Post Graduate College Of Science (Undergraduate Department)

Government colleges are a whole different animal. And if they run an undergraduate course, then the vivacious age of the students and the pachydermal inertia of a bureaucracy are a sizzling, roiling and explosive mix. Like the vanars pawing impotently at Kumbhakarna, these youngsters gambol around trying to make a scratch on the steadily slumbering, peacefully grunting body of the management. They have their fun, have their day, and leave, and the management snores on.

Well, actually it's not even half that bad, and while the individuals that run a government lot are as efficient as anybody else, the system that pulls them together is precariously rusted. So they run extra hard - themselves rather than the system - but at the end of the day, remain standing exactly where they are. Yes, Lewis Carroll was talking about them in Alice in Wonderland. Wonderland is the Indian government college!

So the day is spent in fending off boycotts and resolving strikes which, like the underground monster in The Beast, erupt in the most unexpected places. And the management is so busy solving them, that the studies get relegated to what you do when you get bored from hanging around the sinfully expansive campus.

So how is the Post Graduate College of Science any different? To begin with, it was not slothfulness that kept them from rechristening themselves once they started their UG branch. Just plain old regard for historical origins. Secondly, they have a superb Biotech department, complete with a cutting edge lab. The faculty is apparently so good that you won't find the students cribbing at all. Now that's another rarity, even in private colleges. While the canteen is actually a shed sticking out of the wall like the brim of a p-cap, the profusion of quaint little restaurants around campus (Pot, Hyderabad House) seem to be making up very well for it.

The campus is green and leafy, playing grounds abound, attendance rules are benevolent, and on the whole, life is bindaas.

There are some problems that chug ahead in the background, as unrelentingly and unnoticed as a subliminal advert. For e. g. principals who change every two years, and ABVP bandhs at the rate of 2 per month.

But the chirpy students take all in their stride, and just pedal on ahead to their respective futures. Which are usually in the academic line; whether teaching or studying further.

On the whole, a happy and complacent little college, going along with the tide, taking in all who come by.