Friday 31 March 2017

Derek Walcott's 'Dream Play' - Dream on Monkey Mountain

A Dream Play (1907), is a drama by August Strindberg. A precursor to both expressionism and surrealism, this play has been successfully revived many times. Strindberg was in the process of breaking from his earlier naturalist approach when he wrote this dream tale of the daughter of the goddess Indra descending to Earth to meet a variety of symbolic characters.

Forerunner of Modern Drama: The play is considered a forerunner of expressionism and the theater of the absurd.

It employs dream symbolism to translate Strindberg’s mystical visions into the language of drama. Highly abstracted characters appear and disappear in stylized settings; scenes and images change unexpectedly; and profound fears and ghastly fantasies materialize. By breaking with the realistic traditions of drama in his later career, Strindberg opened up new possibilities, prefiguring such major dramatic movements of the twentieth century as expressionism and exerting a powerful influence on dramatists such as Samuel Beckett, Eugene O’Neill, and Eugene Ionesco.

Derek Walcott’s Dream Play: Dream on Monkey Mountain

Makak (Chris McFarlane) prepares to destroy his
vision (Juette Carty) in 'Dream on Monkey Mountain'.
The Dream on Monkey Mountain (1967) belongs to the twentieth-century genre called dream plays, connected with works by playwrights such as Strindberg as well as by Synge and Soyinka. The play's main character is Makak (French patois for "Ape"), a black charcoal-burner who comes to town, gets drunk, and is taken into custody by Corporal Lestrade, a mulatto guard who is the maintainer of law and order during the later years of the colonial power. In a dream scene of a mock trial that was probably inspired by Kafka and Hesse, Lestrade accuses Makak of being intoxicated and damaging the premises of a local salesman. However, in another vivid dream sequence, Makak is crowned king in the romantic Africa of his roots, surrounded by his wives, his warriors, and the masks of pagan gods.

On Androcentrism

This is just an extended disquisition and supplementation to our discussion in class today on the ‘normatives’ in society based on ‘Androcentrism.’ Please find below a wonderful rundown on the term ‘androcentrism,’ excerpted from 50 Key Concepts in Gender Studies by Jane Pilcher & Imelda Whelehan.

Here we go!

Androcentrism

Deriving from the Greek word for male, androcentrism literally means a doctrine of male-centredness. Androcentric practices are those whereby the experiences of men are assumed to be generalisable, and are seen to provide the objective criteria through which women’s experiences can be organised and evaluated.

Some writers, particularly those influenced by psychoanalytical theory, prefer the terms phallocentrism or phallocentric, in order to draw attention to the way the phallus acts as the symbolic representation of male-centredness.

A related concept is that of phallogocentrism. Deriving from the work of Derrida and Lacan, this term describes those ideas centred around language or words (logos) that are masculine in style.

Postmodern feminist writers such as Cixous argue that phallogocentric language is that which rationalises, organises and compartmentalises experience and it is on this basis that terms ending in ‘ism’ (e.g. feminism) may be rejected (Brennan 1989; Tong 1998). An early use of the term ‘androcentric’ was made by Charlotte Perkins Gillman who subtitled her 1911 book, ‘Our Androcentric Culture’.
Dear Students of II MA English,

All your II CIA Marks and Assignment Marks (with me) will be handed over to you personally in your classroom, on Tuesday, 04 April 2017.

Corrections/clarifications if any, should be made on that day itself.

Hence, please be present in your class on Tuesday, 04 April 2017. No change, whatsoever, will be entertained after the given deadline.

Regards,

Dr. Rufus 

Thursday 30 March 2017

Dear Students of I MA English & III BA English,

You may collect your answer scripts of the II CIA Test, when I meet you in class tomorrow, Friday, 31 March 2017.

Corrections/clarifications, if any, should be brought to my notice on or before 03 April 2017.

