stories beyond the classrooms

Kaleidoscope like everyone else in the industry of dissemination of knowledge knows that their clients are hooked in their smartphones. So, how about doing an experiment with their smartphones to create something new?

Kaleidoscope told his otherwise inattentive students to take photos of interesting things and post it in Instagram along with a few lines describing the story behind it, with a hashtag #apjanthro22. This is a funny way of preparing them for the fieldwork which they will undertake in the next semester. It will definitely enhance their observation and writing skills. #apjanthro22 is booming and kaleidoscope cannot help sharing their excellent narration and photography skills!

While it was an assignment for the fifth semester students, third semester is also joining in!

Reclaiming space - Built-in exclusivity and the rebels

Ignoring and avoiding the past is a tendency that often engulfs the people who have successfully 'climbed up the stairs'. This is most conspicuosly manifested in the spatial arrangements of the late capital built in spaces. The first among those in rhe city of Kolkata happened to be the shopping malls and gated communities. These are often built on poor performing and locked down factory sites. Like Kaleidoscope saw that the South city was built on erstwhile USHA factory. One of the workers stayed back in the middle of rubbles, and earned by working as a bus conductor. His protest was too small to be heard, his body was found mysteriously beside a road. No one knows what happened to his family. Kaleidoscope has had his brief experience in South city mall, attended programmes at the post residential complex nearby and like everyone else he too has forgotten the story of the bus conductor. 

Diamond plaza, pantaloons, quest are all success stories of conversion from places of production to spaces of consumption. 

New town, the extension of shopping mall, built on the country lands is perhaps showing every symptom of the othering process. While the residents are demanding more and more exclusivity from the rest of the world, the so called natives curve out a variety of places and transform it on their own. Kaleidpscope has seen cows and buffalos are grazing on the neatly kept lawns, people occupying such lawns and hawkers making quick sales. 

As water is a great leveler, so during a spell of rain kids started playing football on the park where gralss lawns were supposedly representing aristrocacy. 

Absent trace and forest - an intimate story

Twilight, cloud and a mysterious forest  can make things even. As the forest canopy, hundreds of years old trees carrying old memories opened up the old souls wake up. What makes them standing tall, geometrically super proportionate, against the gravitation? Instinct! The increasing demand of the sunkiss that makes life worth living. The clouds laugh out and engulfed Kaleidoscope once and for all. Yes, love demands privacy, it was the intimate moment of whispering winds, foggy cloud and the neverending longing for the home - nostalgia. Kaleidoscope thought of shouting out the name of his love to see if it echoes back! The forest stops him immediately. Demanding an intimate search for the soul in soul, hand in hand. Kaleidoscope made love with the absent trace, the nostalgia with a belief that someone somewhere is also longing to become one once and for all. The forest will remember the absent trace and longing for the lost connection and cravings. 

of matters Time, when you make love

It is the meeting and melting point of day and night that make people realise how fast time runs, kaleidoscope! The half finished tea cup said. It was a windy late spring afternoon and as slowly darkness started to spread its tentacles, Kaleidoscope knew its time to rethink time. Is it the fast moving Sun that makes people realise that time runs fast? No! Kaleidoscope exclaimed! 

Time runs fast when you hold hand of the person you love the most. Time speeds up when you forget everything else and make love. A liminal day only brings night, as the tea turns towards the soda! 

A Destination nowhere or a time travel

It is their turn to meltdown as the entire city attempts to engulf a small cab. It should be the yellow one, Kaleidoscope thought. What would be best way to end an wonderful day as the love struck romeo and his princess had surreal hours of togetherness. You are not the author, or are you, Kaleido? - The city asks him. Kaleidoscope didn't know what to say as he saw the princess was already melting down in the warmth of the space where she sat for the last few hours. She is beautiful and she shouldn't just leave the Romeo now, not in this way, thought Kaleido. But he is not the author, or is he?

They hurriedly left, as the love-struck Romeo was already bridging the boundaries between the possible, impossible and beyond, between the known and the unknown, limits and beyond. Would they go for a smoke now? Would they walk through the alleyways where the neon lights, streetlamps and trees were busy making a twilight? Would they wonder as the city was preparing for a more mesmerizing hours? 

Yes Kaleidoscope is not the author. Ah! a yellow taxi. City is writing the rest of story, Kaleido thought. 

So an impossible journey begins. A journey that doesn't have a destination. Nothing to achieve, nowhere to go, Princess and Romeo were melting down inside as the yellow taxi directed by the city itself move passed through the city traffic and neon lights. They were rather quick to become one and a frozen moment was created. They reached nowhere in time, yet they moved through the space, only the frozen moment remained like an absent trace that lingers. Thousands of these absent traces in-scripted by the city itself make up the city, a beautiful love affair. Kaleidoscope knew he is not the author.  

Emptiness and love affairs - the absent trace

 Kaleidoscope with his endless succession of depthless presents embraces an empty signifier the whole wide world likes to call as love. Love, to be loved is often a longing for a home that never exists. Indeed this empty signifier makes love ever more coveted. Kaleidoscope like his fellow countrymen aims at attaching love with person, objects and over and above everything fleeting realities. 

... and then against all the odds, love arrives, in its purest and tender form, like a neverending storm. Is this home? Asks Kaleido? Home? what is a home? does it exist beyond the moment in which Kaleidoscope immerses and finds himself. One kiss, one touch, one moment of holding hands, touching fingers and looking at the person, while everything else melts down. Is this going to last forever? 

What is the forever? Why Kaleidoscope is so enamored with permanency when the entire world is becoming more transient and mirrored? In the heart of the built in city, Kaleidoscope notices the buildings only have the foundations, the rest is glassy. Glassy! yes, non-permanent, transparent and again fleeting. What if the mirror breaks down?

What if the mirror breaks down? Kaleidoscope looks at the ceiling of the his favourite joints, they are all black! Why black? Because no one looks at them? Who says no one? he was looking to find  out post-office red painted water pipes, what if there is a fire? also the AC ducts hanging naked! Werent they supposed to wear a proper false ceiling. 

False ceiling? False and ceiling, where is the true ceiling then? Well its painted black, invisible! 

Kaleidoscope kisses everything that he feels like permanent, loneliness, emptiness, fleeting signifires, black ceilings, even if they are invisible, even if they are leaving an absent trace. 

Kaleoscope decides to seek the fleeting and empty signifiers for the rest of his life, be it dark, be it dampy, be it moist and full of tears, Kaleidscope still believes in love affairs.  

disciplining, anarchy and the broken dreams

Just an weekend approaching when the entire world is trying to make things different. Christmas some call it, some find it in the new year, some find it in their birthdays. Making out extraordinary from people's otherwise regular disciplined lives. Kaliedoscope thought of giving a benefit of doubt about his fellow planetmates, yes they need a reason to celebrate, they need an occassion to to go beyond the disciplinary boundaries. Only once may be, or a few times in a year.

So, the not so classy people have Biswakarma, a bit classy has the Kalipuja, and the superclassy has the Christmas and New year parties. 

So kaleidoscope's beloved government gives a discount in the night curfew, thought Kaliedoscope with his critical self intact. However, in the midnight, it's kaleidoscope opening up himself to the world, embracing all the the disciplinings and the challenges he thought he was making in his everyday life. Therefore kaleidoscope too looks half faced, half dark in his deadly combination of punishing self and the disciplinings. 

In sum CHEERS.