On Power

This week has seen me in the University bookstore almost every day. Independent Studies entail having to order books myself. It is a pain. Picking up books for my regular classes are almost...fun. In a portentous way, ofcourse. I found myself, just yesterday, looking at books selected by Professors for certain English classes and despite myself burst out laughing. It was remarkably comical, this circus of an exhibition. I could almost picture these Professors take out their selections from their sulfurous cupboards, wiping the dust off them with their sleeves and handing it to the secretary with a mad glint in their eyes. Yes, they must, they could subject their wards to an unending list of obscure literature. Obscure did I say?
A certain Professor seems to have a more discerning bend of mind and has included a Divakaruni (?...alright I do know her but have they exhausted all possible choices when it comes to World Literature or have they started assuming that all students in their classes are going to be like me and simply need to be brought in contact with bad literature so as to toughen us up) in her World Literature class. This was the same teacher, I am pretty sure, who insisted on telling us that one of the characters in Vikram Chandra's (yes) short story had a name-sake in Bollywood. I remember being so mortally frightened of being asked questions on Shahrukh Khan that I immediately started on how Vikram Chandra co-wrote the screenplay for a popular movie called Mission Kashmir and from there eased the class into a discussion of the then upcoming Academy Awards. I shan't get into that right now because I fear I digress too much. Yes, she had her mandatory Morrison too. There are others who have mandatory DeLillos and others who demand you buy Gaitskill. These Professors I call non du peres. For all his presumptuousness Lacan can be pretty useful. Which reminds me of one of my classes. I think I shall drop it for the DeLillo. Why? I was asked to buy a David Lodge. And also because his ugly bowties distract me awfully.
Oh, to be sixteen again and under the sway of Derrida. I should have just taken the advice of my senior school English teacher to heart and turned my nose up at Universities.
Well, Said had called it one of the last remaining utopias.


I also remember feeling slightly nauseous when I thought I saw Kite Runner in the English section. Fortunately it was in the Liberal Studies section. Fortunately. Ho hum.