Absurd reasoning : Absurd of B.R.C.A.
(Based on Albert Camus´ notion of Absurd)

´´What you feel in replication to your emotions are they themselves. ´´

If we scrutinize and study a little into depths we find that absurd in existentialist philosophy has its meanings, favourisms and rejections, and i find Albert Camus´ idea of absurd as most apropos to the situation. But the flow of the river is still not that easy to follow, as in context of RCA the things fold their own way, which pertinently requires that, the way we experience things needs to be revisited and retold yet we accept that the the basic texture of their clothes remains the same, despite a lot of literary dyes being applied.

Any reason regardless of fact to which it belongs, needs food on which it burgeons and hence entails us to think with and sometimes beyond logic, thus performing an analysis and giving conclusions. Reasons to analyze this absurd of RCA are the reasons not very uncommon to all of us. They follow the unkown, sudden and irrational feelings of frustration, confusion and dissatisfaction, which encircle all of us, sometime or the other, during and after an event regardless of the performance and regardless of the result!

Let us not deviate more and more and instead arrive straight to the business. All events, their announcement, preperation, competition, performance, and aftereffects, i.e. the whole meat in the kernel, makes us to go through a very different experience. Think why the non-comps are favourites among the masses, and i am assured the prizes are not the only reason. This competition, i have realised is the necessary evil, and its fecundity is at par with the pain it can impart to the souls. Sans competition, sans quality of RCA, but like the side effects of a medicine the pain is always there. Yes everybody feels the pain, some with a smile, some with curbed hatred. The agony during the whole process, the urge to win, the urge to be a best, the urge to put up a nice show, or even the urge to give in to the complusion of sending an entry in the event, all these demand with time and energy, a lot of pain and blood, either you take pains while preparing, or in performance, or both times, but that needle cannot be just left in the corner, it hits you again and again, each day, each minute. All these events which exchange a lot of pain with us make us to realise the very absurdity of them and of this RCA.

A genuine scenario at many occasions, when u r going back to the practice session after a break, and u see a guy filling water bottles at hostel tap at 9.30 PM, you imagine, he will go and sleep afterwards or may be study a little and sleep but definitly within an hour, or on other hand he may go and watch a movie he has just downloaded from DC, or he would just spend the time talking, that is, the whole night is at his own disposal whereas you dont even know when you will get to see the bed, but you are always sure definitly not before 3.00 AM. and especially when in first year you never even have iota of an idea. And you know he will get up in the morning, will take a bath, get ready while whistling, take his breakfast in mess, read a newspaper in common room and will go to institute in the bus and you might or for sure bunk the morning, getting up at 1.30 or 2.00 missing lunch, going to sassi or ordering food from outside, and while having that food you will then discuss how like the past 5 days, today you have again missed the morning and maybe the first class of the afternoon, and the same will go for the next few days till the event. But you are proud that it is still not a big deal for you, and your aims are still high.

´How routined!´, or some other similar attribute you attach to him while u see him filling up his bottles while you are still thirsty. You march ahead as you give him a smile, and exchange formalities with him, sometimes teasing him. And as you move past him to your destination, you try finding a mistake in him, something wrong in this schedule of his and you delibrately try making some reasons, some defences to sooth your mind, to tell it that in any case the final conclusion is that you are right and he is worng, somehow, to consolidate which you simply laugh at him, a hollow laugh. Sometimes you imagine competing with and defeating him in an interview just because you will be super-confident there, you are culturally active and he, a routined dumbo, sleeps before 11 at night, or he watches movies and all, nothing for him to write in extra-co section in resume, will be rejected somehow, someway. This might be sounding comic but is the bare reality. Then you either reach your place or get distracted to forget the whole issue for the time being, but there are a times when you just stop and realise, that nothing is wrong with him, and nothing is either wrong in what you will be doing for next 4 hours, and then you ask yourself, a simple - although difficult to answer - question, for what important task do u miss the comfort, the relaxation, the joy of a whole night freedom, and even if you go for a night-out movie and that bunking classes and all, its just a give and take after all, but why doing that just because you practiced for some event at night? And then what strikes you is, that you are doing that not for creativity, because creativity is never forced, you are doing that for the event, for the hostel, for the RCA, you are doing that because it has to be done, you are the one to do it, not he, he is here to enjoy only, at just that instant your heart screams, shouts and hurls a lots of whys at your cognition but your brain, initially trying to reason out, is speechless, no answers, no explanations and no words even coming out to sooth you, this conflict. this feeling of unanswerability is the absurd.

