I have been living in a different world for the past two weeks. Days have rushed by with a blur; writers, poets, graphic artists, independent publishers and book designers seem to be spilling onto the Jude campus, the one site where book-creators and –lovers congregate, in the absence of an official annual book fair, courtesy the state government’s indecision in appointing a permanent fair ground. So the campus has ‘literally’ been teeming with academics like John Kerrigan and Jaqueline Rose, writers like Maggie Ferguson and Kunal Basu, independent publishers from Argentina etc, book designers aka Trinankur Banerjee and Pinaki De, and film makers like Anurag Kashyap (Remember No Smoking?). Last week, Robin Robertson swooped down on us, and dazzled all in a poetry-reading session where he read a few of his poems from his latest collection called Swithering which has bagged prestigious literary awards He has worked in publishing for more than twenty years and the books which he helps produce , usually make it to the top ten bestsellers list in the UK. It was such an experience to just sit and listen to someone who has been on both sides of the fence; the side which creates the book in a fundamental sense, and the side which shapes it, moulds it and packages it as a saleable commodity to the public. I had till then, only been a part of the former; I read books, and sometimes buy them, but never had the chance to look into the book-making process as such. Most of us in fact are oblivious to the publishing process , and have little or no idea about the various considerations which go into converting a manuscript into a proper book. Things like book design, the importance of typography, the layout, the cover, chapter divisions, copyright issues, matter so much to a publisher, and affect the ultimate look of the book in numerous ways. But the buyer doesn’t think twice about them, before buying a book, even though he/she might have been attracted to it precisely because of such features, in the first place. I often think that since a publisher does his best to make the book look good, and treats it as a commodity , selling a book is really no better than selling a cake of soap. The only difference is that while there you can print Kareena Kapoor’s face on the wrapper indiscriminately without thinking about which brand it is, here you try and coordinate the subject matter and the form, because even though all soaps are essentially the same, all books are not. So if you’d have to design a cover for a book, you’d first have to know what the book is about. In that sense, book-making is a far more involved process than soap-making. The saddest part is , however, that there are more people on Earth who buy soaps than books.

Quotable Quotes from the Land of Jude

Sometimes they teach, but most of the times, this is what they do. My profs rock!!


* “For a long time I have been taking classes with two people. Sometimes three. This is so disconcerting.”
- Prof PB, on being faced with a class of 40-odd.



* Amlanda in a Milton class: " There's no help for it, really... no help at all... you know, they say this when a man is going to get killed... well, as I see it... we shall have to read the whole of Paradise Lost."


* Dibyajyoti: “He goes to Hell…”
Prof SukChau: “Yes. But he doesn’t stay there, poor man..”
-on wanting to know the story of The Divine Comedy.



* “Bertrand Russell’s third wife – he had many wives and girlfriends – he really really did believe in free love.”

-Prof PC, on Bertrand Russell.


* On having been sent by Amlanda to tell Prof SKC ( the Don) that there’s a phonecall for him at the office

Me: Sir, there’s a phone call for you..
Prof. SKC: Is the person on the other end attractive?
Me: Umm, that’s impossible to know, Sir..
Prof. SKC: Ask, ask..you must always ask.
Me: Well, Amlanda (another prof) is doing all the asking
Prof SKC: Then it must be my wife!

After going and receiving the call, he continues, ‘That was a singularly unattractive gentleman professor from Burdwan who wants to get his daughter into the department. I am not receiving any calls you bring me news of ever again!’



* “In the first scene of the movie Henslowe is being tortured for failing to pay back money. Henslowe had enough money to buy all the torturers of England at one go. But who wants reality when you can watch Gweneth Paltrow? --Prof SKC on the film, Shakespeare in Love.




