My 12-year exile (2011-2023) : why I left that place.

Approx. 45-minutes read.

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Foreword : Devyani's Curse.

In Indian Mythology, the Devta-s and the Daitya-s were always at war. Daitya-guru Shukracharya had the Mrita-Sanjivani Mantra, by which he could revive the dead Daitya soldiers in the war, tilting the scales in their favor. The Devta-s too, wanted that Mantra. After careful planning, Dev-guru Brihaspati's son Kacha was sent to Shukracharya as a student to learn this Mantra. Over the course of events, he strategically extracted this knowledge from his teacher. During his stay at the Gurukul, Shukra's daughter Devyani fell in love with Kacha and proposed to him. But Kacha did not reciprocate her love. Jilted, Devyani cursed him, saying that "You will never be able to use the knowledge you have acquired". She also cursed him into lifelong misery. Kacha, being the spy of the Devta-s, still did not reciprocate, and left. Many years passed. Devyani's curse bore fruit. Kacha was never able to use the Mantra taught to him by Shukracharya. 

Since then, Academia has been condemned to this mythological curse. Academicians teach, but do not (or cannot?) apply their knowledge. Safe in the Ivory tower, they are with books, refusing to look up at the real world. The result? They are poor. They are invisible. They don't call the shots in society.

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Fundamentals

    The core problem with academia is that it is a system violating the basic rule of the universe, which runs on the principle of sources (positive pole) and sinks (negative pole). The Big Bang was a source of all the mass of the Universe, and the Black holes are sinks of the same mass. Similarly, a river flows because there is a source of water (mountain snow) and a sink (ocean). Electricity flows due to a potential difference between a positive charge and a negative charge. Magnetic lines of force run between a North-Pole and a South-Pole. Heat flows from a point of higher temperature to a point of lower temperature. Information flows from a knowledgeable to an ignorant person. Love flows from a self-sufficient person to a helpless person (mother-to-child). If the pole strengths are gone, there is no flow. Professional life also runs between two poles : Fear (-ve) and Greed (+ve). Fear chases you and you run away from it. Greed attracts you and you run towards it. The fear called job-insecurity keeps you on your toes and makes you push yourself every day to keep your position secure. The greed for monetary compensation keeps you attracted and you work hard to get a promotion/ raise/ perk/ benefit. Every job is a part of a very large food chain called the economy. Every member of the chain survives by counting on someone, and someone else counting on them. These relationships keep the chain strong and flourishing. Every single member of the chain has to SELL something in the market according to the market DEMAND, and make money. 

    Stepping aside from the above mainstream, imagine an entity/system which is not a part of the food chain, and yet occupies a 'prestigious' position in it. It exists parallel to the main wealth-generating chain, does not contribute to it, and survives on the leftovers from the main chain. For example, national heritage is preserved with tax-payer's money. Symbols of national pride are also maintained by tax-payer's money. Such things do not generate wealth nor create employment, but need to be maintained anyways. They are liabilities, not assets of the nation. If the government treasury is low, these will be first to lose funding.

    Scrutinizing deeply, one can insinuate that Academia is also one such place. (Here I am not talking about schools providing primary, secondary, and higher secondary education : they are all extremely necessary for basic human resource development. I am talking about institutions providing the highest possible degree : PhD). Academia employs highly qualified people as academicians, to do scientific research and teach under-graduates and graduates. The institute publishes research papers (in journals and conferences), files patents, does technology-transfer to the industry, and awards degrees. The papers may never be read in future, the patents may never be converted into commercial products, and the degrees are only formalities for employment for the next 5 years. Employees here are paid for what they are (e.g., they are PhD-holders, well-read, knowledgeable), not much for what they do to run the world. Academia can barely run its own shop to sustain itself in research. The government sponsors its activities through tax-payers' money, but rarely expects anything out of it. No one counts on it to boost the economy. No one counts on it to take decisions on socio-economic / socio-political / socio-cultural importance. Bluntly, academia is not a part of the mainstream economy! There is no expectation of any market-driven time-bound work. There is complete job security, and hence there is no fear. The salary is fixed (with minuscule increments over the years), and hence there is no motivation (greed) to work harder. Hence, there is no growth! This makes a typical academician stagnant. Stagnation is spiritual death. 

Bottomline : If you want motion and direction in your life, place yourself between two poles. 

    Poles are huge and massive, and you alone cannot become a new pole in one lifetime. Their magnetic strengths are created over decades, centuries, millennia. An entrepreneur becomes a pole for attracting employment over several years. A family becomes a pole for friends, relatives, acquaintances, and neighbors by being wealthy and influential. A city becomes a pole for attracting migrants over decades by providing employment opportunities and better standards of living. A country becomes a pole for attracting migrants by being prosperous, having a superior socio-political system, and providing tax-worthy facilities (healthcare, education, security). A source of wealth is an economic pole. Similarly, academicians try to become intellectual poles but usually fail, because knowledge does not create wealth unless applied. Mouthing the same lectures year after year does not lead to growth. Doing "challenging and complex" intellectual exercises for projects / papers / PhDs does not lead to technological advancement of the nation. As the years pass, the academicians realise that the industry ignores them, and so does the media, government, and people in general. Devyani's curse!

