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Where have all the glow worms gone?
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Spectacles such as starry nights and glow worms that defined the IISc campus are fast fading... with it the idealist generation of shapeless kurtas and faded jeans.
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SOMETIME AROUND 2000, that's when it started — the wrong feeling. There would be this clutch of guys, all old-timers, at the Indian Institute of Science, and one of them would go: "You know, this place is getting different. Too much noise... too many buildings... " And the others would all nod, and keep up their nostalgic trip on what a serene place IISc used to be.
IISc is full of trees, birds and shady little corners... but things have been changing. You'd walk along a nice wooded avenue and suddenly, you'd be startled by a building there that didn't exist a week ago. These buildings sprout, faster than the plants. Takes time getting used to it.
This particular bunch of guys, hanging around the canteen, they've been long-timers here. IISc isn't just a research institute. It is Walden, a lung space. So these guys make it a point to be there as often as they can. And they leave the City behind when they enter the gates of the institute.
It breeds a culture, this IISc ambience. The hotspot was the "Tea Kiosk", which was a two-room canteen that offered you tea, coffee, and a few pastries. The seating was sparse, just a few stone benches among the trees. The place got pretty dark after sunset, but everybody liked it better that way.
The students coming around to the kiosk... well, they had the IISc-intellectual seal stamped all over them. They wore thick glasses, kurtas and faded jeans, Kolhapuri chappals, and smoked and drank a lot of tea and they would sit in pairs on the stone benches. They walked sloppily and their eyes looked hazy. But they wouldn't hang around very long. They had to get back to their computers and microscopes. Not this bunch of long-timers, however.
A couple of these guys were on projects, and some of the others were from around the place. It was the mid-90s and there was a lot of stuff floating around in their minds. They talked Ayn Rand and Richard Bach and Schrodinger and Heisenberg and Robert Pirsig and Einstein. They talked about alternative worlds and virtual particles and selfish genes. They believed the world was rigged against them and they needed to gear up for the Big Fight. They felt strongly against "brain drain" and leaving for foreign lands. Somehow, the ambience used to breed such anti-materialistic thoughts. The people on campus were those aspiring for the "higher things", which was why they hadn't sold out to the MNCs for six-or-seven-figure salaries. You were an idealist if you were at IISc. That was understood. So our bunch joked about the City slickers, those poor devils who were forever chained to their cars and cell phones and credit cards. Those sissies, who wore starched clothes and patent leather shoes. What would they know of the rarefied atmosphere at the higher levels?
Oh, it was good, this righteous feeling. They all felt high. No materialistic warble! Just the higher things — literature, music (only rock, no sissy pop!), philosophy, physics... It would get surreal at times... like on some dark nights, a couple of the gang would be walking along and they would see floating lights all over the place... glow worms. There would be thousands of them, all doing some kind of weird tango, and the boys would stare at them, transfixed. The first time they noticed IISc was changing was when the kiosk was broken down. An alternative one was put up a short distance away, but this new one was... too convenient. And comfortable. Plenty of chairs and tables, so one wouldn't have to sit on the pavement, like at the old kiosk. And the menu... well, you took a lot of time to decide what to eat, there were so many things to choose from. Soon, families began pouring in. That was a laugh and a half. The old kiosk was so badly lit up, had such a bare menu, older people probably dreaded coming around. The new ambience somehow erased those misanthropes, the kurta-jeans types. The new folks coming in... no more shapeless old kurtas and torn jeans. They came in crowds, in their cargos and chinos and tight shirts and well-sculpted bodies. They were all clean-shaven and strode in confidently and perched there. And no, you couldn't catch anyone smoking. And somehow... people would sit around for hours. They didn't seem to have anything else to do. Just sit and eat and talk under the bright lights. It baffled our old-timers.
What's happening to research, they wondered. This doesn't seem right... but there was the rest of the place, at least. Their favourite spot was a kilometre-long stretch, which was shaded and overflowing with vegetation, lots of dense trees and thorny shrubs and high grass. It was probably a part of the jungle that had been there before the campus came up. Our boys weren't what you'd call environmentalists, but they liked the trees and silence. They would even come up with weird thoughts on trees... like this guy Roshan, who had long hair and a beer belly and always turned up in a torn T-shirt and bermudas and a guitar... "I was talking to this friend," he would say, "and he told me the mind requires oxygen like the rest of the body... you know... and our minds aren't getting enough oxygen, and that's why there is crime and stress in the City."
And another of the gang, Krish, would take up his favourite theory about trees. "Did you know that aborigines believe trees can be used as transmitters of thought?" And the rest of the guys would groove over that. No idea was taboo. Somehow they felt IISc offered them protection from the outside world. It became their world. There was this guy, "Vaguey", who was paranoid about lights. He felt the City was taking the religious books too seriously (about "spreading the light") and he was sick of the light beams on the road, the glare from his computer, the harsh neon of the streets. He would rush to IISc on his off-days and walk around in the darkest places. "Darkness is soothing to the mind," he would say. There was one place where he could see the stars and the moon. The sky hadn't turned orange yet, from all "light pollution" in the City.
Lately, of course, spectacles such as the starry nights and glow-worms had been few. The glow-worms had mostly disappeared; the feeling was that the buildings and lights had driven them away. The crows remained, of course. The crows, all inhabiting the upper terrain along the avenues, were the most raucous feature of IISc. They would all start cackling in the evenings, and the white stuff would rain in from above. Our boys, walking along those roads, would wonder if the crows were doing it deliberately... aiming for the most grumpy blokes who came ambling down that road ("Hey, Jack! I got the physics prof!"). Then they would wonder at the probability factors of avoiding a "bird-hit"... maybe some maths whiz at IISc could do a project on that one...Then, suddenly, inevitably, they saw their "trekking spot" enclosed in corrugated sheets and some feverish activity going on. One of them peeked in. Trucks, bulldozers, excavation. More buildings, apparently. "Why, why, why, why?" asked Krish when he heard of it. He meant it when he said "Why?" What he didn't say was: Where do we go now?
DEV S. SUKUMAR
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Bangalore
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