Ten years down the line, looking back to these days, what will we remember? Countless memes on the internet foreshadow that 2020 would be a landmark year in future history textbooks and that we are living through historical events. Maybe, we are. But who is to say what actually makes history? 

I am not denying that the countless memorable events in the past year are historical. Instead, I am attempting to focus on how this history is being narrativized. Who are the people appearing in it? What are those names and dates that will come in History Tests to write short notes on?

Most of us will have different answers. What makes those answers different is our personal attribution to those specific events, dates, people, and our own individual experiences. Many of us are staunch followers of the social distancing protocol, some are vacationing, some face severe symptoms of the CoronaVirus, some don’t even feel that they have it, while millions are losing their lives. Some are still pondering new ways to work or study from home; many lost their jobs, while a majority were walking back to their hometowns just to not starve.

Our experiences of the previous year are layered with social, economic, psychological, cultural, and religious angles. And it’s highly unlikely that all our very different, individual, and emotional experiences would be remembered. Maybe a few memoirs make it through, a few exceptional pieces of writings, fictional or otherwise create a stir to emphasize the individuality of history. But, what always makes the cut is the collective history.

The epiphany of the fact that we all would end up being just numbers of statistical data used to research the long-lasting biological or economic effects of the pandemic makes one realize that even the history we study is marred with overshadowing of the collective over personal. It makes me wonder who were the countless and nameless ‘Yous’ and ‘Mes’ during the era of Independence, or how the lives of people were affected by the welcoming of the Indian Constitution in 1951. Everything – history and the process of its narrativization – is political. Our past, its idealization, the nostalgia of a greater or a more democratic, more traditional, more ‘Indian’ India, might as well be a shadow of an era full of countless people with their sufferings forgotten.

On 26^th January, the Indian population watches the parade, celebrates, and takes pride in the legacy of our Democracy and its Constitution. Maybe, this year after living through these countless ‘Historical Events’ we can understand that taking history on its prima facie is honestly a lie. History is refined. It is filtered and cleaned, which when looked upon with a magnifying glass reveals all its gaps and flaws. And let’s face it, only a handful of us try to make attempts to look at this history more closely and fill these gaps. The rest just sip a cup of chai, read obnoxious WhatsApp historical facts aloud like it is the Holy Bible, and take pride in chest-thumping nationalistic pledges, not realizing that, just like we are erasing a part of that past, we are simultaneously being erased in the future’s past.

Read also: An Epicureanist Appraisal of the Year Past- What I Learnt From 2020: Ignorance Can Be Bliss

Feature Image Credits: Fine Art America

Sakshi Arora 

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Delhi University released an official circular which makes it compulsory for colleges to hold online cultural fests.

On 16th January 2021, University of Delhi (DU) released an official circular on its website which stated that it was mandatory for all colleges to hold cultural fests online. The decision has come as a relief to a lot of students who were drowning in sadness because of COVID-19 that severely hampered the conduct of fests.

January-February every year marks the fest season in DU. All the colleges get illuminated with zeal, excitement and thrill. One usually encounters crowds everywhere with students moving from one college to another to attend consecutive fests. However, the pandemic seems to have entirely changed the fest landscape of DU. DU Beat spoke to a few students across DU via virtual means, to capture their reaction towards the latest DU decision.

“I feel that it’s absolutely a valid and welcoming decision. Although I completely stand by the fact that offline fests with food and artists whom you can see closely from stage can’t replace a virtual fest. I still applaud the fact that DU has tried to do something in the arena of entertainment for its students.”

Anonymous, student, Delhi University

The detailed notice of DU has outlined a couple of guidelines and general points that the students will have to follow while attending the online fests. One such outstanding instruction was that students would not be allowed to call their friends and gather in one place to watch the performance of artists. This has been supposedly done to avoid direct physical contacts. Similarly, the DU administration stated that the consumption of alcoholic beverages like whiskey, beer, etc. would be strictly prohibited.

To keep a check on the same, DU has made it mandatory for everyone to keep their cameras open. Students can only keep snacks or soft drinks with them while watching. As far as performances are concerned, DU hasn’t provided any clarity on the same. But reports suggest that all the regular artists like Guru Randhawa, Jass Manak, Zubin Nautiyal etc. would not be invited this time.

” As a 3rd-year student, I do welcome the decision of DU but I am still disappointed because this was our last fest season and I thought I would attend it with my friends. Moreover, the guidelines by DU are also quite strict and I am apprehensive as to how will I enjoy it if I can’t get together with my friends.”

