New Beginnngs

  Smriti who has been living in Goa for a while, called up  sometime last year and spoke excitedly about witnessing the release of turtles into the sea. This was something we hoped to witness  and since our visit to Goa was planned around Smriti's birthday, it was serendipity that it coincided with the month in which Olive Ridley turtles were being released into the sea water  shortly after hatching at nesting sites around the beach. Alka, who heard of our  proposed trip, made enquiries and found that the turtles were being released as they hatched from a quiet location on Goa's beaches.

 It was good to learn that Olive Ridley turtles visited beaches other than those on the Orissa coastline. Magical indeed and happy making to think that from both sides of the Indian subcontinent, intrepid little turtles only a few hours old, were being released into the Bay of Bengal and into the Arabian Sea, to make their way into the vast oceans that spread out in front of them.  We arrived at Morjim beach  and contacted a forest official, Shivanand, who told us that there was a batch of turtles that would be released later in the evenig. At the beach we sat in front of a shack, sipping lemon water  and chilled beer, devouring spring rolls and dense yellow chunks of  pineapple whose sweetness can never be replicated by the pale cream versions that dominate the Delhi markets.

The sea air was balmy and sunset watching is a restful activity, so we continued to sit at a shack and watch the sky change as an orange-red sun, leaked its colours into the waiting waves and disappeared from the horizon, across the waters into the darkness of the night. The shacks were soon lit up and various offshore lights began to flash. The sky was filled with stars and a blood orange moon had taken the place of the sun, in the skies above the beach.  Despite  locations  facing each other on the beach, the sun and the moon  continued to dominate this cosmic drama of birth and movement. The turtle guardians wait for the beach crowds to thin down, allow the shacks to earn enough income and then monitor the journey of the turtles, asking humans to remain still, warning of how  the little turtles could be easily crushed under careless feet.

 Shivanand had told us that it would be well past 8.30 pm when the turtles would be released. There was a moderate audience that had gathered. None of these people were heading home or hanging out at the shacks.  We were allowed to see the turtles that were to be released and advised not to use the flash  while photographing the tiny creatures that were flippering in huddled company in a blue  plastic container containing sea water.  

We went into one of the rooms of the nesting site and watched the hatchlings  fascinatedly. We  were also shown the shell of an Olive Ridley turtle, as well as a preserved turtle in embalmig fluid. The Olive Ridley turtle is not a very large turtle and the name Olive refers not to someone named Olive but is  the colour of the carapace of an adult turle which is olive yellow green in colour. The name Ridley, possibly English in origin continues to mystify. Ridley as a surname has been around since the  13th century and apprently people with the surname can be found all over the world. I searched through several Ridley family coats of arms but found nary a turtle. So the name contiues to remain a riddle.

The baby hatchlings are gray in colour when they hatch but look almost black, when wet.  These tiny turtlets are released under cover of darkness into the ocean, as the waves come closer to the shore during high tide.  Even when  the turtlets hatch during the day, they are released only under  cover of darkness, as this gives them optimal chances for survival, away from predatory birds or dogs and other creatures inhabiting the coast.

We are introduced to Rajan Halanth and his compeer Gyanendra. Rajan, Shivanand tells us, has been caring for the turtles since 1997. We chat with him. He expalins that he was a fisherman at Morjim and discovered four nesting sites in 1997, which he protected from local dogs and human predators.  His work, labour intensive and driven by love,  is about locating the nesting sites of the Olive Ridleys which arrive en masse on the shores of the beach to lay eggs.  Apparently, these female turtles return to the beach on which they were hatched after twenty odd years, dig conical  nests with their hind flippers and lay eggs. When the egg laying is complete the female turtle swims back into the sea.

 

Rajan and his team, collect the eggs, nest by nest, and locate them in a man made nesting area that is cordoned off from the beach. The eggs, between 100 to 150 in each nest are first collected  from the nests built by the  turtle  and then rearranged in the same manner in the human controlled nesting habitat. The egg collectors are trained to rearrange the eggs in the same manner in which they were found, with the eggs that are taken out last from the bottom of the nest going in first into the new nest.

 It is a huge success story, as this nurturing space now actively connects  humans with these gentle reptiles. In 1997, Rajan tells us there were four nests. He began to rehouse the turtle eggs  in a sheltered spot. He managed to save four hundred eggs in 1997, from around four nests. Now in 2025,  150 nests have been rehoused, and thre is a possibility of around 1500 hatchlings that will be sent to sea. 