Regards,
Dr. Rufus

Discussion @ MIDS

Discussion on Tamil Nadu State Budget 2017-18
@ Adiseshiah Auditorium, Madras Institute of Development Studies
Friday, 31 March 2017
Programme

2:15 pm
Welcome and opening remarks by Prof. Shashanka Bhide, Director MIDS

Remarks by
Mr. S. Krishnan I.A.S.,
Principal Secretary, Department of Planning, 
Development and Special Initiatives, GoTN

2.45 pm
Presentation by Invited Speakers
Dr. R. Srinivasan,
Associate Professor,
Department of Econometrics, University of Madras
Prof. K. R. Shanmugam,
Professor, IFMR
Prof. V. R. Muraleedharan,
Professor, IITM

Wednesday 29 March 2017

Kudos dear students...

I congratulate the following students of II MA English for their original, highly creative and inspiring write-ups on their tryst with the Chennai Book Fair and on other related Events in MCC as well.

The impactful, highly creative articles of the students, whose names are given below, are already displayed on our academic web blog. 

If, per chance, I’ve missed out on the name of any student, kindly email me rightaway, at rufusonline@gmail.com

All of you get the promised bonus marks as part of your II CIA, on the General Essay paper. You may collect your answer sheets of the 'General Essay' paper tomorrow in class.

Keep up the spirit ye all.

God bless you.

Best wishes,

Dr. Rufus

Congratulations, again, dear students, on your highly creative and inspiring write-ups on the Chennai Book Fair 2017.

May your bonding with books be for life!

1.      Pheba K Paul, II MA English
2.      Aparna, R. II MA English
3.      Joanna Shalom John, II M.A. English
4.      Christina Mary George, II M.A English

"I am Monarch of all I survey..."

The Antilles: Fragments of Epic Memory
[Derek Walcott, Nobel Lecture, December 7, 1992]

Felicity is a village in Trinidad on the edge of the Caroni plain, the wide central plain that still grows sugar and to which indentured cane cutters were brought after emancipation, so the small population of Felicity is East Indian, and on the afternoon that I visited it with friends from America, all the faces along its road were Indian, which, as I hope to show, was a moving, beautiful thing, because this Saturday afternoon Ramleela, the epic dramatization of the Hindu epic the Ramayana, was going to be performed, and the costumed actors from the village were assembling on a field strung with different-coloured flags, like a new gas station, and beautiful Indian boys in red and black were aiming arrows haphazardly into the afternoon light. Low blue mountains on the horizon, bright grass, clouds that would gather colour before the light went. Felicity! What a gentle Anglo-Saxon name for an epical memory.

Under an open shed on the edge of the field, there were two huge armatures of bamboo that looked like immense cages. They were parts of the body of a god, his calves or thighs, which, fitted and reared, would make a gigantic effigy. This effigy would be burnt as a conclusion to the epic. The cane structures flashed a predictable parallel: Shelley's sonnet on the fallen statue of Ozymandias and his empire, that "colossal wreck" in its empty desert.

Drummers had lit a fire in the shed and they eased the skins of their tables nearer the flames to tighten them. The saffron flames, the bright grass, and the hand-woven armatures of the fragmented god who would be burnt were not in any desert where imperial power had finally toppled but were part of a ritual, evergreen season that, like the cane-burning harvest, is annually repeated, the point of such sacrifice being its repetition, the point of the destruction being renewal through fire.

An Inspirational Interview of sorts with Derek Walcott! Couldn't have been better!

Remembering a legend and his artistic ensemble, in this month of mourning for Derek Walcott - a much-loved Nobel laureate of our times!  (23 January 1930 – 17 March 2017).

In this candid interview with Edward, Derek Walcott deliberates on a host of issues close to his heart - on the English language, on being a Caribbean writer, on V. S. Naipaul, on the importance of the figure of Robinson Crusoe to him, on Heaney, on his guru Robert Lowell, his style of writing, and lots more...

Reproducing below, a wonderfully taken interview - i would personally rate it the best Derek has given - where he opens his mind and heart to everything about Derek - the artist!

