 This lecture is titled multilingual plurality and it actually deals with our environment. We have already talked about the fact that we would adopt a generative approach, that means we would have to constantly dip into our own inner resources and also our environmental resources in order to develop more and more creative attitudes and work. So, our approach it begins with the evolving sense of the self. We talked about it in the previous lecture also by placing it within the accelerated pace of change that we notice all around us. This particular you know rapid pace of change is not really an exclusive characteristic of this historical period alone. If you look at more universal models of growth and youth and change, you would find similar tendencies that affect young people. That is the pace of change, external change may be rapid in some historical periods and relatively less in some others, but the fact is that young people are really very receptive to all the changes and the possibilities that surround them. So, we can if you want dip into Erickson's childhood and society, where he has offered a psychosocial model of development and in his kind of framework each stage of our growth is marked by crisis and growth. I would say that when we look at the Ericksonian model and we place it within the rapid pace of change within adolescence to youth, he has pointed out that identity versus a role confusion marks this phase and also concerns for newer areas of intimacy and also impending isolation. So, there are these binaries he has offered these mainly suggest the fact that this is a phase where one is affected by search for identity and identity in that sense is an evolving process. So, this is where we place our generative approach I would say firmly within the fluidity of all these processes. In this complex construction of the self, the crystallization of ideas, perceptions, feelings that writing process offers I think cannot be replaced by any other activity. So, whether you are doing science in order to find your sense of self or you are doing technology, you are doing writing, painting, designing, law because I actually spoke to students of law recently on creativity concerns they wanted interaction from that point of view. So, whatever your area of concern finally all of this comes together very beautifully and powerfully in writing. So, doing science, but writing about it, doing technology, writing about it and the writing process and its beauty in some ways is captured most eloquently by Rilke in this quote he says for the sake of a single poem you must see many cities, many people and things. You must understand animals, must feel how birds fly and know the gesture which small flowers make when they open in the morning and it is not yet enough to have memories only when they have changed into our very blood into glance and gesture and unneemless no longer to be distinguished from ourselves only then can it happen that in some very rare hour the first word of a poem arises in their midst and goes forth from them. Think about this quotation, think about the ideas that we have shared and we will then from that point on develop further activities because the challenge before us is to find ways through which our creativity is spurred. We have decided to adopt what we describe as the discovery model which is highly inspired by Pandit Nehru's discovery of India and also therefore the impulse to investigate one's social cultural surroundings like the book, but also more than the book it is that impulse that we feel is endorsed by this title and this notion. This discovery actually has to start with the self and the sense that one has about this is related to the self in relationship to multi-legality of our social environment that sense that this would yield very rich results because language is very very important part of who we are and it is also an important part of our you know freedom or sense of freedom or the ability to articulate a sense of freedom not only feel it but articulate it and also there are so many other things associated with the intimate relationship that we have with languages. The language seen however is not simple to say the least we would like you to dip into some of the figures that are offered by the census 2011 just to have a sort of feel for where we stand today as a nation. So the of course the total population of the country is 1.21 billion people the number of languages that are spoken that also includes dialects is 1652. So far as English is concerned a miniscule minority uses it as a first language for most educated people they are also part of a miniscule minority in the country considering we are 1.21 billion people for the educated minority this continues to be a second or third language. So then when we talk about multi-linguality it is definitely a concern that we would like you to actively explore because along with multi-linguality of our environment there are associated cultural elements that we would like you to think about. So this is really not to suggest that a language and a culture are tightly knit I think the boundaries and relationships are very fluid and it is precisely this fluidity that we would like you to explore with very specific kind of exercises that we would recommend and in fact we have some of these poses that we would share with you right now and these poses also many of the students have responded to we will show that soon those exercises also and the students in action that we would show you soon. So then one of the poses relates to the word creative itself. So now when we talk about multi-linguality plurality how about starting with this key word and why this word of course evidently because we are interested in understanding creative processes but I think the process is one thing but the word itself what does it connote what does it mean to us. According to Raymond Williams this is one of the few words in the English language with only positive connotations this is an idea that we will again discuss later when we talk about institutionalization of creativity and creative writing especially Dawson and Rob Pope and what they have to say about this institutionalization but to begin with what does the word creative mean is it just a word we have acquired and we just go around thoughtlessly applying it wherever we want or do we want to become self aware and self conscious in a productive way. So then let us see what these relationships lead us to. So we would try to focus on multi-lingual India we would also like you to look at two or three languages that you use see where English stands within that frame of reference but also explore your relationship to languages their script their content their emotive appeal for you and therefore in that sense what are the different meanings that these words hold for you. So again you would have to come back to yourself so there is no general pattern so you know that we would like you to follow but these are leads that we feel will bring you back to yourself in a much more investigative and richer manner. The reason this needs to be done much more carefully is because everything said and done we do belong to a very polarized academic context in which languages and their value has not been appreciated fully. I think that is a kind of loss for all the disciplines because it is not a question of territorial interests so to say but it is a question of how crucial languages are to our thought