too far-fetched ?
March 22nd, 2008Back in college , I “minored” in Linguistics (We were required to do a major course, which was the course you had signed up for while joining-mine was Mechanical Engineering-and also a “minor” course, which was something you had to additionally “learn” as part of your B.Tech Program in IIT Madras ) . Why I minored in Linguistics -apart from the scorching thirst to have more meaningful practical courses and something that i truly felt passionate about- is not exactly the subject of this post. One of the courses i did was “Indian Fiction in English”. While all the courses i did as part of the minor program were really amazing, this one had a very different flavor to it.
It was taken by one of the coolest profs around Prof.Mohan. An extremely forthcoming gentleman with very interesting idiosyncrasies. One of his famous opening statements to any new class of joinees :-”…. I love to read books, I read all kinds of books, no really….. I read anything right from the Vedas to pornography…….” . This may not seem all that jaw-dropping a statement for the normal reader. But in such an esteemed institute from such a conservative place, when one of the professors (who are granted the mantle of being a “guru” – in its truest sense) is so “forthcoming” with his views , it truly does throw the simpleton/pupil for a toss.
A normal day in his class, would include dissecting a novel/short-story from every possible angle. What the author was thinking , could have thought, intended to think, might want us to think ……etc .One fine day,while discussing a plausible point of view , a fellow student stood up and asked him with a mildly frustrated tone, “Sir… don’t you think that view is slightly far-fetched? I mean for all we know the author was just thinking about something plain vanilla….” – keep in mind this is a class filled with to-be-engineers. Prof.Mohan very assertively told the simpleton (not his exact words , but it went more or less like this) “…if everyone in the field of literature thought like you son, then fiction and literature as we know it today would probably have gone extinct……” . In all fairness , a very small part of me also did have this doubt, that probably we were thinking far beyond the realistic assumptions of the author. But i was a more diligent linguistics pupil and decided to thwart the thought at once.
Just today , I watched the movie “No country for Old men”, and only today was I truly convinced of what my professor told me almost 4 years back. You would probably understand what i mean ,if you’ve already watched the movie. Many points have deliberately been left livid, and this gets you thinking…. Was Chigurh really in the room when Bell walked in ? Was the beautiful Kelly Macdonald’s fate eventually decided by the toss of a coin ?…..And it is from this uncertainty that you derive, that strange sense of content from a good work of art be it a novel or a movie……
[UPDATE : Out of respect, I mailed Prof.Mohan, regarding the above subject and asked for permission beforehand.... He said he had no problem at all with me using his name, and was actually glad that i remembered what he had taught. See that's why hes one of the coolest profs in IIT .Honest and at the same time encouraging..... We need more Prof.Mohans in this world]
