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A tribute to two great men of Chandigarh

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Asit Jolly
Asit JollyFeb 03, 2018 | 11:02

A tribute to two great men of Chandigarh

It has been an unsettling January for many in Punjab, particularly in Chandigarh. One of the region’s most recognised scholarly faces, Satya Pal Gautam was discovered dead inside his Delhi home on January 31. Gautam, 66, was a very special human being.

Besides his many academic accomplishments — through three decades on the Philosophy faculty at Panjab University, as chairperson of Jawaharlal Nehru University’s Centre for Philosophy, and a stint as vice-chancellor of the Mahatma Jyotiba Phule Rohilkhand University in Bareilly — he endeared himself to multiple generations of students with his unflinching commitment to teaching and learning philosophy. An inexorably late, inebriated night of partying was no deterrent and Gautam would be up and away and standing in front of his class at eight the next morning, none the worse for the wear, and delivering one of those stimulating lectures he was famous for.

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“He was able to liberate philosophy from the classroom,” says a former student, still completely in awe of the man’s unparalleled ability to reflect and analyse. Gautam’s patent response to most queries was a very deliberate breaking down of content into specific points. “There are three things in this…,” his favourite opening before he proceeded to deconstruct the problem. Muzaffar Ali Malla, another former pupil who is currently a professor at the Savitribai Phule Pune University, remembers Gautam for his spontaneity. “Spontaneity, I would say, was his style of doing philosophy... True to his style of doing philosophy, he imposed it on death as well,” Malla said on a blog, on learning of his teacher’s demise.

But Gautam also remained an untiring activist throughout his life. He was an integral part of International Women’s Day processions in Chandigarh. And on January 26, four days to his end, he was part of a women’s march in Delhi. Together with colleagues who went on to become lifelong friends, he became part of the Socialist Teachers’ Forum on Panjab University campus in the 1970s and was instrumental in taking the Panjab University Teachers Association (PUTA) to its preeminent position in the region and the nation.

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Dedicated as he remained to teaching, Gautam made sure of bringing the intricacies of philosophical thought to his students in Punjabi and Hindi as well. Besides translating Jostein Gaarder’s celebrated novel Sophie’s World into Hindi, colleagues will tell you how he tried engaging with a larger audience through other scholarly works in Hindi and Punjabi. Oxford Brookes professor Pritam Singh, who was an old friend, says Gautam’s Punjabi handwriting was calligraphic, “like a piece of art”.

Nor was Gautam’s world circumscribed by philosophy. A diehard fan of Joan Baez and Pathane Khan’s music, one wall in his living room in Chandigarh was adorned with large photographs of an obviously delighted Gautam alongside Joan Baez. He talked about his meeting with her for months after with a happy gleam in his eye. And it was always open season at his house where his cook, actually his Man Friday, exercised the liberty to offer any visitor to the dinner and a hearty meal, even in Gautam’s absence. “He’ll be back soon,” Govind would assure visitors. And the sad irony that Gautam will never come back is hard on all those who knew and loved him.

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Midway into the month, barely 10 days before Gautam’s death, his dear friend and one of Chandigarh’s most accomplished painters, Malkit Singh, 76, passed away, leaving fellow artists, poets, writers and doctors at Chandigarh’s Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, where he worked for over three decades, distraught.

But then Malkit was way more than a painter of, in his own words, “intangible forms, feelings and emotions that we live with; natural beauty, haunting harmonies, spiritual sublimity and frail paradoxes.” Firmly grounded in the ethos of Punjab, he wholeheartedly reflected this both in his works and his countless friendships.

“A soft-spoken man infused with a rhythm that came through in his paintings, his poetic expression, even his gentle gait,” is how a longtime friend described him.

(Courtesy of Mail Today)

Last updated: February 03, 2018 | 11:02
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