Voices, Feeling Disconnected and Mr. Lapata

Voices, Feeling Disconnected and Mr. Lapata.

A long time ago, well, to be honest not so long ago, I used to write for a campus magazine called Voices. This was run by, at first, Akanksha and Abhijeet, then later, Anindita (Buri) and Pragyan. It was during Buri’s tenure that I started writing somewhat regularly for Voices. My column was called ‘Feeling Disconnected’, and that happens to be a rather good description of the contents. One of the stars of the Voices team was Sujit, the cartoonist. The character he created was called Mr. Lapata. ‘Lapata’ literally means ‘lost’. And that, again pretty much sums up the experiences of Lapata. Anyone who has ever stepped into a graduate programme will either admit to feeling lost or just happens to be a compulsive liar.

Voices gave me a lot. Starting from learning how to get a tiny magazine printed cheaply in Bangalore (getting to know DTP blokes on a first name basis) to learning how to interview somewhat unwilling administrators and not get kicked out of the institute, yes, I picked up quite a few skills there. Avik and me became the editor’s firemen. I got clubbed with our resident crossword expert, one Rohini to work on, yes, you guessed it right, a crossword. Well, we started disagreeing back then, and its been almost three years and we have rarely agreed on anything yet.

At the annual Voices function, Ayan (Buro) scripted a short skit that revolved around the life (or lack of) and times (way too much of) of Mr. Lapata. It turned out to have hit a chord. Someone had made a huge thermocol cutout of Mr. Lapata which I pinched after the show. While cycling back to my room, there was small accident which resulted in Lapata being very neatly decapitated, but after I put him up on the wall, nobody ever noticed anything strange!