Gautam Sengupta, RKMV 1969
About the Speaker:
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 the fields of semantics, philosophy of language, computational linguistics, and cognitive science. He has delivered plenary/keynote lectures at numerous institutions worldwide, including 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 significant 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.
Enjoy the Carnatic and other music projects that Gautam has worked on, in various capacities, under Project Anukriti and elsewhere:
Video 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFHmKcQGj4k
Video 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqLXifpRKJ0
Video 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFyXzl2cOi4&t=5s
Video 4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42ii9ewOwaU
Video 5: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1cxSZGI0qw
Video 6: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_p0_MUyHNPs
Coverage in The Hindu Friday Review:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ifU9v-LKh2vb57fmKF4F27QBvVDfCVNG/view?usp=sharing
About the Adda:
Unlike India's languages, all of her indigenous writing systems are derived from a single source: the Ashokan Brahmi script which is a marvel of human ingenuity and innovation. The odds are that our kids will grow up without any knowledge, understanding, or appreciation of these writing systems. In this brief presentation, Gautam Sengupta will focus on the beauty and architectural grandeur of these Brahmi-derived writing systems with the hope that an appreciation of the esthetics of their design will motivate the audience to make a sincere effort to teach their children how to use them and thereby save them from extinction.
Moderator:
Professor Dr. Aloke Gopal Ghoshal, RKMV 1969