The weather has been inclement and the baby turtles have been hatching.  Rajan is thankful for the support the forest department provides them with.  He has chosen to dedicate his life and time to the nurture of turtlings. Some eggs go bad, he tells us, and the ratio of male and female turtles depends on the temperature; the warmer it is, the more females will be born. This has been a good year for the Olive Ridleys at Morjim.The nests have only been on the increase since 1997.

 The baby turtles are brought out on the beach in a trough. A small corridor is created ten metres away from the water. This is to enable the babies, the females, to create a location map inside their heads of the beach they were born on. They will remain in the ocean for  very long years, but when it is time to lay eggs, they will return to the beach on which they were born, unerringly.

 Speaking of survival rates, Rajan says that the one percent survival rate that is offered up is not accurate. According to him, there is a 25 percent survival rate, which sounds positive. He also points out that the seas are now depleted and there are far less fish in the ocean now, and that is another reason that more hatchlings have a better chances of survival in the water. 

Someone in the crowd wonders aloud if that will not upset the balance in nature...but now, the turtles are tipped over into the sand and the light of the moon and a torch guides them in the direction of the ocean. They move unsteadily in ones and twos in the direction of the light and ocasionally get stuck in the sand or move sidewards. They are carefully picked up by the young men in charge of operations and put back on the correct track. It is a few moments of sheer magic as the little creatures move in the direction of the sea. The advancing waves knock them back on to the beach , but they wiggle in the wet sand, find their footing and allow themselves to be lifted up by the next wave. 

The viewing humans are asked not to move as the hatchlings thrown back  by the waves could be very easily trampled upon. The turtle protectors, lift the hapless turtles away from giant feet and set them in the direction of the wave again.  In a few minutes all fifty and more hatchlings have set out on their journey. It is a portentuous occasion, as the vast ocean and the darkness swallow them  up. They have no escorts, no guides  and zero parenting but  will have to rely on their own instincts on this long voyage. There is soon no trace of them.

 Faewell brave voyagers, and when the time is right, twenty years later, may more of you return to these beaches and continue to proliferate and may there be more Shivanands and Rajans to  provide shelter and nurture in the years to come.

 Floral Abundance  at SVC

Sri Venkateswara College  has been subject to a lot of expansion  and construction over the last 35 years.  Stretches of ridge lands on which the institution stands  have now been tamed into a larger canteen with stone clad seating areas for teacher and students,   a library block, extra  teaching rooms,   more staff quarters, hostels for young men and women, bamboo rooms in two sections of the college requiring more levelling of the gound, extensions in the science block, expansion of the Arts Block and the  adminisrative section, an auditorium shell and a new teaching block named after Durgabai Deshmukh, concretised parking space for vehicles, badminton and tennis courts, electric cables, generators, and the most recent of them all, a walkway from the metro gate to the centre of college, leaving us with shrinking grounds over the decades.

Besides the miniature temple, very much a twenty-first century construction  is a  small patch of land bordered  with a few rain trees in front of th administrative block. For long it  showcased a few foundation stones, announcing  new sites under construction inaugurated by important digntaries. Members of the garden committee spent long years in shifting away  the commemorative foundation stones.  

When the stone slabs and the cement frames holding them were gone, the ground was levelled to plant pink roses bushes that quickly filled up the space and flowered profusely, providing an abundant  source of flowers that were collected for worship. Eventually, the rough demarcation between this green patch and the path leading to the grounds was identified by two concrete borders, on either side of a tarred road separated by two concrete boundaries that marked off the green spaces. The  rose bushes  looked scraggly when  not in bloom. The small plot outstretchd itself and   and took on new avatar. It  was chosen as  a site for rainwater harvesting.  Then grafted roses were planted instead of the local variety and they did rather  poorly. The whole area looked like wild scrubland. Eventually, the grafted plants  had to be painstakingly repotted and relocated  and we had a whole new canvas to work upon.

 We bordered the patch  with ruellias (mexican petunias) in pink, white and mauve colours..and slowly prepared the gound for flowerng annuals.   The rain tree shrubs formed the backdrop and salvia, daisies and calendulas were planted in stretches. A few marigolds and tagetas also found some space.  Closer to  the wall hollyhocks ranged themselves in and around the rain-trees. Alysiums in purple and white charmingly brought up the groundswell  next to the ruellias covering up the edge ofthe border.