INTERVIEWER: What would you say about the epiphanic experience described in Another Life, which seems to have confirmed your destiny as a poet and sealed a bond to your native island?

WALCOTT
There are some things people avoid saying in interviews because they sound pompous or sentimental or too mystical. I have never separated the writing of poetry from prayer. I have grown up believing it is a vocation, a religious vocation. What I described in Another Life—about being on the hill and feeling the sort of dissolution that happened—is a frequent experience in a younger writer. 

I felt this sweetness of melancholy, of a sense of mortality, or rather of immortality, a sense of gratitude both for what you feel is a gift and for the beauty of the earth, the beauty of life around us. When that’s forceful in a young writer, it can make you cry. It’s just clear tears; it’s not grimacing or being contorted, it’s just a flow that happens. The body feels it is melting into what it has seen. This continues in the poet. It may be repressed in some way, but I think we continue in all our lives to have that sense of melting, of the “I” not being important. That is the ecstasy. It doesn’t happen as much when you get older. 

There’s that wonderful passage in Traherne where he talks about seeing the children as moving jewels until they learn the dirty devices of the world. It’s not that mystic. Ultimately, it’s what Yeats says: “Such a sweetness flows into the breast that we laugh at everything and everything we look upon is blessed.” That’s always there. It’s a benediction, a transference. It’s gratitude, really. The more of that a poet keeps, the more genuine his nature. I’ve always felt that sense of gratitude. I’ve never felt equal to it in terms of my writing, but I’ve never felt that I was ever less than that. And so in that particular passage in Another Life I was recording a particular moment.

INTERVIEWER: How do you write? In regard to your equation of poetry and prayer, is the writing ritualized in any way?

WALCOTT
I don’t know how many writers are willing to confess to their private preparatory rituals before they get down to putting something on paper. But I imagine that all artists and all writers in that moment before they begin their working day or working night have that area between beginning and preparation, and however brief it is, there is something about it votive and humble and in a sense ritualistic. 

Individual writers have different postures, different stances, even different physical attitudes as they stand or sit over their blank paper, and in a sense, without doing it, they are crossing themselves; I mean, it’s like the habit of Catholics going into water: you cross yourself before you go in. Any serious attempt to try to do something worthwhile is ritualistic. I haven’t noticed what my own devices are. But I do know that if one thinks a poem is coming on—in spite of the noise of the typewriter, or the traffic outside the window, or whatever—you do make a retreat, a withdrawal into some kind of silence that cuts out everything around you. 

What you’re taking on is really not a renewal of your identity but actually a renewal of your anonymity, so that what’s in front of you becomes more important than what you are. Equally—and it may be a little pretentious-sounding to say it—sometimes if I feel that I have done good work I do pray, I do say thanks. It isn’t often, of course. I don’t do it every day. I’m not a monk, but if something does happen I say thanks because I feel that it is really a piece of luck, a kind of fleeting grace that has happened to one. Between the beginning and the ending and the actual composition that goes on, there is a kind of trance that you hope to enter where every aspect of your intellect is functioning simultaneously for the progress of the composition. But there is no way you can induce that trance.

Submission of your Assignments - Regarding

Dear Students,

Those of you who are doing your assignments under my supervision, kindly remember these points!

If it’s going to be a “cut and paste” job, you better not send it at all, because I think I can ‘search’ your assignment’s “40 KB of googled data in MS Word," all by myself on the great grandmother of knowledge – Google.com, and well, even much much much more than your 'stolen,' and/or ‘smuggled’ data.

A Sample Submission  for your perusal
Oh come on guys, give my plagiarism software some rest. It hasn’t stopped beeping since last week! J

Well, it’s YOUR assignment, and please do take it seriously. (Remember, it substitutes one CIA Test! Just in case you forgot all about that!)

If you think you don’t have the time and the integrity to do an honest assignment all by yourself, you’d better not submit it at all!

And please, for heaven’s sake, don’t submit anonymous attachments! [that have no details, whatsoever, about the sender].

Moreover, while submitting an online assignment, please have the courtesy to introduce yourself, the title of the course paper, the class you are from, etc. 

