Jadavpur University campus survival tips

t2 issue of 19th sep, 2015

Following are some survival tips for freshers (or veterans) at JU (Jadavpur University, Kolkata) campus:  

*Don't let AC canteen fool you by its name. It doesn't have AC. As the old bard said, "What's in a name"

*For cheap printouts @50p per page, head to the xerox centre situated shyly behind the capacious AC canteen

*Jheel is just a romantic red herring. For real mush-fest, go to Worldview's terrace.

*Cheapest and the most walk-worthy canteen is a remotely located jungle-wala canteen. Opens after 1.40 pm. On your way, you will pass through quarantined dogs.

*The corridor to Comparative Literature Departmental library will always have water over the floor. A Harry Potter connect, minus the Chamber of Secrets (but who knows). Dare not peep into the girl's bathroom, though ;)

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Hermeneutics and diasporic novels

The Comparative Literature department of Jadavpur University played host to author Judy Fong Bates today and it was both gratifying and heartening for me to be a part of the audience. That is one good thing about being a student of JU. You get to meet, and even interact, with writers and poets from both Oriental and Occidental backgrounds.

The session introduced us to this woman-author who is Chinese by birth but has been living in Canada and hence her works are primarily diasporic, like those of Jhumpa Lahiri.
To be quite honest, I had had a heavy lunch that was having its soporific effect, making it difficult for me to direct my complete attention to what she was saying. On a couple of instances, I even dozed off, much to my chagrin and one Miss DDR will not be a happy person when she reads this.

But good ideas come to people either when they are in their bathtubs (please refer to Archimedes) or when they are just out of a nap. After failing to benefit much for the most part of the session (since I was groggy and also because the voice wasn't loud at the back bench where I was seated), I redeemed myself somewhat towards the final 5 minutes.
It was accidental, I would say in my defence, but the idea did fascinate me, and for a few moments, even I became my own fan.  *grins sheepishly*

Hans Robert Jauss' theory of hermeneutics erupted out of me all of a sudden (wish it had done so during the sem exam) and it struck me that a diasporic novel can have as many as four categories of readers who will receive the same piece of work with dissimilar emotions. In Judy's case (whose protagonist is Chinese living in Canada, like herself), these four kinds of readers will be:

1. A Chinese reader living in China and reading the story of a Chinese living in Canada.
2. A Chinese reader living in Canada and reading the story of a Chinese living in Canada.
3. A Canadian living in Canada (a local) and reading the story of a Chinese living in Canada, and
4. A neutral reader, say an Indian living in India and reading the story of a Chinese living in Canada.


Now, there is a good and subjective scope to analyse it, and this is where, I perceive, Jauss' Reception Theory springs into action.

The 1st kind of reader is a Chinese who presumably has never been to Canada. While reading the text, he will feel for the protagonist who shares his nationality but finds himself thrown into an alien world where he will be subjected to racial and cultural discrimination. The reader will undergo multiple emotions. He will be bemused at times, shocked on occasions, grieved and even disturbed in certain situations. He will feel the agony of the protagonist since there is a fraternal connect with him. However, he is an external reader who reads the story from the outside, knowing that it is not going to happen to him in his immediate surroundings. So, there is pity but not fear. (Like Ruskin Bond, at the recently held Kolkata Literary Meet 2015, had described reading a horror story as an experience of "safe fear"- you are scared for the protagonist, yet you feel safe, knowing that it is not going to happen to you).

But for the 2nd kind of reader, the reception of the text will be more personal. He is a Chinese living in Canada and thus shares the geography and associated circumstances of the protagonist. He will draw parallels with the journey of the protagonist and will often squeal, "oh yes, it happened to me too" or feel a jolt of fear, realizing that it may happen to him some day.

The 3rd kind of a reader is a Canadian and he will try to find himself not in the Chinese protagonist but in the authoritarian/discriminating/chauvinistic Canadian. He will either i) be quietly ashamed of the way outsiders are treated in his country or  ii) haughtily agree with the oppressor instead of pitying the protagonist (in this case, the reader is what I would call a 'passive racist'), or  iii) be indifferent, thereby playing a totally neutral reader (theoretically possible, though practically less probable).