 The annuals are now in full bloom. It is now a balmy spring and the nighs are still chilly, allowig the flowers a riotous interlude.  Soon the heat will be on and the flowers will slowly disappear. It takes  six months to create this wild floral canopy, every season. Our gardeners contracted for this work, work hard, nurturing the plants and replanting those that have died or have been damged by animal and human footfalls. This stretch has filled up uninteruptedly with annual blooms, almost 15 years after the stone plaques were removed.  Perhaps in the next season, more varieties of flowers will join this vibrant stage and add to the festivities. Who knows?

NO ACADEMIC SPRING AT DELHI UNIVERSITY

 Life  as a student in the North Campus at the end of the 1970s was made up of  halycon days. The North Campus was the longest distance I had commuted to in the city  in all of my life upto then.  Nursery and then Primary School had been at a walking distance and   Middle-school and Senior-school were always a short school bus ride away. The university that loomed in the distance was made accessible  through public transport. For 12 rupees and fifty paisa, one could board any DTC bus, blue in colour, sometimes maroon, and travel from Western Extension Area  to North Delhi and further. When we shifted home from Karol Bagh to Saket, there were university specials, buses in which mostly students and teachers going to the university travelled. These buses, dropped us off outside the gates of the coleges we studied in, allowing us to explore a whole new world.

 There were  sprawling grounds in  individual colleges, and then an entire university campus  one could wander over. From the back  gate of  college there was a scenic route to the the science block of the university and  from there  to the university coffee house where jelly and cream was a preferred delicacy, along with coffee and other odds and ends.  There were in fact so many food haunts around the campus, ranging from  the chow mein at the arts faculty dhaba and the aloo chat sold by a twinkling eyed man outside the arts faculty, who had ben selling aloo chat from quite some time. It was easy to saunter and attend  lectures because they were illuminating and sit in on  for talks that were informative. Sittiing in the college cafe and wolfing down flame-scorched buttered bread, or eating samosas and gulab jamun with nimbu paani  at Rohtaas's stand and absorbing a brave new world of ideas. Discovering  chane bhatoorae at KNags and  books in shops in  Kamla Nagar as KNags was expansively called. Nesting books on  library shelves in an old world library where from a seat  in an alcove, there was the possiblity of gazing at the green of the lawns outside the library window. Spic Macay and college festvals, theatre and social service leagues and literary societies and the occasional film at the film club, reaching home after long bus rides and drinking in all kinds of new thoughts and trying to accomodate them inside of one's head, exploring new spaces, such as Triveni and Mandi House, the National Gallery and the National Museum;  getting off the U special to have chaat on Shahjahaan Road, these are some of the memories that the mind throws up.

What an amazing place the university was in those days, and how wonderful it was to have a  long single academic year, that began after a hot summer, led us through the monsoons and then provided us  with  autumn and  winter breaks, where one could savour the seasons, enjoy varied   festivals in the short break in  October and then  nourish oneself in winter in the third week of December and  into the New Year cozying up  at home during the cold season. Back in the New Year to college in bracing weather that turned into spring and then taking our exams in  almost hot April, while the university shut down for the summer for students and teachers. It was a space of leaning and safety , from which we emerged, ready to test our wings in the world. Yes, the university in myriad ways prepared us for the universe!

 Five years of such  learning; undergraduate and graduate, at the university and  the overwhelming desire to continue to be a part of this life.  So there I was, after yet another long summer, back to teach in another college across the road, engaging with undergraduates and tutoring MA students and being part of a community of teachers,  young and middle aged, bonding over tea in the college staffroom, in between lectures, teaching various undergraduate classes,  rushing out to join rallies  or attend a talk, view  an exhibition of art/pottery,  watch a play, or just pick up a book or two  at the library and browse. We tried out  the local eateries in Knags. patronising  special Chane Bhature that sold out everyday in under three hours.. the shopkeepers downed shutters until the next morning... and  savoured the wonderful fruit beer at the corner as well as the snacks at Bercos..which underwent many new avataars from seedy to hip.  As young teachers we were  monarchs of  all that we surveyed, full of energy and arguments as we began to articulate our  discoveries in the subjects and areas that interested us while being trained through  MPhil programs to focus  on PhDs. 

Almost a 150 years after William Wordsworth one could  echo his sentiment and paraphrase it to declare that bliss was it to be alive during  those  years, when the joy of studying and teaching at the university was non-pareil.  As teachers, even befor internal assessment was introduced the university had a system of tutorials, preceptorils and practicals that were valued additions to the  academic  life of  a student.  Teachers came in to correct  answer sheets at  examination centres, set up in different colleges, usually at the North Campus in the hot summer, and brought food from home which was pooled into an abundant  lunch over which we exchanged notes and pointers about scripts that were to be corrected.  Examination results were seldom delayed  and evaluation was for the most part fair. Systems of re-evaluation were also in place. As teachers we also had a strong DUTA in place that worked to improve and ameliorate teacing and learnng spaces in the university. We were a much admired university at the turn of the century with varied disciplines  committed to academic growth and research.

