The UoH convocation is scheduled for October 1. Since we mark October 2 as our Foundation Day, and October 2 will always be a holiday in India, the suggestion that October 1 henceforth be the “University Convocation Day” has some merit. It would, for one thing, greatly help in scheduling.
The convocation speaker this year will be Dr Anil Kakodkar, eminent nuclear scientist and former Chairman of Atomic Energy Commission, former Director of the BARC, Mumbai. A man of many parts, Dr Kakodkar is known for being unabashedly self-reliant on matters nuclear, while also calling for more stringent safeguards, particularly in the wake of Fukushima.
One of the highlights at the Convocation is the speech by the chief guest, and while its not certain what Dr Kakodkar will talk about, I was thinking about the Vonnegut Commencement speech that made the rounds of the internet some years ago. For those who will graduate this year, and will be too young to have known about it (or who would not care, anyway) in the late 1990’s, a speech was circulated (largely by email) purporting to be the text of the Commencement Address by Kurt Vonnegut Jr at MIT. This was a hoax- the speech was written by Mary Schmich under her own name in the Chicago Tribune, but viral spreading through the internet brought it a certain amount of fame and some unwanted notoriety. In any case, the speech, while not particularly deep, has many nice parts to it, and for those who may not have come across it before, here are excerpts (taken from Andrea Wesseleyi’s site where a fuller description of the whole story can be found).
Ladies and gentlemen of the class of ’97: Wear sunscreen.
If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now.
Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Oh, never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they’ve faded. But trust me, in 20 years, you’ll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can’t grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You are not as fat as you imagine.
Don’t worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4 pm on some idle Tuesday.
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Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don’t.
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Get to know your parents. You never know when they’ll be gone for good. Be nice to your siblings. They’re your best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.
Understand that friends come and go, but with a precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle, because the older you get, the more you need the people who knew you when you were young.
Accept certain inalienable truths: Prices will rise. Politicians will philander. You, too, will get old. And when you do, you’ll fantasize that when you were young, prices were reasonable, politicians were noble, and children respected their elders.
Respect your elders.
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Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it’s worth.
Addendum: A reader of the blog told me that this “speech” was set to music by Baz Luhrmann so maybe many of you would have heard it before. In case you haven’t, here is the Youtube link.
Month: September 2011
Tragic loss
| On Sunday, 25 September, five days after his 27th birthday, our student in the first year MA (Communications) in the Sarojini Naidu School, Ratan Kumar, drowned in one of the lakes on campus. |
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Ratan came to the University after having done an Engineering degree in Mumbai. We are all shaken by his tragic and very untimely demise, and while offering our condolences to his family, we share their grief.
There was a meeting at 11 this morning in the SN School where teachers and students remembered Ratan and mourned his demise. We are the poorer…
TOI link
Greed
No, this is not about the Von Stroheim classic, though it could be…
A couple of weeks ago, the Department of Political Science had an afternoon discussion on the Lokpal bill where, among others, Jaiprakash Narayan was present. One of the M Phil students, had made a presentation on what UoH students understood by ‘corruption’, and how it came about. One respondent traced it to just this: Greed.
There is this amazing scene in the Von Stroheim film. I saw it years ago (in the days when I was catching up on early cinema and sitting through Potemkin and other such silent greats, and when I should of course have been more gainfully employed). There is nothing really left for the protagonists to fight over- they are in Death Valley, with desolation stretching for miles in all directions and there is no possibility of survival. So no benefit to the man who takes, nothing really to lose for the man who loses. And yet, greed, more the pity of it.
The person at the Pol. Sci. seminar was quite right- so much of corruption that we see around us is due just to greed plain and simple, though not always as pointless as in the movie.
Single Girl Child PG students
The University Grants Commission has invited online applications for the award of Post-Graduate Indira Gandhi Scholarship for Single Girl Child for the academic session 2011-13 with the purpose of supporting post-graduate education through scholarships to such girls who happen to be the only child in the family.
Candidates (under 30 years of age) admitted in post-graduate first year regular non-professional degree course in any recognized university or a post-graduate college during the current year i. e. 2011-12 are eligible.
The value of Scholarship is Rs. 2,000/- pm for a period of two years only namely for the full duration of a PG course. Applications should be submitted only through ONLINE mode latest by 25th September, 2011: See this site.
Please make sure that all eligible persons you know apply in time!
Anonymity vs Invisibility
A comment that was submitted by anonymous@gmail.com to an earlier post that talked about corruption reads “Want to make some good money? Try to get a contract job with HCU. Be prepared to bribe everyone from the gatekeeper to the top guy. HCU is a filthy corrupt place.”
Other than adding a ? I have done no editing, but I thought that rather than simply approve the anonymous comment, I would highlight it to request that if you are going to be a whistleblower, then (a) please be specific and (b) share your name, even if privately- I can assure you that I will respect confidentiality.
Specificity is useful if you want some action. In the above, the implication is that the guards (who, for the most part are Group 4 employees) all the way to the VC are taking bribes. Since I do have some knowledge of at least some part of this chain, I know that this is not true, even though I have been told that there are some areas in the University where there is serious cause for concern… Unless by “top guy” the writer means someone else, in which case it would be useful to know who.
About sharing your name. Anonymous letters are difficult to take seriously. I have got my first one, a typewritten page that is filled with half truths, untruths, and improper allegations (not just about me, about any number of people) and plain inaccuracies. What does one do with this other than discard it totally? I know that the person who wrote it must be aware of this- and may well read this post, so here is an offer I hope you cannot refuse: If you are serious about it, engage in a dialogue and I will guarantee both privacy and confidentiality. Write to me here.