So, for the 3rd kind of reader, we actually get three sub-categories, since individual readers will employ their personal subjectivity to arrive at three different viewpoints (and emotional response to the text) as expatiated above.

Then there is the 4th kind of a reader, the only kind that is totally unrelated to the protagonist and the anti-protagonist in terms of both nationality and immediate geography. He, therefore, has the liberty of reading the text for the purpose of pure pleasure and without undergoing the emotional burden of taking sides. However, complete neutrality is hard to achieve as it necessitates the reader to be completely isolated from such circumstances and also to employ an emotionless approach. So, he may get influenced disparately, depending on his background and cultural roots. For instance, an Indian reader, with a colonial past, is more likely to empathise with the Chinese protagonist in the book, while a European reader may not feel pity for the protagonist in the same degree and may even side with the anti-protagonist.

Coming back to the seminar at JU, perhaps I didn't frame my question to the best of my abilities but when I asked Judy as to "her target reader out of these four types", I couldn't extract out of her the answer I was looking for. Perhaps, she is herself unaware of the reader she is instinctively targeting (as she stated) but on my part, the profitable thing that came out of this session was my deeper understanding of hermeneutics.

-Ritesh Agarwal

Comparative Literature, Jadavpur University

05/02/2015

She desired for me both

Not every mother has her boulevard littered by hurdles, not every woman loves her child as much as she hates her life. But for my mother, my house was certainly an unaccustomed earth. Born and brought up in a family not impoverished, she was flung into a marriage where promises bore little fruit. Her husband (my father) was never good with money. He lost what we had, gained nothing in return. There were rifts in their relation, gloom hovered on all sides. This was her house, her new house, a house where promises bore little fruit.

I happened to be an only fruit. It was important for her to sow me, to reap me, to toil from dawn to noon so that she can savor the sweetness by her dusk. But life, even in its most mundane form, can be terrifyingly demanding. Her fruit could hardly be nourished without funds. The school fee, the tuition fee, the money for clothes and all my needs. She could compromise, sacrifice on quality and on comforts to tend only to the basics. But no, she did so not.

For her, it was not about ‘this’ or ‘that’. She desired for me both ‘this’ and ‘that’.

She sacrificed leisure, she discarded luxury, good clothing, delightful food, even good sleep. But they all belonged to her. The loss was all hers, the gain all mine. I profited from her misery, she drained her life to feed mine.

South Point (one of the top schools in the country) is where I went, branded games I played with my mates, Moustache I draped on my legs, Bata adorned my feet, and imported apples were the daily rites.

Yes, there was the easy way out. To separate from my dad, redeem that lost life. But no, she did not walk that happy path. Not out of love for a man, but out of love for a child. Her child should be spared no physical luxury, should be accorded no emotional misery….

For her, it was not about ‘this’ or ‘that’. She desired for me both ‘this’ and ‘that’.

[This post is a part of #UseYourAnd activity at BlogAdda in association with Gillette Venus]

From dusk to dawn: Story of the lady who loved literature

There are women who are striking, there are women who are gifted and then there are women who are tough. But one cannot be tough without having gone through the grinds of examination that life has the habit of conducting at the most unexpected of times. And ages.

So, there is a young woman who, being a young woman that she is, could have chosen to pursue a degree of a lucrative kind without being bothered about poetic notions like passion and pleasure. In fact, many men must have told her so. But there are some (there is one, at least) who marvel at the decisions she has taken. It does require a steeled resolve and every morsel of determination to brave the daily storms of life and yet walk through the moment with a gritty smile, and emerge on the other side triumphantly.

