‘Yours honestly yours’ | My Diary and Me ❤️

A Voice of Your Own!

23rd July 1997 ❤️

#memoriesfromdiaries 

[This day, 27 years ago, from my personal diary entry]

What does keeping a diary mean to me?

As I had remarked in my past post, I couldn’t have quite imagined that, one day, I would be posting about my past diary entries of say, 27 years ago, onto a virtual blog space as this! 😊

Yes! but why do I have to post these past diary jottings of mine here?

The main reason is that, these diary entries are a voice of my own!

Yet another reason is that, my personal diary entries provide a microcosm of my life, as I have lived it in my own terms, - in the good ol past - that goes a long way in revealing vignettes on my character, my individuality, and on my multiple identities - as a friend, as a classmate, as a student, as a son, as a sibling, etc, and how my character and my personality are formed, acquired and influenced by the environment in which I am placed.

In fact, a famous literary movement of the late 19th and 20th centuries – American Naturalism – puts forth a similar proposition. 

According to the American naturalists, then -

Our character is inevitably shaped by the vast array of social conditions, heredity, and the environment in which we are placed!

I repeat -

Our character is inevitably shaped by the vast array of social conditions, heredity, and the environment in which we are placed!

And since a diary resonates the social conditions, and the environment in which the diarist is placed, a diary, [like a novel], can provide a lot of enriching insights into the character of the diarist as well.

So for once, let’s look at this particular diary entry to do some character analysis on this diarist –

Firstly, ‘went for French Class’. Yes, a few of us had opted for French, just for the excitement of learning a new language. 

For all ye language enthusiasts out there, who love learning new languages, if you wish to try your hand at French, do get for yourself a copy of this book titled, Modern French Course by Dondo Mathurin, a book that helped me a lot in my tryst with French.

Secondly, Bagat Singh and myself, we offered to take up ‘Sports Quiz’.

And well, that’s because, we both had a penchant for Quiz, and we both had so dutifully resolved to participate in all the Quiz Events that happened in our College and beyond!

We were placed fourth, out of a total of seven teams that participated in the Quiz Comps today.

On this particular day, we both had offered to give our names for the Sports Quiz!

Thirdly, my love for playing songs on the guitar. 😊

You see, for long, I’d been wanting to play the guitar, but somehow I didn’t have the right person to teach me to play on the guitar. 

Having grown up listening to the likes of Billy Joel, Jim Reeves, Cliff Richards, MLTR, etc., who’ve always had their major hits on the guitar, I had this passionate love for playing songs on the guitar. 😊

In this regard, I should acknowledge the fact that, my MCC School days proved very helpful for me, since I had a lovely friend from the North East, Lang Karpoori War, who patiently taught me the eight basic chords, and also coaxed me to sing simultaneously, as well!

That’s why friends are for, ain’t it? They know and understand the song in your heart, and they can beautifully bring it out from within you, for the world to see it!

From thence on, it was no turning back for me, you see!

Whenever I got an opportunity, I never failed to capitalise on it.

In fact, along with my friends Wesley and Prabhu, - we took guitar classes during our spare time on an ‘irregular’ basis, from a guitarist in the locality as well.

On this particular day, in the Welcome party given for the freshers, I gladly volunteered to play on the guitar to one of my favourite songs! 😊

Ebi was my senior and a close family friend, who had just then come to my class, when class was in progress and called me out, simply to talk to me! 😊

Finally, during the night, after 10.45 pm, we had an evening of songs on the guitar, with my close circle of friends that included Wesley, my closest buddy! This is again something I so cherish doing! Playing antaksharis with friends all day long, and all night long! 

Coming back,

So yes! A diary helps in giving you your own inimitable voice!

You are ‘Yours faithfully yours’ and ‘Yours honestly yours’ in your diary entries.

Which you can rightly call, a Voice of Your Own!

That’s so phenomenally yours, and so uniquely yours! ❤️

'Consistency, then, is the Key! ❤️

My Article in The Indian Express ❤️

21st July 1999 ✍🏼

#memoriesfromdiaries 

[This day, 25 years ago, from my personal diary]

I couldn’t have imagined that, one day, my diary entries would be adorning something called a blog, on the world wide web!

