my 14-year old self didn’t realise, was a remix album. But Meteora was something different. As old timers will tell you, cassettes have the benefit of forcing you to listen to the same band for a substantial amount of time – time taken from the first song to the last. Yes, you can fast forward, but that’s as easy as dragging the FM frequency randomly and hoping you hit a station.

So here I was in Meerut, in the guesthouse called Ashiana. My parents were getting ready to move out of Meerut and to Delhi. Being of an age where you are always a hindrance but rarely useful, I had shut myself in my room and had Meteora for company. I had time on my hands, and a patient fascination for English music. Combined with a two-in-one cassette player (so called because it also had transistor radio), I spent no less than four to five hours simply listening to Meteora. One band, one album, four hours. Consider that this wasn’t music meant for me, suggested to me or even relating to me. It was probably meant for a late teen-young adult audience in the States that lived in conditions very different from mine.

But I connected. In those songs, I could relate my own bitterness, pain and sadness. And I could also realise that going through these things meant I was becoming something more. More than any Value Education class or bland sermon, I could feel the words become the theme song for my own angst and sorrow. And also the theme song for what I would like to do to get out of it all. But also the theme song for what I could do and would do. A band I’d never heard of before was singing about my life through a cassette player. And all I had to do was rock to the rhythm and it all related to me, inside my head.

Yes, I had felt Numb, yes I had felt it was Easier to Run. Yes I had felt each line burn and disappear, to be replaced by the next, which burned in turn. Events and developments flashed, along with fantastical ideas. Fantasy and reality were getting mixed up, but the reality of my pain was never lost. Even when I imagined myself in situations that weren’t real, I knew they were reflections of my actual pain and sadness. By thinking and feeling, imagining and jumping about like a madman, I was letting it out and introspecting. I would like to say that this made me a better, more mature individual, but I’m not sure I became that. I only realised my pain in a way that I had not before.

Needless to say, I was hooked to the music. In later years, these songs – and more from LP – became theme songs for various events and situations of my life. I clearly remember, as things went from bad to terrible before the Class X boards, I listened to Numb for hours on end. Even the video, and the characters in it, seemed to relate. Much later, songs like Leave Out All the Rest helped me contemplate what I may leave behind if I had to leave. Others spoke about feelings of betrayal, unfamiliarity and also, sometimes, the will to overcome it all.

But the music evolved. The screams and howls of Meteora were replaced by the more sedate but equally touching lyrics of Minutes to Midnight. Thousand Suns continued this, while the Hybrid theory series brought out the best of meaningful rap. The Hunting Party was different again, but again I could relate.

How did I do this ? In my mind, there was the image of a young boy – about 16 to 18 – take your pick – who was discovering the joys and sorrows of this world, and found that there was more to be sorrowful about. He wasn’t a particularly popular or noticeable person, he did not like to hang out with a lot of people. Yet in his head, it was all so colourful, but also so bitter. It was, in a way, the image of myself in the movie whose theme song was Meteora. For all the change in music, this didn’t change. And so I could relate.

But this year, they’re coming out with music that’s different. For the first time – at least as long as I remember – they’ve got a girl (Kiiara) singing along with them. They’ve got music that speaks of love, instead of the lonely pain they usually spoke of. They speak of strength and strength through bonding, whereas earlier it was more about rejection and backing off. All of this, somehow, confuses the kid in my head. Because that kid had little contact with girls, was an introvert and most of all, used LP to channelise his negative emotions.

But the person who thought it all up has also changed, and at first, it is tempting to just blame that. It is a grand thing to say I’ve become mature, only to prove to myself a thousand times that I haven’t. But somehow that kid isn’t all that is in my head anymore. Over the years, my tastes have mellowed. Whereas I would hungrily gobble down metal bands, I’ve increasingly moved to country, folk and even classical. I can’t explain why, but this music speaks to me too. LP has gradually lost some of its space, and that kid comes out less and less. Instead, other constructs fill my head, enjoying varieties of music which I could never have imagined in my teenage years.

But it’s not enough to say that I’m a different person. Because I still need to channelise pain and rejection. I still cry while covering my face with a pillow, I still feel like taking extreme steps to solve problems and I still am sensitive to efforts to exclude me from various groups. My character, with its flaws, has not been formatted and a new one installed. This is proved when I listen to old LP songs and can still relate. Given the chance, I would again listen for four or five hours to Meteora.

