I am thankful to Supriya Agarwal for her kind words.. After what Dr. Jasbir Jain spoke about ' Self'- the topic of our discussion today, , I can only elaborate upon what she said.

I want to start my speech with a broad remark; I can think of myself, my identity, either as a 'self' or as a 'soul'. If I think of myself as a 'self' then I seek fulfillment; if I think of myself as a soul then I seek liberation from the bondage to' this- worldly' pursuits.

In India you have both these searches. A search for fulfillment would mean this: all my hunger for the experiences of this world, whatever desire is there, be achieved in this life; alternatively, If I think of myself as a soul I don't have to live all my life in a perpetual cycle of desire and disillusionment.,. A moment can come, unexpectedly, or by 'grace', when the illusory nature of hope despair cycle becomes apparent and I am released. Ramana Maharshi said , when it happens to you, you will realise how simple the whole process is, for it could have happened any time in your life.W.B.Yeats desired both fulfilment and release and made great poetry out of the quarrel of both in him. (Europe vs Asia too in some poems)

I must also add this to what I have said so far. I find it very difficult to find in my language (Kannada in which I write) the two words which can demarcate self and soul, because both self and soul are called 'atma'.

But the problematic (perhaps unavoidale) gift(?) of modern western literature to us writing in the Indian languages is that we have got the notion of "me" as "self",in opposition to the notion of "me" as "soul" .

That is point , number one .

The second point I want to make is this; even in western literature, when I was a student,as I grew up, and started writing, I was a great admirer of Shelley. Tagore had also liked Shelley. Shelley had seemed like an Advaitic mind. For instance my teacher who was a student of Leavis, condemned the poem: "Ode to West Wind", and said that Shelley was self - obsessed and sentimental. He was very critical of the famous line in the poem: "I fall upon the thorns of life, I bleed", I said no- for it seemed to me that Shelley was only bewailng this avatar of the atman as a corporal body, which is an impediment to the great knowledge of Oneness with the Universe. So "I fall upon the thorns of life, I bleed:" meant for me ' God liberate me from this body - so that I may merge.with the universe.

(You have a Walt Whitman too for whom the self is something that merges with the whole universe),

Or let us look at some other great lines Shelley wrote when Keats died, "Life like a dome of many coloured glass, stains the white radiance of eternity."

These lines were very fascinating to me as a student, because life 'seems' beautiful, for it is "maya". It is "Life like a dome of many coloured.glass'.. In both of its senses it is ' stained'-- beautiful, yet a hindrance. It doesn't make you see the white radiance.of eternity.

This is almost a Shankara kind of statement or upanishadic. Maya makes ths world seem beautiful..

Now I am trying to recall my student days, that moved me greatly, moved me also in opposition to my fascination for Shelley and advaita. Keats wrote in a letter that this world is like a "valley of making souls". I may not be quoting him correctly for I am speaking from memory. Alternatively, you can talk like Wordsworth; I came into this world a soul; 'like trailing clouds of glory do we come from God who is our home'. In the process of growing up in this world I am covered with illusion, and hereby I have become a' self'.

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What do I think now?

I am more with Keats than with Shelley, more on the side of those who seek fulfillment.

Many of us writers belong to that kind of a mind set.

And there is another dichotomy: The self in the creative process --: How does it participate in creation ? Eliot had a theory about it and it is important for us to note that this was in opposition to the Romantics and Victorians.and somewhat closer to the ancient aesthetic theory of our country. .

The personal Self is only a catalyst for him,.The catalyst does not undergo any change but It makes change possible. It speeds up the creative process.in the poet.

So he developed a theory of "impersonality" in art", which sometimes came very close to our great Indian aestheticians, for whom without a Vibhava there is no creation. Vibhava is the "Objective Correlative" of Eliot. .

That is one way of looking at all literature and again in opposition to it, whom do I think of? I think of Blake. Blake, I may not be quoting correctly,again-- I remember he said "this is mine, yet not mine."

