These are some of the photos of Rajagiri Viswajyothi College of Arts and Applied Sciences, a college which is located right within the greenery, and stays close to nature by all means. I had written about the same college before, which you can also refer, and these are the news images of the college in its present form. The courses include BA English Literature, Communication and Journalism, BBA, B.Com Finance and Taxation Model I, B.Com Finance and Taxation Model II and B.Com Logistics Management Model II. As we are not sure how the admissions would turn out to be during this year, it is better to have a seat booked for any course of your interest. Due to the same, admissions have been open early, and now, it is your choice to make. A fine green campus in the village of Vengoor near the popular town of Perumbavoor awaits you, as the management admissions are open, while the university admissions will begin sooner or later, and there is not much of time left to think as far as the Post COVID-19 future is concerned. You can go to the website (https://rajagiriviswajyothi.org) and there is an online scholarship exam coming up on July 27th, which will provide the toppers with some fee concession.
***These images can be seen on the Official Facebook Page of the college, and the admission for next academic year is now open.
I have watched many movies which are based on campus life, including Classmates, Niram, Doctor Love, Nammal and more, but never did I thought that my post graduation time will be the best years of my life. Yes, there has been problems here are there, but all of them have only contributed to making me a better person, and there was the chance to go through all the literature, which is why I consider the two years as among the best of life, and remain as my strongest memories; UCC is the fantastico of my education.
This memory is all about UC College or Union Christian College. The history of UC College’s history goes back to 1921, when it came to existence as a result of co-operation between four major church denominations in Kerala, the Church of South India, the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church, the Mar Thoma Syrian Church, and the Malankara Jacobite Syrian Church. Earlier affiliated to The Travancore University and now affiliated to the Mahatma Gandhi University at Kottayam, UC is a very much reputed college.
UC College has been one of the few things which continues to represent the town of Aluva, along with the Marthanda Varma Bridge, the Federal Bank HO, the Shivarathri Manappuram, the Advaita Ashram and Mangalapuzha Seminary. Located about four to five kilometres from the main town area, UC College is one the best known education institutions in Kerala, and among the colleges in Ernakulam district close enough to Cochin, it has been traditionally the most popular.
The college was also like three and half kilometres from my home at that time, a distance which I could reduce by a few metres if I had chosen to walk by taking a few shortcuts through a world without traffic. So, UC College was always going to be the right choice for me to go for MA English. So, the fact that I could get admission there on merit itself was more than just another happy moment for me. But I wasn’t sure about my future even then, and I could never be clear about what was to happen there, being the big cynic.
But the college which you have seen in the movie Premam was not just another educational institution for me. UC College has been the source of nostalgia, something that still stays, unlike the rest of the insitutions – in the case of all the others, the memories have clearly disappeared. From the canteen to the library, and through each building there, stretching around the green campus which has so many trees and old structures, each corner of the college is still alive in my mind. It feels so good to reach the campus early morning, and walk through this green universe. There is the need to arrive early and leave late considering how refreshing the campus is.
The days were fantastic, even though I understood that they were so when it was coming to a finish. I didn’t feel that it was going to be this good when I began, but things only got better. As the second year started, life had become so much closer to literature, and Film Studies was also a paper waiting to come to light. The whole department had become even more friendly, and even getting permission to go to the canteen and have a cup of tea was so easy. I could never study at an institution which had friendly teachers earlier, but UC College was an exception. Most of the school teachers have been demons for me as I remember.
The advantage of having friendly teachers is that you will have a better interest in the subjects which they are teaching, and you never hesitate to ask the questions. Throughout my studies, until joining UC College, I had only one or two of such friendly teachers, but thankfully that changed with the MA English adventure. I remember the opportunities to attend the seminars at different colleges and the chance to be part of many quiz programmes in Central Kerala along with winning a few! One of those wins are still shown there on the official website of the college, and that still feels happy and extra fantastico! 😀 You can see it here
***The images used in this blog post were taken by me during my MA English course there.
It has been some years, but it feels like an eternity. I don’t really remember those days at all. Did they really happen or were they just dreams? I do have the certificate and the mark list; so it should have happened at some point of life. I have only some recollection of the same, but it seems like I did do it. There will be doubts if it is really a useful thing, but I guess I did it at that time. Sometimes I wonder if it was ever supposed to bring something better in mortal life or monetary benefits; I guess it wasn’t on the list.
