Mangalore University

Our time at Mangalore University was spent in the company of students with a remarkable degree of literary awareness. With a large number of M.A. students participating, the conversations carried a depth and maturity that transformed our activities into lively exchanges. The visit also gave us an opportunity to build upon lessons learned from our previous session. We were able to refine our approach, and the students' willingness to engage gave the discussions a momentum of their own.

We were delighted to discover that several of the students were writers themselves. They approached the texts in our activities with sensitivity, creativity and keen critical thought. The session fostered both introspection, what do we knowingly or unknowingly ignore in our own languages?, and an outward curiosity about linguistic worlds our peers and friends inhabit. Equally heartening was the enthusiasm and support we received from the teaching faculty, whose encouragement added to the experience.

Among the activities, the recipe-writing exercise emerged as a particular favourite. What appeared at first to be a simple task quickly evolved into a lively exploration of language, culture, and everyday knowledge. One student, for instance, observed that certain utensils used in specific culinary traditions do not have clear English equivalents, citing the implement used while making puttu, the beloved Malayali breakfast dish. (“Stopper” was the closest word they could collectively arrive for the lid, for the purposes of the activity.) We greatly enjoyed this visit to our second university on the Karnataka coast and look forward to building a long-term relationship with Mangalore University and its warm, welcoming community.