Due to a physical disorder, she cannot commute. Otherwise, she could have so easily got into a good college for chasing a degree in literature, her foremost love. But encumbered by this problem, she couldn't. Jadavpur University (JU) is just a stone’s throw away from her place. But one of the toughest things in academy is to get a seat in literature in this prestigious university or else she could have so easily persevered with that dream. But what I have observed, over the years, is that luck doesn't really favor the brave (whoever made that maxim certainly erred big time). On the contrary, people become brave precisely because luck never favored them.

So, disheartened at not being able to find a seat in literature, she ought to have succumbed to misery. Right? 
Of course, she had the option to reduce her standards and do a sit-at-home course by signing up for a distance degree in this subject. But that wouldn't have been acceptable to her conscience. 

At the end of the day, she was as far away from a degree in literature as dusk is from dawn. But some people can stay docile throughout their lives and it is only when a dark storm approaches that they realize how resurgent, how resilient can they be!

She created a second dream for herself.

"Dreams must be nurtured," I have heard from those myriad philosophers and poets. But what I have learnt from her is that "dreams can be created, reinvented." So, she submerged herself in history, her second love. She plunged into the task, cracked the entrance exam and found herself that rare seat in JU where having failed to qualify for literature, she ensured that she qualifies for history.

Around five years later, she is the most favorite student of her departmental head. As she sits on the brink of doing a PhD in the subject, I sit here beside my window and admire the choices made by her.

As for literature, she hasn't given up on it. Her heart, somewhere, is still loyal to her first love. But it’s not a question of ‘literature OR history’ for her but of ‘literature AND history’. She reads her beloved books daily on bed before closing her eyes for the day.

 She didn't die in literature, but was born again in history.

She smiled through the storm and eventually pushed me to claw out of my gloom, encouraging me, helping me find a seat in JU, emboldening my eyes to dream for literature. In her eyes, I see my eyes and in them I see her dreams taking flight.

She is the 'she'

She created her own dawn after life heaped dusk at her.

  [“This post is a part of #UseYourAnd activity at BlogAdda in association with Gillette Venus“.]

Alternate careers for JU teachers of Comparative Literature

Source: Google images

What if our dear professors and lecturers at Jadavpur University were not in this profession and were something completely else. Based on their habits and teaching style, this is a meant-to-be-a-fun-read post on the suitable alternative careers for them:

Ipsita Chanda- Architect  (coz she goes so deep)

Kunal Chatterjee- Substitute for Prof. Binns, the teacher of history of Hogwarts  (coz KC is the only one listening to himself, and can be soporific to the extent of putting Dennis the Menace to sleep)

Dipannita-  Poster girl for Lakme India

Sujit Kumar Mondal- Stage comic actor  (I don't know why. Perhaps he is just too endearing and can always make his audience smile)

Sayantan Dasgupta- Projector guy at Inox

Debashree Datta Ray- A storyteller (A bard using oral tradition or a novelist who uses diacritical marks)

Suchorita Chattopadhyay- Owner of a poultry farm that rears dogs or a babysitter

Partho Sarthi Bhowmick- Editor of a revolutionary Bengali magazine called 'Hok Theatre'

Kavita Punjabi- Coach of Kolkata 'Knight' Riders

[Note: No offence intended. The post is to be read with a light heart. I hold upmost respect for all these beloved teachers.]

-Ritesh Agarwal,

PG-1 student of Comparative Literature,

Dated: 4^th November 2014

Email: ritzy182000@gmail.com

10 books which have stayed with me

Since this is a list of books that have ‘stayed with me’, I have desisted from picking books which I read in 2014 or 2013 (or else books like ‘Love in the Time of Cholera’, ‘Unaccustomed Earth’, ‘The Lowlands’, ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’ and ‘Autobiography of Agatha Christie’ would have surely made this task of picking only 10 books extremely difficult, though I must say that the task was still equally ‘extremely’ difficult and I had to bow in to my heart by including some personal favorites under the guise of the convenient category we love calling as ‘special mentions’.)    J

So, these are my 10 and I am not ranking them (so please do not agitate your brains):