Jasbir Jain used the word "authenticity",--- now, the notion ' this is mine, yet not mine,' brings in a quality of authenticity to what one writes.. Since what I write is mine, it is authenticated. Yet, it is not mine only---. not just personal – it belongs to every one else. I would incline more to the Blake kind of definition of the involvement of self in writing.

As a fiction writer let me share another experience with you. It is a great accident of certain times that the self that writes is not just the personal side that writes. Historically some conspiracy would have taken place, I am calling it "conspiracy" in quotation, For, by some acident of history, what I think of as my self is just not of my own self..

I may still be writing what I think of as my 'self'. . This is what happened in English literature when D.H. Lawrence wrote Sons and Lovers . I was a student in England in the 60s. I had a teacher who became a dear friend, Martin Green, and another teacher-Richard Hoggart, he was from the working class.If Richard Hogart would write his own autobiography, I imagine, it would come very close to Sons and Lovers.. His relationship to his own mother, his mother who sent him out to bring cigarettes,( she bought cheap cigarettes which she kept in an impressive expensive pack.)

There is a certain kind of earnestness in those who come from the lower classes. if you come from the lower classes, then you have an over- earnestness, and an embarrassment that comes from that over earnestness. All that.you fnd in Lawrence and Hoggart.

Those who read Sons and Lovers in the 40s and 50s, I think the working class intellectuals, young people, the large number of people produced in the red brick universities, secondary schools, there was a little revolution in England. Lawrence wrote the Self in Sons and Lovers which was not just the Self of Lawrence. It was the Self of the innumerable young people who were coming up.in life across class barriers

It happens to certain works. I would say in my own writing in the late 50s and 60s, I must have produced a few things in my own language which became the self of many people. This must have happened to Nirmal Varma; this must have happened to many writers in India. But it is not done deliberately, it just happens accidentally-from good luck, otherwise if you have a very peculiar, singular kind of self and you write that self only; then you over - psychologize it, then it becomes a "Case History".

Therefore, here is a danger of writing about the self, it can become an interesting "case history".

In many of the novels which are about 'growing up', where you have a disturbed self, even in a comic novel like Huckleberry Finn, and a lot of Dickens where the writing the self can become writing about the Culture, contemporary problems of the time the result is sheer magic. . It acquires effortlessly sociological, political significance too.

Which is that American novel, I forget the name, that had created so much interest... where a teenager writes... Yes – Catcher in the Rye.- Look, you know-- when I became Head of the Department in a Secondary Teachers College, a Regional college of Education, I devised a syllabus that included a lot of novels on growing up. I thought if someone is going to become a teacher they should read novels about growing up. I had Catcher in the Rye. It transformed all my students, the whole class was radically influenced; they became more honest, more self-searching, more aware of the inner life of their students..

In India the only virtue is obedience. If a student looks very obedient the teacher thinks the student is very good. If you are obedient your Head thinks you are very good..Catcher in the Rye changed all that.

I'll present to you one more idea, then I'll stop. When times get very troubled, like in the 1930s in Europe, where you feel that my self in whatever form it writes, has no significance at all because Hitler is rising to power with hypnotic mob fury there was madness in the air, evil and racial hatred all around. In such times you tend to feel your self has no significance., At such a time Christopher Isherwood said, "I am a camera", I am not a self, I'll just capturewhat I see with my ' passive' self. A great man like George Orwell, who had an active self sometimes as a political activist, felt helpless as a novelist and said lt me just watch and record what is happening around,. If you read his Wigan Pier or his great book on the Spanish Civil War you see journalistic writing becoming creative..

Even Malraux did that,. But the interesting thing is that the camera also chooses an angle. It chooses an angle, you pick-up this rather than something else. Even camera can write a self but the self is not as actively engaged as in Blake,

Take two poems- Blake's "London" and Eliot's "Wasteland". Eliot's 'Wasteland' is in the other mode, where the catalyst self is working, putting things together, whereas in "London", "When I roamed from street to street" the self is involved and its a great poem. Its a little poem,but it's a wasteland he is describing (I owe this insight to F.R.Leavis),

But the interesting thing is that Blake like all the prophets said that an angel dictated it to him. But we should not forget that Blake took care to correct what the angel had dictated.

Thank you. The Self is still there.