    By then, it is too late for the academicians to become a part of the flow (mainstream economy) because they have forgotten 'swimming'. A person joins the academia after a PhD and a post-doc, say at the age of 30. They go through the grind for a decade to establish their research by meeting the minimum requirements of publications, lab-set-up, and doctoral guidance. But the time they see through the sham, they are 40+. But now it is impossible to turn back the clock, and they are too old to learn anything new. Therefore the continue what they had started, pocket the salary, and go home (consoling themselves that they have at least brought stability to their family and can live tension-free).

    People outside the academia are smart and practical. They have better survival instincts. They learn early on where the poles are, how strong each pole is, and which is the flow-direction. Then they learn swimming, keep track of the currents, manage to remain afloat in trying times, and maneuver themselves through the flow-field. On the other hand, academicians need buoyancy-supports all the time, which is provided to them on tax-payer's money, with the hope that something worthwhile and exemplary will come out. But that happens rarely. Public investments do not give returns. The academic space fills up with non-performing assets. All this makes academia is a monetary sink of the society. Everything looks like a White elephant. Devyani's curse!

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After a 16+ years in academia (4 years as a doctoral student, and 12+ years as a faculty), I can give you the following detailed account of what I observed, learnt, experienced, tolerated, suffered.

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Chapter 1  Mindset.

    Academics spend too much time alone, inside their heads. This makes them weird, with poor social and soft skills. Why? Let's see their history. Academics are those who had been school-toppers and college nerds. Their school-lives (12 years) and college-lives (3-5 years) had been spent with books. Don't we all know the class geek/nerd, who sat alone in a corner, studying? Interpersonal skills develop only with regular exposure and frequent social circulation. Later in life, they pursue higher studies in their twenties, and populate the academic campuses as faculty in their thirties. Spending decades over books and papers, away from the mainstream society, they did not give themselves the chance to develop their inter-personal skills. Therefore, with only rare exceptions, academics are seen to be socially inept. Often, they are awkward and uncongenial. They are even arrogant and blunt. Such people also prefer solitude, and the presence of students ironically disturbs them : no wonder they are always getting so irritated when students approach them, and they want to shoo them off ASAP (I have seen this repeatedly in my student life). They do not respect the fact that students are the clients of the University! It is as if "The stricter you are, the better you are as a teacher"! They barely smile and have poor eye-contact. They talk others down and make them feel worthless (esp. students). Because critical thinking is necessary for research, academics are critical and judgemental of everything! They cannot seem to switch off the analytical minds after work. No conversation with them is comfortable. They argue for the sake of arguing. They never praise nor appreciate anyone. There is neither politeness nor friendliness (I would often get pissed off in most of my interactions with academicians. This continued day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year).

    Intellectualism has paved the way for elitism here. People mouth idealist things, but are actually quite naïve and impractical! Riding an intellectual high horse, they expect the world to work perfectly. Their academic achievements (journal papers) have made them so full of themselves that they barely listen to anyone : every conversation is an opportunity to show off their knowledge! They have an opinion about everything! These academic achievements have led them to have big egos (Yet, there is a betraying undercurrent of insecurity). They are snooty, always putting up a façade of a 'knowledgeable scholar'. But, in reality, they are miserable people, making their students' lives more miserable, especially the doctoral students. Seems like they are angry with the whole world. (Whenever I have interacted with a typical colleague, the conversation has always been always about work : classes, exams, grading, students, papers, projects, administration, seminars, conferences, etc.). 

    I found the campus filled with cowards. There was no one going out of their comfort zone. It is as if they did not choose this profession, but took it up as some 'last resort'. Are they too scared to be in the industry and have therefore taken refuge in the safe haven of academia? Do they not understand market forces at all? No, they are intelligent people. Then do they value academic freedom over everything else?  No, they know that is how the world works. They actually want to avoid the pressures and constraints of the industry. Academia has been pampering its employees for decades. One can sense a strange culture of escapism here, in both research and teaching. Are they doing a job or simply pursuing a paid hobby? Are they too busy in academic pursuits only because the reality of a market-driven and money-minded industry is too harsh? (That is what my intuition has been telling me for the last decade). Industry people have more risk and more time-bound responsibilities, and hence, get paid much more. It is the academicians who are sitting out on the game. Deep down, every academic knows that the world can run without them, their research will by junked in the library shelves, and the students will soon outgrow them. Academia lies in the fringes of the society, and never occupies the centre-stage in the running of the economy. Perhaps academicians never learnt to play the game since childhood; because when others played sports, they studied. Once a while, they chose the play-safe games, where no one will lose. Those studious nerds ended up in the academia and worked alone, telling themselves that "I am my own competition", which actually translates into 'others are way better than me'. They have secretly resigned themselves to their life of un-importance. Devyani's curse!

