‘The Tales from Campus: A Misguide to College’: The first lessons on empathy for young adults

Indoctrination is everywhere. Whether proclaimed or discreet, visible or invisible, vociferous or quiet, every cultural text that circulates around us has an ideological axe to grind. However unobtrusive or innocuous it may seem, it is out to champion some point of view, legitimise some thought system, justify some mode of behaviour or plan of action, and to lay down, however casually, the blueprint of some world order.

Narratives of identity are forever in place, simply waiting for us to, inadvertently or consciously, step into them. Every individual is a teeming and rioting bundle of narrative scripts that they have received from the domestic, social, cultural, economic and political spheres that they inhabit. If, at all, the human brain makes its appearance in the world as a tabula rasa, this blank slate takes little time to be filled. Inputs arrive thick and fast from all directions telling us who we are and how to make sense of ourselves and of our world.

Every text or narrative that is handed down to us, is out to win us over to its specific side. But there is also a self-awareness that develops, slowly, often painfully, and chiefly as a result of experiences that go contrary to such scripted versions of identity – experiences of betrayal, conflict, opposition, suppression, or repression. What is fortunate is that no idea or narrative is invincible. There is always an adversary to be found in a counter-idea or a counter-narrative and it is, perhaps, in the possibility of choosing, circulating and adopting the narratives that build, uphold and sustain us, that our salvation on this earth lies.

The journey of self-determination

At what point of time does an individual become aware and decide to take charge of their identity narrative? The journey of self-determination, perhaps, begins chiefly in college, a space where new-found adulthood and the freedom from the authority of parents and school synchronises with a vast range of available choices to confuse and beguile an individual. This is the sensitive phase that Shweta Rao Garg’s graphic novel The Tales from Campus: A Misguide to College, effectively captures. “What do you do with all that freedom?” asks Garg. “There are endless possibilities here. You could be anybody you want, you could do anything.” There are, in other words, both opportunities and threats to this freedom and Garg steps forward to ensure that there is some understanding about choice and consequence in young minds.

While young adults are often lectured on what to choose, there is very little literature that rallies around how to choose. This graphic novel with its thirteen chapters about locating and finding oneself in a confusing world, helps to valuably address that gap by offering readers a manual about the responsibilities that the idea of choice entails on various fronts. Each of these chapters conscientiously documents socio-cultural issues that need to be understood, thought about, and approached in nuanced ways.

In “Mind Your Language”, for instance, Garg raises the issue of language and how it powerfully constructs our realities rather than simply expressing or reflecting them. The use of offensive or profane words (which in the form of swearing and slang is considered rather fashionable in young people’s circles,) is only another step toward the fostering of bitter realities such as divisiveness and hierarchy. Profanity in language may appear to be chic or dissident and, in its roughness and indelicacy, a kind of resentment or revolt, but the fact remains that words beget their own ideologies and the violence in expressions, even when playful, quietly encourages and justifies a culture of hegemony and violence.

Humanisation of the subaltern

While chapters like “The Boy Who Paints His Nails”, “The Perfect Body”, “The Bus Ride” and “To Be or Not to Be” deal with issues of queerness, beauty stereotypes, catcalling, and depression/suicide that have gained some visibility in media and social circles today. Chapters like “Have You Seen My Dog?”, “Hands that Scrub the Floor”, “The Project”, and “Reserved” are highly innovative for what they bring to the table. The first of these is built around issues of disability and the food habits of people which leads to their social perception as “others”. Assuming that a lost dog has been eaten by a group of people simply because there is a practice of eating dog meat in their regional cuisine could be the worst way to stereotype a group and place it under the radar of suspicion. Similarly, making a big deal of one’s love for animals without taking into account the needs of the differently abled can also be an utterly thoughtless act. The second chapter is entirely visual and documents through pictures the hands of a poor working woman, an ayah or a maid – “Salma from Bangladesh or Bimla from Bihar”. It is a radical and sincere attempt at the humanisation of the subaltern, and the need to offer them their due share of dignity, gratitude and respect.