1. War and Peace (love in the backdrop of war), written by Leo Tolstoy

2. The diary of a young girl (the memoir of a Jewish girl during Hitler's regime), written by Anne Frank

3. Papillon (autobiography of a convict) by Henri Cherriere

4. Harry Potter (you know what), written by you know who

5. Journey to the Centre of the Earth (Jules Verne)

6. The man-eaters of Kumaon (terribly thrilling tiger tales from British-ruled India), written by Jim Corbett

7. The Famous Five series (involves my first literary crush Anne), written by Enid Blyton

8. The hound of the Baskervilles (a pastoral horror setting), written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

9. Tales of Imagination by Edgar Allan Poe

10. Albert Einstein- a short biography (by RK Murthi)

Special mentions:

11.  Mixed Blessings (Danielle  Steel)

12. A walk to remember (Nicholas Sparks)

13. Malgudi days (RK Narayan)

14. Curtain- Poirot's last case (by Agatha Christie)

15. The murder of Roger Acroyd (a path - breaking crime novel), written by Agatha Christie

-Ritesh Agarwal,

Email: ritzy182000@gmail.com

Date: 10^th September, 2014

Mardaani sisters: The unsung Heroes

This is no piece of fiction. So if you came looking for a spicy story, you arrived at the wrong place. However, the story I am about to narrate is no less inspiring, even interesting and perhaps even as enthralling as a bestselling novel.

I have my mother who at one point of time stayed submerged in chronic depression. With a child on one hand and no means to support on the other, she found herself at a crossroad where all roads led to death. But she fought back every strand of depression, she battled the financial crisis simply by seeking pleasure out of her baby’s smiling face, she weathered the black storm which an unhappy marital life brought, she stayed hungry to feed her child and stayed awake to see him sleep.

At a time when her most convenient option was to surrender to a rope or a bottle of poison, she withstood the vagaries of time and fate hanging on to life with the mere hope that her child would one day grow up and lead a happy life.

She is not a hero because she chose to live; she is a hero because she chose not to die.

And there is her sister (my Masi) who raised her two daughters at a house where she was deprived of running water and electric connection after being deserted by her husband. Her heart must have broken into thousand pieces for all I know but she never let the smile fade out of her face. She raised her daughters and made them proud CAs. She treated me like her son and bought me my first bicycle and my first video game. She perhaps led the most miserable life a wife could lead but it is astonishing how that radiant smile on her face never dissipated.

She is not a hero because she chose to smile; she is a hero because she chose not to cry.

And these two sisters (now pushing towards the twilight of their lives) are the unsung heroes (Mardaanis) of my family, of my life, of my saga. I owe my everything to them.

This is written as a part of I am Mardaani activity exclusively at BlogAdda.com for Indian Bloggers.

The lady who loves classics too much

This post is dedicated to Asha Roy, the woman who reads (and loves) classics too much.

Last day she shared a pic with me. The pic described a classic as something which everybody respects but nobody reads. Till a few months back, I used to feel quite devastated at the preferences of the current generation of readers. But I upset myself no more. I have come to realize (call it an epiphany if you want) that classics are too beautiful to be understood by everyone. 

A classic is that rarely beautiful thing which can be appreciated only by those rarely beautiful people. You tell me, can an internet-bred 21st century romance ever be better than Victorian romance? Can Nikita Singh or Ravinder Singh or Chetan Bhagat or Durjoy Dutta (all bestselling authors in their own right) ever be purer than a Jane Austen or a DH Lawrence or an Emily Bronte?

But here comes the chimera. A classic requires a certain level of intellect and patience which not everybody has. Some readers find these voluminous books to be having quite a toil on their grey cells. Some frankly lust after books which move at breakneck speed. For them, the task of sitting through a Tolstoy is going to  be a laborious ask too intimidating to be ever encouraged.

But those who love literature and love it truly will neither find classics daunting nor laborious. Rather they will tremble before its beauty, stunned and elated at having a piece of old treasure on their lap.

