Alumni Speak

It was on Nov 17, 1967 that I joined the university as a junior faculty in a scale lower than that of a lecturer. In my case it was literally a sheer stroke of luck which I have not been able to comprehend till now. I cannot say it was a dream come true simply because I didn’t have the academic or intellectual wherewithal to dream so big. My academic graph was very modest, just about average without any ‘flying colours’. So, how it came about will always remain a mystery to me. But that’s what life is all about. For me the thirty seven humbling years that followed that ‘event’ have been a period of learning not only how to constantly strive and persevere to repay b worthy of an undeserved ‘reward’ but also how to respectfully remain in permanent debt to my compassionate yet unknown benefactor(s). With all my failings as a person and as faculty, I always enjoyed the warmth and affection of my colleagues (among them some of my revered teachers) and my students. We had occasional differences of opinion, but head on collisions, no, never, simply because these differences were always those of perspectives, never of intentions. These years have also witnessed numerous changes and academic innovations in the Department. There has been a steady increase in the number of faculty and students and the syllabus has gradually been shifting away from its total Anglo-centricity of our student days despite the un-Anglicised and wholly ‘desi’ ethos of the Department and the University at large. The process of change began in the late sixties with the introduction of American literature followed by Indian Literature in English a few years later. The present course structure of ‘Eng Lit’ in the Department is almost fully de-colonised, which is a welcome change and augurs well for the future of English Studies in India. Since I am permanently ‘grounded’ in Varanasi I have plenty of occasions to meet and interact with a number of present day teachers and also occasionally some students. I am always deeply impressed with their dynamism, creativity and readiness to embark on new and challenging and unconventional, if not entirely ‘unliterary’ areas of research which sometimes appear to have hardly any recognisable relationship with the literature as we were taught in our student days. Even a few minutes’ interaction with these young minds convinces me of the enormous relevance of these apparently fancy areas to the study of literature. After all, why should literature be always viewed only through the prism of literature as a rarefied discourse believed to exist for the sole purpose of transporting us to the transcendent realm of ‘ananda’? The times are propitious to open literature up and contextualise it within the larger human concerns and discourses. Interdisciplinarity is the need of the hour and I am really very glad to notice that the present generation of teachers and students is fully aware of the changes occurring all around us in the fast globalising world which is posing a serious threat to indigenous cultures and world-views. Therefore, even when we are teaching and disseminating ideas and experiences articulated in a ‘foreign’ medium, we must not slacken our guard against the all-devouring, homogenising and, in the end, monopolising impulses inscribed in the on-going drive of globalisation.

My joining the Department of English for Postgraduation, followed by an immediate absorption as an English faculty after passing out, turned out to be very crucial in my life. I learnt the alphabets of inner discipline and human values in its beautiful surroundings.As a token of gratitude, I have instituted one Memorial Scholarship and three Memorial Gold Medals for outstanding performance in English at different stages.