    I did not see any self-starting dare-devil attitude in an academician. Any endeavor is "for others to do, not me!" : this attitude ran wild. You discuss an idea with someone and the response you get is, "Tum aage badho, hum tumhare saath hain (you proceed, we are with you)". People carry the belief, "Positive changes must happen, but someone else must bring it. Don't bother me". This makes every self-starting and motivated person a solitary struggler for professional growth. Time moves very slowly here. Delay and procrastination in work is a norm. Kaam aaj hoga, kal hoga, next week hoga, next month hoga, next semester hoga....and this continues. What an inertia! Nobody has a zing. There is no energy, no zeal, no excitement in anyone. People seem to be dragging their feet. This has caused the campus to become a place of mediocrity. Everything seems ok-ok, nothing seemed perfect. The system seems to be running like a rigmarole : there is no leadership, no vision, no motivation, no excitement, no sense of purpose. It is because the secret priority is a laid-back life with lots of time to chill out. People seem to be doing their jobs robotically and tiredly. Everybody seems to be in low spirits. It was as if the job is a majboori (they were helpless about it). Several coping mechanisms are used to tolerate this job : bitching about the establishment, cursing the system, venting out on students, escaping to international conferences and short-term foreign assignments, doing office-politics, pursuing laid-back hobbies, and being on anti-anxiety / anti-depressant medication. I was yet to see an upbeat faculty in 12 years.

Chapter 2   Lifestyle

    The academicians lead ordinary lives. Their demeanor is quite un-smart. Their dressing and grooming sense is absent. Their offices are dirty and disorganized. There seems to be a strange pressure on academicians to maintain an image of an eccentric nerd / mad scientist. I have seen faculty with letharigic posture, lazy gait, facial stubble, shirts not tucked into their trousers, round-neck T-shirts, worn-out floaters, un-ironed clothes, stinking breath, unmoisturized skin, chipped nails, and more. Their houses and its surroundings are simply not looked-after and maintained. In spite of all their academic achievements, there is no basic taste in them for everyday-living. Few faculty have done up their house interiors properly, and neither do they have good furniture/decor in the drawing room. Paraphernalia are scattered here and there. Surfaces are all dust-laden and shabby. (Whenever I have visited someone's house, I wanted to get back home ASAP). The same extends outside the house in the neighbourhood. Sitting entitled, nobody puts in any effort in community-living, but expects everything around to be magically taken care of. They simply lounge and complain about how 'bad' everything is, from the campus to the market to the labs to the students. They cannot do healthy small talk : there would be bitching and badmouthing sessions in most get-togethers (called PNPC : Paro-Ninda Paro-Charcha in Bengali). It is an environment of negativity. They behave as if the whole world is wrong! They criticise everyone from the head of the state to the building sweeper. I was always surrounded by bitter, frustrated people, who stayed shut in their homes and barely interacted with colleagues/neighbours. In the rare club parties, people would be coming in late and making a beeline for the buffet counter. Conversations are all cynical. People would appear to be defeated in life and resigned to their fate. "Jo chal raha hain chalne do". Because they had been tenured as a faculty, work was no longer exciting. There is no incentive to work hard any more. They pretend to be busy in mundane tasks, but do nothing worthwhile in which the students would have been interested.

“Scratch the surface of most cynics and you find a frustrated idealist — someone who made the mistake of converting his ideals into expectations.”― Peter Senge.

    In socializing, I also found a traditional sexist mindset. Male professors did not usually want to interact with female ones. Many avoided me almost as if their marriages would be endangered if they are "caught" talking to me! In small-town India, as we know, opposite sexes do not talk to each other. This was true even if they were well-travelled and foreign-educated, and are supposedly liberal and broad-minded. I had no choice but to seek out female company. But how many female professors do you expect in an engineering university? There were barely any in the hardcore traditional engineering departments. The immediate colleagues avoided work with me. I had taken countless initiatives in all fronts. But to no avail. (a) No one co-authored a paper with me. (b) No one became a co-investigator in a project. (c) No co-supervised a doctoral student with me. (d) I was not even in the doctoral scrutiny committee of anyone's student. (e) No one took a tea-break with me. (f) No one invited me home. But I saw that several cliques existed in campus, who were co-authoring papers, co-running projects, co-supervising students, etc. Female academics in engineering are usually left alone (I have seen this in USA also). Reason : Men seem to feel uncomfortable seeing a female playing the masculine game of engineering. On extremely rare occasions, when I have gone to someone's house, the male professor assumed that I will talk not with him, but rather, with his wife! How? What do I have in common with her? Most of my male neighbors (who are my colleagues = equals), usually talked to me indirectly through their wives! In parties / gatherings, I did not know whether to sit with the male group or the female group. In the buffet line, men used to uncomfortably make way for me, lamely saying 'Ladies first!' (Puke!)

