Huge crowds. Incessant singing and slogan raising. Raised voices. Loud invitiations to draw in the audience. A rampant air of festivity.

If you’re in DU and you notice an event with the above characteristics, then make sure you stick around. For what you’ll eventually witness will be a fine piece of street theatre performed by enthusiasts and concluded with a message meant to mobilize the youth.

Street theatre in DU is usually performed by the Hindi Dramatic Societies. However there are also a few groups which function as separate societies dedicated solely to this form of theatre.

Street theatre is largely devoted to addressing social and political concerns. Society today is witnessing widespread internal and external crises. From terrorism to communal riots to a wholesome political paralysis, the country is plagued with numerous evils. Hence it’s commendable that students of the university take it upon themselves to spread necessary awareness through a medium which shall reach the largest audience.

The street play societies also have the most amount of fun, aays Samriddhi Kukreja, Vice president of Kahkasha, JMC, “We have these sessions where we aim at making the voice of each member reach its highest frequency. So the whole group repeats “anna” and each time the frequency increases. Also, we want each of us to be comfortable with words that would otherwise make jaws drop. For instance, we have sessions where each member is expected to say “condom” really loudly. So these are some the fun things we do.” Various events last year saw the JMC girls perform on the much controversial theme of “homosexuality” and receive significant appreciation.

Besides JMC, Venky has Anubhuti which has been in existence since the last eight years and has immense popularity to its credit. St. Stephens has Shakesabha, Miranda’s Anukriti is popular for its signature human pyramid and Khalsa’s Ankur have been extremely instrumental in raising awareness.

The most reputed of all is Verve, The Street Play Society of the College of Business Studies. Last year their Annual Theatre Festival, Manthan, got a lot of colleges together to perform street plays in government schools and public places.

The street play culture ensures that even while you’re having fun, you’re getting across important messages to the society. Surely it’s a combination well worth exploring!

So, when Happy Feet was released three years back, all my classmates were aware of my “hippity-hoppity” love for Mumble, the un-Emperor like Penguin.

The child in me is till date, echoing its desire to be taken to Antarctica to be able to catch a glimpse of the tuxedoed species, to be able to imitate their noisy flapping action, to be able to nose fight with their protruding beaks and to be able to feel their happy feet!

However, the situation that Mumble, Gloria, Rockhopper and the others in their family are witnessing is a grave bargain. The world is getting warmer but the temperatures are increasing five times faster than the world average in this continent, which is home to a million penguins. The dinner-jacketed penguins are unfortunately, the first to feel the impact. And why is it almost impossible to ignore what’s happening to this species? Because this, my friend, is only a foretaste of things to come, an early indication of what may be happening to other species. The penguins are not the only sufferers of the massive climate change but sadly, are amongst the first apparent victims of the disaster following Global Warming!

As always, Google came to my rescue and has allowed me to consolidate numerous facts about the impending extinction, of the “dinner-jacketed goofballs”. They say that in the changing scenario each species in the world has two options; they can either evolve or die out. There isn’t much to link penguins to the former, because in a situation where the “hot is becoming hotter”, the penguins don’t have anywhere to migrate!

With the unavailability of food-rich waters, the loss of nesting sites, which mind you, have more than a single cause to the shrinking levels of ice, there is not even a single factor favoring their survival. As a simple analogy, it’s almost like the Adelies, the Emperors, the Chinstraps and the Gentoos, took the same route, landed at a four way crossing and none saw the green signal!

The penguins usually munch on krill and fish, their staple diet. Now, due to a disrupted food chain and the continuous melting of ice, neither is available to the penguins, preventing them from gulping food down their wobbly throats. Did you know that an average penguin can manage to cover a mere mile in an hour! Imagine a situation where the hefty creatures have to walk 30 miles to get food because the Ross Sea witnessed two humongous ice bergs melting down only to park themselves between the breeding colonies and the feeding areas, none of which can a penguin sideline!

As peculiar as it may sound, the Adelie penguins only breed on land without ice and snow. Heavier and more frequent snowfalls have resulted in a dramatic decrease in their population. Moreover, its cousins, the Gentoos and Chinstraps have ironically invaded their territory. But the lack of food has made all four stand at cross roads.

Since theory must always be backed by facts, listed below are some alarming figures, which have caused the wiping off of numerous penguin colonies.

#1.  In the Antarctic Peninsula temperatures have risen by 5 degree Celsius in the last 50 years. I know, you’re thinking that 50 years is a long time. But get back to reality and hope for added disaster by the time you retire.

