Lecture at Mari Chenna Reddy Human Development Institute

 Gave a lecture on the, Importance of History and its purpose, to 140 candidates who have cleared the IAS exams and joined the services as per their ranks in the All India List. These candidates have come to the Mari Chenna Reddy Human Development Institute in Hyderabad. After the candidates clear the IAS exam, they have a training for three and a half to four  months. Half of these candidates are sent to Mussorie and the rest come to Hyderabad for training. In this group of 140, only 30, were girls. They came from all over India and will be joining the services like Income tax, Police, Revenue, Railways and many more allied branches. It was fun interacting with  them and discussing how history will be suitable in their future career. On Saturday, they will speak on this topic and how History can help them and why did they join the Civil services. Generally, the candidates are divided into two groups but when an external expert like myself come, they are all combined into one group which is a large group. It was nice to interact with a girl who told me that she was pursuing her Ph. D from JNU on Women's issues and plans to complete this. Mari Chenna Reddy Institute in Hyderabad has a beautiful campus spread across thirty three acres with a lot of green cover and beautifully  laid out gardens. This is a premier government Institute to train Civil and public servants and sharpen their personality, give them Knowledge and teach them public speaking skills. It is always fun to interact with the future administrators of our country.

Mohiniyattam

 The Centre for Womens Studies organised a programme, on Mohiniyattam that was a talk and a performance. Language is a medium of communication and we use this medium in the Centre for Women's studies through out teaching, research and writing. However, dance is also a medium of communication  through gestures and one which many Centres of women's studies have not explored.  There are different views on the particular functions of dance. Some scholars hold that the body language are as diverse as verbal languages and no position of the body or expression of the face has a universal meaning. Others hold that there is a universality of expression for basic human emotions such as anger, disgust, sadness, enjoyment fear and surprise. This programme explored dance as a medium of feminine desire. Prof. Anuradha Jonnalgadda a very well known Kuchipudi dancer and a Professor in the University of Hyderabad, introduced the topic. The different speakers were introduced by Mr. G.V.Anna Rao who has established himself  in Hyderabad as a well known figure  for organising various classical dance events  and is very well well informed  about classical dance. Anupama Kylash  again a very well known reputed Kuchipudi and Vilasini Natyam  artist and scholar, who is performing Kuchipudi for the last twenty five years and Vilasi natyam  for over fourteen years, gave a very interesting, scholarly and rich  talk on dance and the concept of lasya, femine grace in the textual and performative tradition of India.Those of us who work on Women's History found this talk very interesting when she spoke of Bhakti and no distinction of gender in the writings and performance. This was followed by  Mythili Anoops talk and elaboration of the concept  with  Mohiniyattam where Mohini is an ideal embodiment of femine beauty.  This was followed by her with the performance of three pieces of the  Mohiniattam dance.  Though all these were beautiful,  to me the highlight  was the performance of Mohiniyattam from a  sufi piece of Amir khusroo. I am amzed at the kind of experiments that are going on. There is so much that we do not know and have to learn.   A book written by Mythili Anoop on, Mohiniyattam a language of feminine desire was also released at this event. Thanks a lot to my students Pooja Chetry for the vote of thanks and  Rizwan Ahmad for taking these pictures.

Mizoram University

 It is always a pleasure to visit the state of Mizoram and the Mizoram University. The general environment, the peace and calm of the place, the beautiful green forest cover, the politeness and humble nature of the people and the over all neatness and cleanliness always are points of  attraction. Unlike any other Indian city you never hear the horns blaring on the road and though the roads are so narrow like any hilly place people wait one after another in their cars, bikes very patiently for the traffic to move on. In the evening the deputy registrar came to meet me and said, Mam, I am a student of Hyderabad University and he has joined here just a month back. I met so many of my old  students who are now teaching in the University and different colleges around Aijawl. In this post I am also sharing few beautiful pictures of Aijawl clicked by my students Zara Ralte who is a passionate photographer. It was great meeting Zuali, Malsawma and Zara. I have traveled a lot and met many of our students in different places but the kind of love the students in Mizoram  have for Hyderabad University is unparalleled and this attracts me to them and this place. They always talk about the University to me and how they miss it. A great trip and thank you all for making this trip so special.

meeting Jeevananadam at the airport

 Happiness is running into your own student, Jeevanandam, who now teaches in the History Department at Sikkim University, in Calcutta Airport at the same gate number but for different flights. We had so much to catch up. My, my, was I glad that my flight got delayed by an hour and a half.