    The infrastructure is so old and outdated. There is not a single modern cafeteria. The buildings do not have a pantry. Even proper parking is not always available. The office rooms are shabby and gloomy. Everything has a 1950's feeling about it. The classrooms are disorganized and dusty. The furniture is outdated, low-standard, and down-market. There is no office decor. The whole ambiance is old-fashioned. Activities here were actually 'passivities'. Everything is a drudgery. Paperwork moves slowly, thanks to the massive bureaucracy. It takes days to get a signature to forward your application to the next level! One has to call up the administrative building repeatedly for reminding them to process your application. Often, you have to physically go there for the same. It takes weeks for your official expenses to be reimbursed. Bills require several weeks for clearing. Procuring basic necessities for work requires additional paperwork. If an experimental equipment starts malfunctioning, it takes months to repair it (I have seen it across departments). It is a very change-resistant culture here. Everyone is a status-quo-er, which is an oxymoron for a researcher! Rules, regulations, system, officer-attitude, pace of administrative work, curriculum, housing quality, campus-maintenance standards, hostel food quality, even the timings of the gym and the swimming pool have not changed in 20 years! Yes, some new housing has come up (with more problems than the old ones) and some roads have been built, but they are not modern enough to match a world-class institute. The buildings look so shabby! Several buildings are dilapidated and are in a dire need of renovation. Some of the institute buildings do not have a functional ladies' toilet! Most of the roads on-campus do no have sidewalks. There are no benches for students to relax during breaks. Everything screams " LOUSY". 

    This communist state is a sick place. I was tired of the non-existent work culture. There is so much scope of improvement and systematization. Official web-pages are not updated. For information, a new faculty has to run from pillar to post. No wait, the new faculty does not know where is the pillar and where is the post! There is no 'new-faculty' orientation! You have to gather information by asking random people and/or by being at the right place at the right time. Non-teaching staff and officers rarely reply to emails. The information cell is not at all proactive : old information lies in the official website. The campus hospital does not bother to install an electronic registration system for incoming patients : it is all handwritten(!) like they did in the 80's. There are no electronic medical records for the employees. The campus pest-control is non-existent, with complaints of snakes coming from hostels as well as residential quarters everyday. Snakes were sighted even in academic building and laboratories! The campus green-cover maintenance team is absconding most of the time. Except in the vicinity of the main building, the environment is overgrown with weeds and looks 'abandoned'. Everything is so sloppy! The gym runs  for only 3 hours in early morning and only 4 hours in the evening (Yes, it is closed for most of the day). There are no maps installed in the campus, directing you to your destination. When I had first come to this campus two decades ago, I had to ask the rickshaw-wallahs and autowallahs where my hostel was. There are no signboards to indicate the hostels, departments, complexes. You have to ask random people on the roads or the semi-literate security person at the gate. The campus roads do not have names! You cannot direct anyone to their destination easily. You have to use landmarks of trees and buildings! My on-campus quarter did not have its number painted on its front wall. I had to take a printout and paste it for people to know! The dumpster outside our building did not have a cover : stray dogs littered the garbage in my garden. I had to write and remind the sanitary section about 10 times and then they got a cover, but of a wrong size! The student-hostels are infested with cats, which the security guards are too scared to catch and transport them to the eco-park outside the campus. The residential building terraces could have been easily utilized for solar power generation, but are not. Cultural programs always start an hour later than the time mentioned in the notice. (Why the hell was I tolerating such a compromised existence? Had I lost taste of good things? Or did I have high hopes that 'one day' things will be better, and had extreme patience to wait for it?) 

Chapter 3   Teaching and Mentoring    

No academician here is trained in any pedagogical skill. (They do not require the equivalent of B.Ed /M.Ed like a school teacher). This means that the teaching is ad-hoc, improvised, concocted. They have questionable public-speaking skills. Lectures suck! No one speaks smartly and confidently in class. They do not know to throw their voice for everyone to hear crisply and clearly, nor is there any voice modulation. They cannot even maintain a confident eye contact with students. Their voice is dull and boring, almost putting the audience to sleep. How is it supposed to arouse the students' interest in the subject? They are severely lacking in communication, presentation, and marketing skills. The sad part is, nobody puts any effort to improve themselves in spite of regular genuine anonymous feedback from the students, semester after semester. Also, most teachers lecture at a level of their own understanding, not at a level of the student's understanding. (This glaring gap in the technical communication gets repeatedly exposed in the oral and written examinations). They are somehow in a hurry to complete the class, and rush back to their messy offices for writing those journal papers for their promotion (which gave a 2%-3% salary increment after 6-8 years. Yes! You read it right! 2%-3% only.). Instead of actively conveying the knowledge, they are simply doing the routine task of completing the syllabus. Neither you will be told why you are being taught the particular topic. No one gives the big picture. Students are unable to put any knowledge into the perspective of engineering as a whole. Also, a part of the subject includes topics of the instructor's current/previous research, which an UG student may not be interested in for a future job. 

    Apart from teaching, another part of the job is student-mentoring. Does that happen? I did not receive any in my five years as a UG student here! Students are left to fend for themselves. No one can motivate, inspire, guide, set an example. There is no one for a student to look up to : no one worthy of emulation. No one guides the students into extra endeavors, e.g., what should be learnt/done apart from the curriculum, both during the semester and during vacations. Confused and disappointed students resign to collecting random 'funda' from seniors, who often misguide them. The professors also lack student-project-planning and coordination skills. Every project seems improvised and ad-hoc. Making realistic timelines for a project seem absent. The student does not know the proper targets and deliverables. The projects also move at snail's pace, testing the student's patience. 