Then do I reject the new LP ? No, I allow myself to channelise pain using different metaphors. The songs still speak of pain, but that – as I have realised – is not purely negative. Amy MacDonald taught me that a girl’s song can be as much about you as about a girl. Feelings of love and affection – even carnal love – can coexist with feelings of bitterness. They don’t have to be antagonistic, they can simply coexist. Because you can hate and love at the same time, and music can express both.

Maybe, then, the kid who was the child of mine and Meteora’s has not only become less relevant, but also changed. Maybe he is not always a bitter kid anymore, but an individual who balances the bitterness with feelings that are positive, without trying to throw one at the other and see which breaks. Maybe he sometimes sings in a girl’s voice without fearing the loss of his manliness, realising that much of what humans go through applies to both genders and at the end of the day, there’s nothing to be had by being male in a predefined stereotype. Maybe he is not one person anymore, but a teenage kid, a more mature man and also a woman, all rolled into one. The person who lives them will probably never know.

This begs the question – how do we really feel and relate to pain ? Each song of the band will give its own answer, bringing out a different type of kid. Perhaps they’re all variants, perhaps they’re avatars moving from one to another. But if there’s one thing that keeps them together – relevant and in my head – it is that they help me express myself in a way I know I could never do on my own.

And that’s why I hope LP never stops singing.

Pace and creativity don’t gel, no matter how much you try to maintain your creative streak in the midst of the storms of life. Yeah, they could be perfect storms like the poets have. Mostly however, you’d end up with imperfect ones that require a lot of running around and anxiety and hope and confusion, and all of this makes hammering out anything beyond the immediate confines of your job, impossible.

The last few months have been a case study of such chaos. Things have taken too many turns, and all at the same time. But this post won’t discuss that, for such chaos deserves its own mantle. This post will discuss what it feels like to reach a station you desperately wanted to reach, after every train you wanted to catch from there, you’ve already boarded along the way. So when you alight from the final train and reach Redundant station, how do you feel ?

You’d probably feel you’ve wasted a lot of money, and would waste more getting a train back to where you actually need to be. Would you feel anything else ? Yes, if the scenario were a metaphor. Thankfully, it is.

You see, stations in life, in all their hierarchical and transportational glory, are defined by the system in which you live. One such system is called capitalism. If you’re not a diehard communist, nor a recluse, chances are that some of your most desired stations in life are shaped by what you understand of capitalism. For me, it has been an ability to add capital to the world economic system and draw from it, thus turning the “wheel” ever on and on. After all, what is capital but the condensed fruit of labour combined with existing capital ?

Now contributing to the capitalist system is something that is necessary, for without it you cannot draw your basic sustenance from the system. This is something I realised during my content writing days, when each page I wrote contributed a certain amount of money to my client’s pocket via Adwords or similar platforms. Or through commissions on websites like Seeking Alpha. Or through promotion of their own products and services. But never mind. The point is that contribution is something fundamental, as fundamental as drawing your wage from the system.

But capitalism would never survive if all we did was simply produce as much as would help us survive. That would be primitive socialism, not capitalism. Capitalism implies that man would follow his natural instinct to accumulate more and more, and in doing so, would create capital that could not immediately be given out as wages. This would stack up as savings, as rent to land and capital goods and as payments to organisation. What would be done with all this ? It would be invested, of course. Invested so more money could be made, increasing wages, yes, but most vitally creating opportunities for more capital to be made. The goal of the system becomes not sustenance, but profit and capital accumulation to not only keep the wheel turning, but ever widening.

Now if you look at investment, you will see that from the perspective of the investor, it is a risk of giving out something balanced with the hope that great returns would come of it. From the perspective of the recipient, it is a loan that contains an expression of faith in the person or firm’s ability to repay that confidence and capital through dividends. Looked at from the perspective of loans, are dividend payments that different from payment of interest on an actual loan ?

At one time, I’d hoped for such investment. No share-selling dividend-paying investments would I get. Instead, I would get the ability to turn short term loans into liquid credit with which I could buy services I needed to keep the content writing afloat and also expand it. Again, this could expand into the realm of frivolous spending, but then we all have our vices. What I wanted was for the capitalist system to repose enough faith in me so as to provide me with an investment or loan. One that I could use to create more capital, and thus become an integral part of the capitalist system.