This brings to mind a quote by Alfred Gardener I remember from my class 11 days, "If diamonds were as plentiful as pebbles, no one would have stooped to pick them up."

It is the rarity of a diamond that makes it so treasurable. In the same vein, it is the rarity of a true classic lover that makes him/her so delightful a person.

I am, hence, glad to have a friend in this girl. Even though there have been cracks in the friendship and a huge question mark looms over the tenure of the relationship, I am glad that our paths crossed. Over the years, we have had some fascinating conversations which only two true classic lovers could have actually had.

I am not sure of the future of this friendship. Now, it all seems like all those talks happened in a different planet on a different time zone. But come what may, as long as my memory serves me and perhaps till my last breath, I shall cherish these conversations as the most beautiful memories of my life.

-Ritesh

Ranked 3rd in entrance exam for Comparative Literature

Wanted to top but woh ho na saka. Secured 3rd position at JU's entrance exam for Comparative Literature.

Printshot of results

To know how I made the cut, kindly read my earlier post

How DH Lawrence helped me in my MA exam

Thank You,

Ritesh Agarwal
email: ritzy182000@gmail.com

How DH Lawrence helped me in my MA exam

Google images: DH Lawrence

I am writing this sitting uncomfortably in a sweat-filled, grime-filled and people-filled bus chiefly because I owe a post to DH Lawrence and can't wait till I reach home (or till the home reaches me).

I gave myself two hours of DH Lawrence last evening on the eve of this exam I am returning from (MA entrance in Jadavpur University for Comparative Literature) and just as I had expected, just as I had envisioned, he filled me up with everything a pupil can expect of his teacher.

When you read the kind of classic that Lawrence writes, you become so full of words, so full of vocabulary and so full of refinedly structured sentences that you feel never at a loss for words.

For someone on the brink of the most vital exam of his life, such a state is a state of utopia, a scenario of complete perfection or near-perfection as in my case.

If I top this exam, which I think I should, I shall be eternally indebted to Lawrence and his Lady Chatterley.

My indebtedness also owes itself to Brita aunty, Sneha Isabella Sharma, Tanisha Chatterjee and Sreetama Ghoshal for their helpful inputs over the past few days. I hope to be perennially grateful to them despite the fact that hope is a dangerously unreliable thing. :)

-Ritesh Agarwal

19^th May, 2014

15 authors who have influenced me

In Facebook, there is this fun game currently trending. I did a lot of brainstorming, consulted my notes and jotted down these 15 authors/poets who have influenced me in some way or the other. Felt, it would be fair enough to post them on my blog as well (so that I may peruse them later on in my life).

I was tagged by Mehta Pankti into this fun little game:

The Rules: Don't take too long to think about it. Fifteen authors (poets included) who've influenced you and that will always stick with you. List the first 15 you can recall in no more than 15 minutes. Try to tag at least 15 friends, including me, because I'm interested in seeing what authors my friends choose.

1. Enid Blyton 

2. Agatha Christie 

3. Edgar Allan Poe

4. Arthur Conan Doyle

5. DH Lawrence 

6. Jhumpa Lahiri 

7. Danielle Steel 

8. Jules Verne 

9. Satyajit Ray 

10. Leo Tolstoy 

11. JK Rowling 

12. Jim Corbett 

13. RK Narayan 

14. William Wordsworth 

15. Walter de la Mare

Special Mentions: Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Nicholas Sparks, Sidney Sheldon

Tendulkar and the long hard walk towards sunset

Images are mine, taken from TV

Sometimes, one has to make the most difficult choice in the world since it is the only choice which is there to be made, with no other choice available. The choice I am alluding to is the choice to walk away, to walk away from something you love, to walk away from something you have held on to for such a long time, to walk away from something you thought you would never have to walk away from, to walk away from something you never wanted to walk away from in the first place, to walk away from the thing which wants you to walk away from it knowing well that it would hurt, even destroy, you in many ways.

