 It is great to be back. This is the second module and in this module we would focus on writers and writing. In the first module we had talked about writing as a very important part of any creative process because it is a kind of culmination which clarifies the process whatever your creative focus may be. It may be on sports or it may be on science, technology, design, painting. So that was a sort of overall general view. In the second module we will begin to look at writers and writings in greater detail. This lecture is titled Writers and Writing and the module is titled to be a writer. Now we have structured this first lecture in a sort of manner that it lends better understanding to not only writing in terms of you know professional writing but also how we can institutionalize it. This was a concern that we had voiced in the first lecture also. So now this section is actually organized in a certain way and I think I would like to explain this to you. We have divided this particular lecture in three parts. The first part is open-ended and we deal with number of perceptions that you may have of writers and writing, we look at changing fluid aspects of writing, we look at mythic as well as historical illusions and we look at cinematic representations of writers. The purpose of this is to really get you to think about writing and its cultural significance. We assume diversity of viewpoints, we assume diversity of reading backgrounds and writing aspirations. So with all that in mind, this particular part one is meant to really provoke certain open-ended kind of response to what it means to be a writer. The second part deals with unraveling hidden dimensions. In this part the creative writing teachers, pedagogic and creative intent is unraveled. And in the third part we bring you and the teacher together in some kind of a dialogue within the classroom. Now even traditional classroom really demands dialogue and in that sense we really carry over from the traditional classroom and we are actually interested in placing creative writing classrooms in relationship to what you have already learned or the manner in which you already learn to read literature, to think about literature and to raise questions about various definitions of literature. But in addition to that we would really like to develop a certain special position or certain orientation that creative writing teaching and learning requires. So this is the way the lecture is structured starting with general floating perceptions to the teacher's own point of view and then the ensuing classroom dialogue ideally which should help each one of you discover your hidden talent. So now we will start with the open-ended queries. So the first question that I like you to think about is really linked to why you want to write. This is again in some ways close to the spirit of autotelic activity which in order to discover your autotelic drives or your inner drives is very, very important to introspect to ask as many questions as you can so that you can really stay in tune with your inner voices. So why do you want to write? It may not be possible to answer it in simple ways nor do we have a set you know way of expecting answers but basically this is again a process of self-discovery that may be necessary as you write. It may keep changing also your definition may keep changing. What in your opinion is the writer's vocation? So again we assume varied exposure to reading and social or framework and to cultural issues and in that sense you may have your own opinion of what the writer's vocation is. A writer may or may not agree with your definition but what is your sense of a writer's vocation? Does any particular writer come to mind when you think about the writer's vocation? So again this happens you know we live in a very imagistic culture. So it may happen that you have certain set of people who immediately inspire you or they come to your mind when you think about the writer's vocation and they may bring a whole set of values and methodologies that you may associate with the writer's vocation. Do you think of the writer as a male, female or androgynous figure? Now if I were to really go in the confessional mode I may quite be willing to share this great surprise in my mind when I often find that the women learners when one teaches these courses they often have a gendered view where they do not really necessarily place themselves at the center or a woman at the center of the writing process. They often seem to place the male as the writer. Mr. Naipol may like that idea but I think we need to look at it much more critically. So then these are the set of questions then some others have been added. So you often hear the term poetic license when you talk about writers or poets. The term poet you will use as a synonym of writer and in that sense you often hear the term poetic license. What does the term poetic license evoke in your mind? What do you think about the widely quoted sentiment the pen is mightier than the sword? How has writing changed in the context of the internet and communication technologies? Do you think cyborgs can create new writings? Now it is quite possible that some of the words and terms that we are using in this set of questions may not be familiar or they may not be accessible to you. We would like you to work on these words, figure out their meaning and figure out your response. Again you may like some questions you may not like some other questions but the idea is to provoke some kind of discussion on what it means to be a writer. We thought that it may be a good idea to also dip into many images and many associations many allusions which means references that circulate in our cultural context. So I picked up a few that certainly seem very intriguing and powerful and yet I really do not have an answer