Praktani Shining - Gautam Sengupta, RKMV 1969
Gautam Sengupta is an alumnus of Ramakrishna Mission Vidyapith, Deoghar (1964-1969), Visva-Bharati (1974-1977), Jawaharlal Nehru University (1977-1979) and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst (1983-1990). He taught Linguistics and Cognitive Science at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, Jadavpur University and the University of Hyderabad, retiring from service and relocating to Kolkata in 2019.
His academic activities and interests span across the fields of semantics, philosophy of language, computational linguistics and cognitive science. He has delivered invited and plenary/keynote lectures at various universities and institutions across the world, including the Cornell University, the University of Goettingen, the Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main, Institut de Recherche en Informatique de Toulouse, the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research and the Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics.
He is also a fitness freak who counts among his major achievements in life the ability to engage in high-intensity interval training at the age of 70 with severe spinal stenosis which, according to experts, should have made it impossible for him to walk.
Gautam is a Carnatic enthusiast who produced a Hindi version of a more-than-half-a-millennium-old Carnatic krithi which happens to be the first ever classical Carnatic composition to be translated into and sung in Hindi. This initiative is known as Project Anukriti.
The following article appeared in the Friday Review of the Chennai edition of The Hindu on July 23, 2021. It summarizes Gautam’s contribution to the world of music. Enjoy the soulful Carnatic music and Project Anukriti here:
Video 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFyXzl2cOi4&t=5s
Video 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42ii9ewOwaU