So yes! today’s blogpost on a past personal diary entry of mine, is significant for two reasons.

First and foremost, on this particular day, my article had appeared in the Letters to the Editor column in the Indian Express.

21st July 1999 - Personal Diary Entry

Encouraged and enthused by my dear Librarian Dr. Jesudoss Manalan, who motivated me skyhigh to write for magazines and newspapers on a regular basis, I began writing for newspapers and magazines. Many were rejected, but some were published.

On this delightful occasion of Guru Purnima today, I am so glad to share an inspiring note by my guru and mentor Dr. Manalan and his impact on my life as a writer and as an academic!

The excerpts are from a recently published book in honour of my beloved Librarian!

Here goes - 

Coming back, 

The very joy of spotting your name in the day’s newspaper is enough to enliven and to encourage you to keep writing, ain’t it?

On this particular day, around 8.30 am, while reading through the day’s newspapers, I was carefully poring through the editorial page, [considered to be the brain of the newspaper,] when down below, on the same page, to my great surprise and astonishment, I spotted my ‘letter to the editor' adorning the page! 

My joy knew no bounds you see! Literally I was in tears of joy! 😊

Back then, when email was literally unheard of, we had to type out the letter manually, in the nearest typewriting centre, [giving an additional two rupees, for using a carbon copy  - which is for your personal files], and then send across the ‘original’ letter to the Newspaper Editor by ordinary mail.

I well remember, when once, I had forgotten to sign my letter, and the newspaper office promptly returned it to me, asking me to affix my signature on the letter and return it to them. They then published it as well. 😊

This was indeed a great boost and a fillip for me to keep writing.

The second one from today’s diary entry is that, my article had appeared in the College Magazine as well.

I had written an article on the harmful effects of smoking, under the title, ‘Slow-Motion Suicide’.

Many of my professors had lauded me on writing for the College Magazine and for the Newspaper.

Those lovely encouragements from my dear Librarian and my Professors indeed kept me going on and on in the world of writing!

From then on, I started writing regularly for the College Magazine and for Newspapers and Journals as well.

Well, dear reader, if you’re thinking about how to start writing and having your article published, for a start, try writing a Letter to the Editor for a leading English daily in your town / city.

At times, they might turn it down, or even ignore it. 

But perseverance pays!

Keep writing them regularly! 

Again, consistency is the key!

After a particular point in time, to your great joy and delight, you will be recognised! Your labours will not go in vain!

Also get every available opportunity to write for your college magazine, or department magazine.

These would be the baby steps to help you in carving a niche for yourself in the world of writing!

To conclude, this personal diary entry taught me five lovely things –

1. Writing ‘Letters to the Editor’ for the Newspaper

2. Writing for your College Magazine / other Journals / Periodicals

3. Writing consistently!

4. Encouraging others and wishing the best for them when they write or achieve anything! Encouragement is a great morale booster you see!

Lastly,

5. Having your evening tea/coffee with your buddies! 😊

And well, here’s wishing you happy writing and happy coffee-ing as well, and a Happy Guru Purnima 😊

The Early-to-Class Club ❤️

The Early to Class Club

18th July 2024

Special congratulations to the following students of the II MA English class, who made it early to their first hour class today.

ANGELIN MIRIAM J

HARSHINA K

HELNA RAJAN

IMCHAAIEN

JAYASHRI K K

JEEVA MINU

JESSICA RIONA P

NIRMALA J

REBEKAH ANGEL L

S ANURADHA

SNEHA B

VADHANA SIVAKUMAR

VIDHYALAKSHMI R

ALAN M EBEN

ALAN SAVIO JIJO

DEEGO BENWICK V

HUDSON MATHEW J

JOMON JOSEPH

Keep up the spirit, class.

What Makes life Interesting? 😊

What Makes life Interesting?