Toocool. :)

Around fifteen new people have come in our class. Since JU is the best for post-grad English in the country, thousands sat for the admission test. I ofcourse, being good enough to get in once did not have to take the test again. Thank God.So. Some of them look like arrogant idiots. Which I’m sure they are. There’s one who looked like a dead fish while amlan da, the best of the best, cracked jokes while teaching us greek crit. For all you know, it was greek to this guy. He didn’t even crack a smile.Anyway, I have developed a sudden interest in orkut; the importance of social networking sites being plain to me now since one of my closest friends Tanya, left college for greener pastures. She’s joined a card company near deshopriyo park. Here’s wishing her the very best in life. Have a happy ever after!

javed akhtar in jadavpur

A week ago, the department of film studies of my university organized a one day seminar on the dialectic between hindi films and urdu poetry. This turned out to be a first in various ways. Not many universities of course, can boast of a film studies department and when one’s university falls into this rarest of rare categories of actually possessing a department wholly concerned about what is frankly, a mode of entertainment to me, and treats watching films as a necessary component of an academic discourse, then, I believe one should boast bluntly and boisterously about it. Which is exactly what I’m going to do.To come back, however, if you can bear my superciliousness any longer, to the seminar, it was a first in multiple ways, because, it was wholly about hindi films and not Indian or foreign films in general and also because the department got hold of one of india’s brilliant poets; also an evocative lyricist and a leading intellectual; javed akhtar; to speak on the subject.Javed saab, was such a change from the usual film-maker/critic who speaks at seminars. He did not talk about godard as if he’s known him since childhood. Nor did he insist on dissecting, one of the rare critically acclaimed films which you actually liked, to the ultimate extent of shredding it to bits, with the multiple-pronged knife of modern critical theories, and then proceeding to gas it with copious quantities of pungent, verbal verbose. I hasten to add, however, that not all film critics do that. It requires immense skill and one can acquire perfection only after years of practice. It is , however , (not to discourage potential critics) an art which can be mastered, though being, of no use to people like javed akhtar.Javed saab adopted a very simple approach. Credit also goes, ofcourse to the film studies profs for letting it remain so.In the first half, he read out about a dozen of his poems. A professor from City College(?) , who was accompanying him, translated them into either English or bangla as he went along.He started with a simple poem about a room; ‘ek kamrah’. It’s about the room which he used to live in, with the open casement;’daricha’, and the overflowering creeper outside it. It had two chairs; two twin sisters. It also had two vases, which constantly quallered between themselves. And the poet would lie on the bed and weave webs of stories while staring at the network of rafters on the roof. Now, today, he possesses a huge house;palatial,one would say… ‘bahut bada aur alishan’…. And yet in the silent loneliness of this house, the poet realizes, that his old room used to ‘speak to’ him…woh kamrah baatein karta tha…..The essence of the poem is ofcourse lost while translating it to other languages. In urdu however it sounded absolutely beautiful and was received with thunderous applause. His poem ‘doraha’ or ‘crossroads’ which he once wrote for his daughter zoya ,he now dedicated to the innumerable young women in the audience. He also quipped that the applause was somehow louder when he read a couple of romantic poems, one of which was adapted for the song ‘kabhie kabhie’. On a more serious note , there were 2 poems;’ fasaad ke pehle’ and ‘fasaad ke baad’, ‘fasaad’ meaning ‘riot’. He ended by reciting ‘waqt’, an apparent favourite. The atmosphere, needless to say, was absolutely electrifying, by now and his one-liners like ‘I realized all good looking men cant act’ on being asked why he never wanted to act in films , had the whole house in splits.The second half of the programme was dedicated to a question-answer session. Queries ranged from ‘do you support remakes and remixes?’ to ‘why do you think forms of urdu poetry, other than the ghazal, is dying out?’ . Queries to which Javed saab answered with his inimitable wit and élan. A memorable moment was when he said that one should see , not why, but how a film is re-made, a la, devdas etc. , and someone from the audience quipped ‘so how is farhan making don?!!’ Snippets of scenes from sholay ( gabbar singh with steam coming out of his ears and nostrils, legs astride, lashing his whip left and right and going ‘arre o sambha…kitne aadmi thhe’ in the background), and deewar ( bachhan ranting like a madman to poor shashi kapoor who apparently thinks having a mother like nirupa roy, who turns on the waterworks at a moment’s notice, is God’s way of being nice to him) and songs like ‘ek ladki ko dekha’( no snide comments here..i like the song) were also shown while he spoke on urdu poetry in general, and on the deteriorating nature of language being used in films….In short, javed saab had the audience eating out of his hands. His wit, language and style( not to forget the yellow kurta) floored all.We applauded him,cheered him,loved him….and sadly, also mobbed him… hope he didn’t much mind the last bit though…I mean , it’s not very often that he has pretty Judeans like us ( and I only mean the girls, here) chasing after him, does he?