dschool

I have been reading this book “D. School: Reflections on the Delhi School of Economics- Edited by Dharma Kumar and Dilip Mookherjee”. The book reminds me of what the school means to me. So here is a promo of the 2-yr (and counting...) encounter with the ugly building and the people within that changed my life.
I was one of those MBA rejects who came to dschool thinking that eco was not a bad fall back option esp if it gave you a job at the end of it. Something in me though, told me that i would make it through the entrance examination even before the paper was in front of me. Its funny but dschool, now when i look back, was the only place i could have been in and belonged to.
My first day as i still remember it, the day of the orientation, i had eyes only for one person. I had apparently fallen in love with the first glimpse of a long haired guy. It only helped that he was so well known that my accompanying younger cousin seemed to know of his famous oratory. My eyes followed him the whole morning whenever i could sight him. Besides that, i was so in awe of the place, that an inner voice still wasn’t convinced that i was here and was here to stay. I bunked the first lecture day of dschool in order to look for accommodation because the hostel lists would be very delayed. Being the finicky person that i am, i rejected all that i was offered: PGs, guest stature in a hostel and even the university guest house. I had seen the beautiful dschool girls’ hostel building and i was already dreaming... the first week i commuted to and from vasant kunj, paying 100 odd bucks to autowalahs in the evenings. Later i moved to meghdoot for a week and shat with big ants for company.
I remember being quite a loner in the beginning because everyone else was from delhi or Calcutta univ and knew everyone else. But i preferred it this way. I had decided that if not academic satisfaction, which i wasn’t sure i would stay to gain, i would at least make no mistakes in getting acquaintances. Funny thought again, but xavier’s Mumbai had put this notion into me that i would make the best friends of my life in a student’s life in delhi. Two instances i remember clearly in my early days in dschool:
1. The scholarship interview wherely strangely being the 33rd rank in the entrance, and the 32nd person having quit already, i was the last rank to be interviewed. By the time this occurred i was half not so impressed with the school and half was missing my Bombay colleagues who never felt the need to study. The result being that on the day of this interview when us waiting students started discussing topics that had been covered in class and others, in anticipation to questions from those profs sitting on the board whose names were muttered around with fear already, i realised i knew nothing and was deliberating whether to make a fool of myself or of them by revealing that i had cleared the entrance! After hours of waiting and biting my nails (almost) i quit the scene just when the person before me entered into the board room. Ha ha ha. Even now i think that was a last minute brilliant move.
2. This was the first lab class which was late in the afternoon and due to lack of entertainment in between lectures and this, i had retired to meghdoot for a short nap. It was july or august, sweaty tiring heat. Anyway i reached dschool and was wondering if anyone else was around. I met another waiting fellow, and i remembered him as the person next to me in my first class and one who had been noticed by me. It so happened that after entering together and exploring our allotted places we found ourselves sharing a computer because there weren’t as many machines as students. We had a dazed yet good class where both of us ended up getting something of shazam in. This guy also an MBA aspirant had views about dschool very like mine. We discussed how the place wasn’t as sacred as we had heard it was and that neither the course nor the profs had impressed either of us so much. This guy and some others i would have liked to know better but there are many people in this world who get stuck midway becoming friends for no reason at all.
Anyway my first semester was more or less a daze, me trying to balance on the tight rope without wanting to invest half as much time as any of the rest. What came was totally predicted. I flunked miserably. Though i had feared it, the fact that it had happened and so pathetically, hit me like the greatest shock in my life. I think for about a week my face was downcast and i wouldn’t talk to anyone beyond some words. Meanwhile going slightly into history, i had by now got a beautiful room in the hostel and had taken CAT again soon after my first sem exams. My CAT score was stuck like before on the same percentile, but my room was probably one of the best. It was the room from where the moon could be viewed the best and was on the top floor away from regulatory and spying (bangali) eyes. Even the terrace was accessible at times when the grill though locked was left slightly ajar. Peacocks early morning on the terrace and starry nights were more than i could have asked for. Not to mention the parapet above the spiral staircase leading to it, which i called the ‘stairway to heaven’ because you could lie on it with nothing between you and the sky and watch the night sky endlessly. The best, a dark cloudy stormy sky which felt like it would either suck me in or fall on me, burst into first one then two drops of rain and then a rainstorm that all of us danced in.