In practical form, this meant getting a credit card. Credit cards provide you with a virtual purse every month, from which you can draw as much or as little as you like, provided you pay it all back at the end of the month. If you don’t, they begin charging interest. I could have paid it all back, I could have risked paying interest. I would not have defaulted. But would they trust me with the money entrusted to them ? Nope, they wouldn’t.

You see, there are some conditions of credit-worthiness. One was the per annum income. Usually, this has to exceed Rs. 2.5 lacs for consideration. Mine was close, and may even have exceeded the amount by a certain percentage during the heydays of my content writing. But then you need to prove it through tax returns. I had not filed my taxes at the time, so no go.

When I got a regular job, it turned out that my earnings from my regular job were actually lower than my content writing earnings. So while theoretically I could show salary slips instead of tax returns, the amounts per month would simply not qualify for a credit card. Again, no go.

Things changed only when I no longer needed credit to expand my content writing career. When I got a substantial post, I had to give up my “side-job” (because middle class Bengalis would prefer to theoretically respect poor and underpaid contractual lecturers than well-earning freelancers) due to the rules of the service. Yet the yearning remained. If I could not get a credit card as investment, I could use it to build a credit score and get loans with greater ease. I could get costly stuff on EMIs. Last but not least, I could purchase goods from any store in the world, and thus be a true part of the global capitalist system.

I began applying for credit cards using my now buffed up salary slips. Trouble was, even this wasn’t the last condition involved. As it turned out, companies giving out purses filled with others’ money for you to spend need to know not just what you earn, but also where and how you earn it. And they need to verify this from the point of residence and the point of work. This meant, in practical terms, home and office verification. Trouble was, my home was very much in a city but my office space was in “remote” Tehatta. To be fair, there is nothing particularly remote about the place, given that it is a sub-divisional headquarter and is well-connected to all major cities nearby (even Kolkata, if you manage to catch a certain state bus!) How do you explain this to the companies ? You can’t, and matters weren’t helped by the fact that my DDO gave out salary slips at three month intervals.

Hence, two applications to SBI, one to Kotak Mahindra, two to ICICI and one to Citibank failed. Once it was the location, then the salary slips, then both location and salary slips. I lost count of the number of times I had to go through the whole process of application and verification only to find myself in the credit card garbage bin.

Yet this process taught me two things. One was that there was no point giving addresses of “head offices” for govt. depts will simply ignore all credit card inquiries. Secondly, you have to persuade the people at the bank that location and location alone was the reason why you couldn’t get a credit card earlier. And give them some sops with which to get them to work. Because you know, MNCs work for the next big thing. Give them a sniff and they’ll fix whatever you’re currently aiming at. Tell them that this is the last thing you want, and their duties become hard-earned favours.

At one point, I decided that it was no longer worth applying endlessly with insufficient and unverifiable information (from their perspective). So I went in for what was called a secured credit card. Secured credit cards take the risk away from the bank by forcing you to dump a goodly amount of cash in the bank. If you fail to pay up your credit card dues, the company simply skims away the due amount from the deposit you have made. The silver lining is that the deposit is a fixed deposit, and earns interest at the normal FD rate. The ugly underbelly is that because the card is given out on lien against the FD, you can’t do anything with the FD itself. You get the card, but only if the money deposited is securely out of your reach.

I went in for this option and dumped the required amount in a private bank. Once given, they informed me that the credit card would take about two weeks to materialise. Two weeks later I was told that the amount was insufficient. They would have to open another FD with an additional amount. After this, nothing more was heard of the credit card plan.

The silver lining ? The bank offered something called the Platinum chip debit card. This apparently allowed for international transactions. So while I wasn’t able to borrow money, I could still transact on every website or terminal in the world. Even as my money gathered dust in the FDs (the debit card was against a savings account), I realised that another major component of the credit card world had fallen into my lap.

