RKMV: A General Discussion

There is this interesting thread in the Orkut community for RKMV Deoghar. The topic of discussion is a very sincere opinion, to have some kind of reservation for our wards in the school. We had views for and against this and reservation in general, but a more pertinent question was raised by a fellow junior, do we actually believe that it is the best place to send our wards to, and whether Vidyapith really provides the best environment out there. Only three people were involved, and neither of us were exceptionally happy with everything in Vidyapith. I thought that this would be an interesting discussion here.

To begin with, I'd really suggest you read the Vidyapith life piece from Suman's blog, a nice, simple, objective description of the pros and cons of those years.

What actually caught my eye in the Orkut discussion was how people were expressive enough, how easily they pin-pointed the shortcomings while not rejecting the positives, these certainly are good signs I believe, and a frank discussion with similar-minded alumni with the authorities would do a world of good; this ease at discussion is something you can easily thank Vidyapith for. The problem with the system, I believe, is that none of us would actually dare, for that matter, even care to take that first step.

An interesting point was made though, as Ujjwal complained why one could not use a ball-pen till the IXth standard. Most of us would agree here that the very idea of not allowing 'stock' or food material from home is stupid, as is not allowing any 'civil dress', clothes beyond the assigned dress for school or dham or whatever. So there were these obscenely excessive constraints we are talking about, and they need to be reasoned, reasoned thoroughly by the authorities in front of students to make whatever little sense they could. However, I'm pretty sure that a veiled attempt was made by Shakti Maharaj once, its simply sad that not one of us actually got the idea. Years later, I reasoned with myself, perhaps I had nothing better to do at IIT, I tried to remember almost everything uttered by almost everyone there, I needed to find a logic behind this absurdity.

Well, I make an attempt here: You must understand that Vidyapith tried to follow a socialist setup, it believed in treating every student equally before anything else, this philosophy might have itself come from Vivekananda, or some other influential person/team in Bengal, but that's the way it was. Now students came from different strata in the society, my batch had a son of an MLA, another was a son of a DIG, at the same time my father was a modest Assistant Engineer in the Govt. of Bihar, and someone else's father was an Assistant Sub Inspector. All of us came from well-to-do families, we never actually struggled to have two meals a day, but my father would never gift me a Parker pen when a Jetter suffices, and my stock would comprise of only the home-made thekuas and purukias. The point I want to make is that as a child, there is always a more materialistic longing for almost everything. By actually disallowing such stuff, Vidyapith helped me prevent an embarrassing situation where I would be greedy for everything the son of the DIG or MLA brought. Come to think of it, this was consistent with the general spiritual philosophy being preached, it made us think of every penny and whatever comes of it as valuable, and it made sure that the son of the DIG or the MLA were no specials among us! But like every socialist thought, this had its downside; as we were turned into Milk-Bikis and onion hungry chillars, as we queued and fought to get that extra samosa.

To a certain level, I am content with this logic behind the constraints that we had. There must have been some stupid person in charge of the rules some time, who actually thought of increasing them in number and idiocy, hence not allowing chess, on the pretext that it is a very addictive game (Watch Naseeruddin Shah's version of Shatranj Ke Khiladi though, it harbours the very same thought :P), a compulsion to use fountain pens till the eighth grade, explained using a scientifically unverified theory of how ball pens tend to make your writings illegible (surprisingly though, I was praised by Bansal Sir in Kota, for using a fountain pen in the subjective exam, as it made the whole thing so very clear and easy to grade, while many others had their papers subjected to dustbins, and themselves to slangs).

Indeed, there always was a logic, an attempt to explain how not adhering to the instructions was wrong in principle. I think that the motive was more often right than wrong, it was the extent to which things were enforced that actually made the whole thing seem pointless. Once again, I pity the authorities, because you can't really define limits for everything, they couldn't really have said that you can't bring a pen worth more than Rs 50 with you, it is much more easier to ban everything.

I expect comments from readers, these views might be contradicted by many of you. Next post, I shall try to see why and how the all-round development was supposedly inhibited, which has been a glaring issue in the Orkut discussion.

Hoping to see some response. :)