“The Project” is, again, a brilliant chapter on the complex intersection of gender and class. Being almost entirely made up of snippets from interviews taken with a wide range of people from various walks of social life, it throws light on gender stereotypes in the workforce, on glass ceilings for women, and the frequent relegation of women’s merit to the background. To the question “How do your female employees perform?”, a 55-year-old senior male HR responds, “It’s all okay till they are single. Once they are married, it’s a different matter altogether.”

Here is a documentation of the difficulties that lower-class women face by being pushed into marriage at an early age, that educated and meritorious unmarried women face in finding employment because the employer is forever threatened by the prospect of their impending marriage, and the consistent discrimination which makes “bosses see a man about to become a father as someone dependable, whereas a woman about to become a mother is seen as a liability”. The unavailability of special washrooms and waiting rooms designated for transpersons also finds a mention here as a transperson states, “We seem to intimidate women, and sometimes men intimidate us. Every day is like walking on a tightrope.”

In “Reserved”, Garg very sensitively handles the issue of reservation and how even the most deserving of students from a reserved category can be made to feel unworthy and unwanted within the structures of inequality that prevail in educational institutions. “At home, he was a true inspiration for the entire community but in his college, he was merely an undeserving beneficiary of the system. Why would the system which was supposed to empower him and people like him actually isolate Mehul?” There is no answer to be found except in the cold-bloodedness of a system that others people with great ease and conviction of self-righteousness.

The lack of safety for women in public spaces, the vulnerability of the queer, the use of force and waiving of consent in both homosexual and heterosexual relationships, the fact of home rendered unsafe by structures of abuse within the family, the meaning of being a feminist – all, organically and vitally, come up for discussion in these chapters. The book is centred around four friends who unmake and make themselves anew through their experiences on the college campus, unlearn and relearn the contours of their world, and come to discern, through mutual discussions and reflections, the political import of their simplest everyday actions. In other words, they learn, as Garg intends them to, to be “sensitive and intelligent” observers.

In her “Introduction or Why Not a Guide” to this eye-opening graphic novel, Shweta Rao Garg writes:

This book is created with the evil purpose of ruining your binary mind. It aims to destroy the uni-dimensional single narratives that you have grown up with and provide you with complex, nuanced narratives. Along with the characters in the book, you will engage with their stories and try to think about their problems in the ‘Stop and Think’ section.

By the book’s end, one will agree that this purpose has been well-served.

A journey into empathy

This book is a journey into empathy – the understanding of its necessity and the factors of its production. Empathy, as these characters come to understand, is not an option but an absolute necessity for survival. A world without empathy is irresponsible, callous, and needlessly ruthless. The book meanders through many lives and circumstances to acquaint readers with the complex workings of identity, and to offer snapshots of intersectionality. The subtle ways in which class, caste, gender, region, religion, disability, and sexuality operate in a diverse society like India may not be very apparent at a glance but once surfaces are scratched, the multi-layered nature of narratives becomes evident.

One is as struck by the astuteness of the book and its stunning realism as one is awed by its clarity, concision, and remarkable vision. The illustrations by Prajakta Kavthekar and Prathamesh Siddhesh evince thematic acuity and aesthetic exquisiteness, making way for an immensely rewarding reading experience and helping to bring the message of the book closer to the hearts of its chosen readers. And yet, this is not a book for college-going students alone. It is a manual for every thinking individual and shall work in the same way for each of us, leading us to question our assumptions about the world, unpack them in the light of new evidence, and assemble them with greater understanding and empathy.

Our young adults are our greatest assets. To teach them to develop their capacities for critical thinking and to see the world for the cauldron of narratives that it is, is our highest moral duty. In doing this, Shweta Rao Garg performs an incalculable service toward our society and nation and discharges a responsibility whose significance cannot be stressed enough. It is not sufficient to leave behind a better earth. It is also important to leave behind better heirs who will acknowledge and accept their responsibility as its guardians and builders. In The Tales from Campus: A Misguide to College, we might have come across a book that will help us to do just that.

Basundhara Roy teaches English at Karim City College affiliated with Kolhan University, Chaibasa.

The Tales from Campus: A Misguide to College, Shweta Rao Garg, Doshor Publications.