`JNU Provost murdabad; murdabad, murdabad! Hostel administration down, down, down, down!' and similar slogans shatter the otherwise peaceful campus air. It's lunch time at the capital's prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru University of yore. Students have sat through the morning lectures in the Old Campus and are now headed for the bus stand on their way to hostels in the picturesque New Campus. Clad in traditional JNU attire - dirty jeans (preferably torn), khadi kurta, Kolhapuri slippers and jholas - they walk in groups, share a beedi or two and denounce the rotten potatoes and watery dal they were served the previous evening. It's ironic, however, that the aloo-haters are headed for the same rotten potatoes and what the university authorities claim to be ``protein-rich dal''. Then why all this sloganeering?``That's how we JNU-ites protest. In our own peaceful, JNU style,'' smiles a bespectacled comrade, teeth and betel-stained tongue showing through dense facial fungus. ``No breaking of chairs and tables, no smashing of window panes. Only slogans, dharnas, hunger strikes, gheraos and speeches heard in pin-drop silence.'' He likes to be heard out in ``pin-drop silence''. ``Achchha, chalte hain,'' he seems to have finished his lecture and lengthens his stride to join other comrades in belittling both the V-C and potatoes. He is gone, lost among a crowd of fist-raising look alikes, free-flowing beards, beedis and jholas. ``Maaaarch on, maaaarch on, JNUSU march on!'' No one runs in this part of the world. They always march. The slogans dwindle in the distance. All you can hear is: ``Down, down, down, down!'' and ``Up, up, up, up!''The dining hall in one of the hostels in New Campus on the pahadi. Food is served hot. Dal floods the tables. Tempers run up, up, up while potatoes are gulped down, down, down. The union distributes leaflets for a public debate. Lunch is hurried through and student organisations, each owing allegiance to one or the other political party at the national level, hold closed-door meetings to chalk out the ``future course of action''.Meeting over, the cadres move from one hostel room to another, through nimbu paani-sipping crowds around dhabas to convince the student community of the correctness of their stand. Word spreads like wildfire from room to room, hostel to hostel and campus to campus. Soon leaders from Delhi University and Jamia Milia descend on JNU to express their solidarity. Individual canvassing continues at dinner tables, exhorting students to flock to hear their speakers, including former office-bearers of the union. Names like D.P. Tripathi, Sitaram Yechuri, Prakash Karat, Atul Anjan, Kamal Mitra Chenoy, G Balachandran, David Thomas are enough to ensure the cancellation of any evening engagement - an unfinished term paper, a date with a fresher, a late-night movie at the nearby Priya Cinema.The scene at Jhelum lawns is what makes the university the ``only one of its kind in the country,'' as JNU students would like to put it. Students squat on the ground. Each speaker approaching the dais is cheered with shouts of, ``Ho, ho, ho, ho''. The makeshift canteens around the lawn and the chhotus of the famous Ganga dhaba get moving with chants of ``chai, chai'' and ``idhar lao, idhar lao''. The speakers are heard in silence. Marx, Engels, dialectical materialism, V-C, provost, hostel caretaker, pyaaz, aloo, they touch on all these. Also Afghanistan, Cuba, Vietnam, Uncle Sam. The speeches go on well into the morning, broken only by the flights zooming overhead on their way to Palam Airport. A welcome break, too, for the Chenoys and Yechuris to gulp water down, and start again as the plane's roar fades away.