processes. So therefore the science and technology separation from humanities and social sciences I think we may just briefly mention the fact that there are fairly complex cultural reasons because of which it has entered the mindset of the people. Institutions actually do have to polarize areas of specialization because the training required is different but I think in all of these processes languages should not be neglected and their power and also languages resource for thought processes. So because we are in this kind of complex polarized atmosphere we need to talk about multilinguality also because we tend to polarize we tend to limit ourselves we tend to reduce everything to simpler formulations and therefore I think it is very important to not only talk about the issue of languages but also multilinguality. The question for you and I think that is a very very important question that you have to ask yourself whether multilinguality offers great doors of perception to you. That is a question you have to answer and this is not a simple question although actually it is a question that may be much more accessible than you realize. So examples of some Indian language scripts and words in Indian language we wanted you to dip into for the exercise the words chosen are creative and creativity. So now we will share some of the exercises that were undertaken by the students in order to see if their mother tongue evokes deeper associations about the creative process for them. This exercise I sort of tend to feel when I look at the results of this exercise which I will share with you I tend to feel that the students actually you know looked at this exercise more as a given exercise rather than an exercise that emerged from their own queries. Now sometimes you know you have to take those kind of chances that you feel that there is great deal of potential that will surface or great deal of energy that will surface when you help students dip into their own inner resources because you know many times when they say that they are not able to articulate their thoughts and feelings properly I feel that maybe there is also a language issue somewhere at the back of it. But in any case I feel that this was undertaken as more of if I may say so mechanical exercise which actually they were intelligent enough to turn into an exercise in calligraphy which is beautiful writing then an attempt to look inwards except in one case and I will introduce that case towards the fag end of this presentation. So I actually do have some observations about this also but let me first share what the students had undertaken by way of a multilingual exercise or a bilingual exercise the reason I use the word mother tongue I was really to refer to any language that they use more often as I said there is this feeling in me that there is a deep disjunction and this is time and again surfaced in the last few years where they speak certain languages but they do not write them and the languages they use for writing are not languages in which they emote and they do not think about this critically very often. So in any case let us see what this bilingual exercise it turned out to be bilingual it was meant to be multilingual but it turned out to be bilingual somewhat limited exercise but in terms of their intelligent take I was quite impressed. So now the first person who responded to this Bharat Prabhakar and he his mother tongue is Punjabi he was candid he said well he is not very comfortable and he made this a part of this exercise and instead use calligraphy as a title and I think by that he was making the best of a limited situation but he also added a very beautiful sentence that he created on the spur of the moment and he says my creative energy flows through these beautiful letters. The next student who also express certain amount of discomfort with his mother tongue is Swapnil whose mother tongue is Gujarati and this is what he says I am not very comfortable with writing into Gujarati so I prefer to write in English and for him the word creative meant original and new also creativity he defined as creative activity wherein you are in flow that is you are not aware consciously of your actions very beautifully expressed. So of course English has become the language of mental activity for a lot of educated people like us and so far as the flow of ideas moves in the right direction well I suppose you know we have role models which help us make sure that we remain vibrant and critical and also continue to demand more and more from ourselves in terms of creative outputs but definitely he had a language problem in terms of the mother tongue. The next person who tempted this exercise all of them attempted this exercise I have chosen only a few examples because it is not possible to cover the ground completely. This is Shivashish Bhutya whose mother tongue is Aurya. Now I was not really trying to suggest that they should dip into their mother tongue necessarily but I have also found that a lot of them constantly harp on the fact that they are not able to write in English with the kind of ease that they really want. So there is some stumbling block somewhere so can dipping into one's mother tongue remove that block can one look at strategies offered by great writers like Salman Rushdie or Vikram Seth and see if there are some strategies of creativity that they can develop. I love the way the letters look I love the way they have been drawn lovingly by the students that they enjoyed the process they enjoyed the beauty of the process that was very evident and I think Bharat set the tone for it by calling it calligraphy. So as a calligraphic exercise this is very beautiful but I really wanted it to go beyond that I want to mention this new phenomenon that has unfolded. I think Reenal somewhere has talked about it when she says that when I write my diary and I am quoting her she says I switch over to Hindi words but I spell them in Roman and that is the way I communicate with friends on the internet also. I was actually amazed to see that the performing arts festival in IIT Bombay where the most of these plays are written in Hindi. They are written in Hindi but actually they use Roman script to write the plays. The first time I saw it I was astounded I could not believe it because to me this link between the script and the spoken language is such a vital, vibrant one and I could not quite fathom as to how they could just give up that beautiful link and they were so comfortable doing it. They were so comfortable writing the whole script in you know using the Roman script for writing and I remember vividly at that time thinking of 19, I think 28 when Kamal Ataturk in Turkey he changed, he sort of enforced the use of Roman script as a process of modernization. That was seen as a very radical step that he undertook. Maatsetung tried it in China and he had very limited success. It was resisted strongly because people loved the script so much and here is this phenomenon that has unfolded. I don't know how extensive this is and I don't know what is happening to our relationship with the language. As young people I think you need to think about it. I have no personal moral stand that I am taking but I was shocked that I felt when I saw Hindi being written as if it is English, I cannot quite describe it but I think you need to think about all these things while undertaking the process of writing. The materiality of it is also an important thing.