Post Convocation

 I got a call in the evening and was invited to join all the MA Batch students who had come to Hyderabad  for the convocation. It was fun connecting with the students. Some of these students have gone to different Universities like JNU, Jamia Milia, Delhi University  to do M. Phil's, others have joined coaching for Competitive exams, some have joined Projects. It was a fun filled evening  catching up with students and I will remember this batch as a very active one that was very good at organising events and was very savvy with technology and very visible  on the Internet. I hope they all settle well and I wish them all a bright futures Indeed a great way to celebrate Mahatma Gandhi Jayanti with my dear students.

Ganesh Pooja, 2015

 Ganesh Pooja in my colony. on 19th September, 2015

Workshop on Kabir

 The Department of History and the History Research Scholars forum got together on 12th September, 2015, to organise a wonderful programme related to Kabir. Shabanam Virmani the film maker and artist along with Vipul Rakhi a poet, translator, writer and singer along with Gopal Singh Chauhan a heritage and cultural activist conducted this. After the screening of the beautiful film Had Anhad (Bounded Boundless) there was a discussion on Kabir, his philosophy, the film, it's relevance. This was followed by the rendering of songs by the trio. It was an amazing workshop and one which was very much welcomed by the students.Thanks to our students Kalu Ram Palsania, Kishore Kumar, Nimitha, Pratima, Srijan Mandal for putting in all the efforts and bringing in  this together.

Our garden after the rain

 Wow, what a relief! The much needed rains have come to Hyderabad . We had the first rain shower on 8th September, 2015 and it almost poured. I am very happy for this has given a new lease of life to our garden.

Board Meeting in the Hindi Department

There was a Board meeting of the Hindi department on 4th September, 2015.  Photo of the faculty members of the  Hindi Department,  after the Departmental  Committee meeting,  of which I am a Board member. It felt  nice to see the whole department at one place and ready for a click.

Lady Doak College

Reached Madurai on 7th July, 2015. Had a series of lectures in Madurai Kamraj University, Lady Doak College, Madurai  in Tamilnadu.. It is one of the early colleges established in 1948 and they have done some good work in Women's Studies. I am glad that I am in their advisory Board. The icing on the cake was a visit to the Meenakshi temple and having such a smooth sailing for the darshan since one of the trustees of the temple was escorting me. Had an interaction and lecture with the various teachers teaching women's Studies courses and was really surprised to see so many faculty involved in teaching Women's Studies.

They had a Centre for Women's Studies Board meeting and they organised four lectures during my two day stay there. It was fun to interact with the students and the icing on the cake was that I was able to go to Mennakshi Temple and since the faculty who took me there was one of the Trustees and Board member in the temple we could get an easy darshan and have a very smooth ride into the temple. It was a wonderful trip .

Key Note address in Vizag

 I am in Vizag on 16th July, 2015, to give a key note address on the 106th birthday  commemoration of Durgabai Desh mukh. The Centre for Women's Studies is named after her. I was very happy to meet Prof. Shantamma a first generation Prof of Physics who passed out from Andhra University and the present VC was her student and he reminicence as to how she was the only women driving an Ambassador car to the University and mind you those days there were no power steering and it had all to be done manually. The University also acknowledged her contribution and honoured her. I found a lot of coverage of the event in all the local papers today.