Yes, I am talking about the MA English Language and Literature course. It was only a few days ago that I found and looked at the syllabus of the course, and that made me wonder if it was me who really studied that course and wrote those exams for that MA English First Class (read as the BCom First Class which was mentioned in the movie, Naadodikkaattu). I actually remember very less from the course and a lot of these papers in the syllabus stare at me as if I am a stranger. The syllabus itself seems to wonder if it had ever seen me before, but I will show this one the degree certificate! I will just go through what used to be that syllabus and see if we remember each other enough in the end.
I will miss this classroom all the time, no matter where I visit in my life!
I dig deep into the memories, and I remember those earlier works like The Canterbury Tales, Utopia, Doctor Faustus, Paradise Lost, Pilgrim’s Progress, The Way of the World and all that we studied, but there were the two papers which followed, and those were Phonetics and Literary Criticism. I remember being shocked at the subjects which were part of these papers.
Vampire Owl: What do you mean?
Vampire Bat: Biographia Literaria, The Language of Paradox and others.
Vampire Owl: Okay, whatever.
In the case of Phonetics, I felt that I was going straight to hell. But I still passed, and scored well there, and that was a confident booster. I still believe that words should be spoken like we want to and not according to the Phonetics side – that will be Indian English 😀
These days, when I look at these papers, I am only going to be more and more shocked. I really wanted to use what I studied in life because I managed to pass, but such an opportunity was never to come. While my earlier talk was about the first semester, here I remember that the second one was much smoother, and I remember the second semester as a rather easier one; I was more comfortable with the class and the college, and the seniors were close; the papers were smooth and Linguistics remained the only problem there. But with more focus on that, I could do it better than I did in the case of Phonetics.
I remember that the first semester of the next year, and this third semester of the course had two big troubles; one being the Literary Theory – I was absolutely uninterested in this, but I had good teachers. The classes turned out to be better than expected and something in the internet surely helped. Nature of the Linguistic Sign? The Metaphoric and Metonymic Poles? The Death of the Author? The Critic as Host? And whatever came after that, I don’t remember much of it, and I am not that disappointed about my short memory here. I will keep the memories of my college instead of that, the greenery and everything else. Those sights will surely bring more of the memories back to me.
The greenery at college is inspirational, but the theories are surely not.
The second big trouble was this paper called Politics of Narration, about the aspects on fictional and non-fictional expression in narratives. Even though this was a twisted paper, the scores came good just like Literary Theory. Another thing about this paper is that the talks and discussions related to this paper has helped me in improving my writing. Along with the same, there were a few interesting works of fiction with this paper. Women and Literature along with Writings of the Public Domain were partly bad for me! But the fiction and some interesting ideas saved the day most of the time. I still wish I could go forward with life as the MA English graduate, but that option is the jobless one.
Film Studies was the strangest paper for me; one one side, there were those movie which we surely had to watch, and there was the need to write critical appreciation of movies. This side was pretty much okay for me, and by the end of this paper, I was ready to start the blog, Movies of the Soul. The review of Celluloid at the blog is the same which I submitted for the assignment, with slight changes. But it took me a long time to recover from the theories which were related to movies; those were the difficult ones for me, and I shall not name them – but the memories are coming back to me; now I realize that I had learnt them all, and they are stored somewhere in my memory 😀
Now I am sure and I remember that I am MA English First Class from Mahatma Gandhi University and jobless 😦 Check this video of the BCom First Class version from the movie Naadodikkaattu 😛
***The images used in this blog post were taken by me at Union Christian College, Aluva.
The Tea Cerebrations 