Making their Voices heard...


The stories in this book will agitate your heart and energise your intellect, and stimulate and open up your imagination to the possibilities of women’s agency and endurance. The book was first published in Hindi as Sangtin Yatra (a journey of solidarity, reciprocity and of enduring friendship). The English version Playing with Fire appeared as a response in defence of the first book. Sangtin Yatra gives us hope that women can move from individual empowerment to form a collective countervailing power bloc. In the Foreword, Chandra Talpade Mohanty captures the theme and spirit of the book. She acknowledges the book as a gift ‘which enacts and theorises experience, storytelling and memory work as central in the production of knowledge and resistance’.

Playing with Fire was conceived and researched by nine women but portrays the lives of seven village-level activists from diverse castes and religions. The seven activists are: Anupamlata, Ramsheela, Reshma Ansari, Shashi Vaish, Shashibala, Surbala and Vibha Bajpayee. These women have worked in seventy villages in the Sitapur District in rural India. The women work for the Nari Samata Yojana – a Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) which seeks to empower rural women of the Dalit castes (lowest castes). Eight of the women started an independent organisation, Sangtin, that befriends poor rural women.  

This is one of the few intimate books in the development and gender field that presents the stories and perspectives of village-level fieldworkers. Very often fieldworkers do not get to tell their own stories as the seven women reflect, ‘so often we have asked other women to share their personal stories but no one has ever asked us to tell our own’ (2006: 15).

It is in these personal and collective journeys that we are given intricate and in-depth pictures of the power structures in the Indian family, which ‘are often difficult to observe and record’, and as another fieldworker writes, ‘many fieldworkers are unable to effect change in their own homes and quietly endure family violence – but outside the home in a collective and in the community they are towers of strength’ (Krishanmurty, 1999: 118). These are the stories that often feminist researchers or even activists hesitate to intervene in, the stories of individual oppression in the family. The reflective stories tell how women negotiate these multiple oppressions and strategically challenge them. The collective stories become a ‘chorus’ as they inform us how their personal consciousness developed and changed. The vivid and compelling stories tell us how personal issues get intertwined with the political and social and rescue that long forgotten feminist slogan that the ‘personal is political’.

Thursday 23 March 2017

Institute Seminar Series @ MIDS

Transforming the Subjective and the Objective
A Dialogical Workshop
24 March 2017        Friday       2:00 PM

Chair: Prof. Ananta Kumar Giri, MIDS
Speakers: Prof. Ananta Kumar Giri
Dr. Marcus Bussey, University of Sunshine Coast, Australia (through Skype)
Dr. Subir Rana, Independent Scholar, Bangalore
Prof. Manjubala Dash, MTPG & RIHS, Puducherry


Outline: Subjective and objective are inter-related dimensions of human existence and our quest for objectivity in science, society and scholarship is part of this broader human condition.  Objectivity in social sciences has been much discussed and much water has flown in our rivers of understanding, from Max Weber to Michel Foucault. To this complex field of critique and reflections, Amartya Sen has offered his perspective of what he calls positional objectivity: “[..] positionally dependent observations, beliefs, and actions are central to our knowledge and practical reason. The nature of objectivity in epistemology, decision theory and ethics has to take note of the parametric dependence of observation and observation on the position of the observer.” But the objectivity here is that of an observer but agents in a field of life as well as subjects and objects of understanding are not only observers but also participants. 

Monday 20 March 2017

MIDS Seminar Series - March 2017

THE INSTITUTE SEMINAR SERIES - March 2017

Topic: Mobility of World Refugees: Nature, Causes and Trends
Speaker: G. Sathis Kumar
[Assistant Professor, Great Lakes Institute of Management]
Chair: K. Sivasubramaniyan, Associate Professor, MIDS
Date & Time: 22 March 2017, Wednesday, 3:30 pm
Venue: Adiseshiah Auditorium, MIDS
All are Invited...!

The truth about lies...

The Truth About Lies!

