With the Naxals gaining so much screen time on all news channels (India TV-awesome, just awesome!) these days, discussions have been ripe with the talk of how communism as an ideology has impacted our lives. Before going any further, I’d like to confess that I know just as much about communism as Stephen Hawking knows about giving a good lap dance. The only contact I’ve had with communism is the 9th std lesson on Karl Marx(for people who will remark that Marxism is totally different from communism ,I know, it’s ideal v/s practical-but the apparent difference is same as the difference between Sunny Deol in Gadar,and Sunny Deol in any other film-apart from the turban, everything else is same),and Motorcycle diaries, and yes ,the idle chatter I’ve eavesdropped upon from various people at various times of life that socialism is an utter failure.

However, this crib of mine is not against socialism, but faux socialist dudes. Some people claim the number of such youngsters out on street today is directly proportional to the sale of Motorcycle diaries. Okay, so the book is good, but not a landmark or something that’ll make you revolt against your rich capitalist dad and fight for a utopian society. People refuse to accept that Che was popular because of the weed. Grow your hair a bit, spread rumors about using weed daily, and you have got almost the entire generation of youngsters hooked( which makes me wonder if Rolling Stones, Nirvana, Bob Marley could have achieved cult status had they lived in a war-torn thirty-third world country)

So maybe the guy was great, maybe his book even, but my dear friend, reading that most-probably ghost written book makes you a communist just as much as watching American Pie(1-2-3 awesome, rest bakwaas) makes you a freshly baked oven delight. Sample this discussion-

Friend 1:”Hey man (in a strange Jamaican accent, but we’ll talk about accents sometime later), did you read about those jawans killed by the Naxals?”

Me:”That was one horrible massacre.”

Dickhead (the name I have assumed for faux communist dude, you’ll come to know why when you read what he had to say): That’s nothing, the government has been killing innocent Naxals (now that, I believe, is a parody) for so long, it’s almost justified.”

Me:”Dickhead. Nothing, nothing can justify that.”

Dickhead:”You don’t know the hardships they have had to face”

Me:” Okay, what do you know Mr. Industrialist’s son? Did you read about them on the internet while resting your comfy ass on a 15 inch water bed at 15 degree Celsius in your mood-lightened room? Or did your friend tell you something while smoking that 500-a piece hookah and 1000-a-bag weed?”

Dickhead (visibly confused): I……ummm…….I read in Motorcyc…….”

Me-not there in the scene anymore.

Its somehow cool to follow a radical group of people blinded by a failure-prone ideology sitting in a forest and killing innocent people. What next? Verappanism?

What drives such pseudo-intellectuals? The desire to be different from the crowd? The desire to impress other such socialist chicks(which invariably are dressed in long flowing skirts sporting a load full of junk jewelry and more kajal in their eyes than what a chicken poops in a day)?
The most satisfactory answer I’ve received so far-“I used to get off on this picture on Arundhati Roy when I was in my teens, and now I’m into it just because she’s in it as well.”(ahh…the fickleness of the mind!)

So I am an engineering student suffering from the idiosyncrasies of a quirky ,almost to the point of being non-sensical, institution (and by that I mean my college is crap. Really, really crap).Like all students, I too am faced with regular assaults on my well-being and sanity-the omni-potent (or the impotent, whatever you may) exams. Now a regular, inseparable and almost comical feature of the exams is the supervisor.

In my misfortunate journey as a student so far, I’ve come across a huge number of supervisors of various kinds-the sharp ones, stupid ones, downright lazy ones, the I-am-waiting-for-you-to-talk-so-I-can-screw-your-case ones, the I-am-interested-only-in-the-free-chai ones, the I-will-keep-staring-at-the-pretty-girl ones-different attitudes towards approaching a downright worthless job(really, how fruitful are those 3 hours for these guys, apart from the time-killers mentioned above, they really haven’t got anything to do)

However the only thing that unites these people is the bloated feeling of extreme power they get while supervising a class. Supervisors generally are junior teachers/lab assistants/senior clerks (which basically means they are frustrated little mongs) who don’t have much of importance in the college administration. Add to that a bit of awkwardness in speaking English, a low salary, a horrible dressing sense (we’ve got a junior teacher in the college who wears horribly low waists jeans. I am always under the mortal fear that somewhere, sometime, ’kaanta lagaa’ might play in his audible range and he might be possessed by Shefali Zariwaala’s finished career’s spirit and start showing off a strap or two. So much so, for having an active imagination!) and what you have is a picture perfect loser-a young 30 something man, with all the sense of self-respect lost trying to pucker up to senior professors’ backsides. So logically what does this man do to regain self-respect?

Yeah. Takes it out on the students while the exam is in progress. A round of supervision almost seems the perfect way of nursing a hurt ego and balming tired lips. Shout at a kid or two. Rattle off that fake mix of Australian/Mexican/Haitian accent that he has acquired recently to impress the Barney(the dinosaur, not Stinson, not Stinson at all, you sitcom-fed geek)lookalike from the comps department. To really make an effect, smack a kid moderately in the back of the head. Mission accomplished. Students will now fear him like they feared Shaktimaan’s villains when they were in 2^nd std. For the next three hours, supervisor is the king!(I can almost see them doing a rendition of SRK’s “I am the king” in the class, although most of them have got the charisma of Mimoh Chakraborty’s face while trying hard to take a dump ) .A look from them is enough for a student trying to copy from a chit to pee in his pants.

Once the exam finishes, though, it’s back to square one. Students might just pee laughing at them.And they return back to dingy staff rooms, with the same fragile ego,just polished and disted from the outside.