Adversity and Resilience: Reminiscences on Cyclone Vardah and MCC

The ravage wrought by #cycloneVardah has taken away one third of the city’s vast green cover!

A sylvan canopy to singara Chennai – a canopy that was succour, shelter and sustenance to all and sundry!

Quite interestingly the word ‘avenue’ that forms part of the 'street-nomenclatures' in Chennai and its suburbs, is translated (in Tamil) to mean ‘trees on either side of the street’!

And, yes! Chennai abounds in avenues, avenues and avenues! Avenues of all hues and shades adorn every ‘Pet’ or ‘Bakkam’ or ‘Nagar’ or ‘Oor’ in Chennai! Even the area in which I reside is lined up with numerous avenues boasting of enormous green cover!

Yep! Anna Nagar, Ashok Nagar, Nolambur, and hundreds of these city sidewalks are bulwarked on either sides with trees that lend their invigorating shade to cattle, cars and costermongers alike!

Selaiyur Hall #postVardah

Our own evergreen Madras Christian College has lost a huge number of trees, around 500 by approximate accounts - and double the number have also been damaged in the vardah fury, a damage that’s irreplaceable by all means!

Any student or staff who walks into the sylvan MCC campus #postVardah would be quite disheartened and disquieted, with disbelief writ large in their visage, at the violent havoc that has smitten its salubrious flora and fauna alike!

The gutters sport a desolate look, while the roads leading to the Halls wear a gaping lacuna in its ‘grove’y habitations! The beautifully arrayed stretch of sky-high trees that adorn either side of the 'Zoology-tank road' that leads up to the Princi’s house, wears a devastated look too! Indeed, the more you look at the devastation the more you tend to feel the disquiet within your soul reverberating on and on!

The Hills are Alive...

A surprise holiday always makes you give some thought to eke out an equal plethora of surprise drives!

And that’s exactly what we did, when the government of TN announced a ‘Cyclone Holiday’ for Monday, 12 December, in anticipation of Cyclone Vardah. Since the next day happened to be Milad un-Nabi, and hence a gazetted holiday, we – a ‘trek-crazy-collective’ - brainstormed the whole of Sunday night and yes! we were quite restive on an otherwise resty day! Soon we were on our toes, planning and scoring out all our options and in no time had our plans afoot! Yep! We’d decided to be outta namma Chennai for a two-day trek through three wonderful hills as part of the huge Eastern-Ghats-chains’-conglomerate.

Early next morning - in the chilly margazhi-eve blistering colds, on the auspicious day of the Festival of Lights – Thirukaarthigai Deepam – when households are beautifully arrayed in the agal villakus (lamps) – we ventured out at around 5 am, nine of us – all geared up, - arrayed in our linen jackets/blazers to ward off the prospective cold winds, - and got into our vehicles at 5.10 am sharp - two pretty little hatchbacks!

The rains were incessantly beating against our cars with all their intensity even as we were ‘inching’ our way along the Vellore-Bangalore highway, against all odds – in the cold of the dawny day – making mincemeat as much as possible – of  the most awfulest, most bumpiest, most craggiest, most unevenest of roads – which is sadly nay badly called the NATIONAL HIGHWAY!!! with Toll Plazas doing ‘daylight’ ‘highway robbery’ at every 40 km stretch – for their ‘excellent services rendered’! Saru, our comic relief – tells us all that this has been the case with these poor ‘apology for a road’, for the past five years or more! Never have we seen such pathetic NH anywhere in the South of India! ‘Anywhere’ promptly underlined! Repeated appeals have fallen on stone-deaf ears, say motorists on this stretch of the roads.

Bumpy terrains aside, we were thinking back about namma Chennai, and yes I should admit that, we weren’t in the least mindful of cyclone Vardah, as we were all of the ‘considered opinion’ that it could be just ‘yet another’ weakiest of Nadas, - the frail cyclone Nada - that had failed to enthuse the rain clouds to water-starved Chennai, in the first week of December! 

All along the Vellore ‘National’ Highway, we were witness to intermittent thundershowers and incessant rains pelting our windscreens with gusto and aplomb!!!

As we had already decided, our first detour for a leeway was for a cuppa coffee at Murugan Idly Shop that was the only anchor of hope in the troubled ‘National’ Highway!