By this time, my first year of substantial service was nearing its end. Courtesy some helpful colleagues, I finally managed to get hold of three months’ salary slips. Armed with this and a mouthful of complaints about how people with out of the city workplaces were being discriminated against, I turned up at yet another private bank. The lessons I’d learned earlier did wonders. Explaining that I wouldn’t be able to invest in their this-or-that scheme until I got my credit card, I managed to link my credit card needs with their investment policy sales. They assured me that the workplace verification did have a workaround.

And it did. After two phone verification calls and one home verification, my application was approved and my credit card dispatched. After some unnecessary courier trouble (during which I managed to actually howl at a certain recalcitrant executive), I received the credit card.

Even as I decided that it would be the perfect replacement for my existing international debit card, however, it was revealed that major marketplaces had acclimatised themselves to the Indian payment system and were accepting all debit cards, net banking and in some cases, even cash on delivery! Not only was my credit card rendered redundant, even my international debit card was of little more use than the normal debit cards I had.

So when I did reach the station, what did I get ? The promise of a CIBIL score, for getting easier loans. The promise of EMIs, so I could get costly stuff with ease. But below all that, defying logic, was a sense of fulfilment at having finally become worthy of being entrusted with money belonging to someone else. I could finally get my own purse and spend it, thus drawing from the capitalist system in the second and most vital of ways. Long after the raison d’etat of having a credit card had been lost, I finally had a credit card to call my own.

Bemused and satisfied, I debarked at redundant station.

Polemics are meant to distil ideas yet they seldom manage to do this. Instead, as my recent quabbles regarding a certain JNUSU leader revealed, they tend to obfusicate matters by forcing you to hold on to your stand even while conceding some ground. The two goals are contradictory, causing your own understanding to get thoroughly muddled. Understanding, I say, assuming you’ve done some amount of thinking on the topic.

Yet when the heat of debates die out, the original questions often remain. Perhaps simply because nobody could win the debate, neither you, nor them. Your mind keeps going back, and the ideas become clear again. Funnily, however, the questions seem to change now; the clarity remains.

Take the case of this new KK, one who sings tunes that mesmerize people. If the debate were regarding him alone, it’d have taken two dimensions – one of political power, the other of individual rights. Instead, his defenders and opponents dragged the nation into the whole business. KK became an epitome of the freedom the nation sought, or the abused freedom that destroyed it.

But this is my blog, so let’s keep KK out. Let’s talk of the nation.

Nation, as Benedict Anderson would put it, is an “imagined community” where everyone feels a certain bond even without meeting or knowing anything about the person other than he/she belongs to the same nation. Many who attack KK today would deny the word “imagined”, seeking something more concrete in its stead, conveniently forgetting that it too was constructed. Take Bharat Mata Ki Jai. The concept arose from the conflation of Bharat with the Mother figure during the late 19^th and early 20^th Century. The classic example is the art of Abanindranath Tagore, stylizing Bharat Mata in the image of his departed daughter in one stead, and as a tigress (stripes and all) in another.

But Bharat Mata does not exist in reality, never did. The image is every bit as real as the images of deities. They are real because we believe they are so. This believing is a choice which is supposed to be conscious yet which a good many forces – religious and nationalistic – would have us believe is automatic. We are supposed to be automatons in the service of a nation we must never question.

But say we rediscover our choice. One fine day, liberated by our knowledge, we realize that we can, after all, not pay homage to the idea of Bharat Mata, or any mata, for that matter. We can choose to believe in anything, or nothing, or a combination of anything and everything. We become masters of our own selves, our position in nature decided by us and us alone. Nature – and nation.

The taste of such liberty is exhilarating. Did not the great Rabindranath Tagore move in and out of the nationalist camp (his nationalism was his own, but let’s use the prevalent language) in the space of the Swadeshi movement ? Did not he believe in founding a school that would work on global ideals rather than anything parochially Indian ? Did he not put humanity before his colony ?

It is a fine thing to bask in this liberty for a day, a week, or forever. Rarely are we asked to do anything proactive in support of the nation, and this is as much a critique of the man as the state which governs the nation. Standing for the Anthem here, paying taxes there, these are the little mandatory things, small and big irritants to some perhaps, that give us a sense of being committed to the nation.