With Chess Grandmaster Viswanathan Anand

Today | 16th July 2024

When I got a special invite to meet with Indian Chess grandmaster today at The Leela Palace, Chennai, I impulsively ‘carpe diem’ed it!

Well, one game I’ve loved playing for all of eternity is chess! Right from my childhood to my hostel years in MCC School, to my College days, the game has had such a sway on me! Watching bigwigs of the game - right from Garry Kasparov and Viswanathan Anand back then in our teen years, we’ve indeed had a great admiration for these legends for the poise and the calm they maintain before, during and after the game!

Meeting the Chess grandmaster Anand today was a dream come true!

The interactions we had with him were very rewarding!

When asked about the Soviet domination of the game for decades, he quipped,

The era of Soviet domination is over. After the 1990s they gave it away! First to the computers and then to champions from other parts of the world.

In fact, American chess grandmaster Bobby Fischer was fighting a lonely war in his country, which was uninterested in the game. In fact the Soviets loved him more!

To such an extent that, if he had retreated to an island, he would have sure taken along the Soviets with him, and not his fellow countrymen, said Anand.

When asked for his ‘One tip to maintain mental fitness’, he had this to say -

The number one tip is to sleep early. If you sleep well, and not think about the previous game, you’ve got it. As for the rest, finding something exciting to do everyday is what makes life interesting and what makes life easy to concentrate!

It’s not only in finding what you love, but finding something interesting to do everyday! The brain responds to new things, and that’s actually the best way to concentrate,

said Anand.

You may want to read our past blogpost on ‘A Game of Chess’ from my past diaries HERE

Symposia on 'Introduction to Peace Studies'

 

Sunday, 14th July 2024 | 6 pm| GMeet | All are Welcome!

Greetings.

PG & Research Department of English, Queen Mary's College, Chennai-600004 is delighted to invite you to the Inauguration of In Tandem, Research Club's Fortnightly Online Symposia for the academic year 2024-2025 on the 110th Anniversary of QMC.

THEME FOR 2024-2025: Conflict, Peace, Reconciliation and Planetary Wellbeing

Date: 14.07.2024

Time: 6.00 pm

Platform: Google Meet: https://meet.google.com/phi-waem-mhy

Welcome Address:

Dr. B. Uma Maheswari,

Principal,

Queen Mary's College

Inaugural Lecture:

Dr. R. Belinda

Director, Extension Programmes & Former Head,

Department of Social Work,

Madras Christian College, Chennai

Title: Introduction to Peace Studies

Felicitations by Board Members of In Tandem:

Dr. Samuel Rufus,

Patron, In Tandem  & Associate Professor,

Department of English, Madras Christian College, Chennai

Dr. R. Sreelatha Suganthan,

Patron, In Tandem & Associate Professor and Head (Retired),

Department of English, Chellammal College For Women, Chennai.

Dr. Debashree Dattaray,

Board Member, In Tandem & Associate Professor,

Comparative Literature & Deputy Coordinator,

Centre For Canadian Studies,  Jadavpur University, Kolkata

Mr. Joshua Gnanaselvan,

Board Member, In Tandem & English Language Instructor, IIT Delhi

Coordinator

Ms. Iranggumle Hemang, 

Ph.D Research Scholar, QMC 

Please come prepared with your reading on the subject and contribute to the discussion.

 Thanks & Regards

HOD & Faculty, Department of English.

'Taste' & 'Memory' Combo in Literature ❤️

On Marcel Proust | ‘Taste & Memory’ Combo 😊

Remembering Proust on his birthday today!

“A lot can happen over coffee”, goes the famous tagline of Café Coffee Day!

Indeed, “A lot can happen over tea” as well, proves Proust, Marcel Proust, and goes on to connect ‘taste’ with memory!

Yes! A lovely Taste & Memory Combo!

Imagine yourself back in your childhood days, ‘tasting’ a strange new variety of fruit, that made you deliriously ill for the next couple of days. 

Chances are, when someone gives you the same fruit today, you will run helter skelter, far far away from the fruit, won’t you?