One commonly experinced state just after the event is the state of decompression, feeling odd and empty all the time, little sad may be. Even in case of best of one´s performances, i.e. the prize winning ones, during the whole procedure, i.e. the performance, after it, the applause, the cheering, the clapping, and while results are announced, declaring one´s hostel as best or one of the winners, one as a performer is in a state of temporary trance, he feels nothing, joy or sorrow, just a scary relief, a fearful calm, he is afraid that he might not have to go again through what he has just gone through in last few days. He prays that everything is finally over and he finds it is, and sometimes in a very painful yet relieving way. He leaves the semhall or convo like everybody does, sometimes carrying some chairs or tables, things delibratly with him, to show that even after such a nice show he is still humble, but anyone hardly notices, then back in hostel, in a meeting a few people bang the tables for you and a guardian of RCA makes you aware of the fact that your contribution will enlighten the hostel for many millenia to come, then you are invited to say few words, and you do that in the same fashion as they do in patriotic hindi movies, which you make fun of while watching, only difference there is that you dont have the mud of your hostel´s lawn to smear on your forehead. Again a lot of bangs cheers as you finish the adrenaline rush monologue, final cheerings for mother-hostel and you are out of there. Treat sometimes follows, where the event is supposed to be discussed, sometimes made fun of, you start re-living those moments till the order comes and the vegi and non-vegi divide rules over the event discussions and you are lost in the hunger of people who are fed up of iit mess food, you feel like a fool. Finally when the star performer of the evening is back in the wing, and hears the loud noises of AOE and people shouting, ´join kar lo´, and all that, he finds some people trying to install some new software into their computer, and foolishly laughing over something petty, and some are walking briskly with A4 sheets in their hands, some sitting in rooms discussing the quiz, which is to be held next morning. You try finding on their faces the same joy, which you saw just a few minutes back on the faces of cheering people, the guardians of RCA and may be some temporary enthusiasts. There are some of them who do bother to ask you when is your event and when you tell them it was today, they ask the result and congratulate you there and then and then move ahead praising your talent and recreation. Finally you come to your room, where you meet the neighbourhood guy who might have distantly heard that you got something in some event, but you now are not in a mood to discuss that, you discuss birds and bees with him, he jokes and asks if you impressed some girls with your performance, you try to laugh sarcastically and enter your room, where your lonley bed innocuously awaits you. You lie on your bed and you think, where you erred in performance, what the judges said, peoples reaction, and a lots of clippings playing again and again in the vlc of your mind, you think of the whole evening that just passed by, but then you think of the complex mesh of the assignments, quizzes, prac reports and may be minors lurking over your head like a sword hung by a thread which is getting burned by a candle, and to cheat yourself by being confident is very difficult now, when the ghost of the event has been exorcised by its culmination.