    I had loved teaching since school. By high school, I knew I wanted to be a teacher. Therefore, I did a PhD and started off as a faculty. I put in huge and sincere efforts to teach my subject for eight semesters, much beyond my work hours. I tried to make sure the students liked my class. But within 3-4 years, I saw the market change. The students had no interest in the curriculum and were putting in parallel efforts for the most lucrative jobs (data science, fintech, ML / AI, IAS / IPS / IES, etc.). Class attendance dropped drastically. The lack of students' interest was clearly seen in their performance, and also their behavior towards the faculty. I stood before a class of disinterested students and began to feel, "Why am I teaching Engineering when no one wants to be an engineer?" I felt so ashamed in front of the class. While mouthing the lines of my lectures, I felt like a puppet of academia. I knew it was all falling to deaf ears. The students were paying their fees and I was getting my salary, and for that, I had to dish out some notes, lectures, and slides; and end the semester with some bogus evaluation, for which the students 'studied' for a few hours only. My whole job had become a farce. I had no more belief in my job and my efforts. But I had to continue to put up the act and behave as a 'professional'. I felt like a joker on the dais. I was helpless, and yet had to stay true to my job. I had stopped making the confident eye contact with the students. I had stopped inspiring and motivating them. In between them and me, there was a drama going on, and both the parties were aware of it. There was an unspoken understanding between the two parties that the lectures / exams / grades were all a formality. Each party knew that the other party was aware of the drama. I was saddened by the whole tamasha around me. Life had never felt so fake! 

    Being surrounded by young students all the time, I could not be absolutely indifferent to their presence. I often faced rude and insulting behavior from them. These 18+ people were always refusing to grow up and behave maturely. Most of them were not interested in Engineering : they had come here simply for the degree. Maybe their parents had pushed them in here for the college brand. There was no respect for the system : flouting the academic rules and regulations was the norm. I had never seen such an undisciplined place! Bunking classes, late submissions (of homeworks and lab reports), missing appointments, poor body language, unprofessionalism, not showing up, not following up, not taking charge, making excuses, escapist attitude, arguing with the authority, mass protests for slackening of standards, cheating in exams, begging for marks : these are what defined them. The majority lacked punctuality. Most of them seemed very confused in life, and were easily led astray by equally confused seniors. They took the system the granted, and when they landed up in trouble, the desperate parents blamed the system. It was as if the parents expected the academic system to baby-sit their adult children. They lacked even basic manners (God knows what their parents and school teachers taught them!). They did not know to greet anyone. They did not know how to write a polite email / message. They often ghosted the professors : not picking up calls, not replying to missed calls / emails / texts. They had poor dressing sense : they came to class un-bathed, in unwashed clothes, uncombed hair, un-shaved faces, worn out footwear (even bathroom slippers). They had very poor socials kills, people skills, inter-personal skills, and communication skills. Sneaking in alcohol and drugs into the dry campus was also common. 

Chapter 4    Research

    The other principal aspect of being a faculty is to do research. I loved solving challenging science problems since high school, but to elevate this endeavor to 'research' was strangely tough. Starting my own research and publishing it was a very stressful journey. Perhaps it was something I never liked, not even during my PhD. Writing a decent manuscript took several months of literature review, research, analysis, comparative studies, and re-analysis. Each manuscript went through several rounds of review. The duration from writing a manuscript to finally getting it accepted for publication took at least a year. Often, it was rejected by the editor due to lack of alignment with the research scope. Sometimes it was rejected by the reviewers for lack of sufficient novelty. Each communication consumed a few weeks to a few months. The author had to wait endlessly and send repeated reminders. Writing and publishing was a slow burn. I had no option but to tread that path, for which I was not paid a penny. "Publish-or-Perish" rang in my ears all the time. I was holding life at ransom. But I could not make myself write papers. I delayed and postponed it. Truthfully, I did not like writing papers. If you love to do something, you breeze through it. If you hate it, you avoid it at all costs. I had to put in supreme effort to push myself into writing papers. It was only after four long years of joining as a faculty, that I seriously put in efforts to get journal papers. But mind you, by then I had several top-notch conference papers, had traveled to Europe twice, and had sent five students abroad, too. But every single day in the first five years, I felt guilty of not having journal papers. (More about it in this blog). Even when I was walking on the streets of Paris (which I visited during a conference), I was feeling guilty of not having papers. Every single day in academia I doubted my professional competence and performance. Every morning I felt I have a Herculean task ahead. I always I felt "I am not good enough", "I am not doing enough", and "I must try harder". I got into the self-sabotaging habit of beating myself up and feeling worthless. I could never feel normal while working. It was always as if a sword was hanging over my head. Every night I went to bed promising myself, "Tomorrow I will work more". I never received any appreciation from any senior or superior for my work or achievements. I had stopped valuing myself. I grossly underestimated my worth as a qualified professional. Every time myself or one of my students made a presentation, the critical audience only pointed out "what more could have been done". No one showed appreciation for the work, nor encouraged the student. It would be years before I heard something good about myself. There as a systematic crushing of my self-esteem. Every day I thought, "Meri aukaat kya hain?" Had it been the corporate, appreciation would have come in the form of awards, promotions, raises, perks. State-run academia does not have that system. Research is done mostly in isolation. Here, you work, add lines to your CV, and go home. Devyani's curse!

