The Academic Turmoil Poem by Teja Tanchangya

</>A deadly disease has infected our academic world,
Divided into lines of who have and who want to have
Between those who tell and those who ignore
Sharpening the dichotomy between builders and the built

In the yellows*1 or the greens*2 or somewhere around
“Potatolizing*3, ” intellectualizing, or romanticizing,
Desiring an end, but seemingly not pursuing
Goes one line of those who want and only listen

In the airless rooms, with perhaps spectacles armed,
Stand another line of those who have, tell, and build,
Formidable, respectable, and, perhaps, rarely approachable,
Ascribed to be the sources of our coming days

Thousand theories flow into academic journals
Thousand flow future plans in peer discussions.
Quest for a purpose in life and of a progressive society
Become mere illusions and “fallacies of rabbits’ horns'*4

Is this the nature of our academic world,
Bound to be academic and making it a clear end,
Till we persist to be not known and let pass into oblivion
Ample theorizations and long conceptualized suggestions?

Our ancestors told not the purpose why they moulded us
Nor would we tell our successors why we mould them
Not doubting but listening, not popularizing but harbouring
And we suffer from a deadly infected disease.

Shall we call this an academic turmoil?