Anonymous, student Delhi University

DU is currently working on fixing the logistical issues with regards to conducting the fest smoothly because apps like Zoom and Google Meet only have a fixed capacity to accommodate students. As per reports, the university has conveyed it to individual colleges to conduct the fests by combining 2-3 departments to accommodate all students.

Thus, only small scale artists would be invited this time, which in turn has proven to be a welcome change. This time however one would miss the Khan Chacha food stalls that one encountered in offline DU fests, or the antique item stalls that would be flooded by students. It’s absolutely thrilling to imagine the idea of an online fest and it would be more welcoming to see how successful DU becomes in making it a smooth sail.

Stay tuned with DU Beat for latest news about DU!

Disclaimer: Disclaimer: Bazinga is our weekly column of almost believable fake news. It is only to be appreciated and not accepted.

Read also: https://dubeat.com/2020/12/bazinga-du-to-reopen-colleges-for-next-semester/

Featured Image Credits: DU Beat Archives

Navneet Kaur

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Joking about our personal trauma has always been a preferred coping mechanism, but one that comes at a hefty cost. Read further to see how comedy becomes a cruelty.

People have always used dark humour to mitigate their suffering. On one hand, it’s a commendable effort. Jokes can potentially be a tool for opening up dialogue around difficult topics in a non-confrontational way. If you make a self-deprecating joke at the family dinner, nobody has to take it too seriously. People just let out a chuckle, pass the salt and move on. In that way, jokes can help people regain their agencies by allowing them to share pain without causing instant alarm to those around them. Jokes – at the cost of your pain – can actually be a breathing space, a port in a storm, a place of safekeeping. Who isn’t guilty of this?

I have used jokes to talk about uncomfortable topics. Problems with sexuality, eating disorders, death of a close friend, domestic toxicity, sexual assault – all of this hurt has been turned into comic matter at some point. When I present such weighty information as a throwaway joke, what it does is ease the tension for my audience and, in turn, myself. It defuses the glare of human suffering – one that can seem too straightforward to be bearable – and makes it so.

 “…if you slit your wrists while winking – does that make it a joke?” Hera Lindsay Bird asks in one of her poems. The question is this: How long can human pain be sold off as comic matter before it gets unavoidably cheapened, diminished, impossible to talk about without the suggestion of self-ridicule and inhuman nonchalance? How long before comedy becomes cruelty? In our time, it is an admittedly common tendency to stage mockeries of our pain. Or more simply, to humorize it. It seems to be a generational quirk, pooled by most Gen-Zs and late Millennials that generally unnerves anyone who is not classified in this core demographic.

But here’s the thing: when you continually joke about personal issues, it can eventually become difficult to give them a serious treatment. After a point, this can translate into interpersonal relationships where you don’t know how to console someone because you never did it for yourself. Always joking about stuff can make you anaesthetised to it, disallowing any possibility for sincere expression. This can attack one’s humanness – the very ability to connect through which one can subsequently manage their personal suffering.

David Foster Wallace, the American writer, talked about this exact lack of human sincerity in the postmodern era, where irony had overridden sincere expression. This has been effectively rendered in the 1975 – the British indie-pop band – song, Sincerity is Scary, where Matty Healy sings: And irony’s okay/I suppose culture is to blame, you try and mask your pain/In the most postmodern way’.  Of course, joking about your pain is a good thing, as discussed earlier, if channelled in moderation. But it rarely is. If you’re self-harming next to your friend and both of you laugh it off as a messed up quirk, is that funny? If your friend hasn’t had a full meal in six days, is her admittedly witty pun about anorexia still rib-tickling stuff?

Deriving cues from the dominant culture, people have, over time, adapted their own coping mechanisms, and have ways of dealing with their personal trauma. (This calls for a cultural/ideological shift more than individual reform.) We need to respect people’s boundaries and let them share their pain however they want, if at all. But at the same time, we need to let people know that there is a conceivable scenario where sensitive information may be disclosed without being reduced to comic substance. In an archived essay titled, ‘Traumatic Comedy and Comic Trauma’ on the website Rookie (read here), Bethany Rose Lamont talks about Hannah Gadsby’s Netflix special, Nanette, in the following words:

This work is a conscious contradiction of the comic, as Gadsby begins with typically self-deprecating jokes, follows them with a deconstruction of the art and entertainment worlds’ histories of abuse and oppression, then retells those same jokes as stories of trauma, then disavows comedy as a way to relieve audiences of the tension that accompanies hearing about someone else’s trauma, abuse, and oppression. She wants to stop rewriting her own history as a joke. She hopes the audience will feel her pain, not laugh at it. She concludes by arguing that “laughter is not our medicine. Stories hold our cure.

