ABSTRACT
This chapter touches on the ways I had posited myself first as a student and years later as faculty amidst the contesting narrations simultaneously about me and about broader social events. Starting with the cultural polarization between the ‘metropolitan’ and ‘small town’ (mufasswal), a colonial legacy that should be seen with subtlety, I gradually had to move on to conceptualize and then subvert the very construction of a ‘good boy’ – a category that entails a series of activities and manifestations and is of utmost importance both for assuming a faculty position and broader credibility. The act of defying the construction can be called ‘micro-politics’, or lifestyle-anarchy, unlike what are regularly perceived as political acts from a strict nationalist and/or statist perspective. This depicted my journey into the academy as well as the rules of conformism and confrontations with their subtle nature, with a focus on my strategies to survive.