D. E. Benet

Sometimes the choice of the subject makes the going heavy in the classroom. The recent socio-cultural and political events brought to the classroom a kind of exigency that catalysed a debate over the post-truth society. On that droll day, the millennials wanted to know their living status and took time to pose questions.

They had these two questions, one existential and the other moral - “Is it true that you all spoke truth, nothing but truth once and is telling lies a talent or sin?” For a while, we analysed the cold hard data available and came to the conclusion that our lives are awash with lies, after all.

Fighting hard to snap judge anyone, we arrived at a list of typical liars — innocuous, genial, congenital, compulsive, malicious, pernicious and unconscionable. Then we found out that the word ‘liar’ could be used after any number of adjectives. We all agreed there is none called an infallible liar, and commiseration for the liars is not a misplaced emotion.

The mundane part of it was the spirited discussion on distinction between cock-and bull story and shaggy-dog story. Shallow understanding makes such sessions light and bearable, but attempting deeper understanding can be enervating.

Saturday 18 March 2017

The PSA Essay Competition for Postgrads 2017

PSA/Journal of Postcolonial Writing 
Postgraduate Essay Competition 2017

The PSA/Journal of Postcolonial Writing Postgraduate Essay Competition provides a great opportunity for postgraduate scholars to show case their work in a leading postcolonial academic journal and to earn some really useful research funding. 

The winners and runners-up constantly remind us of the innovative and timely contributions that postgraduate scholars make to postcolonial studies. The competition is a means of duly recognising their work and of furthering their careers as postcolonialists. 

The deadline for submissions is 1 April 2017.

Applicants are invited to submit an essay on any topic relating to postcolonial studies. We welcome essays from all disciplines, including cultural studies, geography, politics, theology, history, anthropology, literature, film, or development studies. The competition is open to any postgraduate student who is registered at any institution anywhere in the world, by, or within three months of, the submission deadline.

All essays are subject to an anonymous peer review by a panel of established experts in postcolonial studies. The winning essay will, subject to editorial approval, be published in The Journal of Postcolonial Writing, a journal that has a long tradition of publishing innovative work in the field and which has had an ongoing partnership with the PSA.

The winner will be awarded £250, and, should they not already be a member, will receive a complimentary year-long membership to the PSA. The runner-up will also have their work notably mentioned.

Guidelines for applicants

Essays should be no longer than 7,500 words (including bibliography and any notes), and must conform to the MLA referencing style), or shorter than 7,000 words. Any essays that are too long or too short will be automatically disqualified, so please ensure your word count meets this requirement.

Friday 17 March 2017

Seminar @ Women's University, Karnataka

Dept of PG Studies & Research in English
Karnataka State Women's University
Vijayapur, Karnataka
invites you for a
UGC Sponsored Two-Day National Seminar
On
Indian Women’s Literature in English
(Origin, Growth and Evaluation)


24, 25 March 2017

For more details, click on the Brochure HERE

This is also a personal invite on behalf of Dr. P. Kannan, the Organising Secretary of this conference.

Thursday 16 March 2017

Seminar @ University of Gour Banga, West Bengal

Two-day International Seminar
on
Nation and Beyond: Interdisciplinary Perspectives
Organized by
University of Gour Banga, West Bengal, India

14, 15 April 2017

Seminar Concept Note

Ernest Renan famously observed that ‘[a] nation is a daily plebiscite.’ This observation reveals the contested nature of the modern nation. The imagination of a ‘nation’ depends on a wide consensus among the members of a ‘community’ (which itself a homogeneous term) and the national imaginary contingent on this consensus is vulnerable to critical scrutiny; for it is problematised by issues such as the right of secession, urge for state-formation, ethnic conflict, minority protection, control of resources, globalization, diasporicity, and trans-national formations, corporations and mechanisms. The objects and ideas having semiotic values (e.g. the national flag, certain sartorial style, particular food habit) are supposed to be constitutive elements of a nation or a national identity, but these are often simultaneously received as divisionary and exclusionary. The assertion of nationality often assumes aggressive masculine qualities. The immigration of new groups of people problematises the issue of the nationality, and the nation state often adopts a policy of, to use Giorgio Agamben’s phrase, ‘inclusive exclusion.’ The emergence of contestatory discourses of separatism and self-determination speak up against the forces of homogenization and hegemonisation. The question of whether to include or exclude the diasporic community within the scope and definition of the nation remains yet another gray area. The concept of nation thus invites debates and discussions.