Chapter 5   My Experience

    Academia had made me a sadist. I became very hard towards myself and my students. My day-to-day behavior became harsh. I lost my temper every now and then. Academia had made me bitter. It made me a sick person. I would get angry on one and all. I was snapping at people often. I often lashed out at the poor students. I went about the day with a throbbing head. I could not make sense of most of the things happening around me. No one had my back. Nobody supported me or mentored me in the early career. I was on my own from Day 1. There was no clear job description. Actually, I never felt I was doing a real job, in a decade! We had to learn everything by ourselves, on the go. Often, we learnt things the hard way. There were no fixed working hours. We were all in a very unstructured routine. I was working late into the evening in my office, sometime till 10 PM. Weekends were also occupied with literature review and grading at my home-desk. Academic freedom and flexibility are very over-rated. "Flexible work hours" translated into being busy in all waking hours. And after so much hard work, there was no feedback. There was no appraisal (only some self-appraisal at the end of the year, which seemed more like a formality, because I have seen absolutely useless and rotten people survive here for decades and superannuate with a hefty pension). There was no one to review our work on a weekly or monthly basis, to give us pointers on our career advancement, to give us clues into more effective teaching and mentoring, to celebrate our successes and encourage us more. It was a very lonely profession. 

    I had to socialize with my project students to maintain my sanity. They often asked me, "Ma'am why did you come back from USA?". One of them actually said, "Ma'am what are you doing in a remote place like this?". Inside academia, felt I was living in a parallel world, while the real world was running elsewhere. There was no action-packed environment. This Ivory tower was a dull, dreary, boring place. Everything moved at a snail's pace. Every year was a repeat of the previous. Same courses, same classes, same curriculum, same grading, same faculty meetings. The professional life had become a rewind-and-replay circuit. The only thing that made me happy was working with my undergraduate project students. I had a great time with them every year. Inspiring young blood became my passion. Pushing these young chaps into more ambitious lives became my mission. And I did that. Consistently. Year after year. Each one was ek se badh kar ek. They brought laurels to the group. I continue to remain so proud of them! They set examples for others to emulate. They carved out bright futures and graduated with flying colors. It was my good fortune to be associated with them.

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I am not a cynic, but an disappointed optimist. I hope and expect the best from everything and everyone. In the last ten years, I have tried my best to make the most of my job and my life here. I had put in sincere dedicated efforts, keeping in mine the interest of the institute as a whole. 

• I have taught my subject with full dedication. I have spent hours in my office clearing students' doubts in home-works, sometimes post dinner. My signature subject had a research-based term-paper, in which I taught the skills of literature review, technical writing, and technical presentation to the undergrads.
• I have tried to create a research culture in undergraduates. Undergraduate students wrote journal papers with me. They also presented their papers in top international conferences with full funding.
• I have helped students as much as possible in their career-building, even after they have graduated. 
• I have worked with my project students like junior colleagues.
• My PhD work was theoretical and computational, but I forayed into experimental work and set up a lab from scratch with my students. 
• I have been in-charge of a hostel and have looked after it, even at odd hours.
• I have invited people over for tea/dinner regularly (without getting return invitations).
• I have tried to organize faculty tea-parties in the Department (without success).
• I created the Whatsapp group of the Department faculty.
• I have given suggestions for improving Dept. infrastructure and surroundings every now and then to the heads of the department (but have often faced resistance).
• I have suggested names for all roads on a huge map and submitted it to the authority (but it was never implemented). 
• I have made a small orientation brochure cum check-list for newly joined faculty and submitted it to the authority (but it was never circulated). 
• I have given suggestions for improvement in campus horticulture. 
• Whenever I have seen any infrastructure problem, I have brought them to the notice of the campus maintenance section.
• I even taught basic manners and etiquette to students (for my own sake!).

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    In the last decade, there has been so many times, that I have felt suicidal. Life was excruciating. I faced it all alone. I worked alone and lived alone. There was no female colleague in my department. The males, some of whom were my professors a decade ago, did not bother to interact with me. In a small remote locality, there was nothing much to do on weekends. I had no life. I had no hobbies. I had no relationships (dating was impossible in this small town). I am a very energetic person, but was getting lost in the morose ivory tower. I was tired of trying to fit in here. I was tired of trying to maintain my image as an eccentric researcher. I decided I cannot live this sham anymore. I wanted to lead a normal, happy life. But this was simply not me! Academia was no longer what I was suitable for. No amount of talking to family or friends helped. Counseling did not help. Anti-depressant pills did not help. Exercising did not help. Yoga / meditation did not help. Self-help books did not help. Socializing did not help. Eating out did not help. Crying into my pillow every night did not help. Foreign trips did not help. Meeting new people did not help. Entertainment did not help. Infotainment did not help. I tried everything above and many more, over and over. Twelve years passed. I was living a dhakosla. The journal papers, which I had proudly published, lay in some folder in my desktop, and had not been opened since their publication. I was tired of those 'trophies'. I knew that no one had read those papers, to put them into any real use, for creating any real wealth. All these decade-long efforts had no significance in the real world. The fakeness of academia was glaringly visible. I decided that enough was enough. It was time to outgrow academia. The arduous ascent of the cold, grey, lonely academic heights (whatever was within my reach) was over. Now it was time to descend to the warm, green, active, bustling and productive plains and settle down there. 

