"No Dues With Jawaharlal Nehru University"

This was a friend's status update on faceboook. He is about to submit his M.Phil dissertation at JNU and has just gone through the enitre campus collecting autographs on a sheet of paper which says that he has paid all his dues to the University and does not have any pending fines. I remember going through that circus before submitting my M.Phil Dissertation and Ph.D thesis in JNU and can completely identify with the sense of achievement and relief that one gets after its done! But this morning my friend's status update made me think. Or perhaps looking at the same experience from a temporal distance has given me an all togetether new persctive to look at it. The question that arises from this new perspective is: "Is it really possible for us to clear all our dues with a University like JNU?" It has been more than two years now since I left the University and I think its not just the knowledge conatined in books that I learnt or got from JNU....but much more....I found a lifelong mentor and guide in my supervisor and some other Professors who taught me; learnt valuable lessons of life from them and others; made some eternal friends in the hostel corridors and the dhabas around the campus; and collected innumerable memories which tremendously enriched my ever-increasing reportory of experiences.

So now I'm not really sure if I can confidently say that "I Have Paid All My Dues To JNU?" In fact this takes me further back to my alma matter....my school...Notre Dame Academy, Jalampur and Patna which nurtured me from a tiny tot, scared to leave the safe and secure embrace of my mother's arms and turned me into a confident woman ready to go out in the world and face its challenges. I don't think I can pay my debt to Notre Dame and JNU in my entire lifetime!! But I would like to make a humble effort towards it by upholding and spreading the values that I learnt and imbibed at these places. I think that's the only way I can try to pay back the debt to these wonderful temples of knowledge and learning! I hope when I look back and think about these places later in life I am able to say that I have at least made a humble effort towards paying back my debt to the places that made me the person I am !!