The next day at the breakfast table you oddy enough you feel same as other 100s in the hostel, may be you smile if you see a fellow performer of last night, but then he runs with his people to the class, with a blue register in his hand, and when you reach the LT, you see class room after a long time, you see all last night horrors coming true, some people still congratulating, you are reminded of your rare achievement, but that provides no relief, as you are in all aspects may be fed up of that event. Next 4-5 days you are clueless so as what to do, you spend most of the time lying in your bed, not sleeping but hiding from the world, as there is something within you which you are not able to comprehend, you live in past- in that evening enjoying your 3 seconds of fame and also in future, as you know what lies next is no less tragic then what you have been through, that now you are already thrashed in the race, and your fellows and friends have long submitted the reports that you have to copy in coming days, or you end up screwing one or two quizzes and amongst all these experiences you stop to ask yourself, a simple question, was that worth it? So much pain, so much suffering, you did that for creativity? No, may be for learning some miserable form of time management, because creativity never yielded so complex emotions and results, creativity in its most grabled forms is manifest and decipherable, then why are you not able to decipher the outcome of the event, why are you not able to decide the whole reason of your doing. You are like a lunatic, who roams in a desert, and runs behind the mirage, only to find it false everytime, you keep on living in past and future and your present laughs at you when you look at mirror, while you shave a little over-grown beard. This feeling of confusion, this living out of present, this unabality to decipher the reason of your deed, this is the absurd.

And to our sudden surprise, this was the brighter side of moon, what if the cigarette is smoked till it is burned to the fliter, what if you lost? The evening is for sure ruined, but u r relieved that it was atleast over. Nothing much, but some senior will say, ´a gaye haar ke´ as soon as you enter the hostel, and you smile outside and frown inside. When you open messenger, some guy who dislikes you may have send you a teasing offliner about the evening´s results, and again the same wing, AOE sounds and those guys meeting you, just now they provide a consolation instead of congratulation, after which you simply hate them for that, and you shut yourself in the room, not even answering the occasional knocks.

Despite all these horrors bugging you, i would assert that this is best of the above said scenarios. Victory and defeat, both in themselves are meaningless, but defeat has certain qualities which the victory miserably lacks. Defeat provokes some for a revenge and pushes some to dungeons of reluctance and sulk, where they opt for the cultural suicide, but defeat definitly entails your cognition to think hard and hard until you realize the mistakes in your recreation, or you reach a point where you realise it wasnt what you thought it to be, and then it depends on you how easily you forget those gory evenings and nights and how quickly you guess the very irrationality of your past few days´ meaningless activities. Then you would surely reach the confrontation. But this, in similarity ans parity to other above-discussed emotions is not very easy to understand and comprehend. That is especially when we have in our ambience the habit to forget and move on, which is otherwise considered blissful, but here is a bane. ´Dont just forget and move on´ i would tap on the shoulder and say to the ongoing traveler, ´just remember, think, comprehend, conclude and then move on, because introspection is our sword against life´s ambiguity and we should keep using the former to shed latter´s blood.

Finally what remains to be answered after so much digging of the graves is, did our boats land at some funky beach or some abondoned island? I would answer, somewhere atleast. In its simplest form the problem is, that in reality due the ever metamorfing trends and its guardian´s selfish motives, ´the bride´ has removed her ceremonial dress and donned an entirely different robe. She has assumed a stature and situation where she murders her own fiancee even before the ring ceremony. RCA today is a cause created to produce recreation and creativity as an effect, whereas if you ponder, recreation is the very cause due to which RCA came into effect, which is manifest if we travel back to the scenario when for the first time RCA clubs were made, and the intention behind their creation was juxtaposed with them. Here comes a comparison, a confrontation. On one half lies the intention which points to the mirage of recreation which tells us that we really get something when we are involved with a team and perform, and very sternly on the other half is the cruel silence of reality, a reality which offers nothing but confusion, presents no gains, and a wide chasm of meaninglessness and irrationality evading our very presence. This confrontation of reality and intention is the absurd of RCA. This is the modular instinct which leads us to frustration, we fight it everytime, in a fultility we reason out with it everytime, when we take part in the events of recreation, the feeling which we all, those involved in all clubs of RCA have experinced at some time or the other. All those events which exchange a lot of pain with us, which make our heart bleed either at the hardship, discomfort, or dissatisfaction in one or more stages of the process make us to realise the absurdity of them and of this cruel structure. One may never pity those who dont realise and introspect, because sometimes ignorance is definitly a bliss, but for those rare ones whose heart is not melted and is still like an ice cube in the hot atmosphere of delusions, i simply have no words.