Maybe we can all benefit from being thoughtful storytellers of our pain, and not the ad-libbed comics we think we are. One must learn to treat their pain with openness, gradation, and subjectivity it very much deserves. I think, in the end, comedy does not necessarily make pain more comfortable – only somewhat laughable. But the gags choke out on their running time; the pangs, yet, go on.  After a point, you have to ask yourself – who’s laughing? So, I think the attempt should not be directed at humorizing our suffering, but rather humanizing it, and therein lies our recovery. But haha…. I’m jk… unless?

Read also: 

Featured Image Credits: Giphy

Sushrut Yadav

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This article attempts to explain the various mechanisms through which we develop or form an attitude that influences our behaviour.

In school, I never did well in Accounts. I always scored low and would constantly look for excuses to skip class. My teacher, on entering the class, would shut all doors and windows, throw punishments around like confetti, and bang the duster on the table very loudly. I didn’t like them. By the principle of association, I developed a dislike for the subject because I disliked the teacher. Thus, I associated the negative qualities of the teacher with the subject they taught.

Similarly, I’m sure you can think about one subject you always liked, just because you liked the teacher. The positive association will lead to a positive attitude and a negative association will lead to a negative attitude.

What are attitudes? Psychologists define attitude as a state of mind, a set of features, or thoughts about a subject that has an evaluative feature. They are lasting evaluations of various aspects of the social world that are stored in memory. This can include evaluations of people, issues, objects, or events. Such evaluations are often positive or negative, but they can also be uncertain.

This also plays out quite unmistakeably during election season in our country. Our attitudes are developed first, by associating cues and heuristics to a prominent figure and second, by associating the prominent figure to the party itself.

Here’s a hypothetical marketing strategy- link mass-appealing qualities (like honesty, ‘nationalism’, etc) to a particular person via media and advertising campaigns and make them the face of your party. Then, contest all elections on their name, such that the voters feel like they’re voting for that particular person, rather than the other candidates of the party.

At the same time, find a way to label and present your opponents as ‘corrupt’ or ‘anti-national’ and you’ve got a victory at your hands; because while it is tempting to think of attitudes as rigid, fully considered evaluations, that may not always be the case.

If an individual is praised or rewarded for exhibiting a particular attitude, chances are high that they may further develop it. Perhaps this why our religious inclinations are often the same as our parents’ because questioning certain practices are often viewed as stupidity or rebellion and not given much attention.

Reward or punishment increase or decrease the further development of an attitude. Consider this case- If a person involved in an open firing in a civil protest were to be given a party ticket, this would serve as a reward or positive reinforcement. This would encourage them to further develop and exhibit their hostile attitude. However, if they were to be fired and brought to justice, this would serve as a punishment and discourage them from further developing and exhibiting this attitude.

Sometimes, attitudes are developed by observing others being rewarded or punished for expressing thoughts or showing behaviour or a particular kind towards the subject. Per my previous example, rewarding the said person would encourage hostile attitudes in us, while punishing them would discourage it.

Over time, social norms may become a part of our social thinking patterns, in the form of attitude. A classic example here is that offering money, sweets, fruits, and flowers in a place of worship is normative behaviour in certain religions. When we see that such behaviour is socially accepted and approved, we may ultimately develop a positive attitude towards it and practice it ourselves. We can also develop a positive attitude towards those who practice such behaviour.

For example, we have been taught that feeding the hungry is an appreciable virtue. Thus, we often find our leaders tweeting and Instagramming their ‘lunch with the poor’ photos. Now, change the narrative here to: give a man a fish, and you’ll feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you’ve fed him for a lifetime; you will find the same leaders criticizing their opposition for doing what had previously done. Here, the issue isn’t about who is right and who is wrong. What you need to look at here is how narratives based on a target audience are formulated to influence their attitude formation.

Many attitudes are learned in a social context individually, i.e., without the necessary physical presence of the others. Huge amounts of information provided through various mediums lead to the formation of both positive and negative attitudes. Remember the fake news phenomenon and how it has blurred the lines between propaganda and information?

From discrediting political leaders to misreporting historical facts to promoting biases, the fake news creators have done it all. If your best friend tells you that her neighbour is a mean person, you are most likely to believe this information without fact-checking. Thus, you will develop a negative attitude towards the neighbour. Now, imagine this situation magnified to a worldwide scale. How often do we care enough to fact check before forming opinions and attitudes?

