Error 101: Your service provider is a jackass!

Freedom, Liberty, Free Will and other such BS, are often claimed to form the nuts-and-bolts of all our Indian laws. I remember, back in school, our civics textbooks sounded a lot of President Bush’s speeches, only a lot less funny and as long as Ekta Kapoor’s scripts. But then, aren’t these supposed to be the foundations of our constitution? And where would our news channels be, if they weren’t allowed to lampoon and feed on the political tamasha? Israel’s ex PM, Shimon Peres, is reported to have said in an interview, “TV has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.” Nevertheless, these are the divine rights, which we celebrate every year in form of Republic Day and Ambdekar Jayanti (when is that?? April 14th). With all these rights in place, where do you think India figures in the world in terms of Freedom of Press? 106! (Out of 175) OUCH! That hurt, isn’t it?

In the present age, the internet is seen as a great "leveler" and a "phenomenon that changed the human civilization forever"; until China came along with its restrictive policies. Next in line was our institute.Accessing the internet from NIT Rourkela is as just as good as accessing internet from a country like Iran (a country where "human rights" are rated above the knock-knock jokes in the funny papers). In fact, in some respects they are better off.

The idea that today's Web is termed "Web 2.0", i.e., it’s a two-way medium, doesn’t go too well with the network administrators here on the campus. They prefer Web 0.5. A filtered, restricted but definitely, more "morally acceptable" worldwide web- free from all the sins and traps our religious books warn us about.

Here’s a simple example to prove that our network administrators are pre-historic oafs and belong in the Smithsonian, right next to the T-Rex fossil remains: Google “Sexually Transmitted Diseases” and click on any link that appears under the search result. The ugly, white, sad page indicating that you are a goddamn pervert flashes instantaneously. Okay, never mind AIDS, Herpes, and all that.
Try visiting Slate.com, often touted to be amongst the most popular current affairs magazine online. Result: Access Denied, under the category: “Entertainment”. If slate.com falls under “Entertainment”, I wonder under which category is the NIT R’s network admin’s page listed. "Circus Clowns",perhaps.

Moving on, 350mn people worldwide use Facebook, NIT R folks can’t.Why? It’s listed under "dating" and dating is outright immoral and against The Great Indian Culture. Never mind the fact that the scriptures on the Sun temple, just a few hundred kilometers away, read like an erotic magazine. All right, for military buffs out there, have you ever tried Googling/visiting any arms and ammunition website? Hah! All right, no points for guessing the answer. Blocked under category: “Weapons”. Never heard of the student who used a ballistic missile to blow up the institute building because his professor didn’t give him an A? Neither have I. But then, an NIT R internet administrator has got to be always prepared for the worst. You never know what the students are up to. Here’s a comparison chart of the restrictive internet policies between NIT R and Iran.

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Sex ed and other dirty-dirty topics

Even though the Indian Government has been trying hard to introduce the science and intricacies of human reproduction, the subject of sex education continues to be a major taboo. Never mind the fact that AIDS is a major epidemic and is a major killer and all that balderdash; we’d rather debate what color robes Lord Ram wore; Red or Saffron? Ah! Now there’s a debate.

Back when I was at middle-school, we had no fancy “abstinence-only program” like the American schools or access to the surplus related-educative content online. In fact it’s interesting how an exciting subject, like human procreation can take the shape of an 8 mark long answer with cumbersome diagram, which isn’t light years close to the image you conjure up in your mind when someone is talking about IT. Luckily, we had help. Shivam was to us...well, what a messiah is to people.

He was about a year or two older than us, but was a lot wiser. His secret behind the exhaustive gyaan: his elder brother’s massive English movie collection. Although none of us got into the real particulars of the entire exercise, the very fact that here was a guy, who hardly knew anything more than us, but still could fire up our imaginations, was incredible. A game of cricket usually ended with an engaging discussion about our incredible Centre Fresh cricket cards collection, and of course, “who has THIS Tazzo card?!” And then, Shivam would take a comfortable seat under a Gulmohar tree and begin with his preaching. The idea of sitting under a tree before preaching anything has been rather widely used throughout our country’s long history. Buddha did it, probably Lord Mahavir also did, Govt. school teachers still do it, and then here was Shivam, doing a service to the bunch of 14-15 year old kids. The precise details and accounts as related by Shivam usually left us confused and full of doubts. Like, Shivam would tell us that it was always considered a bad idea doing it when you are drunk, but then he would go on to tell us that his brother got drunk because he had too much of sex on the beach. The highly improbable idea of sex on the beach being a drink, almost never seemed to occur to us. Much like the fact Genesis 1:1might have ignored a few details; you know, it could have also been Adam and Steve. Not just Eve. Thanks to Article 377, we now know better.

Although we never really got it, it was a welcome break from the lessons we got at school. Where an embarrassed, shy teacher would hurriedly skip through the lesson and would lay all the focus on how the animals did it. “Learning from the animals” seemed to be the mantra. And yes, I’m sure our previous generations were taught just the same things and hence the incredulous population explosion. We don’t like talking about it. But while the others are out talking about it, we’re spending time doing it. Although we did finally graduate high school much better equipped, in terms of the correct practices, it took me quite some time to realize that the ulterior motives of the Indian Educational system was to never make us self-sufficient, happy and Gay.

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