#2. Since the temperatures have risen, the population of the Adelies’ has declined by almost 50 percent. It’s almost like the lives of half your own family is in jeopardy.

#3. Their cousin, the Chinstraps have begun to decrease by 30-66%, who in spite of the warmer, more suitable climate have been losing their young ones to lack of food.

#4. Globally, it has been assumed that, the earth will start to lose more than 1 million species of animals, starting from now till 2050. The penguins have started the count and the census will very well include us, Homo sapiens!

#5. It will not be a shock when summer, winter, spring and autumn are renamed because it has been estimated that the combination of climatic conditions on 10%-48% of the planet will have disappeared altogether!

In a situation which has now started to climb the peak of disaster in a manner as brisk as possible, ignoring it becomes a crime and implementing a basic action becomes a means of saving your own life. In hindsight, not just the penguins, but a thousand more species, both known and unknown, will constitute the book of extinction. Are we still waiting in the hope that the murderer is unarmed? Spare me the task of reminding you, because it’s high time that each one of us does this for ourselves.

Even though the child in me might not be able to have its “Rendezvous with Mumble”, I’d never want the little kid dying out herself.

Einstein while explaining his relativity theory of time gave the example of how one hour with a gorgeous woman seems like a second and a second at a boring conference seems like an hour. Similarly, a fifty minute lecture with a teacher can vary from seeming like two minutes to fifty hours and in the case of the latter, you are sitting in the class wishing desperately to get out but you cannot! Why? Because DU rules say that five per cent of your score is determined by your attendance. This rule compels so many of us to attend boring lectures where we have no interest in the subject or as is more common, where we are blessed with a wonderful teacher who manages to completely kill our interest in the subject. They say that this rule is necessary so that the teacher does not have to face an empty classroom. I find that attitude defeatist. At the age of 18 (when most of us enter college), do they really think that we have the wisdom to choose which MPs will govern us but not have the intelligence to decide which classes we must attend? As it is, we do not have too much choice regarding the subjects we wish to study in the Indian system. At least in college we should be able to assert our choice. The argument about no one attending classes if we do not have marks for it falls on its head when we look at what a truly great teacher can do. At a very famous DU college a professor’s classes are so famous that while he’s teaching even the window sills in the lecture room are filled with kids. People turn up even when they know they will get absolutely no marks for attending, so surely if the teaching standard is great students will turn up. On the other hand, if students attend classes just for the sake of marks but pay no attention in class, does that really help anyone at all? When teachers know that to avoid teaching empty classrooms they’d have to earn it, wouldn’t it raise the level of teaching? Doesn’t this give us an instrument of protest against bad teaching? If the authorities do decide to accord some respect to our ability to make our own choices they’ll realize for a fact that most students are in fact quite keen on actually learning and it will encourage a love for learning.

At the end of the day, keeping aside all debates on the efficiency of exams and the process of checking, aren’t our marks supposed to be a reflection of how deeply we understand the subject? Does attending a few lectures less than the other person really translate into having a deeper understanding? I doubt that. Doling out marks for attendance only limits our choices. And as an Economist has famously said, limiting my choices mostly limits my happiness.

For

Popular culture would have us believe that college life is one joyride with having fun being the only objective of students and studies being some vague entity they are hardly concerned with. Bunking classes in the higher interest of Chilling and contributing to the friendly neighbourhood chaatwala’s revenue is but natural and classrooms are there only to accommodate all the furniture. Most of us would like to believe in this romanticized version of college life and consider the attendance rule a major bubble-burster, but what we seem to be forgetting is that DU is an educational institution with teaching and learning being the primary aim and for this aim to be achieved, a few rules are necessary.

Let’s face it. If it weren’t for the lure of the 5 extra marks reserved for those with an attendance of 85% or more, most of us would definitely not have attended as many classes as we do presently. Though everyone grumbles about this regulation, they fail to realize that it is not a compulsion but an incentive. You have the freedom to bunk as many classes as you want without losing any marks at all. The university doesn’t punish those who fail to turn up for lectures, it only rewards those who do. I just don’t understand why anyone would have a problem with a rule that gives one extra marks merely for sitting around in classrooms.

Though 5 marks don’t seem like much right now, it can actually make a lot of difference in the larger scheme of things. 5 marks can convert a second division into a first, a fail into a pass, a commoner into a topper and so on. In short, five marks can make or break you. Instead of protesting against this ruling, students should be celebrating it and making the most of the opportunity. By imposing this regulation on us, the management is not curbing our rights, but broadening our scope to score marks. The rule, far from being a pain, is actually a blessing in disguise.

