St Xavier's to mark Eunice de Souza’s birth anniversary as Poetry Day

Ahead of her birth anniversary, author Jerry Pinto delves into the mind of the city’s most loved (and fierce) English professor

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MUMBAI: “In dreams, I hack you,” wrote Eunice de Souza and dismantled millennia of Indian mother worship.

She knew what she was doing. The face on the cover of ‘Fix’ (Newground), her first book of poetry, stared out at me in the mezzanine floor of New & Secondhand Book Centre and illuminated the space with its peculiar mix of self-knowledge and challenge.

It was such a special and privileged time, those decades at the close of the twentieth century. Bombay was a nest of singing birds; and its colleges were particularly blessed. Eunice was at St Xavier's; Adil Jussawalla had taught there for a few years. Saleem Peeradina ran an Open-Air Classroom at Sophia College. Nissim Ezekiel was at the University of Bombay. Elphinstone College had Vasant Abhaji Dahake. Jai Hind had Popati Hiranandani and Arjun Shad. Prabodh Parikh was at Mithibai College.

You could be walking down the road one day, as I was, and meet Gieve Patel with someone you did not immediately recognise.

“Hello,” Gieve said. “This is A K Ramanujan and we're on our way to see Nissim Ezekiel.”

I had work to do so I told AK how much I admired his work and hurried away. It was stupidity, I should have gone and witnessed this meeting. But we were spoiled by our anytime access to these poets.