Wednesday 15 March 2017

ELTAI Confy @ St.Teresa's, Ernakulam

12th International and 48th Annual ELT@I Conference
Jointly Organized by
ELTAI
&
Department of English and Centre for Research
St. Teresa’s College (Autonomous)
Park Avenue Road
Ernakulam, Kerala 682011

Theme: English Language Acquisition: Western Theories and Eastern Practices

29th June, 30th June & 01st July 2017

Submission of abstracts : 15th May 2017
Submission of full-length paper : 30th May 2017

Sub-themes:
• Teaching-learning theories of other languages
• Indigenous theories of teaching-learning English
• Failed models of teaching-learning English

Tuesday 14 March 2017

Seminar @ Sree Sankaracharya, Kalady

CALL FOR PAPERS
Three-day National Seminar
on
VISUAL POLITICS AND CONTEMPORARY CULTURE:
IDEOLOGY, REPRESENTATION AND NARRATIVE SPACE
Organized by
Centre for Comparative Literature
Sree Sankaracharya University of Sanskrit
Kalady, Kerala

05-07 April 2017

This seminar would discuss about visual-image discourses on contemporary cultural contexts and political positions. The visuals are superimposed over the society, which leads to new cultural shift. It is an unobjectionable fact that visual culture influences our daily lives by creating identities and by generally influencing our views.

The creation of movement and pattern within the film create a space for the action to take place, where the spectator follows and moves throughout the narrative space provided by the film. We particularly welcome contributions on the presence of narrative space and politics of cinematic representation in cinema and the role of film in the social construction of culture.

We invite research papers from research scholars, teachers and P G students of colleges and universities and academicians of other field interest in this subject. Eminent scholars and theoreticians, performers and film personalities would participate this seminar as resource persons. You are welcome to discuss aspects of your work, and talk of its challenging and exciting moments.

Monday 13 March 2017

Confy @ Vidyasagar

UGC Sponsored SAP, DRS Phase II National Conference on
"Dalit and Tribal Identities, the Nation, and Globalization"
on
29 and 30 March 2017
organized by
Department of English
Vidyasagar University, West Bengal

Concept Note

In India, the concern with identity has been more practically oriented for a very long time rather than being a matter of intellectual analysis. As if in reflection of this, most Indian languages have no word conveying the idea of identity; the words used as equivalents convey the meaning of uniqueness or identification. In the light of the increasing scholarly concern with the idea of identity, especially of the dalit and tribal people of the country, this conference seeks to engage in a problematic dialogue on it. Complex philosophical arguments about the nature and significance of the individual, self, or person aside, the Hindus, by and large, demand strict conformity to social norms and conventions from the individual. Not surprisingly, therefore, the answer to the question “Who are you?” is invariably in collective terms. Depending on the situation, the individual draws from his/her repertoire of identities to answer this question.

The dynamics of social relations in India are characterized by two interrelated processes: the perception of one’s own identity in a given situation; and the reaction of others in terms of the perceived identity of that individual. To the extent that a social situation is traditionally or otherwise ordered and there is a consensus about the norms and values governing that order, social transactions through identity marks or symbols are routine and facile. However, in the light of various forces of social, economic and political change in operation at the national and transnational levels, there arise situations that are fluid or that challenge the traditional norms (for example, when a member of the ex-untouchable caste group is appointed as a temple priest). There also arise anomic situations characterized by sudden breakdown of norms, as during communal conflicts. The asymmetry that once characterized the paradoxical clash between liberty of the state and the servility of its specific socio-cultural groups requires to be reviewed now.