Admittedly, sitting under the fan in a classroom doesn’t really test any skill (except, perhaps one’s patience) and therefore deserves no extra marks. But in this way, the regulation is an equalizer. It cuts through all intellectual barriers, for once giving the average student the chance to score just as much the topper with sheer determination and well, endurance.

Summing up, the attendance rule is just a harmless, democratic tool to ensure that classrooms don’t remain empty and makes life a lot easier for the majority of us. It’s time we stopped objecting to every little rule and instead, start figuring out how to make them work us instead.

(This article has been equally contributed by Shraddha and Aina)

Happy Independence Day. Why day? Why happy? Most importantly why the Independence?

First and foremost, why must we celebrate an Independence DAY? Surely the massive struggle for Independence was not achieved in so insignificant and insulting a time as a day. It was a gut wrenchingly slow and dragging battle for which thousands of souls over far too many generations fought and died. It began from the first feelings of unrest among those suffering under the yoke of colonial oppression and continued till the last of the colonial overlords, wearied to the bone, finally took his leave of the land that had been to him successively a trading haven, a conquest, a property and a home.

Even if we do, in the impatience of contemporary life, choose to allot a mere day to acknowledge this monumental episode of our past, how can the complex emotions triggered by its memory be labeled by that grossly simplistic umbrella emotion: happy? It was a hard won independence, resulting as the result of a long drawn struggle, a world war, mutinies, marches and the silent protest of a nation wanting to exist. It inspired an utter cacophony of emotions. Feelings of relief, euphoria, thankfulness, bliss, bittersweet triumph and pure epiphany all swelled up when the realization dawned that this land was finally solidly ours. At the same time the joy was drenched in the sickening memories of partition, of violence which tore a country apart and the irreversible damage it wreaked. Will any amount of relief drown out the horror necessarily attached to the same historic incident? Surely the drowning cannot be so complete as to even leave behind an overall feeling of ‘happiness’ in its wake…

Finally, to tackle the issue of Independence: Why use such an uncompromising psychologically and socially relevant term to describe a historical victory? Our freedom from colonial rule was certainly a magnificent triumph leading to the re-assertion of our identity. However our country existed far before the British ever came seeking us. We have in turn been conquered and ruled by many invaders; most of whom got assimilated and became us while some were thrown back. Did we celebrate as Independence each little skirmish that led to an oppressive tribal chief, city chieftain or even king being ousted from power? However those fights won freedom too, highly valued by the victims in each case. Even today the struggle for independence is far from over. Whether it is a corrupt government, a negligent minister, an unfair law or even a tyrannical teacher, there will always be people trying to overpower us and deny us our rights. The fight against these oppressors can never cease as indeed our quest for finding new ways of defining and achieving freedom can never end.

Independence is a state of mind. It cannot be brought about unless every citizen truly feels free in our country. Perhaps when India can satisfactorily fulfill the needs of every person calling it home, protecting them and nurturing them, it will achieve that which is closest to ‘Independence with a capital I’- the selfsame one we so presumptuously celebrate each year.

However until that utopian ideal is achieved, let us be content with hoping that each one of us shall appreciate and acknowledge the multiple facets of one great historical achievement of our country, not an Independence but a more temporal albeit equally creditable struggle for freedom.

Here’s to a great victory!

With a decent number of colleges in the University into substantial and serious quizzing, competion here is fairly cut throat. Oxymoron eh?

A few noteworthy quiz clubs in the University are Quiz Club of St Stephen’s College, Illuminati of Hans Raj College, the Quiz Club of Lady Shri Ram College, Jigyasa of Miranda House, and Manthan of Hindu College and so on. Quiz societies such as these focus on quizzes at the university level, as also the inter university level. The quizzing scene in DU is vibrant in its own ways, to say the least, and more so during the festival season. Every academic session, the various quiz societies hold mock written quizzes to recruit the talented and intelligent. The best are inducted and initially trained at professional quizzing, and later on sent as representatives of their respective colleges. Very often, it’s a routine feature to be just venturing out to actually see how quizzing is conducted in the university. This is considered one of the best ways to learn.

Festivals are big in DU and quizzing is very much an active part of them. The annual fest of St Stephen’s College is called Quizzotica, which holds inter departmental, freshers’ quiz and the Stephen’s quiz during Harmony, their college fest. LSR has wall quizzes every week, as well as online quizzes put up on the college website every fortnight. Their inter college quiz Quirosity is a major hit in the quizzing circuit. Meanwhile Hans Raj’s society has Ipso Facto the general quiz and Izklaide, the entertainment quiz. A lot of other colleges like Hindu and Ramjas have their own brilliant teams and so the inter college competitions are a treat to watch, if not participate!