Here, the ‘taste’, the ‘memory’ of the taste and the place it happened get themselves seated in the hippocampus of the brain, and helps you react in a certain way! 

The hippocampus then, happens to be the area where episodic memories or autobiographical memories are stored and catalogued for your own future access.

Episodic memories could refer to specific incidents in our lives, like the coffee we had with our favourite friend, at Starbucks or Coffee Day, a long time ago! 

To Marcel Proust, similarly, one small bite of a madeleine dipped in his tea was enough to transport him on a beautiful journey through memory!

A lovely instance of taste ‘summoning’ memory!

In short, a ‘sense-evoked’ memory!

Yes! One small bite of a madeleine dipped in his tea, was able to summon up a memory that inspired him to write his seven-volumed, 4,215-page novel, titled, Remembrance of Things Past.

One day in winter, as I came home, my mother, seeing that I was cold, offered me some tea, a thing I did not ordinarily take.

I declined at first, and then, for no particular reason, changed my mind.

She sent out for one of those short, plump little cakes called ‘petites madeleines.’

And soon, mechanically, weary after a dull day with the prospect of a depressing morrow, I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the cake.

No sooner had the warm liquid, and the crumbs with it, touched my palate than a shudder ran through my whole body, and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary changes that were taking place.

An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, but individual, detached, with no suggestion of its origin.

And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me!

I had ceased now to feel mediocre, accidental, mortal.

Whence could it have come to me, this all-powerful joy?

I was conscious that it was connected with the taste of tea and cake, but that it infinitely transcended those savours, could not, indeed, be of the same nature as theirs.

Whence did it come? What did it signify? How could I seize upon and define it?

Undoubtedly what is thus palpitating in the depths of my being must be the image, the visual memory which, being linked to that taste, has tried to follow it into my conscious mind.

says Proust, in Volume 1 of this novel.

[T. S. Eliot would call it, ‘disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves’ through the sensory memories.]

And thus happened Proust’s monumental autobiographical novel of epic proportions, through which, he recollects with such intense detailed descriptions on his childhood experiences up till his adulthood in early 20th century aristocratic France!

He simultaneously reflects on the loss of time and lack of meaning in the world!

The role of memory assumes significance throughout the novel, through involuntary memory, wherein sensory experiences of smells, touch, sights and sounds, bring up a plethora of important memories right in front of him!

To William Wordsworth, ‘the meanest flower that blows can give thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears’.

Which means, ‘thoughts’ can be sparked, and ‘memories’ kindled, when one’s consciousness is directed towards an object.

To Wordsworth, since his conscious thoughts are directed towards the ‘flower’, it makes nostalgic thoughts by the number well up within him!

To Marcel Proust then, when his consciousness is directed towards the ‘dunking of the morsel of cake in his tea’, it facilitates the insurrection of a range of subjugated memories!

Wordsworth’s Tintern Abbey is yet another delightful rumination on revisiting Tintern Abbey five years later. 

Every object that he sees here, impresses him to the core, and the “steep and lofty cliffs” in especial, impress upon him “thoughts of more deep seclusion”!

In philosophy, this experience is referred to as intentionality, the capacity of humans to direct themselves at objects! 

Brentano, a great inspiration for Husserl, says that, 

Every mental phenomena, is directed at an object, which we might call, intentional object or intentional inexistence or immanent objectivity!

Hence it is that, every belief has a believed!

Every desire has a desired! Every Love has a loved! Every Hate has a hated!!!

This capacity of directing one’s consciousness towards an object/s is also called ‘Aboutness’ or ‘directedness!’

It’s called thus, since it is intended towards, is about, or directed towards an object!

Intentionality, then, becomes the key to understanding human experience!

Thoughts can be sparked, and memories kindled, when one’s consciousness is directed towards an object.

Well, what’s that one particular song that you so relish down the ages, and that still resonates in your heart and soul even this very moment?

What’s that one particular sip of coffee that you so relish down the ages, and that still resonates in your heart and soul even this very moment?

What’s that particular nick-name of yours that you so cherish, across the years, and that still stirs a chord in you even this very moment?