for the power and the ideas and the metaphors that they evoke. But then the most widely known I think allusion here is to Ganapati as a scribe and the split between Ganapati as a scribe and Vedya as the creator of Mahabharat. So how do you respond to this mythic legend associated with the writing process? Very very interesting ideas come to my mind but I will share it after you are through with this activity and I do not know when that will happen. The legend of course if you are not familiar with it it goes that Vedya has conceived the epic Mahabharat but he needed a scribe. Brahma recommended Ganapati because of his superior intellect. Ganapati agreed to be his scribe on the condition that his pen must not stop while taking dictation. Vedya accepted this condition by demanding that Ganapati should write only after grasping the meaning of the dictated words. Very clever you know on both sides this dialogic process and yeah. So the book was written finally on the barks of trees with a feather for a pen. So see what you feel about this allusion. The second one that comes to my mind and of course I have slightly modified my own sense of connection because that is the way it evokes a response in my mind and that is related to the Eklavya tale where Eklavya's thumb is you know sought as Guru Dakshina by Dronacharya and this affected his skills in archery and in our in my interpretation also the ability to write. So again the Eklavya myth and certain kind of aggression in withholding the possibility to write that is the way I read it. You can read it in your own ways. The third is very interesting really and this refers to a historical situation. As I said there are these varied delusions that we have deboned into and they not really artificially but they are the ones that have been circulating in one's mind. So this one is related to the Buddhist theories who sang songs of liberation in Pali in the 6th century BC in India and these were published in the earliest known anthology of women's literature called Therigatha in 80 BC. And of course if you are not familiar with this illusion the song is given and the source also is given towards the end. This is from a very important milestone in women's writing you know edited by Susi Tharu and Laditha. So we mentioned it towards the end. So this is how the song goes. So free am I. It is called Mutta. So free am I. So gloriously free. Free from three petty things from Mutta, from Pestle and from my twisted lord. Freed from rebirth and death I am and all that has held me down is hurled away. So this is another illusion for you to think about. Well it is really quite nice to be able to dip into the cinematic representation because we are such a cinema oriented people. We love cinema and we also love the performing arts and therefore I think right now we would look at two very contrasting images of the writer one which refers to which is projected in Guru Dutt's Pyaasa which was released in 1957 and the other one will be Bakhwan which was released in 2003. In Guru Dutt's Pyaasa the writer is shown as an idealistic honest person, Vijay the protagonist is a struggling poet who is wrong by the people and also the economic system that has dehumanized most relationships. So this overlap between the economic system that requires certain kind of dehumanization and also the relationships that really only work around economic survival. So this is how he has sort of projected the protagonist who is a struggling poet and in that frame of reference instead of going over the film I am sure you can dip into it you can also go into YouTube and immediately dip into this song it is one of the most memorable scenes from Indian cinema. So in this enactment which is titled the Poet who at this point is also the singer he presents his anger against the failures of society he lashes out and he also shares his agony with the audience by you know using very powerful and searing terms like you know this is the kind of society where if I were to use the words from this very famous lyric from Sahir Ludhianvi, insan ki dusman ravazo ki duniya murda farishto ki duniya and you know he kind of keeps this attack on the social system very sharp and finally the audience of course keeps responding the audience responses very mobile it keeps showing the response to each word each term and at the end of it all however he is brutally removed from the scene. Now this was a very very romantic view of the writer who is a truth seeker and in that sense I have described this here as a vocation of the writer is born out of suffering this seems to be the world view that is presented in this very famous film a pyaasa where pyaasa is also a metaphor of a human being who is thirsty for love thirsty for meaning thirsty for creativity. So you know it is a vocation born out of suffering it is not seen as socially or economically valuable by people who surround the writer in his personal dealings and also the writer is seen as a seeker of unalloyed truth and he or in this case it is he I cannot think of a woman writer who is projected like this but he remains on the margins of society the corresponding female figure in the film is Gulabo who also remains on the margins of society. So this is one very powerful view of the writer as a being who is in search of unalloyed truth and writing is a means of finding that truth and to also if not the truth then to be able to narrate one's understanding of what is going wrong with society at large. So very powerful film and very powerful metaphor very powerful point of view as opposed to that I suppose there is another kind of point of view which of course may also be part of the changing national discourse. So quite evidently from the period of Gurudat to Ravichopra in 2003 this is the ethos of liberalization and there is a very contrasting