Fortunately or unfortunately, the films (especially, the Tamil counterparts!) which have college life as their main theme bring in strike as if a college life without a strike is incomplete! Announce strike for anything and everything you can! No election in college, strike! One student prohibited for writing exams, strike! No proper food in mess, strike! No facilities in college, strike! Scandal against an authority, strike!
And then, there will be four or five guys walking in heavy splash of rain around a corner with umbrellas protecting their skin while students will be shouting slogans getting wet! These guys will use a mike or whatever you call to maintain discipline! "Please call off your strike and go back to your classes else strict action will be taken! A group of student representatives can meet us and give your complaints and we shall look at it!" The students will not give up! They will shout without any amplifier but at the same pitch of that authority guy! "No, unless you fulfill our demands, we are not leaving this place!" Then suddenly, one can notice 3 or 4 vans full of police personnel entering the campus! One naughty guy in the crowd will do something eventually leading to charge!
Police will arrest students and now those four guys (Still in umbrellas though the rain has stopped) will support these students and announce "AN INDEFINITE CLOSURE" till a decision is made! The reopening date will be announced and there will be classes again! What is the result? A long period of holidays for students! Demands fulfilled! etc., etc.,
What this has to do with the current scenario? I too had that and I saw one yesterday! LTTE and SriLankan Government! Will our Government be just and stand against SriLanka President for its war and mass murders in 2009-10? Will Manmohan Singh announce Rajapakshe as a War Criminal? This has been the question nagging very few minds since the war. But now this is the question in every mind after the public witnessed that innocent face of Balachandran Prabhakaran! And that innocent face has provoked millions of people all around the world what thousands of decaying bodies did not! They are the Tamils and there is no surprise that Tamil Nadu people are much more agitated than others.
There started protests! Students form a major group of social society who react to the situations and so they joined the protests. Arts and science college students started this and 8 are on hunger strike. And yesterday my college, CEG (Anna University) witnessed a large number of students gathering in support of the Tamils in SriLanka!
Image: Harikrishna Raghuraman
Around 10 A.M. in the morning, I noticed a very few number of students sitting in front of our prestigious Red Building! A mere 100! But that replicated within afternoon. Around noon, there were 300-400 students and the multiplication continued. Around 2 P.M. around 1000 sat for strike! Police personnel (more than 15 vehicles and hundred police men and women) who have been outside the campus since Friday expecting a situation like this entered the campus! Press people started visiting the campus for the news and the number kept on increasing! The Dean and the VC requested the students to call off their strike but the students did not give in!
And this news spread like a wild fire! Many Engineering colleges had the same situation around afternoon and there came the cinematic announcement! Indefinite Closure for all the engineering colleges! I don’t wish to take a stand here! But I love their cause if it is a real social affection which made them sit under the hot sun! I loved their spirit and their patriotism, their broad-minded nature! I too went in and stood there for some time supporting those suffered and suffering people in our neighbouring country! But I left the campus after some time and the strike is still going on!
But this caused some undesired results! The hostel students were asked to vacate their rooms immediately! Boys before 8 P.M. yesterday night and Girls before 9 A.M. today morning! And all the major travel points, Central, Egmore, and CMBT witnessed a whole crowd of students starting to their home towns! Many students didn't get tickets and didn't have a place to spend their nights! One of my friends was in the same situation and I called him to my place for the night! Fortunately, he a got a bus ticket and safely ended up his place! Some headed to their relatives and acquaintances in and around Chennai!
And now I am at home typing this! I am not enjoying this holiday because this is not another festival or rain holiday! This is not even a holiday but a closure due to some justified cause! I have a request to all those who didn't participate in the protest today like me. This is a holiday, I know! But not a holiday to enjoy but a holiday to think in retrospect and in prospect! Give your voice for people like us who are suffering there!