Four cuppa hot chaais and five cuppa coffees!

After that, we pitstopped only for our breakfast towards the threshold of the Fort City – Vellore!

A minimal breakfast, and then we headed straight to the monumental Vellore Fort!

#Vellore Fort - a side view

Famous for its Vellore Mutiny!

Preparation for NET/JRF - 17

Topics so far –

1. The Road Map for NET/JRF in English

2.Outline to NET/JRF English – Papers II &III - Syllabus January 2017

3.Geoffrey Chaucer: An Overview of the Poet andHis Age

4.The Age of Chaucer: His Contemporaries

5.Chaucer’s Imitators and Disciples in Englandand Scotland

6.Beginnings of the English Drama – MiraclePlays, Moralities and Interludes

7.Background to the Renaissance in England

8.The Renaissance in England: Part – I

9.The Renaissance in England: Part – II

10.William Shakespeare - His Life & Works

11.Shakespeare’s Contemporaries

12.Shakespeare’s Successors

13.The Restoration

14.The Age of Classicism

15.The Age of Transition

16. The Romantic Age: Part – I

Now - 

17. The Romantic Age: Part – II

The Romantic Age – II

Outline

Introduction to the Romantic Age: Part II

The Second Generation of Poets

Byron, Shelley and Keats

Thomas Moore

Thomas Campbell

Samuel Rogers

Leigh Hunt

James Hogg

Charles Lamb

William Hazlitt

Thomas Love Peacock

Washington Irving

James Fenimore Cooper

Thomas De Quincey

Introduction to the Romantic Age: Part II

The Romantic age in literature is often contrasted with the Classical or Augustan age which preceded it. The comparison is valuable, for it is not simply two different attitudes to literature which are being compared but two different ways of seeing and experiencing life.

The Classical or Augustan age of the early and mid-eighteenth century stressed the importance of reason and order. Strong feelings and flights of the imagination had to be controlled (although they were obviously found widely, especially in poetry). The swift improvements in medicine, economics, science and engineering, together with rapid developments in both agricultural and industrial technology, suggested human progress on a grand scale. At the centre of these advances towards a perfect society was mankind, and it must have seemed that everything was within man’s grasp if his baser, bestial instincts could be controlled. The Classical temperament trusts reason, intellect, and the head. The Romantic temperament prefers feelings, intuition, and the heart.

On Dr. Premila Paul's Talk @ MCC

In Bangalore, yesterday, even as the preliminary preparations are happening in full swing for the fifth edition of the Bangalore Literary Festival,  a certain Professor of English approaches Dr. Premila Paul and says, ‘I saw your splendid and captivating introduction to Anita Nair’s oeuvre on YouTube the other day, but it seems to be no longer available up there. There are quite a lot of students here who are doing their research on Anita Nair and I thought it would be quite useful for them to get to know Anita and her oeuvre through your scholarly talk on the author’!, he adds.

Dr. Premila  Paul had us all in splits... 

Dr. Premila promising to oblige him, promptly makes a call to her colleague in The American College, Professor Ravi [my bestie], who in turn rings me up requesting me to put up the videos back on the YouTube-public-domain for the benefit of the larger literary community. And that’s how the YouTube Videos are back again on the public domain.

Well, Dr. Premila's talk had us all in splits all through. Her take on MCC and its myriad sagas of love, our Princi's connection with Madurai and a panoramic sweep of Anita Nair's oevre etc., were lively and peppy all the way!

Blogger Note: I had to take down the videos as we are making a docu-repertoire of all the recorded audio and video talks at MCC and making them into professionally-fixed full-fledged video documents. 

The process is quite cumbersome, taking much time, as they are many in number, and also because it involves mixing, subtitling, and a whole lot of nuances that are being done by one of our prodigious and illustrious alumnus Mr. Karthikeyan and his team. The mp3s & mp4s should be available in a month’s time, we guess! Till then, do be contended with these enlightening videos that you find to the right of the blog.

Happy viewing!

PS: Dr. Premila Paul will be with us in MCC in January 2017 for the T. G. Narayan Endowment Lecture Series. The exact date of the lecture will be announced later.