view of the writer in Bahban I picked it up because it had left a mark both these films had left a mark and I am sure many scholars would also agree with me that it is interesting to talk about these images that circulate. Now the protagonist in this film his writing is born out of personal suffering in a somewhat reactive mode. It is a way of avenging one's lost place in the familial social setup. The theme of writing or that is the vocation of writing is glamorized by talking about only the end product that is the book although there is talk about the suffering that caused the writing of the book but the focus finally is very on the book and the triumphant quality of that book and the money that it fetched. So again this is a very different kind of feeling or different kind of image and sense of possibilities that this film also evokes. The protagonist Raj Malhotra begins to write after retirement so he is unlike the first writer in the writer in Pyaasa his vocation is not really writing but he begins to write after retirement to deal with the humiliation meted out by his four sons. The book is titled Bhakhban the gardener and it is the father, the nurturer the book is titled Bhakhban and it extend the same narrative the life narrative into the narrative in the shape of a book. So the book restores the writer's paternal pride and self-respect and the book that he finally publishes it goes on to become a bestseller earning him hefty sums in the booker prize. In the award ceremony in the film he says I am not a writer I have only written what life has taught me. So this is another take on writing and an interesting one and you can see what you feel about it. Of course you know these are images ideas etcetera that circulate and I think I would finally also like to place the writing teacher so to say in the framework of our dialogue because very often the question is why does one want to teach writing. One can teach traditional literature courses they are also very satisfying but why is it that one feels this strong urge to create another kind of space and also you know teach writing. I suppose certain bit of unravelling of hidden dimensions will help us in establishing better understanding of both sides very often I do not feel that the students really see the teacher as a person who is trying to aspire to create something on his or her own. Because in the traditional literature courses you usually teach canonized writing or even if you teach writing which is on the margins in some ways you are playing an oppositional social cultural role but you do not invest your own presence in that to the extent that you would do while teaching writing. So there are couple of ideas I would like to share with you perhaps it may be quite alright to sort of mention that many teachers of writing consider the classroom as the teachers at earlier that is like an artist's studio or a workshop it is a kind of a space for sharing new ideas about writing and the writing process. So you of course are focused on the students but you are also using this opportunity to choose ideas and eclectically and also to share them with young people and also in some ways your own writerly concerns are shared explicitly or implicitly it depends on the kind of dialogue that is possible in a group it is not always possible to foreground one's presence and writing in such a direct way. So it often depends on the nature of the dialogue which emerges but at the same time this is a kind of hidden dimension which animates the teaching process. I would share a few things about this in a little while. Here are some of the samples of my writing. Rashmi Chaudhary herself a Hindi writer and a doctoral student in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences will read Dange ke baad. Navneetha Talwar is an excerpt from the play A Dream in Three Acts which in the introduction to the play has been described as an attempt to reconcile multiple voices and languages that coexist within the writer. In act one in a dream like encounter Navneetha the protagonist is seen in conversation with Simone de Beauvoir. Navneetha looks up to Beauvoir as a source of inspiration in her search for her identity which also needs to confront the diversity and multilinguality of her own cultural experience. The rest of the play deals with this struggle and celebration of search. The scene descriptions within the dialogues have not been included for this reading though the introductory scene description will be read by Rashmi. The sequence has a dream like feel. The scene description has been read by Rashmi Chaudhary. The part of Navneetha been played by Shekha Lakhampaal and that of Simone de Beauvoir has been played by Smita Pendharkar. A dream in three acts. Act one, two women enter they are deeply engrossed in the conversation. One of them is Navneetha a young modern Indian woman dressed in a deep maroon muslin sari and an attractive woman blouse of the same color. She has a large red tikka on her forehead. The other woman is Simone de Beauvoir the French existential philosopher who is wearing an austere looking black frock and a black turban. Their dresses indicate not only the external cultural differences but also the way they relate to themselves. Beauvoir is older and more analytical. Navneetha is younger and more focused on sensory experience. My dear I am indeed pleased to meet you but I am a bit surprised by your choice of locale for this interview. Madame Beauvoir it is to have undisturbed time with you that I venture to suggest this location and as you know very well the forest holds great fascination for a woman. A sense of pre-sentiment and openness of sorts so I hope you don't mind this place. Many young women of my generation have been greatly influenced by your ideas. Could we sit down and talk? Are you talking