NARCISSUS GAZING AT HIS OWN

 After the Vacation...

I am back from facebook vacation. Like all other vacations, facebook vacations are important. First you stop showing your face, and then you stop seeing other faces. Seeing too much of your own face makes you a narcissist, that at one point, even you enjoy looking at your own image reflected from the wet bathroom floor or cesspool on the road.

 If you look at other faces too much, you become a ‘virtual- space crony’ (V-crony) or a compulsive voyeur and an ‘intellectual shallow’ ready to press ‘Like’ buttons even when you are not too very sure, and press ‘breast buttons’ when you are too sure that you dislike or differ from friends and foes. Unlike ‘Like’ buttons ‘breast buttons’ send dislikes, jealousies and hatred straight into your heart and make pickles inside. That is why heart attack rates are higher in facebook users than nonusers. My humble advice for both friends and foes is to tell your dislikes openly and often take holidays…

Now let me come to business… my facebook/blog idea is basically political.  Then what is the message? As I searched for a theme, what came handy is the reopening of colleges allover Tamilnadu today June18, 2014. I thought I can say something about vacation and reopening of colleges. The idea of vacation to colleges and universities once upon a time was to allow hard working students and untiring knowledge workers called teachers, some rest from their unceasing intellectual scraping of the brain. The vacation allowed physical and mental recouping of these strange men and women. When they returned to work, they were fresh to further scrape.

Is vacation relevant today? ‘Yes’ I will say, but the reason is different. As in the case of facebook, continuous exposure in majority of today’s colleges and universities, are intellectually, psychologically and morally damaging for both students and for well meaning (not all) teachers.

Colleges and universities can be easily compared to facebok. Say if you have a PC with net, you can start a facebook account. It is a matter of another PC to start a college or become a Princpal or Vice chancellor. That is, if you have the Personal Capital (PC) you can become another father or mother of education (Kalvi Thanthai or Kalvithai) after people like Rajaram Mohan Roy, Rabindranath Tagore, Radakrishnan and Kothari. Personal Capital can mean anything from money earned through bootlegging, real estate, large scale loot by politicians, religious business (what bogus swamis, corrupt bishops, TV preachers do) to right family connections to people in position. Madurai’s educational scene today suffers because of two noteworthy father-in-law connections. One was a wonderful Bisop who is no more  and another an Hon’ble former minister who is also no more.

Starting a college is not enough but as in facebook, showing is much more important. Kalvithanthais and Thais show everything - from baldheads to rose- powdered faces and from old fashioned suits to photos posed with VIP visitors and from advertisements of campuses during convocation thiruvilas to academic exhibitions. (one such overerexploited public face is poor Dr. Abdul Kalam). Now, you have to exhibit everything and how much you need to strip is your own choice. More you exhibit, more you reap as benefit. The only difference you make from the facebook is that there, you cause more people to ‘Like’ you and ‘Follow’ you, but here, you make solid business.

The consumer world has made life a show business whether it is your personal existence or selling cars, refrigerators or education. Facebook has taken care of personal showing (you can call it showing of your life style or what you consume in order to maintain that style). Colleges have taken care of public showing of consumption these days, by pompous branding of courses, building Hi-Fi class rooms with POWER points, making MBA students wear oversized jackets and make them look like circus jockeys and finally mouth loudly the magic word of success in education namely ‘placement’. Education is not only made highly visible but made seriously suffer a visual effect but no cerebral effect, today. Everything made visual gives too little a space for brain to reflect and you become shallow. 

 That is how our teachers, Principals, Vice-Chancellors have shamelessly perceive education to be and ae fond of even in wall posters. They think they need not even equip themselves for the job. Worse still, they might even lie as to the nature of their qualification and degrees and commit fraud on the system. If your Principal or Vice-chancellor is accused of fraud, what to expect from the students? Madurai, the cultural head quarters of Thamizhagam in this regard, has one Kalvithanthai and one Kalvithai who have shamelessly misstated their qualification to obtain coveted positions. Both Thanthai and Thai by some strange coincidence are now arrayed before the High Court. One at least I know has committed a big fraud in terms of his qualification.

So much of my facebook holiday was spent by me playing Sherlock Holms to catch frauds and taking them to the court.

For those secret Christians of our Great Campus who suffer under Thanthai, there is good news. Get ready for the farewell of the beloved. It is prophesied that God would arrive like a thief. But my dear friends, you don’t run away in fear and confusion like thieves! Unlike Bishops and policemen, God if at all He comes, HE catches only thieves. But the problem is HE is always on vacation! Because there have been too many faccebook 'friends request' for HIM. HE is scared! But He told me yesterday that HE is joining duty tomorrow June 19, 2014.

CHINNARAJ JOSEPH                                                                                               18.06.2014