Sattish Ashok Balsubrammian, M.Sc. Zoology

Abstract

U Annamalai is a coeducational university set amid rural surroundings in Madras State, South India. Annamalai? It's across from the railroad tracks near the temple in Chidambaram, Madrasies would direct, and thus locate the university by its proximity to a well known landmark and national monument, the Chidambaram Hindu temple. I lived and studied at Annamalai, sharing hostel space, mess hall food, and the idle conversation of students on heat soaked afternoons. Not small by Indian standards, the university is comprised of about forty-five hundred students. It is unique among Indian universities in having all its colleges located on one campus rather than dispersed through several of the cities in Madras State. The centralized campus, students remark, coalesces the community so that like Sattish Ashok Balsubrammian they feel everyone at the university knows about everyone else, perhaps too much, as the public nature of all activities is often inhibiting. Bal is not a single living person I knew, but a portrait drawn from many students at the university. I believe he bears as well a significant resemblance to students at other universities in Madras State and throughout all of India who, like himself, comprise the generation of young, educated Indians, living the transition from a traditional, village-based, agrarian nation to a secular, urbanized, industrialized one.