    I was sitting in a psychologically poisonous atmosphere, unable to breathe free. I spent a decade getting angry and shedding tears in a demotivating environment. In ten years, I piled on 16 kgs. My belly bloated to a "stress belly", thanks to the excessive stress-hormone cortisol flooding my bloodstream all the time. I knew from Day 1 that I do not belong here. I had felt the same when I had come here as a student for the first time. Every moment I felt "Yeh kahaan aa gayi main?". I was simply not myself. I was going through the motions of being a faculty. Truthfully, even during my PhD in the USA, I often felt, "Why am I here?" and "What am I doing?" In 15 years, I could not get a hang of what academia's purpose was all about (because actually, nothing seemed very genuine!). Everything seemed like a drama. I was wondering what was exactly going on. I could not see a point in most of the activities around. Everything seemed so detached from reality. I had been living an artificial life for 1.5 decades! (Thank God I did not do a post-doc. It would have sentenced me to life imprisonment in academia). 

    But then, I had myself cut off my options. I wanted to stay in India, where I was too qualified to be employed in the industry. I joined the academia and started playing the farcical game, and in two years, I was tenured. I was trapped in a secure job (!). I was too scared to be normal. I was suffering from the Ivory tower syndrome. My salary was fixed, irrespective of my performance. I was doing a high-volume and high-quality work in all fronts, and yet getting paid the same as anyone else. I was putting in more efforts and maintaining much superior standards and teaching and evaluating. I took my job seriously, because teaching and knowledge-gathering was my passion. I kept on upping my game every year, consistently. But I was appalled at the mediocrity, or should I say, inferiority around me. What the hell was I doing among such people?

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Chapter 6    Sabbatical

      By the 7th year as a faculty, Devyani's curse showed the first signs ebbing. My mind broke free of this 'black hole' and rewired itself. I forced myself to reconsider if being an academic was at all my forte. I has no longer hypnotized by 'the social prestige of being a professor'. I realized I just cannot live in this zero-energy place. Being in academia is like watching a boring flop movie over and over. The biggest problem with academia is : nothing real happens. Nothing that happens here actually matters in the real world, not even the classes!!! In so many years, I never felt I was doing an actual job. Where were the meetings, targets, deadlines, teamwork, raises, perks, offsites? Academia was an illusion. I was done being an idealist, and now was now transitioning into being a realist. I was tired of the hallucination called academia. I wanted to get out of the toxicity and rejuvenate myself.

    When I took a sabbatical and worked with the industry, I felt so normal and so much relieved! I was breathing free. Devyani's curse had temporarily withdrawn. I was applying my knowledge from Day 1. There were regular meetings with in-house and overseas teams, with exciting discussions of real problems. There were targets and deadlines. It was a very encouraging and uplifting atmosphere. I could have healthy, normal, pleasant, congenial conversations with people around me. No one was judging me. I learnt a lot, picked up new skills, did interesting assignments. I realized that I had been taking life too seriously until now. I learnt to take it easy : the sky will no fall down. I could relax on the weekends and look after my home, look after myself, meet friends, pursue hobbies, contribute to the community. I upgraded my wardrobe. I shed my stress-related weight and traveled across the city. My face glowed and eyes sparkled. My daily routine got disciplined and systematized. Weekends were structured with lots of activities and errands. I restarted swimming. I also tried Bollywood dancing. I prepared to participate in a walkathon (which I had to miss due to some deadline). By the fag end of the year-long break, I was extremely morose (with stress, anxiety, palpitations, panic attacks) at the thought of returning to the hell I had left behind. 

Chapter 7   The Redemption

    When I returned to academia after my sabbatical, I found myself to be a different person. Devyani's curse was, strangely, not working any more. I did hardcore engineering, not 'research'. I led a dynamic undergraduate team in product design and development. For the first time, I was actually and matter-of-factly applying my basic engineering knowledge. I was rapidly and strategically picking up new technical knowledge and immediately applying them : civil engg, mechanical engg, structural engineering, electrical engg., manufacturing science and engg., electronics and communication engg., materials science, the works! I was actually creating the product from scratch on my own. It was a team-work, with 20+ students, at different stages, across departments working in sync for a common goal. It was so exciting! The students were helping each other, and also getting technical feedback from each other. I took inputs from subject-matter-experts across departments and got the product designed. This time around, I got ample, even proactive support, from colleagues of other departments. I availed internal funding for the project, which was readily given to encourage this R&D work. I had shocked myself at my own productivity. The volume of work the students produced was simply jaw-dropping. Their undergraduate theses looked like doctoral theses. Publications emerged from them as by-products. The confidence of the students zoomed. I had never been so happy working. It was almost an out-of-the-body experience. I was amazed how beautiful my work-life could be. Life turned out to be much easier and smoother than I thought. I was finally out of my cocoon. I was so habituated to dragging my life all alone, that I was astonished at how beautiful team-work could be. I found that I could get huge amounts of work done instinctively and effortlessly. I had become used to fighting lone battles all my career. Now I had an army. Every single morning I was looking forward to get up and go to work. Every day felt so purposeful. All the working hours were utilized. My daily routine became even more disciplined and my body oozed energy. After two decades, I began getting up before 7 AM in the morning. Every day we met challenges in the design, overcame it, and looked forward to the next. Weekends gave me a well-deserved rest. Life moved at break-neck speed. It had never been easier. Perhaps this was my calling : Product development and Project management. Why did I not do it earlier?! I was pretty good at it. Without any prior experience in such work, I was breezing through it! Who had taught me? Nobody! I was automatically doing it, almost gliding through it, as if something inherent was propelling me. Chalte chalte raaste aasaan hote gaye. One thing let to another. Opportunities kept multiplying as I seized them. I realized had an inherent flair for this type of work, that I was a dynamic techno-manager. I understood this is what gives me fulfillment, joy, and a sense of daily self-actualization. This is who I was. Yeh hi to hain, jisse mujhe sabse adhik khushi milti hain. I had finally discovered myself at the age of 37. I had understood what the world needs and I had made it. This was my Ikigai : a combination of (a) what I like doing, (b) what I am good at, (c) what I will be paid for, and (d) what the world needs. I was ready to begin my journey towards self-actualization. Now there was no looking back! 