about the second sex? The development of the male is comparatively simple. Woman's story is much more complex. From puberty to menopause woman is the theatre of the play that unfolds within her and in which she is not personally concerned. Our task is to discover how the nature of women has been affected throughout the course of history. We are concerned to find out what humanity has made of the human female. Yes Madame Beauvoir it is this very book and this very question that I am referring to. What humanity has made of the human female? Yes my dear, we will have to answer it for each of our cultures. How would you answer this question? Doughty deaths, amniocentesis, parda, have you heard of these? That's what the Indian woman is confronted with. A life within the four walls of the family. And yet personally when I am home with my family peace descends on me. I feel loved. The light of each morning fills me with gratitude. Why did you reject family and marriage as an alienating institution? Why did you want a life of isolation? Can I ask you a personal question? Why write the novel she came to stay if you did not want any commitment from Sartor? Why the agony over losing him to another woman? Madame Beauvoir what is our truth? One is not born but rather becomes a woman. It is civilization as a whole that produces this creature. Are we merely then the products of cultural osmosis? Can I ever view myself as I am or as I want to be? My thoughts flow. My tales are French. My landscape is French. He went out again and again I stayed a long while on the balcony. I watched an orange-red crane turning against the blue background of the sky. I watched a black insect that drew a broad foaming icy furrow across the heavens. The eternal youth of the world makes me feel breathless. Some things I have loved have vanished. A great many others have been given to me. Yesterday evening as I was going up the boulevard espaye and the sky was crimson, it seemed to me like I was walking upon an unknown planet where the grass might be violet, the earth blue. Now move on, I want to understand my reality through my own experience. Yes, we love, we agonize, we want bliss, happiness. The free woman is just being born. She will love more passionately, she will love more kindly, she will be happier. Thank you Rashmi, Neha, Shikha and Smita for your participation. It is indeed a privilege to have you over and really do this somewhat dramatized reading for the video course. Rashmi is a doctoral student in sociology, Neha you already know and she has background in literature and she is really committed to writing. Shikha is a student of M. Phil and she specializes in environmental concerns and planning. Smita on the other hand is focused on gender studies. So you can see that these are all diverse kind of backgrounds but all of them also are very interested, very keenly interested in the writing process and writing and finding their own sense of self. We will have them on board later on also. Now coming back to my own writing, while teaching the creativity and creative writing classes, I have actually rarely shared my own writing but my writerly concerns have enabled me to be sensitive to the questions students often ask. On the other hand in the western framework, specially in countries like the US, UK, Australia, Canada, writing classes are now routinely taught by published writers and in addition to that they often invite reputed writers in order to be you know writers in residence to add to the value of institutional effort. And I mention this because while teaching the creativity course in IIT Bombay, one had to steer the direction of this course amidst criticism oriented though contemporary humanities and social science courses and of course the engineering and science courses. It could thrive though in a limited way primarily because it provided targeted one semester coursework to those who wanted to explore this path. In other words, one still is at a level of trying to create new cultural space not only within just one course but hopefully in multiple ways so that creativity oriented and creative writing oriented concerns can be explored more actively within the institution. My own creative problems personally could not be woven into this effort because of this lack of earlier tradition of such an activity. For instance, my problem also is actually made complicated by the fact that I write in Hindi which is my mother tongue and sometimes I write in Hindi on you know without thinking about it like you saw this poem, you heard the poem Dange ke baad. He just came to me, occasionally my multilinguality has surfaced strongly so dream in three acts actually later on deals with that multilinguality and I have not been able to use code mixing because that multilinguality seems so rich and so powerful and infinitely more interesting so I really retained it by way of trying to see if one can find an audience for that kind of thought process and then sometimes without conscious planning my writing flows in English. So, it is very hard for me to really deal with these issues and also you know offer these problem areas to students who are also in the early stages of their search. But in any case for my own writing, I have let this happen naturally and published poems, short stories and a play a theme that has preoccupied me amongst many other concerns is related to something that we will explore in the course further. This is related to the vocation of the scientist, I have been very very interested in what it means to be a scientist in India, to do science in India, the definition of science in India and I have been trying to explore this from number of angles both analytical in my research work but also in terms of creative writing because I feel that there are layers about it that can only be