But hold on, did we not debunk an accepted marker of the nation? Do we debunk the nation, or do we find another marker? To be truly radical perhaps, it is necessary to be an anarchist or Anabaptist. Given that anarchism alongside Communism, chances are if you’re going left, you’d end up becoming an anarchist. If you are a firm believer in God, you’d become an Anabaptist. Either way, you end up outside the nation. In doing so, you move outside the structure that governs the nation – the state. Wohooo!

Alternatively, you could ask, can I believe in the nation without believing in what the nation wants me to believe in ? Say, you’re told that the nation wants you to believe in Bharat as a Mata, a protective motherly figure who at the same time is righteous and with your help, can overthrow the unjust yoke of British rule (errata – British rule is dead, so it’s probably some foreign thingy or external threat or ebola. Yeah, something that threatens her children).

You argue that after all, this idea is dated. It was framed in the era of colonial rule, to fight a colonial government. Both are gone, and we have moved through an entire age of pseudo-socialistic-mixed economy to be dragged into globalization. Isn’t it better to find an image that binds us in the present day ? Something that is Indian but is relevant to the times ?

Are you implying that nationalism is outdated? No sir, not at all. I’m implying that our imagination of nationalism is outdated. It is ossified to a degree where it is held up by empty rhetoric and a few symbols for obeisance. It is ossified to a degree where it has to be imposed on a good many without evoking any real feeling inside them.

But what if you found another ideal ? Something that has potential for acting as the glue that binds the nation together, without pandering to the view of “the nation”? What happens when you begin to believe in a conception of nation that brings together all (or most) of those who could believe in the conception, but in reality only you believe in it? Do you shelve your ideal or propagate it ?

Suppose you propagate it, what happens? Does the existing glue, the Bharat Mata for example, prove to be syncretic enough (like the real Mother Goddess cult proved to be) to modify itself to accommodate you? Or does yours become a rival, a different view of the same nation, an anomaly in the sea of Bharat Mata-ists ?

In reality, chances are that both the Bharat Mata ideal and your own would be two among many. All of these would lay claim to being the ideal of nationalism, the imaginary glue that binds the community together, by virtue of having some “features”. What are these ? What is the Minimum Programme that allows an ideal to be nationalistic and another to be not ? Or is it a maximum ?

Say for instance, your ideal of the nation does not involve respect to a certain National X. If the Minimum is X, then you could build on X and still allow the ideal to act as the glue. If the maximum is X, then your entire ideal must fit inside it. The risk with X minimum is that the maximum could become very vague. A maximum X would limit the wriggling space needed for alternatives to emerge.

This brings us to the question of diversity. Our motto, it seems, is unity in diversity. This can presuppose a maximum or minimum X. At maximum, it demands that every belief of every individual fall within the X ideal. At minimum, it demands that each belief have at least some respect, but not be limited to X. On the face of it, the minimum seems to be better, because it seems more assimilationistic.

However, what if X itself is so defined that it becomes hard yet broad ? Say X is the Indian Rupee. If you believe in the nation, you must believe, trade in, quote in, conceptualize the economy in, the rupee. If you use the dollar instead, you are not part of the nation. Would it be ideal to make this X minimum ? So every person in India can trade in the Euro, pound or Dollar as long as he/she trades in rupees ? It would lead to loss of financial sovereignty for India and create mass fiscal chaos.

Now say, you find there to be a maximum X (not the Indian rupee please, I do care about my bank balance!), and you disagree regarding its maximality. You would rather place something else in its stead. Can you put up this contrasting ideal without breaking down the glue that binds the community? In other words, does the nation have a bond that is perhaps outside what we consciously imagine? Can the bond of the community have a palette that allows for mixing of colours instead of being made up of solidified colours entirely?

To say no would be to claim that our nationalism is not deep enough, that we are weak nationalists and for this reason we cling to outdated concepts for dear life of the nation. To say yes would be opening a Pandora’s box which could well cause explorations to plumb such depths and niches that the bond itself is fatally undermined.

It goes without saying that the modern world is a world of nations. Nations protect its people, fight for resources, allow or block trade, uphold rights and wage wars. We are fortunate to have a nation, whatever and however it may be defined, that is stable and diverse at the same time. We have every right to open the settings box and work with the wires, indeed upgradation of the box is necessary from time to time. But we should be aware that random tinkering can well lead to a fire.

Electrical fires cannot be put out with water.

