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Day Scholar OWENS Lee Pomeroy rightly said, "Nostalgia is like a grammar lesson: you find the present tense, but the past perfect!" A journey down the memory lane can be fun if it concerns the time spent in college, and more so, if it has the boarders playing an active role. "With parents willing to spend thousands a year allowing you to go to a strange town that provides the freedom to get drunk every night." Read the first few pages of Day Scholar and you begin to believe a lot more in the power of the quote. Author Siddharth Chowdhury studied English Literature at Delhi University, and Day Scholar gives an interesting account about his days at the university, having a right blend of colourful and interesting characters as well as situations that anybody who has spent time at the university studying or otherwise would easily relate to. The story revolves around another category of students who prefer to stay in a shared rented accommodation and enjoy the best of both the worlds, thus making the boarders and the day scholars go green with envy.
Set in the early 90s, at the centre of the concentric circles in the novel is Hriday Thakur who comes from an upper middle-class family in Patna to Delhi. Hriday aspires to be a writer and much part of his day is spent not only in learning on the campus but also in unlearning his experiences of Patna in places like Shakti Nagar, Kamla Nagar, Batra Cinema, Majnu ka Tila, India International Centre and other locations that are part of the ecosystem of Delhi University. The novel provides detailed cultural and socio-economic linkage to the late 1980s and the early 1990s of Delhi and some of the towns of Bihar. Civil Service guides, ready-reckoners, history and public administration textbooks and the ‘mandatory’ chest expanders, use of immersion rods for making tea for those studying late in the night. Day Scholar has those interesting characters which appear to be so familiar that one might have bumped into during one’s college days. Zorawar Singh Shokeen, the half-Jat, half-Gujjar owner of Shokeen Niwas, is a political broker and property dealer who uses his makeshift hostel for all the pleasure of life. Many residents of the Niwas have moved along with Zorawar’s life, but not necessarily with their pursuit of education. There are many other characters brought and taken out by the author in a fast-moving style. The dream of changing their profile is woven around aspiring for a white government Ambassador car with the red beacon light on top and all sirens blaring that was considered in the mid-90s as the ultimate achievement. The residents of Shokeen Niwas perceive that kind of power as invincible. The leisurely feudal ambience with five or six servants attending to all their demands and the unimaginative riches that came with the job, and not to mention the dowry which would automatically catapult them into the 10-15 lakh category. Through these characters, Siddharth highlights the feelings of a section of students who treat the Civil Service examinations as "national pastime of Bihar", whereas their parents toiled hard to get their son’s age reduced by good five years during matriculation, as a result of which the son is officially 20-year-old when he should have been at least twenty-five! Doing an MA in English Literature in a class, where girls outnumber the boys, is one of the easy ways for some to achieve objective of changing their profile. The characters also harbour a fear that if their parents ever came to Shokeen Niwas and actually saw the surroundings, they would be horrified to see how naturally their "good" sons have fitted in there! The author also highlights how the students in such colonies were a good source of income, with many residents becoming property dealers overnight while others becoming the important link between the students and their parents through their newly started telephone booths. He also touches upon another important section of the populace—local girls from traditional Punjabi trading class with deep-seated yearning to find their place in the world that is seen more at the India International Centre, and at book launches at the British Council. The switchover from bright salwar suits to cotton salwar suits bought from Khadi Gram Udyog and tops bought from Janpath is well covered by the author. A nice collection of
anecdotes that brings back faces of friends and foes from the college
days back to the fore. Day Scholar appears to have been written
in a rush with story moving at a brisk pace with phrases quite common
to students’ life in liberal use by the author. Siddharth has
brought out the novel well in a refreshing manner which may seem to
the readers as a confirmatory collection of their own memories.
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Siddaharth
has been liberal enough freedom to add masaala. The characters
have converged to Delhi from outside with dreams of changing
"their profile". They have lot of share yet to differ on
that is keeping them together at Shokken Niwas—a heavenly abode for
students.