95

Dear Readers,

                      Eventually I have reached this conclusion that people who study literature are beautiful souls and are gifted people in  more than one way.  The mere pleasure of their presence is so enchanting and influencing even though they not speak a word. All the novels, poems, letters, short stories, classics they read leaves inside them an unfathomable quest to understand the unknown, to predict the unpredictable and to gauge the unmeasurable. 

                    History is for the disturbed soul. A soul caught in the vicious circles of punarjanma, of Karma and wandering wild in the layers of time and space, trapped inside the prism of our multiple Universes. I always knew that deep down in me is an actor who loves to pretend and role-play in real life. I enjoy locking myself up in this cocoon and enjoying my privacy but my cozy winter hibernation is interrupted by these 'literature types' who just see through me. They lay me bare and are able to read through my gimmicks. The feeling is horrible. Nothing hurts an actor more than a mild chide pointing out his under-performance. 

                   Yet, one always waits for the next encounter. This is also for the reason that all that a cheerful mind wishes to display, to showcase ( to show the world through his eye) can be best understood by these receivers of human emotions. They don't judge you but take you as you are, just as they would receive any of the characters in the stories or study a chisel strike on a monolith. Its a joy to show them what you want to. But one has to watch out, because even here, it is they who call the shots.

94

Dear Readers, 

                     A small gathering of 11 people was organized by my dear colleague Vishal Vikram Singh, Assistant Professor, Deptt. of Hindi, RU today at his residence in the evening. It turned out to be a big step on the road to foster genuine debate and discourse on-campus and was a momentous success despite the humble count. We are all geared up now for stepping up public speaking and discussions in this hitherto dormant University plagued by insular and petty thinking.

                         The topic of the informal meeting was life and works of G M Muktibodh, one of the greatest poets in Hindi literature. His ideas on Existentialism, Progressivism and Marxism as reflected in his jolting poems formed the content for debating and it engrossed us all into the intricacies and finesse of his beautiful mind. Vishal played the perfect host impressing us with his impeccable house-keeping skills ( the apartment was spic and span) serving cookies and tea and making us sit on the floor on mattresses covered with cool cotton bed-sheets ( giving the feel of elegant and stimulating mushairas) . 

                           As the discussion gained depth and became intense, I felt as if I am gaining one of my lost nerves. After a long gap, I was a party to a vehement, informal, genuine academic deliberation, quite like those we used to have at Ganga dhaba, or on the roof-tops of Brhmaputra hostel or in the lawns of SSS-1 ( all located in my parent Uni, JNU). The reason why I am so optimistic about an otherwise usual tea party is that it has set the ball rolling. Coming days will be fraught with all that we cherish and long to understand: Marx, Piketty, Post-modernism, Literary theory, Ambedkar, Gandhi, Bentham, Chomsky, M.N.Roy, R.S. Sharma, De-industrialisation, Quantum mechanics, Eco-criticism, Raghuram Rajan and anything under the Sun. Knowledge and thinking shall spill all over the teachers and students here........