Preparation for NET/JRF - 16

The Romantic Age (1798 – 1832) Part – I

Topics so far –

1. The Road Map for NET/JRF in English

2.Outline to NET/JRF English – Papers II & III - Syllabus January 2017

3.Geoffrey Chaucer: An Overview of the Poet and His Age

4.The Age of Chaucer: His Contemporaries

5.Chaucer’s Imitators and Disciples in England and Scotland

6.Beginnings of the English Drama – Miracle Plays, Moralities and Interludes

7.Background to the Renaissance in England

8.The Renaissance in England: Part – I

9.The Renaissance in England: Part – II

10.William Shakespeare - His Life & Works

11.Shakespeare’s Contemporaries

12.Shakespeare’s Successors

13.The Restoration

14.The Age of Classicism

15.The Age of Transition

Now -

16. The Romantic Age: Part – I

Outline to the Romantic Age

Poetry: The First Generation of Poets

Novel

Miscellaneous Prose & Utilitarians

Poetry: The Second Generation of Poets

The Semi-Romanticists

Literary Criticism

Periodical Literature

The Essay

Other Prose Works

The Romantic Age – I 

Romanticism in Itself and in Relation to Society: The first thirty years of the nineteenth century form a natural period. We witness the realization in all its plenitude of a type of emotional and imaginative literature that has escaped from the constraining forces of sovereign reason! This consummation is brought about by an inner progress, but at the same time it is favoured by the general influences of the social and moral surroundings.

After the great upheaval caused by the transformation of industry, after the religious awakening of Methodism and Evangelicalism, the decisive shock to thought comes with the French Revolution. It is legitimate enough to date the beginning of the new age in literature from the publication of the anonymous work which united the young talents of Wordsworth and Coleridge (1798). Romanticism in England is the affirmation of an innovatory aesthetic creed, as opposed to orthodox art. English Romanticism does not consist in the triumph of ‘self’. The personality of the writer has a characteristic place in it, because sensibility and imagination are of the very essence of individuality. Classicism laid stress upon the impersonal aspects of the life of the mind; the new literature, on the other hand, openly shifts the centre of art, bringing it back towards what is most proper and particular in each individual.

The Romantic spirit can be defined as an accentuated predominance of emotional life, provoked or directed by the exercise of imaginative vision, and in its turn stimulating or directing such exercise. Intense emotion coupled with an intense display of imagery, such is the frame of mind which supports and feeds the new literature.

Derrida's 'Structure, Sign & Play' - A Critical Summary

Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of Human Sciences

Introduction

“Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of Human Sciences (1966)” was presented by Jacques Derrida at the John Hopkins International Colloquium on “The Language of Criticism and the Sciences of Man” in October 1966. This essay articulates a poststructuralist theoretical paradigm and effectively brings out the important distinctions between the ‘classical’ mode of thinking contrasted with the ‘post-structuralist’ ways of thinking. The classical way of thinking, according to Derrida, gives structure a centre and neutralizes the ‘structurality of structure’, and thereby limits the play of structure.

Rupture in the History of the Concept of Structure

Derrida begins his text with a reference to a recent event in the history of the concept of structure, that is also a ‘rupture’ or a ‘redoubling’, but immediately gets back to the use of the word “event.” The word ‘event’ ushers a significant epistemological break with structuralist thought. But the meaning of the word event is something that structuralism would need to contain as an element within a structure or at least exhaustively determined by a structure. In the same way that science must contain all contingencies (chances, accidents and secondary causes) within the thought of what is necessary, all events should be contained as parts of a comprehensive structure. So strictly speaking, and according to Levi-Strauss, the concept “event” is opposed to the concept “structure.” Derrida uses the word ‘event’ as a word and not as an event to signify the rupture and redoubling.

The Contingent and the Necessary

In The Savage Mind Levi-Strauss says that “Science as a whole is based on the distinction between the contingent and the necessary, this being also what distinguishes event and structure” (21).  This argument draws on the distinction between things that exist necessarily and things that exist contingently.

Something is “necessary” if it could not possibly have failed to exist. The laws of mathematics are often thought to be necessary. It is plausible to say that mathematical truths such as two and two making four hold irrespective of the way that the world is. Even if the world were radically different, it seems, two and two would still make four. God, too, is often thought to be a necessary being, i.e. a being that logically could not have failed to exist.

Books - the Secret of Amma's Energy

‘Alice in Wonderland?’

