There is, of course, this assumption in such questions faced by the ad hoc faculty that they will be appointed where they belong. This is a cruel sport. (Express Photo)
The suicide of Samarveer, a lecturer at DU, points to the tragedy of the ad hoc teacher
Written by Chaity Das
May 9, 2023 07:05 IST
Dear Samarveer
I learnt of your death from a WhatsApp message in my college Staff Association group. As a species, like we congratulate for achievements, we also condole for loss. In any case, this will be a long summer of felicitations and sympathies. Since you are beyond the reach of these messages and all our noble sentiments now, I decided to persist in the folly by writing you a letter.
First, I do not belong to the ad hoc subspecies. I am a permanent teacher. For years, these terms have become metaphors with a certain instability of reference. “Ad hoc” in our vocabulary means a lowering of the eyes, a twist in the heart, a shudder that goes down to the stomach. At times, an eagerness to please since no one can survive a resentful silence for very long. It also fundamentally alters one’s vision of the world and one’s place in it. Did you experience the same exploitation in an institution of higher learning which you had once thought only education could mitigate? Unkind cuts from learned colleagues? Did no one laugh at your naivete? Did you laugh at the human comedy you saw? Did you try to explain it theoretically, sociologically and try to rescue your passion from the abyss of failure?
It broke your heart.
You worked for 6 years; I have worked for 16. We both started at the same age. You chose philosophy, I literature. When I read the WhatsApp message on our Staff Association group, I was attending rituals for my aunt who had lived to be 82 and died like a child, laughing and dancing, not knowing she had once been a mother and a grandmother. After the rituals for the dead were over, I mentioned your passing away. People wanted to know about displacements and appointments. Some said, Oh! The young these days lack mental strength! A man I met there, who works with a Construction Company, said: “If you ask me, what is happening is good. It is restoration of balance. Our universities have to be repaired”. Now, Samarveer, your demise isn’t inconsequential. You are collateral damage. It must be a very big deal if the dust of the immense forces of history has touched you.
I tried to look at your death through his eyes. I tried to look at your suicide through the prisms of our many loyalties and ideologies. What did they offer to youngsters who chose this profession from an array of other alternatives? After a long hiatus, appointments began. The stakes were very, very high. Colleagues in various colleges now regularly talk about two-minute interviews.
—Why did you feel the need to come here? Isn’t your college conducting interviews?
There is of course this assumption in such questions faced by the ad hoc faculty that they will be appointed where they belong. This is a cruel sport.
Samarveer, do you see what I see? You have snatched our masks and run away with childlike abandon. Those who appoint teachers have a simple yet hard ethical duty. To be not arbiters of destinies nor cogs in wheels but facilitators chosen for their ability to think without prejudices. To identify persons with a spark, a light in the eyes that tells them that they will love what they do, from whom students enkindle their own lives and pass it on to society. When appointments are stalled for so long, human dignity is in shreds. We have fed on the fallen for too long.
If the fish’s eye is the most disadvantaged student, then the whole process may be seen as an opportunity. It wouldn’t be picture-perfect. Samarveer, how can ad hoc teacher explain her displacement if she has given all of her in the classroom and to the institution over the years? Perhaps if you had known that you lost in a level playing field you would have not let despair win. You were born to be a war-hero. Shall we call you a martyr, Samarveer?
You know Samarveer, if you had ever come to my college, you would have crossed the statue of the Goddess Saraswati, the Buddha and a framed photograph of Ambedkar on your way up the stairs to the Staff Room and the main teaching block. For a week or so, they will hear your name, watch us go up and down, up and down. They have been silent for ages now in our epoch of ventriloquism.
Tomorrow, we might know of other reasons for which you took this extreme step. Indeed, we need those now to absolve ourselves, to look at each other without embarrassment. I think of your students. Once they may have wanted to be like you. Today, they will be scared to make choices that lead them to this profession. As for others like us (permanent, ad hoc, permanently ad hoc, guest, and fill in the blanks) who have no links but the spirits and ghosts of this surreal world, tomorrow morning we will reach our classroom, share our night’s toils, look our students in the eye and see the home we have made there.
And find peace, Dear Colleague.
The writer is Associate Professor, Kalindi College
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