Derozio Memorial Debate 2010: Behind The Scenes

Bang! Bang! Bang! I wake up. The century-old door to my hostel room is buckling under the pressure of some spirited banging. It’s Singh. I have a call. If you’re wondering what I’m doing in 2010 without a phone of my own, then the facts that I’m a heavy sleeper (or used to be) and that half a dozen missed calls don’t go far towards waking me up should suffice as an explanation. Back to the call. It’s Panickon. There’s a problem. I need to be in college in half an hour. I grunt back an affirmative.

Cut to an hour and a half later. I’m finally in college. Yet another breakfast skipped. The Principal’s room is dignifiedly serene. I rush across the room and enter the back-room we had made our office. ‘Dignity’ just disappears from the face of the earth, the word ripped out of every dictionary ever printed! Brace yourself: Gullu Eyes is sprawled on the floor, laughing maniacally at a joke he had himself evidently cracked. Panickon and Twilight are beside themselves in laughter. Veggie was standing in a corner, giggling and wondering what she was doing there. Napoleon had a bewildered look on his face; his blush meant he had been the butt of the joke. The latest budget sheet had weird elephants drawn all over them. There was a smiley at the end of an official looking letter. Elsewhere, the computer screen showed a distorted graphic of what was supposed to be the design for the newspaper ad, now edited beyond repair. Distant memory told me there was a problem? Yeah! But that’s another story! Welcome to DMD World.

Of Derozio, Rationalism and Contemporary Thoughts

The viewless winds are wandering!

Now o’er the flower-bells fair they creep

Waking sweet odours out of sleep;

Now stealing softly through the grass

That rustles as the breezes pass,

Just breathing such a gentle sigh

As love would live for ever by!”

With these lines have been captivated, nearly two centuries of scholars; lines that poured from the pen of one of modern India’s most endearing symbols of intellectualism, a poet ingenium cui sit, cui mens divinor, a rousing spirit of the Bengal Renaissance – Henry Louis Vivian Derozio.

The mere fact that two centuries after his birth, we come together to celebrate the life of this young poet, bears testimony to the impact that Derozio’s short yet eventful life had on intellectual awakening in 19^th century Bengal. Derozio remains the guiding spirit of Presidency College, the forerunner of which was the Hindu College where Derozio taught, and planted the seeds of rational thought in the minds of his fellow countrymen.