Coming back to my academic issues, my failure gave me one solid resolve. I was mad at the place for treating me like that, and i decided that if this place didn’t give me what i liked then it just wasn’t worth this torture no matter how reputed an institute it may be. Despite contrary advice from all over, i chose game theory as my first optional paper in this second sem and did i love it. If dschool couldn’t let me enjoy what i liked there was no sense in staying here. My decision was so solid that i cared a damn for all the rumor of taking safe papers and being careful. I worked hard, probably the hardest in my life and more than that i enjoyed most of what i studied that sem, even beyond game. Some of the teachers are good beyond words. That was when i started adoring the school. I would unhesitatingly bunk boring parts of subjects and would live for every single game class and attend even when the next day was some other exam and the strength of the class could be counted on fingers. Oh yeah i also developed an admiration for the game teacher, not to mention that the love of my life then was always a couple of chairs away from me in game class.
Deviating a little, because the hostel grew to be as important as the school to me and maybe more to a few of the very good friends i found there. My senior neighbour and my moody classmate to my left are very dear friends even now though we may not talk so often. The hostel reminds me of maggi parties, smuggling booze in, shouting like maniacs, winter sun, flowers, borrowed cycle rides, lying and singing on the ‘stairway to heaven’, talking insane on sleepless nights, girl madness, waking awake alone on the terrace to watch the sun come up in the morning, blaring music, sharing and fighting for good and bad food, home made cakes, teasing, sharing books and notes that i always cursed later and got back to my own or to the books. The hostel was also where my first and last (till now) love flourished, my first unexpected and shocking kiss, ... Phew theres so much that i might as well stop here.
All that reminds me of the canteen in some way. The dschool coffee house as they call it. The samosas and sandwiches there that comprised my lunch. Sometimes the mutton cutlets. And my almost usual black tea and later the maaza. Once in a while the greasy chowmein to change the taste in my mouth and the loitering in front of the canteen (i never liked sitting inside, stopped me from viewing people and looking out for the teacher and the student i was infatuated with) endlessly. I would sit there even alone for hours sipping my tea or with a reading in my hands and a pencil in my mouth. In summers the sole tree in front of it and its shifting shadow determined my place.
The library was like a temple where i went in only for short visits to get what i wanted. Once or twice i leafed through books in an unused room leisurely. Sitting and reading there often ended in me sleeping on my books on the table, it was such a soothing place.
Academically though those years weren’t very successful in the technical sense of the word, though i did manage a first class in the second sem after i subconsciously challenged the place. But if i look back i consider myself one of those few who got so much out of what they studied there, and yes i don’t mean marks. I enjoyed the readings in those chosen optionals that i attended religiously and lectures and discussions would inspire me so much that at times i would call this person up 10 times a day from dschool just to share the beauty of either a statement or a theory in class. This person by the way was my senior who had by now passed out and was specialising in cribbing in an MNC, and is also now the best friend that dschool or any other place ever gave me.
What happened to my first day love? It grew, to such proportion that the person knew without knowing it (i’m sure) and our eyes would meet in moments that gave me away... i was so sure that this was it and yet i don’t know when, the person in the last para shadowed this one and took over. Things didn’t happen the way i wished they would but they couldn’t be better now.
Placement season was the worst torture in dschool and it took half my energy and patience with it only giving me a ‘job’ at the end of it.
What did i learn out of dschool? I don’t know much macro economics but i learnt a love for micro economic theory that is close to reverence. That ugly pink building and its campus of trees, JP, canteen and Xerox shop are together one of the loves of my life. I was once caught with the said guy, after dark in that campus by some chowkidar and chased away and i have roamed around alone so often in there from one confused architectural structure to another that every little bit of that place gives me some memory and a smile. Like someone said ‘the place has a character’. Thats true about Stephen’s (which iv haunted enough without ever belonging there and once even ran to its chapel with a friend without knowing where i was being taken to, when the corporates wouldn’t buy us) and some more bits of north campus actually.
On the last day of dschool some of us took a video around the campus, recording places and people that made up our years there. This is a precious memory that i own. I still frequent dschool and feel as much at home there as before. Sometime back i looked for dschool on google earth. It is built in the shape of a large ‘E’ with the canteen the middle arm of the letter.