Want to be part of the college intelligentsia? Join your quiz soc now!

While conventional debating (the kind you did in school) involves a team with one person for and one person against an idea, Parliamentary Debating (PD) involves different teams with one team for and one team against an idea. A team can consist of two or three people (depending on the tournament) and teams typically fight in multiple preliminary rounds during a tournament, at the end of which the top 8 teams are selected to go into the quarter-finals.

PDs are different, not only because of their tournament style or the fact the one side will “win” but also because of the values involved. Your oratory ability is considered second to your points and adjudicators (who are also students and not the teachers or IAS officers you had in school) award the debate to the team that can best prove their case rather than the team that has the most fluent speaker.

While there are many Debating Societies that take part in PDs, there are many that don’t. Indeed, there are even colleges which don’t have Debsocs. Debsocs are vital, not only because of the network that allows you to be invited for PDs, but also because they provide the training that is crucial to winning.

The money in both conventional debating and PDs is good (although one has to be very good at PDs in order to win). In conventional debating, the writer’s records put the average prize at around Rs.900. Almost every department in every college in DU has their own festival which usually includes a debate. Therefore there are plenty of debates to take part in, especially during December. Most Debsocs that participate in PDs organize one or two every year.

Debsocs vary from college to college: some are very active and drill their juniors into shape, while others do not. In the end it depends on you college and priorities. Debating teaches one not only how to speak but also how to think logically about a situation and express one’s thoughts clearly, skills that will be of great use in the real world.

Inter and intra college writing talent is also inculcated through the medium of college magazines. Students often find a mode of self-expression via these magazines and journals. Some colleges like MirandaHouse and JMC even have a separate prize/scholarship for students who have shone exceptionally in this field.
Truly a writer at heart? Keep an eye out for Wordspill, DU Beat’s upcoming creative writing competition.

The t-shirt slogan splashed across the media waves certainly did not fail to catch the attention of the masses, the only major difference perhaps this time being that it did not have the right to be questioned. And with these words has finally risen the once oppressed society of the homosexuals, which has taken the first step to move away from physical, mental and societal seclusion to a real, more equal world; anonymous letters of complaint and blog posts having given way to pride parades and revealed identities, and shame to confidence.

Besides, the calling should have come to us much earlier, as Britain despite leaving a section of India under 160 years of hostility and subjugation legalized homosexuality in England and Wales way back in 1967. But all’s well that ends well… or does it?

A lot of people clearly haven’t taken the High Court’s decision to decriminalize homosexuality down too well, the factors ranging from religious to personal, some even claiming it to be an irrelevant issue altogether. To this, Aditi Jain, a second year student of Gargi College says, “Tell that to the many sexuality minorities who as victims of a hypocritical, half- baked law get beaten up, harassed and/ or humiliated by the society and authorities alike.” Also, the various historical texts in India seem to defy the cause of protests staged on religious and cultural fronts. As found in Same Sex Love in India: Readings from Literature and History by Ruth Vanita and Saleem Kidwai, formerly lecturers in Delhi University, evidences of homosexuality have been found in literature going back two thousand years into history, and traces of increasing homophobia were only seen after the nineteenth century as a result of the rising influence of colonial legacy and infliction of Victorian morality with the passing of anti-sodomy laws, one example being that of heterosexualisation of qawali poetry which till before colonisation also celebrated homoerotic love.

Times have certainly changed since then. However, fact remains that acceptance of the law and the community will still be limited to the metropolitans where the luxury of approval and retreat lies directly proportional to one’s resources, slowly evaporating as it permeates to still minor places where ignorance eclipses needs. Thus; the least we can do as conscious citizens is give everyone achance to lead a normal life, the normal way. As for the people who’re still finding it hard to swallow, the fact that the act is both legal and consensual leaves nothing to be disputed about.

Besides, jab miya miya raazi, toh kya karega qazi.

For some, Michael Jackson died a long time ago when his music stopped creating records and controversies was all that kept him in the spotlight. But for a large majority of people, he is alive still and will continue to live forevermore. Not only through TV and internet, but through throats raw from trying to produce that perfect “ow!” and through worn shoes that never quite managed to get the moon-walk right. MJ is not dead because stars never die. They twinkle at us when the nights get dark, their light fading only to glow brighter. We love you, MJ!