Silence is terrible and painful only to those who have said all and have nothing more to speak of; but to those who never had anything to say— to them silence is simple and easy (Maxim Gorky)

31 May 2020

My journey of three and a half decades has come to an end today, in the ‘back/fore’ ground of a global pandemic and its inevitable demands of ‘distancing.’ Leaving IR School in Mahatma Gandhi University is painful, and I felt like a fish out of water by the evening of 29 May. Even as a few researchers gathered in my room, just to meet me by 5.15 PM, I tried to control myself as a hypocrite. I would have cried loudly, had no one been around me as I could not afford to miss this home. I also feared if my beloved researchers would also sink into gloom. Chatted with them for a while, by avoiding the stories of ‘achievements‘ – and liberal platitudes never disrupted our conversations. Sijin, Arun, Viswam, Sudheep, Suresh, Aneesh…Of course, not many. As I began to leave the room, Sijin came to me and gifted a copy of Malayalam translation of Maxim Gorky’s ‘Mother.’ What a powerful message that he signalled, by handing over a copy of that classic. That took me to five decades back, to my school days when I used to play the role of ‘borrower’ of books for my mother from the SNSS Library in Thiruvananthapuram. My mother was a voracious reader all throughout and she somehow believed in my selection of novels and stories. One day, I took Gorky’s ‘Mother’ and she found herself in a quandary as to how to complete such big volumes! I told her that this was a great novel (without even knowing that it was a Russian novel written in the background of 1905 Revolution). My ‘experiments’ with ‘fiction’ had such a humble beginning and my mother had been a great source of inspiration for reading. She was the one who struggled in her life since we lost our father (when I was only 8 years). Then it was a great struggle for us, for many years, and I realised the importance of hardwork and determination in life from her. When I became a teacher, way back in 1984, she was the happiest person in our family. For us, even after 2011, our mother remained a symbol of struggle, courage and conviction. I missed her very much, today, as I bid farewell to my IR Home. For mothers like Pelageya Nilovna Vlasova, “when work is a pleasure, life is a joy.” How many of us ensure that this life mission does not slide itself into slavery?

I have no hesitation to say that life in IR School has been an exploration with great minds—my beloved students, researchers, and colleagues in IR and MGU. The School as an institution has been growing on an off-beat track with a collective mindset—engaging critical questions beyond the conventional paradigm of teaching and research. The primary stakeholders—students and researchers—have been given enormous freedom and autonomy to tread on unchartered territories of knowledge. They have become great scholars, and good human beings, insofar as we all maintained this collective spirit. I am sure, this spirit will continue to sustain itself as we have invested heavily, all these years, with our time, energy and limited resources. I am also aware that no institution can declare ‘indispensability’ of anyone in its long academic trajectory. The new faces in the School have enormous scholarship, courage and conviction. Hence, I have only great expectations of its future.

I always considered teaching as a virtuous profession of engaging ‘politics of knowledge.’ Politics is NOT the ‘worst’ realm of human activity, as many would believe. Critical scholarship can emerge only when we recognise this ‘fact of politics.’ IR School continued to uphold this principle of knowledge production. We are actually both producers of politics and the products of politics. The organic link in this process is sustained by each and everyone. I am only a small link in this long chain.

Look forward to working with the forthcoming Institute for Global South Studies and Research.

I wish the IR School a great future.