But why do we develop certain attitudes? According to Firebrand Marketing- “Researchers have suggested that attitudes form for four primary reasons:

Utilitarian-

We tend to form positive attitudes towards things that lead to perceived gains and negative attitudes to things we perceive as a loss. “I like sushi because it’s healthy; I don’t like soda since it’s fattening and rots my teeth.”

Knowledge –

Attitudes help us make sense of the world around us by giving us a framework to evaluate it. So, in our store example above, when faced with lots of shops to choose from, we orient towards the one we had a good experience before.

Value-Expressive –

We form attitudes that reflect our values or which reflect those of our social set. “Sporty tech adopters like me wear Apple Watches, therefore I like Apple Watches.” Of note here is that we may actually have no personal experience of Apple Watches or even really like them, but because they reflect the attitudes of our peer group, we adopt the same view.

Ego-Defensive –

We adopt an attitude to save ourselves from anything which threatens our ego or sense of self-worth. “Sporty Apple-Watch-wearing tech adopters like me don’t eat at Taco Bell or shop in K-Mart.” It just doesn’t fit our self-image so we form an attitude against those brands even though we may have no experience of them.”

Once formed, these attitudes influence our behaviour. They can also make it easy to predict our behaviour. Marketers have used these principles to positively influence our attitudes towards their products and services. If we understand how and why our attitudes develop, we can avoid this influence and the subsequent trap it might lead us to.

Read also: https://dubeat.com/2016/04/difference-in-attitudes-towards-exams-during-various-semesters/

Featured Image Credits: Creative Bloq

Featured Image Caption: Huge amounts of information provided through various mediums lead to the formation of both positive and negative attitudes.

Kashvi Raj Singh

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Girls accounted for nearly 292 out of the 528 students who took admissions under the sports quota at Delhi University but chose to drop their seats due to the lack of hostel accommodation in Delhi. The matter draws our attention to many impediments to women’s higher education.

Near the close of the University’s official admissions season in late December, the administration officials discovered that 528 of the total number of students selected for sports-based admissions had failed to deposit fees and confirm their registrations. Many informed the University that their decision was born out of uncertainty with regard to hostel accommodations. Since 292 of such applicants were girls, the larger issue of women’s higher education being fraught with obstacles is brought to light.

“We found that of the 528 applicants who did not pay the fees, 292 were girls. These are applicants, who despite the approvals given by the principals and college admission committees, after the allocation of courses and institutions, didn’t confirm their admissions by paying the fees. So, these seats are now vacant and need to be filled.”  – Pankaj Sinha, Chairperson of DU Sports Council

It comes as no surprise that a dearth of hostels at the University is clamping down upon the merit of so many girl students. The thought of off-campus accommodation in a city like Delhi invoked fear and is expensive as well. When added to the social pressure of ‘saving’ the money that could be ‘wasted’ on a girl child’s education, one can see the complete scope of the problem raised by these dropped admissions.

“When we spoke to some of these students and their parents, we were told that they weren’t keen (on admissions) after they found accommodation in Delhi a major concern since there weren’t hostel facilities available for them.” – Pankaj Sinha, Chairperson of DU Sports Council

As Mr. Pankaj Sinha correctly observed- vacancies of such a nature would attract negative publicity for the University, and “greater scrutiny by the government agencies, the public, and the media.” As such, the Chairman has urged the University to release the third list and fill the remaining seats immediately. The third list won’t be open to those who had applied in the previous two lists but failed to make good on confirmation of their admission. It came out on 4^th January 2021.

“We will issue a new list with a fresh set of students. Currently, I am asking colleges to send me their seat matrix to see how many vacancies there are. We will allot seats in colleges to students as per their preference.” – Pankaj Sinha, Chairperson of DU Sports Council

What becomes exigent is a revamp of hostel facilities by the University. Allocation of funds to building more hostels, as well as improvement of existing infrastructure, will go a long way towards the golden futures of female aspirants. Special education drives aimed at educating the aspirant’s parents on the necessity of higher education for the girl child will also have a role to play. These measures, however, seem much lower on the University’s list of concerns for now.

The Sports Council, meanwhile emphasized how the entire process was made successful with ‘zero-contact’ and ‘without any human intervention’,  in the wake of a global pandemic. The procedure was relegated to the sphere of software specially designed for admissions. No interference, except occasional scrutiny of the machinery, on part of the administration, marked the duration of college and course allotment in a year that proved to be a major obstacle course for the University.

Feature image credit : Parveen Negi

Samya Verma

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