Bookmarking the Corona Silence

The first session of the virtual reading club ‘Bookmarking the Corona Silence’, moderated by Mr. Ghosh started on 19 April 2020. There were 7 participants – Harshita Devavarapu (DP1), Ananya Shah, Anahita Aman & Aashraya Dutt (DP2), Aurodeep Ray (Class of 2019), Tvisha Devavarapu, Freya Lalani (Class of 2018). It witnessed an animated discussion of a text, an excerpt of an essay ‘Wordsworth’s Mountain’ by the illustrious American poet Mary Oliver. While deliberating on beauty, man-nature binary, desire vs duty, product vs being, intrusion and survival, time and human evolution, significant references to other works were also made for further inquiry. Freya Lalani (Class of 2018), speaking from Singapore, alluded to an ethnographical work The Woman in the Body by Emily Martin, Aurodeep Ray(Class of 2019) added an artistic perspective to his interpretation by referring to the works of the British painter, David Hockney. Mr.Ghosh suggested two works for further exploration – Erich Fromm’s Man for Himself and Robert Macfarlane’s Underland. Overall, it was an hour-long stimulating session of ideas and insights!

Dedicated to an excerpt from Amit Chaudhuri’s ‘Afternoon Raag’, the second session was moderated by Aurodeep Ray (Class of 2019). It saw readers engaged with dissecting the motif of music. In light of such thought-provoking discussion, the session rightfully titled after its central theme ‘The Language of Music’ featured diverse insights ranging from the exploration of negative space to the Freudian take on dreams, escapism and redemption.

The third session, ‘An insight into the Dalit experience’ was moderated by Zakeeya Zahra (Class of 2019). From visibility to audience, from freedom to human agency, from canon to craft – a lot to mull over as the readers of the club analysed two texts: Lakkur Ananda’s With Just One Needle (translated from the Kannada by Vanamala Viswanatha) and English poems by Meena Kandaswamy, mostly taken from the collection Touch .

The fourth session dedicated to Mother’s Day and to celebrate Tagore’s 159^th Birth Anniversary, the session was moderated by Mr.Sudeep Ghosh. It began with the reading of Chinua Achebe’s Refugee Mother and Child. The poem was situated in the context of today’s pandemic and, more importantly, to the plight of the migrant labourers especially ill-fated mothers in the recent Aurangabad train accident which is profoundly disconcerting. The discussion of the poem highlighted the beauty of tragic poignancy, the relationship between suffering and creation, political short-sightedness and deprivation of the marginalized working class, the value of life vs mockery of fate. While the allusion to George Orwell identified the satirical vein, the allusion to Patricia McCormick’s Sold captured the sense of stoicism. On one hand, the paradox of democracy was examined in the poem, the nature of elevated suffering by way of Rumi’s The Song of the Reed was put forth on the other hand.

Analysing Tagore’s poem from Gitabitan ‘Tomai aamai milon hobey boley…’ (Because you and I will marry the sky is full of light’), translated by A.K.Ramanujan and Naresh Guha, was to delve into the realms of mysticism. The archetypal traveler, the physical-nonphysical duality, the motif of time, oneness, cosmic romance, pantheism, devotion and divinity, God and women, the eternal and the perpetual were the areas of discussion. The allusions to Koran and Rumi’s Ode 2180 and A New Rule added a philosophical rigour to the discussion of religious language.

The fifth session was led by Prof.Sumana Roy from Ashoka University and focused on Creative Writing.

Prof.Ray commented on the written pieces of Ananya Shah, Anahita Aman, Aashraya Dutt (DP2), Aurodeep Ray and Zakeeya Zahra (Class of 2019). In an absorbing 90-minute session, while giving her thoughtful and incisive feedback to our budding writers, Prof.Ray identified elements of creative writing like- marriage of form and content, craft and intended reader, visual language and perception, editing and overwriting, style of defamiliarisation, informal and anachronistic language, journalese and poetics, relationship in writing, sense of surprise & shock, violence of imagery, intellectual conceit and banality, role of nouns/adjectives, music and metaphor and polyphony of silence.  A delightful session of enduring appeal, to say the least!  

Reflecting on the session, this is what our students had to say -

Ananya Shah (DP2): ‘Sumana Roy radiated warmth and compassion as she wove a path of allegories for us to understand the style of writing. Her references to our “culture of reading” evoked a sense of reverence for my heritage. She wants us to colour outside the lines, not conform to identities, genres or even realms. Her inferences about synecdoche, silence and detachment felt similar to my own. Her concept of becoming an actor and acting out a scene with words opened up a new perspective and writing process for me. When she gave feedback to my work, she said something very impactful, ‘when we try to poetise a scene, we lose the actuality of it’. I always knew there was a flaw in my poetry, to aptly be able to identify and avoid it is one of my biggest takeaways from today’s session. Her many inter-textual references have found themselves on my “what to read next” list. It was an absolute honour to have her read my work. I have always feared my writing. There has been a conflict within me that my writing would never be good enough. Her words have made me feel a lot more confident about my writing. I will surely write more often now, and hopefully more refined! ‘

Iliyan Hariyani (DP2): ‘Our session with Prof. Sumana Roy today was one filled with immense learning and a dive into effective creative writing techniques. Ma'am helped us understand how we could improve our work that we showed her, and gave us insightful insights into appropriateness of verbs, adverbs, adjectives, Indianized words (and why we need not translate them for the audience) and the importance of having a gripping title to our work, among many other helpful tips. I think my key takeaway from the session was that our ideas and purpose should be reflected through the writing itself, thus, not requiring the formatting of words and phrases using Bold, Italics, etc. Personally, this session has inspired me to read more and write more, and I definitely look forward to immersing myself in more creative writing.’

Aurodeep Ray (Class of 2019): ‘There’s something wonderful about having your writing read and remembered - seeing your words quiver between form and life, like tadpoles in a lily pond. Dr. Sumana Roy’s session this evening was such an endeavour. A collective exercise in the art of reading, our works in unnoticed time, like a stream, carried our session over waters known and discovered; depths solely discerned by the length of oar we’d lose to the churning undercurrents. The navigator admired, at times even curated the scapes that framed our motion, ever-changing, ever-eroding banks whose sediments have crystalised the roots of our hair and caked the skin of our foreheads.’

For more information, visit the padlet link https://padlet.com/aurodeepray1/366c1t3ceg0eq8x3  curated by Aurodeep Ray (Class of 2019).