Thursday, December 07, 2006

Of students and their PDA

One of the things that has fascinated me these few months in Hyderabad is the rapid change that I have noticed. The change is apparent not only in the monstrous “new-age” buildings that have sprouted all over the city or the flyovers but the open Public Displays of Affection that I see in certain areas of the city. When I stayed here in the eighties such things were unheard of. Come to think of it even an open mingling of sexes was something that was not all that common

One of the pleasures that I now have is getting out of the house at 5.00 am to reach my class at 6.00 am. I teach a motley group of topics (and in my opinion do a damn fine job of it) to those who aspire to get through the recruitment process of the IT biggies. But it is not my superlative teaching that I want to discuss but certain activities that one notices in secluded corridors of the classroom blocks where I teach.

All sessions end at 8.00 am but it depends on individual lecturers when they finish the session. And that day my lecture happened to be the only one on the third floor. As the other sessions got over a bit earlier the students had trooped out dutifully except for this enterprising couple.

Placing themselves strategically at the top of the stairs, where they had a view of both the corridor and the staircase, they were busy in a world of their own. A world that saw a lot of entangled limbs and paws. Now in spite of their strategic location they made a simple but egregious mistake. They forgot that there was a third floor and chaps like me were likely to walk down those steps any moment.

Anyway to cut a long story short, I caught the couple in flagrante delicto. And that is where the fun started. Innocent me saw them and took a second or two to figure out where the guy’s hands were and why and why the young lady was standing at the top of the stairs in such an arched position.

Of course gyan dawned immediately but I kind of ignored them – as much as it is possible to ignore happenings of this nature – and continued to walk down the stairs. That is when the dude saw me, noticed I was a “Prof” and then took off like a scalded cat leaving a rather bewildered, backwardly arching young woman.

She then saw me and ran down the stairs onto the corridor. By the time I got onto the corridor I noticed that the guy was making good progress at the other end with the girl just a few steps in front of me. As soon as I caught up with the girl I obviously had to decide whether I should play the Prof who is scandalized by this behaviour and who threatens to “call your parents” or be the cool dude Prof who winks and lets it go. I, unfortunately, decided to “dialogue maro” a bit and said, “Discretion is a better part of amour” and walked away.

I know, I know. Not terribly inventive but that was all I could think of on the spur of the moment. And please remember I was quite taken aback too.

When I was thinking about the episode, apart from kicking myself for not making a better comment and wondering whether I should report the two to the “authorities”, I did wonder about the behaviour of this dude.

I mean, here you are caught while necking your girl and the moment you notice a figure in authority you take off. What if I had decided to take the young girl to task? Given the general climate of intolerance exhibited when dealing with young couples and the environment of moral policing, quite frankly, I could have made things quite messy for her. Just cannot figure this out.

Call me old fashioned or whatever you will I still think that this dude should have held his ground and in the unlikely event that I did say anything should have been in a position to cover for the girl and taken the rap himself. But he did quite the opposite. And to think that the girl was almost threatening him with words like, “come back or I’ll kill you” while walking along the corridor

Well! Maybe I am wrong and that is the way to handle things.

Welcome to the New Age Man.

17 comments:

Anonymous said...

should've just told them to get a room....politely

Anonymous said...

You sound like an old pervert. You prbably are a horny loser, who gets a power trip on this kind of shit.
Stop bothering the kids. Who the fuck are you to tell them how to behave.
Typical desi (male) behaviour.

Anonymous said...

pda is pda, but what's more interesting is how people react when they're noticed.

if youve got the hard on to do the crime, have the balls to do the time.

Anonymous said...

well i thought 'discretion...' was a pretty cool thing to say, even at the spur of the moment.

30in2005 said...

Your quick comment about discretion was very appropriate. Not very gentlemanly behavious from the dude though, skiddling off like that!!

Anonymous said...

I seriously think there is a bit of old fruastrated soul in this post

anantha said...

Hmmm, I think you probably did the most gracious thing possible.

I understand your initial thoughts about toeing the "management's line" and do what a "teacher" is expected to do by the culture police masquerading as the managements of educational institutions. But in the end you did the right thing.

And then here I find a couple of people who cannot differentiate between hypocrisy and a liberal attitude.

I wonder what these ppl would have said if you had dragged the gal to the people in charge and ranted here about culture.

This just goes on to prove that you can do nothing right. Bah...

Anonymous said...

i'm surprised this happened in Hyd!

Anonymous said...

@shabri (commenter #2): I know the blogger and want to correct a few of your misconceptions. Pervert - yeah, Old - no. Horny - yeah, Loser - no.

Otherwise you are spot on. Damn you Gautam - stop bothering the kids!! Next time you're walking down from your 3rd flr lecture and someone's necking on the stairs, take the damn elevator or a nearby sewage pipe down.

(Are you sure the brave KLPD dude wasn't our shabri by any chance? Sure sounds like him. As you see I am also an expert now on figuring out people by how their written words "sound")

Nyayapati Gautam said...

Thanks Raghu,

What would I have done without your support. About the Pervert & Horny part, I thought I was concealing them a lot better than in the ST. Paul's and LFJC days. :-)

Obviously I couldn't escape ur eagle eyes. ;-)

Anyway abt Shabri: Yaar please Read the post. It was not about my power trip or about telling them what they should do or otherwise. It was about the reaction of the principal participant to being caught out.

Anonymous said...

What a jerk! Taking off like that. I have heard of these kind of incidents happening a lot these days.

Anonymous said...

PDAs have long been there in the scene - the degree of visibility is increasing by leaps and bounds these days, IMHO. If you parked yourselves on the Elliot's beach in Chennai for a couple of hours, you wud see a wide variety of such displayes, ranging from the hush-hush type to all out ones.
Kali kaalam!! ;)

DesiGirl December 9, 2006 05:00 AM
Comment on www.desicritics.com where this article was cross-posted.

Anonymous said...

I think your response was just fine. =]
Vi December 9, 2006 10:38 AM

Comment on www.desicritics.com where this article was cross-posted.

Anonymous said...

Are we not mistaken here? This is not 'Public Display of Affection'. PDA is : a peck, a lip lock, a hug, holding hands etc. in flagrante delicto, arched backwards, hand positions suggests that the crime at hand, caught red handed was much more than PDA. If that is the case, it tantamounts to public indecency punishable under law. Even given that -- you did just fine Prof.
As far as pure innocent old ishtyle PDA, we Indians are guilty of not doing enough of it. Much happens behind closed doors as the billion speaks for itself.

Chanakya December 9, 2006 04:10 PM
Comment on www.desicritics.com where this article was cross-posted.

Anonymous said...

Knowing me I would have told them to get a room!

Deepti Lamba December 10, 2006 03:56 AM
Comment on www.desicritics.com where this article was cross-posted.

Anonymous said...

The guy scooting off must be the worse thing he ever did in his life. But the 'Prof', well he should have avoided playing the moral police, and chasing them down the stairs, God forbid if something untoward had happened, like the girl breaking her neck instead of saving it.

Anonymous said...

A much awaited post from Prof Gautam after a hiatus of 5 plus months, and what does he come up with, a misadventure which would have made bajrang dal and shiv sena proud of.
And off course knowing him he is definately not an old pervert and neither a horny loser.
Folks stop mindless shooting from your lips and do not take the freedom of speech for granted which would even put a reckless truck driver to shame.