But then, life is like that. It does not like it to be taken for granted and if you do so out of ignorance or blithe, it sends a reminder in the harshest manner possible. This is what consumed Sachin Tendulkar on the day he had to walk away from the very 22 yards over which he had spent a greater part of his 40 years. It was a cruel reminder that he couldn't take something for granted and a day would inevitably arrive when he would have to take the hardest walk of his life, hardest because it was a walk away from his life, because it was the walk he never intended to take in the first place, because it was the walk which must have come at the cost of a thousand unshed tears and unexpressed sighs.

 In my own personal life too, I have faced situations when I had to walk away from things which were, and still are, very close to my heart. I remember the streak of tear which brushed past my lips on the last day of my college. I had kissed my desk before vacating the classroom never to return to a place I had fallen in love with and had become accustomed to. The tear was a reminder of how I had taken the exuberance of a college ambience for granted. So the pain was foreseeable when that ambience was wretched out of me after my three memorable years of graduation. I cried when I had to end a beautiful relationship and I was lost when I had to walk out of a sweet friendship.

Just when I was beginning to take a few friends for granted, life intervened again and wretched them out of my life! And when Sachin was walking away from the dusty brown pitch for the final time after bending down and giving it an obeisance that spoke for their 3 decades of chaste relationship, he could not suppress his tears. It was then that the gravity of his long walk registered on me. I urgently pressed the red button on my television’s remote, collapsed over the sofa and burst into tears. I cried and cried and cried until I paid off for all the smiles Sachin had given me since my childhood. Ironically, I had only a few salty tears to pay for those smiles. And when I ran out of tears, my heart was left grappling with a void too deep to be ever filled back again. Sachin was gone. Just when I had got used to his presence, life had wretched him too. But no matter how hard it may try, life will never be able to wretch his memories out of my heart. It was a long hard walk back to sunset for both of us. It was a difficult walk but a journey well lived.

~Ritesh Agarwal

Email: ritzy182000@gmail.com

Author’s Bio: At 28, Ritesh Agarwal is too much in love with his childhood memories to be christened an adult. A major part of those memories have something or the other to do with Sachin Tendulkar who has been a constant in Ritesh’s life ever since he was ten. When not reminiscing about Sachin, Ritesh spends his time pursuing freelance writing, weaving short stories, teaching high school students and eating tomatoes on the sly after midnight. 

Which colour best defines who you are

Image Source: Bitstrips.com

When t2 recently asked this question, my face blanched for a moment, not knowing what to say.

But then I stared deep into the mirror, almost peeping into my reflection's soul only to discover that there is plenty of white in me (honesty, transparency and purity of soul to an extent..umm). I have always associated a bit of girlishness in me. So, a bit of pink also lurks somewhere. A bit of grey (okay, not as many as 50 shades perhaps) and perhaps a hint of black. Yellow, I am not sure. Green, definitely no. Blue, definitely yes. And I have never been fond of red, but who knows. Maybe with passage of time, I shall reveal my true colours to me.

Colourfully yours,

Ritesh Agarwal

PS- Now readers, which colour best defines you? Red, blue or black?

Love can happen for the stupidest of reasons

Image Source: Google Images

When you fall in love if you ever fall in love, you may discover that love often happens for the stupidest of reasons. A girl may meet/court/date dozens of super-intelligent and super-handsome men but she will fail to fall in love with any of them, which is remarkably surprising since she should have ideally fallen in love with all of them. But in the end, when she does fall in love, she is so likely to fall in love with someone who has average brains and below-average looks. Quite often, it is a person’s stupidity and his vulnerability which make girls fall in love with them.

Earlier this week, one of my best friends got married. On her way to marriage, she had her share of relationships but she bypassed all those young and hunkier males to ultimately walk the aisle with someone who is 12 years older to her and is rather a quiet and unassuming sort of a person.

On personal front, I am currently violently in love with Ileana D’Cruz. And the reason why I fell in love with her in the first place is that she has crooked teeth.

Told ya, love can happen for the stupidest of reasons…..