Hate is something we are taught, and from this hate we obtain our moral compass. What do we hate, and why do we hate it ? Who taught us to hate, and therefore to love ? What if we stop hating ? Valid questions, but only selectively put forth. I say selectively because they have become legion in cases like communalism (so you’re a beef-eating Muslim $*#$%^$ ?) and sexuality.

But there are other things, patent in society, that we must hate and never question why. Corruption for instance. And then there are things in academia that we hate without questioning. Lecherous teachers who cheat on their wives to make out with their colleagues. Sorry, cut that. Replace it with plagiarism. Yep, that seems safe enough. Corruption and plagiarism, a nice pair (made in the lowest depths of hell).

Now the point is not to raise moral arguments about these – that would make for a very long night indeed. Instead, let’s talk about why we’re taught about these (or learn) and how our hate for them is similar.

Take corruption. It’s that limitless force that causes rust and fungal growth in virtually every human-based structure in the world. More specifically, corruption pertains to the political sphere, where terms like embezzlement, black money, venality, etc. are thrown about with brute vehemence and vindictiveness. In this sphere, corruption generally means taking undue advantage of a system or allowing others to do so. As flies come to wounds, so money comes to the corrupt areas, enriching few and ruining the system and all who depend on it. Hence rations are hoarded and black marketed, pension funds are sucked off, ill-gotten funds are taken away to the Cayman Islands, unworthy get jobs and licenses and virtually everybody has to shell out something to get something done. Something over and above the usual fees that is.

Feeling angry ? Aye, me too. But hold on, let’s get you angrier. Talk of plagiarism. Plagiarism, or plag for short, means the art of taking stuff from people’s intellectual property and using it to decorate your own house. Or build it even. Imagine you worked for years to create a lovely piece of art. Someone comes in and clicks a photo of the canvas. Next day you find that your picture now forms a part of the portfolio of another artist! How can you produce something, put in your heart and soul into it, if you know that people may use it to their advantage ? Where is the respect and returns due to intellectual labour ?

Phew, those are angry words, and typing them out does push your typing speed to its limit. Now I’ll type slowly, and you take a few deep breaths. Let’s talk of idyllic worlds without mosquitoes, plagiarism and corruption.

In this world, the government would be corruption-free (not talking about the AAP here). It would create an education system that would be free of plagiarism, so academia would be corruption free. Why ? Because if we take corruption in the literal sense of being a distortion to something, and in the political sense of helping one and harming other by screwing the system, then plagiarism definitely fits the bill. Plagiarism is a short-cut that allows you to take more credit than is due to you while harming the rights of the ones who actually put in the effort to come up with the plagged work in the first place. A deviation from honest effort ? A short cut that harms one and gives undue advantage to another ? That’s corruption in the grammatical sense. Wait, make that corruption in the grammatical and quasi-political sense.

Academic corruption, or at least part of it, is plagiarism.

So if corruption is the set U, plagiarism is one of the circles in the Venn Diagram. To talk of corruption is to talk of something big, to talk of plagiarism is to talk of something more specific. Something more concrete and measurable, in both definition, practical application and impact.

Really?

You may say that a certain string of words may have been found to be copied from some previous work without a proper footnote. Without going into the intricacies of what a proper footnote is, let’s assume the footnote isn’t there or it’s improper. The reader can’t make out that this is not the original work of the author. Now it is perfectly possible that the author of the plagged work has decided to take credit for what is not his/hers. It is also possible that –

1. He/she wrote the line in exactly the same fashion and was not aware of the original work.
2. He/she omitted certain lines from earlier drafts that caused the footnote to be deleted.
3. He/she had given the footnote earlier and did not bother adding the same book with Ibid. again.
4. He/she gave the credit to the wrong person and at the wrong place. So the footnote ended up far away from where the quote has been placed (if quote it be).
5. The text has been taken from web sources which did not credit the author and hence is of dubious validity.

Some of these make your blood boil more, some less. But these are just some of the possibilities. None of them can justify the plagiarism, but they help explain why. Compare them to the works of schoolchildren and you will see.

