Watching TV for third day in a row and understanding nothing. The demonstrations on Belgrade university are under way. Dad's there, while not exactly in Novi Beograd (the Agriculture college is in Zemun, nearby), and he's staying with tetka which is, then, near the epicenter again.
He finally comes, don't even remember if he managed to pass any exams, if the exams were held at all. He just couldn't get to the old Belgrade before the situation cleared, as there's the bus station. And he had an index, as a part-time student, so he was admitted by students' guards and could pass the barricades.
He brought lots of newspapers, specially the issues of Student, the badges of the Free University (as the BU was renamed at the time) and, most enlightening for me, the local edition of Politika. The differences between what was in this local edition and in that for the rest of the country were amazing. The latter was so sterilized, so devoid of anything important which couldn't be explained to outsiders, incredible. That taught me to not trust the official version. The lesson took some years to take root, but the seed of doubt was already sprouting.
The explanation (probably by dad, and not necessarily addressed to me, but I heard it) was that the local edition couldn't ignore the events everybody in the city could see with their own eyes. For out of town it was different, not all the country was supposed to know everything until the situation cools off and the shape of the official version solidifies.
I didn't understand most of what I read, but I kept reading whatever I could. I remember the name, Vujica Rešin Tucić, who was a fierce mocker, he filled the whole back page of Student with some unfathomable satire, „The horrors of underground“ (the word underground still meant only the criminal millieu, not musical).
„young innocent broad, are you hurt“ „I am not, thanks to dick“
„Pausanias, ancient Greek of whom nothing is known“
„Enemy should be beat with his own weapon, he said and picked up the cat-o-nine-arsepatchers“
(arsepatchers are seeds of a certain weed, which hook into anything that has hairs and are hard to take out)
I quoted the above in january 2025, from memory; the „Horrors of underground“ grew into a novel (conditionally calling it so) by 1990, which I can't find anymore, but did find it once, at least in parts. Now Yandex gives me one video in which parts of it can be seen, and another site where it could allegedly be downloaded for free, but you need to have an account with Gugao, m$ or Apple, which I don't mean to. Back then I didn't even know that VRT is a local from here, from Melency to be precise, and that he collaborated with most of the local cultural scene, where I'll find myself in due time, in a circumspect way. I met the guy in 1972, with an epilogue on 29-IX-1972..
On ninth, Tito said that the students were right. The protest ended on eleventh. Party issued „guidelines“, i.e. their instruction on how to further develop the system of socio-economic and political relationships.
7-I-2015 - 17-IX-2025