Perhaps the most visible of the identity marks of individuals in India are the prefixes and suffixes to their names, which has neither been uniform across the country nor remained fixed. As part of a process of their upward socio-cultural mobility, members of the lower-caste groups dropped their old vernacular names in preference for the Sanskritic names. However, in the context of a growing caste and tribal consciousness, many people have been reverting to their caste-specific jati names as suffixes. While religion is the broadest community category of identification, the process of ascriptive identification starts with the primordial group affiliations. Conversion from Hinduism to religions like Christianity, Islam and Buddhism does not secure the convert from the politics of discrimination that he/she suffered before. Identity in terms of geographical space, language, economic status and gender within a community and across communities is a plural heterogeneous idea that is constantly in flux in these days of globalization.

Talks and discussions will include but will not be restricted to the following issues:

Saturday 11 March 2017

"An artist! an Amateur in the real sense! A man of passions!"

The weekend is but a reprieve to a 'regally reclined' reading time! 

Today it was yet another ‘unputdownable’ by Salman Rushdie, Imaginary Homelands, where, he holds his gritty sway over your concentration straight on - right from his insightful and hilarious 'Introduction,' which bowls you over with his free, unstilted conversational prose, to the next chapter, where he proceeds to ask the enigmatic question that an exile encounters: “What does it mean to be 'Indian' outside India? How can culture be preserved without becoming ossified?”

Well, one particular chapter attracted me the most! Of course, it was more for the title than for the essence contained therein J

“The Painter and the Pest”

It’s about an artist from Bengaluru – whom Rushdie describes as ‘an amateur in the real sense: a man of passions. In fact, he is quite possibly the most enthusiastic individual on the face of the planet.’

The following extract - culled from Rushdie - is given below, for your Sunday motivation! :-)

The Painter and the Pest

A new name, it appears, must be mentioned, the name of Harold Shapinsky, sixty years old this month, an artist of Russian extraction presently living in New York City, where for most of the past four decades his work has been completely ignored.

Now, after all the years of neglect, there has been a remarkable reversal of fortunes, and Mr Shapinsky is experiencing an annus mirabilis, with a major retrospective of his work at London’s Mayor Gallery, loads of publicity on both sides of the Atlantic, and several important European galleries reportedly queuing up to buy his work.

The story of the belated ‘discovery’ of Harold Shapinsky must surely be one of the most extraordinary in the history of modern art. It is hard enough to believe that a painter who is now attracting lavish praise from every corner of the European art establishment could have languished so long in Manhattan, the undisputed capital of the art world, without gaining any sort of real recognition. Even less plausible, perhaps, is the identity of his ‘discoverer’; because the man who has singlehandedly worked the miracle is not an art expert at all, and has no links with -either the American or European art establishments. He describes himself variously as ‘some crazy Indian’ and ‘a pest’.

This man is Akumal Ramachander, thirty-five, a teacher of elementary English at an agricultural college in Bangalore in southern India—a suitably improbable background for the hero of a shaggy-dog story whose saving grace is that it happens to be quite true.

Professor Ramachander—Akumal—is an amateur in the real sense: a man of passions. In fact, he is quite possibly the most enthusiastic individual on the face of the planet, as I discovered a couple of years ago when I was on a lecture tour of India. Akumal, then a complete stranger, arrived at my Bangalore hotel room, introduced himself, and proceeded to overwhelm me with the unstoppable frenzy of garlands, vast smiles, flashing eyes, unceasing monologues and emphatic gesticulations to which those who find themselves in his vicinity rapidly grow accustomed. He struck me as a bit of an operator, but it was impossible not to warm to his openness and affection for life, as well as his obviously genuine love for literature, art, cinema and many other things, including butterflies. (He also sings.) This inexhaustible, ‘crazy’ energy needed something to focus on. That necessary sense of purpose was provided when Akumal met, by chance—though one sometimes wonders if anything in his life really happens by chance—the son of the painter Harold Shapinsky.