1 review for Up Campus Down Campus
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Up Campus Down Campus
by Avijit Ghosh
Description:
It’s the late 1980s and Anirban Roy, fresh from the dustbowls of Inner India, arrives on an alternative planet called JNU. Here Marx rules the graffiti, the pamphlets and the suggested reading list. But Freud, at least his sex thing, rules most minds. Anirban has a fixed goal: get through the ‘civil services’. Every day he hurries through his ablutions, eats a slippery fried egg with a half-burnt toast, quickly scans The Hindu (the preferred newspaper of long-term civil services aspirants), stuffs a notebook into his jhola and sets out to attend his classes. He certainly harbours no lofty Leftist ideals nor any grand political ambitions. But JNU has other plans for him the student elections and heartbreak. Up Campus, Down Campus is an exuberant celebration of JNU’s uniqueness. With refreshing honesty and humour, Avijit Ghosh maps the aspirations, raging hormones and moral conflicts of small-town boys like Anirban, who arrive in city campuses every year eager to build a life and, perhaps, also find love.
About The Author
Avijit Ghosh works as a senior editor for The Times of India in New Delhi. Born in Agartala, he grew up in the small towns of Arrah and Ranchi. He graduated in history from St Xavier’s College, Ranchi and earned his Master’s and MPhil degrees from JNU, New Delhi.
A journalist for more than twenty-five years, he has written extensively on Hindi cinema and sports. He has also briefly been a film critic for The Telegraph and The Times of India. His previous works include Bandicoots in the Moonlight, a bildungsroman set in 1970s small-town Bihar, and Cinema Bhojpuri, which won the Special Mention for Best Writing on Cinema in the 2010 National Film Awards. His third book, 40 Retakes: Bollywood Classics you May Have Missed, revisits a bunch of movies that have fallen through the cracks of our memory.
Avijit is addicted to films, music, football and cricket—not necessarily in that order. He tweets intermittently from the handle @cinemawaleghosh and eagerly awaits your detailed feedback at avijitghosh65@rediffmail.com.
Skryf Review
This book is for all those who have spent time in campus, being fresh out of their familiar surroundings and trying to get a grip on how to take the next steps towards manhood. Up Campus Down Campus takes you back to those days and reconnect with your youth and relive those strange things we did when we were young – be it triple riding without helmets to the nearest booze shop, ogling at that sweet girl who took the same bus route as yours, watching shady pirated movies at night and passing bawdy jokes, canvassing in student elections or burning midnight oil just before exam days to move up to the next class. A book which is serious and funny at times and which makes you think on how the universe has a plan for everyone.