In short, what’s that ‘disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves’ moment for you?

PS: Photos and templates, this blogger’s.

Literary & Debating Association, PSGR Krishnammal College for Women, Coimbatore ❤️

 

Friday, 12th July 2024 @ PSGR Krishnammal College for Women, Coimbatore

"A great writer will often create a new taste, and make a fresh departure in the literature of his time"

And Oh! The ‘HEL’uva Things we Bought! 😊

5th July 1997 | Periods in English Literature

#memoriesfromdiaries

[This day, 27 years ago, from my personal diary entry]

Dear reader,

I wish to transport you for a moment to the 1990s, to the good ol’ pre-internet era, when we had to make a beeline to all the reputed book stores in the city, hop-stopping across stores on the look-out for ‘Literature Texts’ - the hard-copy versions. 😊

By default, most of these book stores had their glittering stacks all lined up with text books that targeted either Computer Science or Engineering students.

Yes! there were only a ‘select few’ book stores that catered to the ‘lovely literary being’. 😊

Like the good ol’ Mohan Pathippagam in Triplicane.

We had gone to one such store (don’t ask me the name of the store, my bad!) and bought a copy of Hudson’s HEL!

Ask any student of Literature, ‘Have you read your HEL’?

Chances are, with a gung-ho grin on them, they’d gladly answer in the affirmative!

Well, without ‘HEL’, it was next to impossible for a literature student to go ahead and taste the ‘HEAVEN’ of literary delights that were reserved for the subsequent semesters.

HEL was hence the mother of all our Literature Course Work! 😊

An Outline History of English Literature by W. H. Hudson was priced at Rs.50/- in the year 1997.

Today the price of the same book in a book store, is Rs.215/-

We also bought a chess board that was priced at Rs.17.50 paisa.

And as usual, early in the morning, went and bought a copy of The Hindu, the day’s morning newspaper, which was priced at Rs.2.30 paisa, back then.

Today, the price of The Hindu has not shot up much. The Chennai Edition today, costs a very modest Rs.5.00/-

And since Hindi was not taught in schools for us, we went ahead on our own accord, and enrolled ourselves for a Semester’s Hindi Course with the renowned Dakshina Bharat Hindi Prachar Sabha.

Now, coming back to Hudson’s HEL,

Well, this was one of the pioneering books that outlined the entire History of English Literature into self-contained Periods, for ease of study.

Added, it was Hudson who gave us an elaborate definition for the first time, on the word ‘Period’, and its importance to English Literature.

Says he –

The great central purpose of a history of literature the purpose to which everything else in it is secondary and subordinate - is to give a clear account of the whole transformation of literature from period to period, and so far as possible to mark out the causes which have combined to produce it.

A great writer will often create a new taste, and make a fresh departure in the literature of his time.

Even the greatest genius is necessarily moulded by the culture, ideals, and mental and moral tendencies of the world into which he is born, and the character of what he produces is therefore to a large extent determined by these.

In this sense we have to regard every writer as a ‘product’ of his time, and so regarding him, we have to inquire into the nature of the influences which shaped his thought, directed his taste, and helped to give a distinctive character to his work.

Thus, for example, one of the principal forces behind the English literature of the Elizabethan era was the immense enthusiasm for the Greek and Latin classics which had come with what we call the Renaissance; our writers and readers alike were under the powerful spell of Italian literature during the same period, under that of French literature at the end of the seventeenth century, under that of German literature a hundred years later.

We ought now to have no difficulty in understanding why the history of English literature is always divided into periods.

A period in the sense which we properly attach to the term, is a certain length of time during which a particular kind of taste prevails, and the literature of which is therefore marked by various common characteristics of subject-matter, thought, tone, and style.

While the individual writers of such a period will of course differ immensely, one from another, in all the specific qualities of personality, these common characteristics will nonetheless be pronounced features in the work of all of them.

Then with a decisive change of taste, the period in question may be said to come to a close while another period opens.

Well, that was ‘HEL’ in a NUTSHELL for you, dear reader!