Students, colleagues, poets recall memories with Eunice de Souza

Nothing mediocre about herShe was a legendary presence as a professor in the English Department when I was in college in the rsquo80s I remember her superbly caustic wit and her ability to distil complex ideas without dumbing them downThose of us who loved poetry and I certainly did were very aware of her stature as a poet The fact that she was a poet made her glamorous to many but to me it also made her more credible Along with Nissim Ezekiel Arun Kolatkar Gieve Patel Adil Jussawalla and others Eunice was a reminder that poets werenrsquot just a breed out there in the remote ether they actually livedEunice has been important to me for various reasons For one of course she was inspirational as a poet For another she offered me my very first job I went back after my MA to teach at St Xavierrsquos Junior College thanks to her recommendation And whatrsquos more it was thanks to her that my very first newspaper article was published She sent something I wrote on TS Eliot to The Times of India and it was published when I was still an undergraduate That probably led tangentially to my becoming a literary and performing arts critic later onArundhathi Subramaniam poet author former studentLiterary celebrity in classFrom a studentrsquos point of view she was a literary celebrity We actually had some of her poems as course material in the second year Unlike most educators she treated you like an adult She demanded critical thinking not acceptance We clashed often on many fronts In fact she kicked me out once in my third year laughs But then I owe my career in theatre to her I was 18 years old when she asked me to direct a play for Ithaka the theatre fest Until then I had never thought of myself as a director There was a span of four or five years when a lot of us theatre guys from Meher Acharya Ayesha Dharker myself and Yuki Ellias among others came out of the college A lot of that is testament to herQuasar Thakore Padamsee theatremaker former studentRebel with a causeEunice was always popular even as a young professor in the 1970s She was fascinating and to an adolescent her outspokenness to be antiestablishment sarcasm and wit with fresh insights into understanding literature with such insight were absolutely captivatingShe was fiercely protective of firstgeneration learners She would give opportunity and fiercely defend those students who were the first of their family to take up the subject or even enter college As a colleague I greatly admired this qualityDr Fleur DrsquoSouza historian former viceprincipal and Head of Department History St Xavierrsquos CollegeGlamorous and powerfulMy first memory of Eunice is watching her walk across the St Xavierrsquos quadrangle in those beautiful sarees that she wore She had such a magnetic presence What I loved the most was her ability to keep students riveted to the subject of literature throughout her career as a teacher But she also had a knack of picking students with a love for literature skill and talent Incidentally my niece also had Eunice as her professor and enjoyed her thoroughly It is amazing that she retained the same passion and intensity for teaching even as she agedArundhati Chattopadhyaya theatremaker writer former studentDistinctive voiceRochelle PotkarIt was Eunice de Souzarsquos narrative voice and style of writing mdash sharp economical and ironic mdash that set her apart Hers was a unique perspective of a Goan Catholic woman hailing from Pune and living and teaching thinking and questioning in postcolonial MumbaiIndia It was also of a woman who lived singly and alone firmly at a time when most others around her might have been in traditional arrangements of marriages Eunice de Souzarsquos poems had mirth wit and biting humour and yet never compromised on all the things that needed to be said She was the lean mean poet of our timesRochelle Potkar poetReading Reccosgtgt Rochelle Potkarrsquos pick Idyll and Sweet Sixteen gtgt Arundhathi Subramaniamrsquos pick Fix and Conversation PieceOur fave works by Eunicegtgt Women In Dutch Paintingsgtgt These My Wordsgtgt Learn From The Almond Leafgtgt Ways of Belonging