1. He copied from a notebook with no name or with an unintelligible name.
2. His lines came out the same as another boy’s.
3. He used a guide book and hence could not say where the quote was taken from. He could not tell the teacher he used a guide book, hence he was in trouble.
4. He found the information scrawled on a board or on a micro-xerox in the toilet.
5. His parents filled up the text and so used sources which he was not aware of. Of course he could not admit that his parents did the work, so he got into a mess.

Compare this list with the one above, and note how schoolchildren’s mistakes become academics’ mistakes. We’ve been trained to hate plagiarism from a very early age, and this hatred is reflected continuously as, like overzealous kids, we continue to find each other’s faults endlessly. Academics are folks who have passed exams with high marks : they have learned their lessons well.

But have they also attended school on corruption ? For many speak about corruption with so much conviction that they may well have been in the administration itself. In the administration I said, corrupt I did not say. Don’t misquote me!

But such stands perhaps come from the same moral compass that leads to our hatred of plagiarism. Let’s see –

1. A clerk took money not knowing that he could not take money for the task. Say he has shifted from being an agent of some company to a government employee. Habits die hard, rules are learned slowly.
2. He overlooked some stuff for someone’s advantage.
3. He helped someone he normally would have, except this time he credited the wrong person, and at the wrong place!
4. He interpreted rules according to dubious sources and cynically manipulated them. And was caught.

Note how we need to add “intentionally” to every sentence to prove someone is corrupt. Did we do the same for plagiarism ? We didn’t. This is somewhat unfair on academics, since plagiarism after all falls within the ambit of corruption.

Yet this distinction does not obscure the fact that the two are similar. A schoolkid’s mistakes, an academic’s mistakes and a clerk’s mistakes – all appear similar when put down on pen and paper.

But the similarity doesn’t stop there. Let’s talk of limits. What are the limits of corruption ? Where can one be totally corruption-free, hypothetically and practically ? Similarly, where can one be totally sure that there is no plagiarism. The methods of measuring corruption vary, as do moral compasses. The methods of plagiarism checking vary too, as again do moral compasses. This leads to the domain of both being exceedingly vague. Vagueness lends itself to vigilantism, to finding scapegoats for various purposes and for foisting one set of rules upon another just to serve selfish purposes.

Again, both are easily hidden. There are two ways of doing this. One, you change the rules so that your corruption becomes legal and another’s legality becomes dubious. Similarly, moving from one standard to another, one journal to another, causes the methods to change.

Secondly, you can simply accuse someone else of plagiarism. Or corruption. He/she either makes counter-charges and/or becomes defensive. In the worst case scenario, your corruption is exposed, but by then it is always a political issue.

Fourthly, both become all-encompassing. A corrupt person is corrupt and nothing else. A plagging scholar is nothing but a plagger. A cheater who made his fame without the effort required and is therefore of dubious moral calibre. Corruption and plagiarism don’t become one quality – they become the only quality.

Fifthly, charges are usually levelled by those who are the least productive. They have the least to lose, because their trail of activities is the shortest. So the lazy person, who also fears being attacked for his laziness, seeks to divert attention from himself. Ditto for the lazy academic.

Now let’s go back to school.

1. “He hasn’t done his homework”
2. “I didn’t know it was wrong. Won’t happen again!”
3. “ I thought I’d already done this/that”
4. “I heard from a friend and decided to do…”
5. “I didn’t notice/remember…”

Imagine each scenario with an angry teacher, plenty of ironed out student uniforms and souls which are being shaped to be the crusaders against corruption and plagiarism. We have been taught all this, and taught in a way that allows us to apply the same standards to both.

This doesn’t make for a plea of free-thinking. Too much of country and education depend on keeping corruption at bay and plagiarism out for us to let our guard down so we can wonder if the “Police” written on our clothes makes sense or not. Our system was built on these assumptions, we cannot help but shoulder the burden and carry on. We can’t turn our backs for a moment. So we have been taught, so we shall teach our children. Such notions, will at least, uphold the system as it exists. As they say, a bird in hand is worth two in the bush.

Yet why not reflect? How did we become such creatures, righteous yet monstrous ? Where did we lose our willingness to cooperate instead of fight with everyone else ? Could an alternative have been possible at some point of time ? Why did we accept this morality and not another one ? Why did we not question this when we questioned everything else in the heat of our college years ?

Perhaps these would answer the questions – why do we hate corruption and plagiarism, and why have we been taught to do so ?