~Ritesh Agarwal

Email: ritzy182000@gmail.com

Jhumpa Lahiri: A peek into her personality

Jhumpa Lahiri at Kolkata Literary Meet, 2014

I am not sure how or where to begin. Jhumpa Lahiri, having written books like The Namesake and Unaccustomed Earth, may carry the reputation of a heavyweight author and of a celebrity who would have a certain degree of pompous air around her. But when I recently came across her, what struck me most was her reticence.  She talks less and only when it is required. She smiles lesser and only when she really wants to.

It's amazing how she can maintain a straight face even when a really good joke is being floated around. Some of my friends suggested that probably she is arrogant and does not reciprocate the warm greetings of her fans with equal warmth. However, I couldn't disagree more.

Jhumpa mam came across as a woman who is a fiercely private person. She doesn't make any effort to guard herself from public life. It comes quite naturally to her. It is also easy to see that she is not the kind who can socialise easily. She cannot open up in a way she opens up through her writings. In a way, her characters too reflect her persona in several ways. Many of her characters are emotional beings but they are emotional within their own private den. They seldom show their flood of feelings and often keep it suppressed for years until the dam bursts finally and the emotions are unleashed.

On meeting Jhumpa, one cannot figure out what is going inside her mind. Even when I spoke a couple of sentences to her before being ushered out, she just looked at me with her seemingly green eyes and offered no word, except for a thin smile which didn't betray her thoughts.

An outsider will find it hard, even impossible, to break through her shell and peep into her thoughts. She is a woman of few words, as they say, which is ironic in the most ironic way possible, since it is her words which have earned her a Pulitzer trophy and a Man Booker prize nomination.

When I come to think of it, I feel it is perhaps the way it should be with great writers. All their words reside inside their hearts and not on their faces. You've got to earn them. You've got to earn the right of passage into their hearts. There's no other way really.

A letter to Jhumpa Lahiri

A letter to Jhumpa Lahiri

Dear Jhumpa mam,

                             

I was in a fix as to how I should address you. Addressing you as Jhumpa Lahiri would have been disrespectful while calling you Miss Jhumpa or Miss Lahiri would be too impersonal for my liking. So I thought of settling for Jhumpa mam, not only because I find it adequately respectful and satisfyingly intimate, but also because whenever I talk to you in my mind, I always call you Jhumpa mam. I don't know why I like calling you by this name. Perhaps, it makes me feel closer to you in a way we never will be. Or maybe, this is how I like to address all the women teachers in my life.

This is a good time to disclose that I have found a teacher in you and you a student in me. In your writings, I chose to seek shelter one day and have ever since been learning under your tutelage. The way you manipulate words to extort emotions out of them, you never realized that you breathed life in them. In turn, they mothered a writer in me and breathed life into it.

From you Jhumpa mam, I have learnt how to explore human relationships. My story 'A mama's boy' and 'The lady who loved tea too much' are as much yours as they are mine. It's only fitting that you have a copy of them and see if your student has done a passable job or not.

I may not get another opportunity to meet you. But I leave you with this letter and a couple of my stories in the hope that you remember me through my words, just the way I shall live my life through yours.

If possible, please write to me. Will wait in hope.

Lots of love

Ritesh Agarwal

Calcutta, India

*I gave this letter to author Jhumpa Lahiri when I met her that evening on 23rd January, 2014*

How to overcome writer’s block?

Source: Google Images

Hi friends. I am not going to rattle off the general suggestions which are traditionally floated everywhere (you can find them if you Google). I am just going to offer a few personal tips which work for me, though they may or may not work for you (to each his own).

So, if you are a writer, you would often go through the dreaded phase of writer’s block. Generally, it is said that the best way to tackle this phase is to simply sleep over it. Just go to sleep or take a short break (may be, plan a holiday or a brain-cation) and your refreshed mind will be able to dish out new ideas the next time you sit down to write.