That’s how we felt, my sisters and I, completely dwarfed by the floor-to-ceiling array of books, and a very tall step ladder with a perch on top, standing against one shelf-wall.

I heard my oldest sibling whisper to my Dad,

“Are these real books?” I tugged at his sleeve: “Appa, please may I climb the ladder and sit on top?”

Jayalalithaa, then perhaps in her twenties, had ushered us into her brand new home at Poes Gardens, and she was showing us around.

My father, Tamil film actor Gemini Ganesan, had asked if he could show the place to his “girls”, especially the library that she had apparently described to him with great passion.

The books were indeed ‘real’ and she had an amazing collection of English classics - Shakespeare, Dickens, Kingsley, Hardy, Tennyson, Bronte, Wilde, and more.

The Dickens collection among a few others was leather-bound, embossed with gold letters.

Which is why I smiled, as I watched Jennifer Arul’s interview with Jayalalithaa on NDTV - re-telecast after Amma’s death - in which the former CM said,

“My dream is to retire to my farm, surround myself with books and read them, listen to music, with my dogs, and perhaps do some agriculture. Far from the madding crowd.”

It wasn’t said for effect. She really meant it. And she had read Thomas Hardy.

Jayalalithaa was not always ‘Amma’. 

She was called ‘Ammu’ (dearest one) at home, and her Mom sent her to the best schools available then, both in Bangalore (Bishop Cottton) and Madras, Presentation Convent, Church Park, where I was in junior school when Jayalalithaa was in her final year, matriculation.

Her long, straight hair, that she wore in a single loose plait, would gently swing like a pendulum well below her hips as she walked across the school grounds, the sun catching the largish golden hoops she wore in her ears.

With her porcelain skin, impeccable manners and dignified gait, Jayalalithaa stole many a heart but the teachers in school loved her for something else - she was their star pupil.

“Do you think you are Jayalalithaa that you can read comics in my class under the desk and still stand first?” So saying, Miss Edwards, the geography teacher, snatched my comic and threw it aside.

That was the kind of reputation Tamil Nadu’s Amma had at school - a brilliant student who could walk away effortlessly with flying colours!

It’s common knowledge now that Jayalalithaa never wanted to become an actress; she never wished to enter politics - yet she made a big name for herself in both.

She once mentioned that she was very keen to study English Literature. Others say she wanted to become a lawyer.

Whatever might have been her choice of career, there can be no doubt that she would have stood head and shoulders above others, perhaps far exceeding her performances in both films and politics.

(The writer was in junior school in Presentation Convent, then Madras, when J Jayalalithaa was in final year).

Source: Times of India, 08 December 2016, Chennai Edition.

The same columnist Ms Narayani Ganesh has also written an article on her dad - Actor Gemini Ganesan, in one of the past issues of the MCC magazine.

You may find the same on our blog HERE

Preparation for NET/JRF - 15

Topics so far –

1. The Road Map for NET/JRF in English

2. Outline to NET/JRF English – Papers II & III - Syllabus January 2017

3. Geoffrey Chaucer: An Overview of the Poet and His Age

4. The Age of Chaucer: His Contemporaries

5. Chaucer’s Imitators and Disciples in England and Scotland

6. Beginnings of the English Drama – Miracle Plays, Moralities and Interludes

7. Background to the Renaissance in England

8. The Renaissance in England: Part – I

9. The Renaissance in England: Part – II

10. William Shakespeare - His Life & Works

11. Shakespeare’s Contemporaries

12. Shakespeare’s Successors

13. The Restoration

14. The Age of Classicism

Now –

15. The Age of Transition

Next –

16. The Romantic Age

The Age of Transition

Outline to the Age of Transition

1. The Poetry of Sentiment

James Thomson, William Collins, Thomas Gray, Oliver Goldsmith, William Shenstone, Charles Churchill

2. The Novel of Sentiment

Samuel Richardson, Oliver Goldsmith, Laurence Sterne

3. The Realistic Novel

Henry Fielding

4. The Revival of Comedy in Theatre

R. B. Sheridan

5. Historians

David Hume, William Robertson, James Boswell, Edward Gibbon

6. Prose Writers

Edmund Burke, Adam Smith, William Paley, The Earl of Chesterfield, William Godwin, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, James Macpherson, Thomas Percy, Thomas Chatterton

7. Other Novelists

Tobias Smollet

8. The Novel of Terror & The Pre-Romantic Novel

Horace Walpole, Mrs. Ann Radcliffe, Matthew Gregory Lewis, Frances Burney, Jane Austen

9. Pre-Romantic Poetry

William Cowper, Robert Burns & William Blake

The Age of Transition

The eighteenth century is marked by the progressive advent of a new inspiration. Just as the invasion of sentimentalism transforms the moral life, so the literature is transformed by the gradual appearance of themes based on sentiment, which come to take their place besides classical motives.

