Speech made at the inauguration of the literature association at Baselius College [6-11-1997]

I agreed to come for this function for two reasons. One, almost everyone in this department is friend of mine, and I am obliged to them. I also have few old students doing their postgraduation here. It would be rude and ungrateful if I declined the request. Two, challenging though it was, I was secretly flattered that you had chosen to have me to inaugurate the activities of your prestigious association.

I said challenging. Give me a class and a subject to teach. I think I would perform to perfection. But believe it or not, even after twenty eight years of teaching, facing an audience makes me very nervous. See, even as I was entering this campus, it seemed like somebody in the vicinity was beating a bass drum. Then I knew it was only the thumping of my heart. Now that I am among friendly and familiar faces I feel my heartbeat coming back to normal.

I wanted a subject to talk about. But your friend Vinod made it very difficult for me when he said I could talk about anything under the sun. I spent a lot of time thinking and finally I thought I will speak about the advantages of having a taste for literature, for I assume that all of you are students of literature. But remember that just because you have opted for literature for your graduation or postgraduation it does not mean that you necessarily have the taste for the subject. You may realize this taste in you at any time of your life. It may be some person or some experience that opens the door and exposes you to this wonderful world of literature. It is for you to choke or nourish it.

In my case, I was forced into this world. When I was very young, I was a sick and weak child. So at home and at school I was insulated from any kind of physical activity in the playground. While my brothers and sister and friends ran around playing hide and seek or catch and run I was left alone to wander with Red Riding Hood or Hansel and Gretel. But what began like a curse soon became a craze. I studied in Mount Carmel School, Kottayam and I remember a time came when I exhausted all the books in the library. My teachers began to lend me books from their own homes. By the time I was in high school I knew literature was my subject. I really enjoyed my B.A and M.A years.

But I miss this enjoyment in most of the present generation students. It is not in the case of literature alone. Most of them chose their subjects not for the love of it but for its prospect in the job market. You miss a lot of fun that way-especially with literature.

To a student who approaches it with real interest, literature is a magic world. You could talk endlessly about it. To be very brief, good reading is a matter of taste. It has to be acquired. What you get from classrooms is only support. Only practice and experience can help you to recognize a really good work of literature. It is not the language but the life in them that really matters.

I think I could put it like this. There is a mulberry tree near my bedroom window. It is bushy and makes a good shelter for little birds in the summer heat. Last summer, one day, there was lot of twittering and I ran to see what was wrong. A young bird had fallen down and our cat was chasing it. I rushed out and reached in time to save the bird from the cat. I held the little bird in my hands, one hand cupped over the other. I couldn’t feel the weight of the bird. It was so frightened that it was very still. But I could feel its heart beating. It must be like that with a good story or a poem. You should feel the heartbeat without feeling the weight of what you are reading.

Once you reach this point you will wonder at what it can do to your person. It will sharpen your sensibility. It will heighten your compassion and understanding. You will be able to judge people better. It will make your life richer because good writers will take you to unchartered areas of experiences and emotions and help you to look at things with a wide perspective. As you grow older it will expose you to the world of wisdom and intuition, and help you to leap from thinking to understanding.

For example, take the case of a simple flower. For a man who trades with it, it is something to buy and sell for money. This is its lowest value. It can also be an object of intellectual interest for a botanist and for that matter a nettle may sometimes be more interesting to him than a flower.

But for a writer – for a poet – it becomes an object of joy. It becomes a thing of beauty and truth, a window from which we may look into the beauty and truth of the universe or the beauty and truth of our own souls.

They say making a speech is like falling in love. It is difficult to begin with but once you start you don’t know when or how to stop. I will stop before I get into that dilemma.

Thank you.