captured in the kind of space that fiction provides. So, what I will also like to do as a concluding part of this you know unraveling process that I venture to share with you is to share my own notations in the kind of diaries that I have maintained regarding my writing. So, of course I feel that these ideas have been flowing within me you know unabated but now I need to really see how I can focus on them and give them proper shape. So, I really need to do that but I will read and show you the pages of my own diary. So, with reference to this theme of science I have a notation with a title of either a short story or a novel called the researcher in which I have noted down a statement for from Gombrow is the Polish writer modern writer who said the weight of our self depends on the size of the population of the planet. This particular statement by Gombrow is which I think I read while you know and looking at Kundera's own writing and essays it is simmered within me and I have another notation on the same page which says Simhas Tamela the researcher's dream the film and then later on at some other point in time I have this other notation in my diary as you know with another title called the expansion of species and I have this notation which I will read verbatim about an Indian scientist who works on population control a modern man's fear of population explosion personal history of excessively large family research work a quest and a reaction the milling crowds the repressed sobs the cry of the unborn kumbh scenario seen as a child the quiet lab silence of the womb the scientist playing God a kind of nobility turning to evil and that's the notation so I think I have shared my own personal you know journey with you in a very limited way and I am sure this kind of sharing when it occurs on both sides it gives greater degree of understanding of each other's choices and also the kind of world view that we construct for ourselves. Now based on your own desire to write your own perception of what writing as a vocation means the teacher and you they you establish dialogue with each other the dialogue is not a very very simple process but I think it has to be active on both sides the teacher should be a learner and the student should also be a teacher and these two elements should coexist within the same person we have talked about it in the first module as well. Now let us look at some specific kind of predilections of the writer while we bring writing into the classroom there are certain issues that we need to talk about writers have always existed everywhere in the world and nobody is going to stop anybody from writing but when we will begin to talk about institutionalization of writing that is bring writerly concerns to the classroom because you are also helping train people to look at the writer's vocation as a potential future vocation for them then I think some things need to be articulated. So three ideas have been singled out to establish dialogue between students and teacher. So with reference to writer's vocation isolation and or interaction we need to talk about the significance of both. We need to look at this metaphor of the Garrett versus the ivory tower we can also look at two writers and some certain kind of metaphoric significance that they evoke that is Kafka and or Camus. So let us see how we can develop this discussion. Now in terms of isolation and or interaction isolation can mean many things but at this point we are emphasizing the space and solitude necessary for writing and this is based on this very famous book that Virginia Woolf wrote where she talked about the necessity and the significance of a room of one's own in order to be able to write. There is a kind of independence, there is a kind of autonomy, there is a kind of space either mental or physical that is necessary in order to carry out the act of writing. So isolation in terms of the solitude and space necessary for writing. On the other hand interaction is equally important but I think it is a kind of complicated for many many writers because in terms of your own writing related interaction it is very difficult to judge at what point one can begin to share one's writing with other people. So therefore I have described this in these words interaction is a crucial but difficult step in sharing either the challenges of one's writing process or a specific finished work with others. It does not come that easily so there is certain amount of judgment that is involved in reaching out and you know interacting with other people. So in the classroom scenario we assume that interaction will help writers a great deal but I think it one has to keep in mind the sensitivities that are involved and sort of also help you realize that they may be certain kind of writing where you may feel that you are not ready for interaction. So these kinds of situations are very very common so isolation is necessary so is interaction and you have to find your own balance in this regard. With reference to bringing writing to the classroom there are some very very interesting ideas that Paul Dawson has raised in his recent study a very important recent study titled creative writing and the new humanities where he has looked at these very cliched in his own words very cliched but also very useful metaphors of the Garrett versus the ivory tower. In his opinion although the two seem to be at cross purposes but actually he wonders if that need be so the Garrett the metaphor of the Garrett is actually sort of associated with the writer's retreat according to him it can be this metaphor can be extended to the creative writing classes. Now how does one do that the Garrett is associated with certain amount of isolation and also certain amount of I suppose deprivation economic deprivation or certain social deprivation that writing