International Conference 

on 

Environmental Justice 

[the place where the first environmental justice movement (Chipko Movement) began]

 24 & 25 March 2017

at

Dr. K. N. Modi University

Newai, Tonk, Rajasthan, India

Entrenched, Rooted and Grounded in the Chola heartland!

A historical romance that pre-dates a thousand years,

A work of epical proportions that brings to life in ‘flesh and blood’ the historical valour, culture, love and might of the Tamils from the glorious Chola empire, in all its charm,

   Vaanar Kulathu Vallavarayan 'Vandhiyathevan'

A work that in over 2400 pages spread over five volumes of ‘well-wrought’ ‘mighty lines’ of Kalki, and celebrated as one of the finest modern works in Tamil Literature, has an impact that outlives its milieu,

A work that, [like Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities mixes fact with fiction], blends fact with fiction with such ease and alacrity that Poonkuzhali, Murugaiyan, or Nandini or Mandakini ‘transfix you for eternity’ like the factual ones do, in the novel!

When such a legendary work comes alive on stage in your own backyard, who on earth would want to give it a miss?

Periya Piratti and Madurantaka

Well, YES… we – a bevy of besties - were all in attendance at the Vani Mahal even an hour before the start of the play this last Sunday evening – a pleasant day at that – when the weather gods were kind enough not to play truant – and blessed us with their cosy evening ‘winter winds’, that we were promptly cajoled into taking a quick ‘detour’ to the next door Pothys for a hot cuppa filter coffee to drink of the caffeinic delights thereof down ‘to the lees’!!!

After coffee, we walked down Vani Mahal, and we were doubly delighted to see the eponymous ‘students’-saviour’ aka ‘Rain Man’ Ramanan who was also part of the spectacular array of spectators. The moment he was ‘spotted’ by his enthusiastic fans amongst the crowd, curious eyes and smiling faces made a beeline to him and vied with one another to get themselves clicked for ‘posterity’! One lady – a part of the ‘frenzied groupies’ who had gathered around him – says, ‘Sir, we miss you. You shouldn’t have retired!’ He acknowledged her gracefully and replied with his trademark smile, ‘Everyone has to retire someday, Isn’t it?’

A book lover and her doting spouse!

When I decided to give away a section of my modest collection of books [owing to the burgeoning space crunch for books back at home], and advertised the same on a few online websites like olx and quickr, I got many responses, and quite a few interesting ones too. There were students who were asking for good books on Literature, a private Arts & Science College librarian asking for books to ‘fill up’ their College library, a couple of schools enquiring if i had books for school children and to give the same to them for a subsidized price. 

One particular response startled me! It said, ‘Sir, please I want to get the books from you. Will you please have it with you till next week?. I love reading books sir pls.. I shall take them from you next week for sure, as right now, we’re running short of the new currency!’

I was quite impressed, as it was a message that radiated a great love for books. Moreover, since I was giving a whopping collection of my favourite books at a very nominal (token) sum, I didn’t want them to land in the hands of commercial-minded people!

So choosing to ignore the other messages of enquiry in my inbox that made a beeline for the books, I replied to this particular lady,

‘Okay mam! Sure. I can wait for a week, if it’s for your own personal use and not for commercial purposes!

And as she had promised, she called back a week later, and asked if they could come and have a look at the books!

I invited them over to have a look at my modest collection this last Sunday.

Confy on Women & Power @ The American, Madurai

International Conference 

on

Women & Power: Challenges and Opportunities

06, 07 January 2017

At

The American College, Madurai

Last date for submission of Abstracts: 12 December 2016

For the Confy Brochure, kindly click HERE

Images of American College: ruggedanay.wordpress.com