The Rosalind Wilson Memorial Lecture has been a fixture on the Delhi school calendar for more than twenty years, and has featured writers such as Vikram Seth and William Dalrymple.
This year, the book being discussed was All the Lives We Never Lived.
This year, the book being discussed was All the Lives We Never Lived.
Springdales School organizes the discussion to honour the memory of Rosalind Wilson, who taught there. She was an English teacher at the school and also served as the head of the English department. She later founded and edited the popular children magazine Target. She died at the age of 49 in 1992.
The Principal of the school, Mrs Ameeta Mulla Wattal, wrote in with this report of the discussion, which took place on 14th December 2018.
"The book discussion was riveting. Over 150 students across schools in the National Capital Region participated.
All students had not only read the book but were very perceptive in giving their views on the issues in the novel.
Gender justice, the politics of colonialists, questions of individual liberty versus pressures of society, the idea of freedom and the dynamics of the self were some of the points raised.
Students even revised and revalued their own positions at the end of the discussion. It was heartening to see the way they were able to connect the content of the novel with current concerns. Nationalism, the new laws on adultery, article 377, the whole debate around gender and so on.
The discussion was moderated by Dr. Nirmalya Samanta, an alumni of the school, who is extremely bright and is able to bring out the best in students during a book discussion.
His inputs were valuable"
All students had not only read the book but were very perceptive in giving their views on the issues in the novel.
Gender justice, the politics of colonialists, questions of individual liberty versus pressures of society, the idea of freedom and the dynamics of the self were some of the points raised.
Students even revised and revalued their own positions at the end of the discussion. It was heartening to see the way they were able to connect the content of the novel with current concerns. Nationalism, the new laws on adultery, article 377, the whole debate around gender and so on.
The discussion was moderated by Dr. Nirmalya Samanta, an alumni of the school, who is extremely bright and is able to bring out the best in students during a book discussion.
His inputs were valuable"
Listening to the students discussing the book, it was striking how much intelligence, thought and empathy there was in their readings. Different students reacted to different aspect of the book: one noticed man's relationship with nature and solitude; another observed that by focusing on a woman and child, the book had decisively shifted the focus away from dominant nationalist narratives. With charming candour, one of them confessing to finding the narrative too slow until she "got into" it and was swept away by it.
Most students had perceptive and refreshingly unpretentious things to say. They may be a part of the Snapchat and Whatsapp generation, but are obviously love reading critically, at length and in depth as well. Despairing adults are given to moaning over the how social media is ruining the young, but if this discussion was anything to go by, all is not lost -- at all.