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Before I bid goodbye, let me you what I learnt in this 12 years : 

1. Independence : I learnt how to be a self-starter and be self-driven. I worked without support, survived alone, and still succeeded. I planned projects and papers alone, executed classes and evaluations alone, mentored students alone, succeeded alone; without being a part of an clique.
2. Patience, persistence, resilience, tenacity, stamina : You need all of that to survive in academia, right from when you start your doctoral studies. You have to handle constant criticism, take daily disappointments and failures, and still press on. 
3. Project planning and management : You need to plan projects and execute them in a timely fashion. Various people are involved : students, professors, lab assistants, suppliers, administrative officers, mechanics, etc. 
4. Leadership : Inspiring and motivating subordinates, tolerating mediocrity and them pulling it up from there are all part of the unsaid job description.
5. Teaching (Yes, this too!) : Simplifying your knowledge to the undergraduate level during lectures takes effort. How to handle students, take sh*t from them, set my dignity aside, correct them, and teach them to be better.
6. Time-management and prioritization : you have to juggle a lot of distinct tasks in academia (research, writing, teaching, fund raising, administration, dissertation scrutiny, mentoring, etc.) and still be perfect in each one of it. 
7. Effective oral and written communication : paper-writing and presentations for a decade have polished these skills.
8. Networking, Collaboration, and Intercultural communication : I worked with people cutting across departments. I had students from all over the country as my project / research assistants.
9. Self-consolidation : One needs to reinvent oneself in academia to have relevant publications and bag new projects. It takes sweat and toil to add those precious lines in the CV. Depth and Diversification are both required and regular intervals. One has to constantly up the game.

Things which academia cannot teach you are as follows :

• Survival skills. Outside the Ivory tower, people are far more aggressive about making money and surviving in the economy. They are always brainstorming about how to make more money and how to increase their financial security. Many are usually living an unpredictable life of ups and downs, and are game for it. They find ways to adjust to various situations. They know that like must be a healthy mix of stability and turbulence, just like the blowing wind.
• Marketing skills. Non-academic people understand that we must do, but also seem. 
• Inter-personal communication skills. Non-academic people are far more polite and courteous. They know their limits in being judgmental about others. 
• Taking orders. When there is a boss above you, you learn to take orders and follow through. Without bosses, academics run at their own pace, dislike work pressure, do not like being ordered. 
• Being in the mainstream. Academics isolate themselves in their quest for new knowledge. However, the leaders of the society are not in academia, but in business and politics, both of which are very ruthless games. Business-people and politicians run the show. Academics sit on the cheap spectator seats. If life is a river, academics sit on the bank and watch it flow.
• Realism. Instead of focusing on how things should be and how people ought to be and how the world must run, non-academicians accept the reality and strategize ways to maneuver through it.  
• Risk-taking. There is nothing risky in academia to sharpen such skills.
• Teamwork. In the real world, people work with, deal with, depend on, count upon, and gather feedback from each other. An academician is like an inert element, which refuses to bond with any other element.

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I had been languishing in a wrong state, a wrong city, a wrong profession, a wrong society, a wrong environment, at wrong standards, among wrong people; for over a decade. Now I was finally going to find my tribe. What I heard now was "The Call of the Wild". It was time for me to shed the "comfort" of academia and enter the real world.  At last, I removed my label as an academician and redeemed myself. After twelve long years of an excruciating exile, main shrap-mukt ho gayi. I was finally liberated from the curse of Devyani.

Goodbye!

(Pictured above : Buck, the dog-hero, from "The Call of the Wild" by Jack London)

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The author worked as an academic for 12 years (Visiting faculty, Assistant Professor, Associate Professor); taught several courses in both UG and PG levels, created new course from her Research, graduated 02 PhDs, 03 M.Techs, 15 BTechs in her group, set up a lab and a unique R&D facility, did multi-disciplinary work, represented her Institute 10+ times in international conferences, had 50+ international publications, did administrative duties in multiple positions, collaborated with top companies, won national and international awards for her research, and did several outreach activities across India. She finally quit academia in June 2023.