Where did these years go? I just don't know. DUTA has ben reduced to small rag tag groups that have been pulverised by the new systems that has been set in place. The place of the teacher as reprsentative has shunk in important bodies such as the Academic Council and the Executive Council. A hurriedly implemented  semester system  is firmly in place. Upon its body experiments on curriculum continue to be harnessed. First we truncated and bowdlerised the annual mode, next we expanded it to a four year program with silly ennervating syllabi  that had to be  rejected on public demand.  Another Trojan Horse that was introduced in the midst of all this was NAAC.  This trojan horse continues to consume all our energy as we try and get accreditation on paper by endless accumulation of data. Significantly, the powers that be have never engaged with the absurdity of the idea of accreditaion for a hundred year old public university.  As we limped back to arranging a more suitable curriculum for the semester system (although that is a misrepresentation of the truth for the semester system is unsuitable as a method of teaching in itself) we were struck by COVID and subsequently pushed into online modes of highly unproductive teaching. Before we could recover and restore the university to its rhythms, CUET and the NEP were implemented in the university. 

Were we caught off-guard as teachers? Was it the onslaught of unending semesters, or  the death toll of the pandemic  that ushered this new regimen in?  We are now in some Americanised environs where mountains of data is collected on cyberpages on what seems to me to be a six-hourly basis. Endless hours are demanded of each teacher in compiling and uploading data which  contributes zilch to  the processes of  teaching.  So I keep asking  myself..wasnt the university set up to teach?  Five years from today there will be research papers documenting how  data punching damages and depletes the human  brain and corrodes creativity. Assembly line techniques  work for objects,  they are not meant  for the human brain.

 So  how does this impede the learning process? Much has been said about the shrinking of the classroom space and the curriculum. Perhaps it is time  to speak for the student meant  to learn and grow holistically at the university. The students are run down and  bleary-eyed, the air is thick with particulate matter.  Hostel accomodation is meagre and PG digs are either expensive and unsustainable or shabby  and unappealing.We are so busy watching  the AQI that our water and food contaminants are yet to be highlighted.

 In this toxic amosphere, each student has seven papers per semester from the first semester onwards.  There are three core papes, one GE that is disguised as a core paper and courses such as VAC, SEC and EVS. which are  offered as credit papers.  While the core papers have diluted content, the marks have increased exponentially. If earlier 25 marks out of hundred was part of the internal assessment  and attendance that colleges contributed to the score sheet, now numbers crunching has reached  70. 

 CA (continuous evaluation) is for 40 marks (35 marks for student performance and 5 marks for tutorial attendance) and IA( internal evaluation) is for 30 marks ( 24 marks for writen work and 6 marks for attendance). Each core paper is  for 160 marks and all  students attempt  a three hour central exam  for 90 marks. The CA and IA demand five pieces of writing from the sudent in each course.  The non-core courses, supposedly less demanding, continue to put pressure on students, seking a steady handing over of endless assignments.  

Whil a teacher may have to evaluate abour 500 essays of varying length per semester, each student has to write about seven essays in each of the courses he or she is offering. Most students have replaced the older cut and paste system  with modern cheat technology and one can get   written assignments from an entire  class powered by ChatGPT answers. The modular semester program ensures that no course can ever spill into the next.This promotes silo learning from semester to semester, easily forgotten because there is very little time available even to teach the truncated courses that are on offer.   

So three years of this..and then one more mysterious year later, our students will enter the brave new world of a one year Masters Program.  Why have  Masters  Programs in various disciplines  been compressd into a single  year? Does this bode well for students  when the  core undergraduate syllabi has been greatly diluted?  Why have  MPhil courses been scrapped?  The University continues to be  in the throes of a  learning and teaching pandemic. No  inoculation is  in place. Nor have any  systems  been generated to nurture the best pedagogic practices that the university had in place, once. Students are packed into lecture, tutorial and  practical rooms by the gross.  Neither the sub-par curriculum nor the dinacharya of the overburdened student or the clericalised university teacher compiling data, is likely to be reviewed at any point.  

We have already celebrated 100 years of Delh University. It is now in free fall, disintegrating  into small bits. The telescope that can track and record  the fall and disintegration of  humungous bodies such as a central university has yet to be invented. If we cannot change this, maybe it is time to gather around and mourn.

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