demands and according to him the Garrett has had certain amount of romantic association with creativity and authenticity of the writing process it is also seen as outside of society so writing is outside of society so it sort of evokes all these associations in his point of view and as opposed to that the ivory tower is a metaphor for established academic systems and often it is seen as a negative description because it seems to evoke the sense that it sort of shelters the practitioners from harsh realities of actual life. Now in his opinion these two need not be separate although actually if you look at the pyaasa content the content of Gurudat's pyaasa it again fits into the metaphor of the Garrett and actually the publishing world in that framework is actually linked to the ivory tower because it involves protection and it also does not challenge those who have undertaken the work too much. The Garrett in particular and its association with pyaasa and ivory tower in terms of certain privilege position in terms of bakwan can also be evoked but in his opinion the ivory tower and the Garrett are parallel and permeable metaphors for the academic critic and the writer. So in his opinion they are metaphors but they are permeable metaphors for the academic critic in terms of the ivory tower metaphor and the writer in terms of the Garrett metaphor. And what he has tried to really establish in this book is to sort of see how these two can be negotiated. It is not possible to do away with these concepts because they do have certain element of truth in them but at the same time how does one negotiate these two in order to institutionalize creative writing. So both in terms of institutionalization of creative writing and in terms of thinking about the writer's vocation I think you can look at these two and develop your own take on it. The next association for classroom dialogue so I suppose in a classroom situation we could debate these two, we could talk about these two, we could have our own take on these in order to pursue our own independent line of creative action. The other kind of question that I raised again in a metaphoric sense was in terms of its links with two different kinds of very very powerful writers of 20th century Kafka and Albert Camus. If you are not familiar with the two writers then according to most biographical accounts Kafka you know did not want to publish his writing so there is sort of a lot of material available on this whole issue. The second writer Albert Camus on the other hand was deeply invested in wide ranging writing and publishing activities such as journalistic writing, philosophical essays, drama, short stories and novels. So now when we talk about it the question that we can debate is whether you want to be Kafka or Camus that is do you want to write with a clear aim to publish or do you want to treat your writing as a way of making sense of the world but not necessarily publish it or publish it sporadically whenever you feel that some things can be shared with the world at large but some you want to keep to yourself. So this is a question that you can ask, it gives you different kind of space for yourself. The other related question can also be linked to the genre that you would like to devote yourself to. Very often people may you know may have a sense of which genre makes them feel excited in terms of their writing but while writing they may shift their attention to another genre because that is also a kind of shifting ground. There are lots of blurred boundaries in terms of genre and so again while talking about publishing or not publishing one can also look at this question of genre while debating the writer's vocation. So what which genre would you like to devote yourself to because writing contains a lot of possibilities so we are also keeping that open ended different kinds of writing processes and products may be involved. The other question in tune with the multilingual cultural context that we inhabit is related to the language which language would one like to write in. This famous case of Girish Karnat which if I understand it correctly he has mentioned it in one of his editorial you know editorial comments that he wanted to actually write in English but when he sat down to write he began to write a play in Karnat and that was Yayaati. So it may again be a question that can actually you know you can resolve only when you start writing more seriously. So now this more or less concludes this first section where we want you to reflect on writers and writing and the cultural significance that you or your society or your social framework associates with the writing process and we would recommend viewing of Pyaasa by Gurudat a great film with some very very great moments and the dialogues are also available. There is a recent publishing trend where the dialogues of some of the very famous Hindi films the cult films these have been translated but they are also available in the original so you can dip into the dialogues of Pyaasa in order to understand the total you know the set of ideas that we have only briefly talked about. You can also look at Paul Dawson who has tried to establish creative writing as a mode of gaining knowledge and this is with reference to new humanities and many of the theoretical formulations of the last 20 years in teaching of literature and raising foundational questions about the definition of the term literature and hence creative writing as a response to many of these foundational questions. And finally Tharu and Lalitha's women writing in India from which we have taken the Therigatha songs with this we conclude this session. I hope you will think about your own self much more actively before we embark on the journey to understand what other writers have to say about the writing process. Thank you.