a new world...a new life

JNU... to me, it was always like the IIT's- something to look upto, a place to be in awe of- but a place i was not allowed to dream about. and here i am...a certified student of JNU, attending classes...and having that campus referred to as mine.

one can be forgiven for thinking of jnu as *just a campus*- its anything but that. its a world of its own- it has its own politics, its own culture, its own lingua franca...its own ways of doing and saying things. there's everything inside there- millions of canteens, multiple photocopy shops, a whole row of book shops, a big library for each dept AND two huge libraries, a big market (with its own mother diary and other shops), lotssss of hostels...and a wholeeee lot of people.
my beloved old south campus- with all its buildings situated in a circular fashion, one canteen, one cute photocopy shop, one library, one girls hostel, and two boys hostels...and an everyone knows everyone sort of atmosphere- seems very village like in comparison.

and its not just the physicality...the culture of jnu is unlike anything i have ever witnessed before. students hold dharnas, and seem to genuinely believe for certain causes...graffitti is everywhere...there are anti-marx posters, anti-hindutva posters, anti-opening of nescafe posters, posters announcing dharnas for various reasons...at times it seems that jnu is anti-everything...
the people are so different...it actually is a mini india...im one of the three delhiites in a class of 21 in my class- its strange to be in a class where people dont know of north/south campus, or dont go to CP often, or shop at sn or janpath...hell im sure some of them dont even know of priyas. they refer to *dilli* as a foreign country...for them, jnu is all the delhi they need to know.
everyone seems to be stupendously intelligent...they know about everything..they talk of things which dont even sound like english...let alone sound familiar. and they're all intelligent in a very nonchalant way...in the beginning, during our free periods when the class would go out for tea, the topics of discussion ranged from Indo-US nuclear deal to Max Mueller's work on India...if you walk around campus, you hear people saying things like "oh he specializes in medieval history" "oh i would love to read your article"...it was all so alien, so strange...

its easy to be overwhelmed by the multiplicity and largeness of everything in jnu. it may sound strange, coming from someone who's studied in delhi for the past 7 years...but this world is starkly different from everything which i called *college* earlier. its been more than a month...but i still feel very much like a participant observer of some DU vs JNU comparative experiment. i feel like im here to take notes, and go back...
i still feel comfortable referring to myself as a DU girl; i spent five years inside that system, living and breathing the good and the bad of it...its become a part of my identity. i wonder if ill ever call myself a JNU girl, without it sounding like a pretense to my own ears...