It was 1981.
He was slim, of medium height and was sporting beard. He was very casual in his dress; he was clad in trousers or pyjama with kurta or trousers with a simple half sleeved shirt. He was doing his Masters in Philosophy. He would be invariably sighted where there was a group of students agitating for something or other. He would organise the students on any issue; if there was increase of college fee, price rise, or if there was an incident of rape or anything happened anywhere in Odisha or India or even in the world. It appeared as if he were waiting for something untoward to happen so that he could get a chance to organise a movement. He hawked his party tabloid (Proletariat?). He along with his friends collected donations in a tin box in bus stand or in other public places for the party cause. He was a member of the student wing of a leftist organisation. He professed to bring in revolution for a classless, exploitation-free society, to establish the rule of the proletariats. Let’s call him a Revolutionary. In the University he was one year junior to me.
A student from Balasore while returning from home had an altercation with the conductor of the bus. The conductor of the bus allegedly threw away a bag of puffed rice he was bringing from home. He came to the campus, told his friends. His friends and friends of his friends went to the road and hijacked seventeen buses (all government buses) into the campus and demanded action against the culprit bus conductor. It was given the colour of prestige issue for the university students. The bus, the conductor of which misbehaved with the student, belonged to the president of the Bhubaneswar Bus Owners’ Association, who was also an MLA. The demands of the students were not always rational. The bus owners were also united against the students. The administration could not resolve the issue immediately. Mrs Indira Gandhi, then the Prime Minister was scheduled to inaugurate Institute of Physics at Bhubaneswar within three-four days. The administration was very cautious not to take any step that would precipitate a strike on the eve of the PM’s visit to the state. They were dilly dallying.
The day of PM’s visit came. The Revolutionary reached the scene like a vulture reaching a carcass. We had our last semester within a week or so. We were apprehensive. If anything happened which led to a students’ strike, our exam would be postponed and we might lose one year. In the name of students’ unity, against inaction of the administration and for students’ honour he mobilised the students to protest and show blag flags to the visiting PM at the site of Institute of Physics. I was standing in front of our hostel with a few of my friends. He started his harangue and urged upon us to join the demonstration at the Institute. His very appearance infuriated us as we could smell disaster. We reasoned with him and tried to dissuade from showing blag flag to the PM, but he was made of a different stuff. Out of anger a friend of mine threatened him with his fist; he went away castigating us ‘reactionaries’.
The things happened as we had apprehended. The students demonstrated and showed black flags to the PM at the Institute of Physics. The police lathi charged to disperse the mob. A few students including some girls were injured by the lathi charge and the stampede that followed. The students came back to the campus and set alight the hijacked buses. The police arrested the students, whoever they chanced upon, including many innocents and put them behind bars. The university was closed sine die. But our revolutionary escaped the arrest. Our semester exams were postponed. We lost one year, we took three years to complete a two year Masters’ course.
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1982. One day I was taking tea with my friends in a jhopdi hotel inside the campus. We had appeared the exams and waiting for our results. I noticed the revolutionary sitting on the cement structure of the culvert in front of the jhopdi hotel with some of his friends. I saw he opened the tin box they used in collecting donations, counted the collections, picked up a few coins and came to the hotel. He ordered some boiled eggs. His harangue on the day before going to disrupt PM’s programme immediately came to my mind and all my anger for having lost a year was directed at him. I shouted, “You are collecting donations from the public for the cause of revolution and buying boiled egg with the money. This sort of moral character you bear?”
He went away without waiting for the eggs and responding me. My friend taking tea with me remonstrated, “What happened has already happened. The revolutionaries have also hunger and perhaps, he was hungry.”
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1993. I was working as Treasury Officer, Satyabadi.
It was a day of the first week of the month. There was rush in the Treasury of the old people to take their pension. The left parties had given a bandh call against inflation, unemployment, etc. etc. I was in my office disposing pension files. A group of persons trooped into my office room. They were holding red flags and shouting slogans against the government. They forced me to close the office. There were around 80-90 pensioners. Many of them, mostly retired primary school teachers, were drawing minimum pension and the amount of minimum pension then was a paltry sum of Rs 300. If they returned without pension, they had to come again. I tried to reason with the agitators. They were not in a mood to listen to me. One of them threatened, “Are you going to close the office or face the consequences?” I knew the consequences. They would vandalise, ransack the furniture, set ablaze office files and papers. They could do anything.
I was helpless and bewildered. At that point in time I spotted the Revolutionary through the window of my office room. He was outside the office arguing with some retired persons who had come for their monthly pension. I went straight to him and said, “Most of the old people here take minimum pension and that is rupees three hundred only. They might have spent rupees ten for the rickshaw or towards bus fare. If they don’t get pension today, they have to come again, and again they have to spend towards rickshaw or bus fare...”
He stared me for some moments. Perhaps, he was not certain of what he should do. I did not have patience. I lost my temper. I said, “You might have forgotten me, but I still remember you. You are that person who buys boiled eggs with the donations collected in a tin box for the party cause. Of course, it is futile to request you. I am well aware of your conscience and moral standards.”
I told my office people to close the office. But to my surprise, the revolutionary instructed his followers to leave me and my office. He told them in a loud voice, “The officer tells he will close the office within one and half hours after disposing the pensioners. Let him do, otherwise the old people would face hardship that we don't want.”
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Now a days bandhs are not as frequently called as it was in the seventies and eighties of the last century except in the Naxal affected areas. Many of the student ‘revolutionaries’ of those days have joined the so called ‘reactionary’ parties and some of them have also become MPs and MLAs of the parties they have joined. Some of them have also joined government/company services, in other words, working for ‘bourgeois’ class. I have not met our revolutionary since 1993.
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