Young Engineer
Our colleague in the SEST, Koteswara Rao V. Rajulapati has been selected for the Indian National Academy of Engineering [INAE] Young Engineer Award this year. The award which will be given to him in December consists of a citation and Rs. 1 lakh.
Dr. Rajulapati has many original contributions in understanding the microstructure and mechanical behavior of several important metals and alloys. His contributions to the metallurgy of nanostructured materials are significant. His doctoral work was the first systematic attempt to understand the role of nano sized second phases on the deformation behavior of nanocrystalline face centered cubic (FCC) metals. He developed unique approaches for fabricating bulk nano grained aluminum and its composites.
Koteswara Rao joined the School of Engineering Sciences and Technology in January 2009 and has taken an active role in building the laboratories to cater both research and teaching needs. He has been instrumental in setting up various laboratories and contributed significantly for the initiation of various research programmes in Materials Engineering and Nano Science and Technology.
Warmest congratulations to him from the UoH community! And thanks to the Dean, SEST, for much of the write-up above.
On Democracy
A couple of weeks ago, my erstwhile colleague Professor Prabhat Patnaik, who recently retired from the Sukhamoy Chakravarty Chair at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, JNU, wrote a thoughtful piece in The Hindu. One chord that the essay struck in my mind was on the nature of democratic functioning…
There is something in what he says for us to think about, especially since we (at UoH), are members of a publicly funded enterprise that is patently engaged in a social activity which, arguably, is for the greater common good. Much of Prof. Patnaik’s essay is the contrast between democratic functioning and messianism which may not be entirely germane outside the context in which it was written, but there is a basic issue that needs consideration.
Democracy essentially means a subject role for the people in shaping the affairs of the society. They not only elect representatives periodically to the legislature, but intervene actively through protests, strikes, meetings, and demonstrations to convey their mood to the elected representatives. There being no single mood, freedom of expression ensures that different moods have a chance to be expressed, provided, the manner of doing so takes the debate forward instead of foreclosing it.
For all this to happen, people have to be properly informed. The role of public meetings where leaders explain issues, and of media reports, articles, and discussions, is to ensure that they are well aware. The whole exercise is meant to promote the subject role of the people, instead of being merely ‘masses’ and the leaders as true facilitators. Even charismatic leaders do not substitute themselves for the people, they are charismatic because the people, in acquiring information to play their subject role, trust what they say.
Alter legislature to Academic Council or Executive Council, substitute faculty meetings for public meetings, substitute leaders by Dean, Chair, Head or even Student Union president… the parallels are there. And I believe we need to reflect on the democratic versus the non-democratic at the UoH.
Democratic functioning is crucial to our growth. We need to have informed debates on all issues that concern us, devoid of acrimony. And with passion, but also with respect for contrasting points of view. One of the most important adjectives in the above paragraph, in my opinion, is informed. We have enthusiastically celebrated the Right to Information Act, but withholding information is still, regrettably, all too common at all levels. This makes it all the more difficult to have an informed debate, when so much information is simply not there in the public domain. It also does not help that the RTI is used by some as a weapon and as an instrument of mischief. They do not help the cause.
In any case, where and how is this information to be shared? Where is it to be discussed and debated? Given our commitment to scholarship, this is a question that should not need to be asked. This blog is, of course patently meant for the sharing of ideas and concerns and also for sharing information. But this can only be very limited- in part because it would get tiresome otherwise, and in part because there are more issues that need our concern than can be covered in a blog.
I believe that everyone who is in a position of some authority can take a number of steps to bring about the democratic process, by inviting discussion and encouraging debate, and by helping to form positions and evolve opinions.This needs to be done proactively. And in a manner that encourages participation, is inclusive, and allows for dissent. Not that this is entirely missing in our campus- it just needs to become more common…
Jean-Michel, Marcel… Arnold
I thought I would share the results of a misspent Sunday morning when ewandering brought me to the site of Jean-Michel Folon, an artist who I have greatly admired ever since I bought (now sadly lost…) some posters of his in New York about 35 years ago (thank you, DeFrietas!). The watercolour to the right, a card he made for Amnesty International, and the World Cup Football poster to the left give you some idea of his charm and wit.
Folon, who died in 2005 had set up the Fondation Folon (and museum) in the 1990’s. Exploring that site, I came across the Proust Questionnaire – something I had not come across before (the results of a sheltered life, I guess). To learn more about the PQ, I went, naturally to Wikipedia… and found that there is an online version (with a different set of questions). This had, unfortunately, dangerous consequences… I tried this “Turbo Proust” to discover that based on my answers, I was most similar to Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Anyhow, I thought that for the UoH community, an updated PQ might be of interest, so here are 14 questions, down from the original 25 or so (you can see them in the Wikipedia article, along with Proust’s original answers in 1890). Some of these are about you, and some of these are for what you see about the University and your interaction with it. The UPQ is for these times, when life is lived on Facebook (for the most part), so feel free to add questions! .
- Your preferred virtue
- Your main character trait
- UoH’s biggest shortcoming
- Your biggest quality
- What you like the most about the UoH
- Your favourite occupation
- Your dream of happiness
- What would be your biggest misfortune?
- Apart from the UoH, where would you like to be?
- Your heroes in real life
- Your heroes in history
- The historical events you despise most
- The reform at the UoH you would most value
- The natural gift you would love to possess.
As we all know, these questionnaires don’t really mean much and are poor indicators of personality. But they are harmless enough and can be fun.
I’ll be back…