But I have personally observed that a very effective way to combat this writer’s block is to read a heavy book (preferably a well-written classic) for a length of 2-3 hours continuously. When you are exposed to such bombastic words, sentences and writing for such a long time, your brain automatically gets a warm-up which can be a great precursor for a satisfying writing session. The classic will open up the pores of your brain and help it to think better. Quite often, you get so full of words and ideas that the writer’s block melts as easily as it had appeared.

Another great way to figure out ways to solve a writing dilemma or to stitch up loose narratives is to mull over it when you are sitting in the bathroom. At the risk of sounding crude, I would say that the best plots come to me when I am in the bathroom- whether taking a bath or whether…umm….doing potty (excuse me).

So, the next time you are unable to find the way ahead, try to find inspiration in the lavatory.

Also read this post- Bathrooms, a place where geniuses are born.

                                                                          

~Ritesh Agarwal

Email: ritzy182000@gmail.com

PS- Check out some new Harry Potter books on the sidebar!

On writing and editing: Daily word count and how editing can be avoided

Some people set up a strict goal of penning down a certain number of words daily. 1000, 2000 or even more!

Personally, I don't torture my brain with such goals....I also don't necessarily write daily....I can write and write best when I'm feeling completely full of words. At the same time, I am personally against the idea of hurrying down 10k words and then snipping it back to 2.5k.

Words have lives. They can move you, evoke a smile and make you do things you never wanted to do. So, editing is synonymous to cold-blooded murder, since you're killing/snipping words.

Of course, one can edit in order to insert better flow. But isn't it better that when you sit down and write for the first time, you do it so cautiously, so slowly, so guardedly that you write it perfectly, so that it doesn't necessitate any major editing?



Ritesh Agarwal
email: ritzy182000@gmail.com

Agatha Christie and her sweet little childhood

I was just going through the wonderful posts of A Homemaker’s Utopia and loved her take on some of the classic authors like Tagore and Tolstoy. It is always great to read about old-age authors from the point of view of someone who has utmost admiration and knowledge for classics. So, in that regard, I’d say this post is directly influenced and inspired from the A Homemaker’s Utopia’s blog.

Currently, I am reading the autobiography of Agatha Christie. Mind it, it is an autobiography and not a biography. Though a biography can be as good, but at the end of the day, it is just a well-researched compilation of known facts about the person. An autobiography, on the other hand, is a direct window into the mind of the person and can be a treat for his fans and followers.

This book is deliciously thick and with tiny prints, just the way most classics are. Of the 600-odd pages, I have barely scraped through the first 100 at the moment. But I am already richer.

I feel Agatha must have gone through heavy bouts of nostalgia while penning this down. She wrote it during her final years and the first print of the book released after her death. So, in her mind, she retraced her steps from the ending point of her life to the starting point as she began narrating her journey right from her toddlerhood.

She had a pretty normal childhood. Her parents, she recounts, were a happy couple and stayed so throughout, till the unfortunate, and untimely, demise of her father when Agatha was around 11. He had succumbed to an illness and his wife (i.e. Agatha’s mother) was completely shattered.

Agatha had an elder sister called Madge and a brother called Monty. But they lived in their old world (due to the age gap) and Agatha spent the major part of her formative years under the wings of her nanny.

Agatha was quite a curious child and took to reading very early in her life. Her parents objected to the idea that children should be allowed to read before the age of 8 or 9. But incidentally, Agatha’s nanny told her parents one day- ‘Your daughter can read’. Agatha was just 5 at that time. Of course, her parents were upset with that development. After that, Agatha developed the habit of reading regularly and enjoyed it tremendously. You can say that even before turning 10, she was what we say ‘a voracious reader’.

There was an incident when Agatha stumbled onto a tabooed book in their library upstairs. It was an adult French book which children were not supposed to read. Her dad was furious when he caught her reading that. But Agatha merely shrugged, not knowing why he was so angry. She was, in any way, not able to take in any word written in that book.

~Ritesh Agarwal

Email: ritzy182000@gmail.com