M. Yurreisim; Defence

 M. Yurreisim my Ph. D student from Gender studies defended his Ph. D thesis on, Narratives of violence against women in armed conflict a case study of Naga women in Manipur  and was awarded his Ph. D and he became my 16th Ph. D student in both History and Gender studies to be awarded a Ph. D degree. However, I would place this viva in a different category for it was a new experience for me. Prof. Rosemary Dzuvichu from Nagaland University and a former director of the Women's Studies was appointed the external examiner and she had given the date earlier on in  July and then on  6th August. The student had come to Hyderabad from Manipur and was waiting for the viva. . On, 3rd,I got a message from the examiner that due to some unavoidable reason she could not come and she was cancelling her tickets but she could conduct the via through Skype. I went into panic and this being a Saturday Sunday did not know what to do. Asking a new examiner would take again so much time. I rang up the Chief Examination officer as to what I should do and he informed me that the University had earlier passed a resolution in the AC and we could conduct the viva through  Skype. I did not want to waste the  time of the student  and on Monday, I was told that I needed to get permission for this. I really feel very happy that our University has such a good and efficient system and does accept things even if they are not done   in the old fashioned way. Since the viva was on Tuesday, I did not have time for the paper work and I just sent a mail to my VC, CEO and the Dean and decided to go ahead. I soon got a reply from the CEO that we can go ahead. Though every thing was set, I could not sleep during the night. I was having nightmares that suddenly during the viva voice, the current would go, the Skype connection will snap, or we could not connect to Nagaland and this could not be completed. I am very happy to report that every thing went very smoothly, and the whole proceedings were recorded, to be handed over to the examination branch. This was a new experience for me but at the end of it I am in two minds and not sure if I will prefer this method. Yes, this does save a lot of money, for the University did save the airfares, the accommodation, boarding and lodging expenses but as a supervisor, I was under a lot of tension. As the student kept presenting, I was afraid some thing may go wrong and the examiner would not be able to ask the questions and complete the viva. I wanted the student to finish his presentation fast and was very restless through out this time and could not enjoy his  presentation. I also feel that through this method the student looses an opportunity to interact with the examiner on a one to one basis. These are students beginning their career and interacting with the expert who are  very senior, having lunch with them gives them a lot of  learning, an acquaintance and definitely a memory to cherish for ever. Technology does not give this personal touch. May be in future when Universities face resource crunch they will prefer this as a mode of examination but the human touch will be totally lost. So I would like to use this technology only as an exception, when there is no other way out but I would still vote for the old fashioned way where the examiner is present before you and you have an eye to eye contact and then you defend your thesis. Any way a great and new experience. The icing on the cake was when the examiner sent me this note on what's app after the viva, Prof Rekha I am glad .The scholar has done good work.Its very rare to have a Naga scholar in gender studies research and he has done good work.Not easy too to record those stories of violence and he has done it.We will meet up for sure. Welcome it was my pleasure.Regards.

Oh what a day!!!! It has drained me completely.

Women's World Congress, 5th Book

 The fifth book of the Women's World Congress is released and reached me today morning. I am so happy to see this. It has taken a long time but the quality and end product is very good and can compare to any International publication. These are a series of nine books by  different editors including besides myself, Sita Vanka, Tutun Mukherjee, Bharat Chilakuri  S. Jeeva nandam, Abu Saleh and published by Rawat Publications  and today the fifth one   has seen the light of the day.  The other  four books are still with the publisher and I only hope that he delivers them fast so that, I can close this file. It was a herculean  task to weed out about fifteen to twenty papers for each volume, from the thousand that we had received from all over the world for each volume and after double blind  peer review getting back to authors, getting clarifications and rewriting  and there was a delay of some years even on our part. I thank all the authors for their patience since 2014 (though the wait is still not over for some) and the editors for all the hard work.