WHY...Academia?

Academics can do it to you! A few years of university teaching and a PhD (you realize how it is not a four-letter word! Dismay!) later you suddenly discover yourself on the verge of an existential query: WHY?

a)Why should one be diagnosed with cervical spondylosis days after he has submitted his tome? The mornings were supposed to begin with piping cups of coffee and the rustle of newspapers. It begins instead with modulated, timed, precise manipulations of neck and shoulder muscles! Where have all the mornings gone? And WHY?

b)And then the eyes! I go to the doc. She says how the muscles of my eyes are tired and cannot converge for a period of time. “Fatigue! Overwork! Strain! You need to be off books for a few days, and instead try convergence exercises!” Mamma Mia! What unconquerable bliss, what reason to rejoice! I have waited for months… years. Garnered those books for months… years…yes…Garcia Marquez, and Vargas-Llosa, and Troilokyonath, and my latest fad…Le’Carre!!! I have seen them from a distance, touched and felt them, read a couple of pages and put them back…all for this period of my life…when I thought I would once again be a free man! Unbridled, unshackled, ‘un’academic(sic). When I would not, in printed words, look for aporetic possibilities or discursive dynamic or post-foundational tendencies! When I shall swim in the sheer beauty of the image, the lilt of the word, or the quiet splendour of the turn of phrase I have long forgotten! Where have all the afternoons gone? And WHY?

c)And the evenings have been challenged by cholesterol! This seems to have been directly lifted from Rushdie. But I never knew that cholesterol comes in a buy one get one pack. There seems to be a ‘good cholesterol’ and a ‘bad cholesterol’. Good Angel and Bad Angel! My bad un is toward the higher side. Ya. That bad! And you have to portion the drink you pour. Always. At thirty-three. That bad. Where have all the evenings gone? And WHY?