Shantanand Saraswati Do you exist? Do I exist? The Power that connects you with me and all others is God. Can we doubt that connecting Link? I am impressed with your English. How did you master English so well? Shine on.
Sugata Bose Shantanand Saraswati Now if I say, God's gift, you will catch me. So, I have to desist for the while from such an avowal.
Shantanand Saraswati Sugata Bose I envy your English. How did you do it? I am serious. Don't pretend to be over humble.
Shantanand Saraswati You did not reply. That means i will have to do something to help you free from your ego. May I know your age and profession, if you don't mind, Sugata Bose?
Sugata Bose Shantanand Saraswati The study of English literature, especially that arsenal of thoughts, a veritable magazine of explosive ideas, 'The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda' over and over and over again. William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Bertrand Russell, the Romantic poets, Shelley, Keats, Byron, Coleridge and Wordsworth, and a whole host of writers who I have selectively studied in an orderly way so as to distil their writings in my mind. But style stems from originality of being, one's intrepid ability to assert one's personality in one's life instead of abiding by those of others, however exalted they may be in public consciousness or in real. The Bhagavad Geeta exhorts us to be stationed in our own dharma, that is, our own mode in life, and hold its out as terrible to imitate another's. [ स्वधर्मे निधनं श्रेय: परधर्मो भयावह: || ] I have followed this grand dictum all my life and have never blindly followed anybody else. This has been the distinctive feature of my personality and, in effect, my writing as well from early adolescence. But the earliest watershed in my writing must be attributed largely to the overwhelming influence Rabindranath Tagore had on me between the ages 15 and 22 years when I was simply carried away as in an inundating river by the current of his poetic thought. Tagore triggered in me some sort of a word-flow which continues to this day. But the impulse was embedded deeper in my being as words struggled to issue forth from my mind but, in the absence of sufficient vocabulary then, -- for I had begun reading books outside of the school curriculum only as late as 15 years and was, thus, a trifle handicapped by a paucity of words at my disposal -- I could only utter unintelligible groups of words that jingled in musical harmony but, of course, as stated, carried no communicative meaning to the audience, although, I knew perfectly well what such primordial language meant to me. Thus, in a way, I was able to fathom as well the roots of language when man, in his primeval attempts to communicate, must have uttered sounds which, by commonality of occurrence, -- for there seems to be a similarity between different human brains how words are formed even in the untutored babes in any socio-cultural setting -- gained meaning gradually and evolved into language. So, I was, perhaps, psychologically predisposed towards linguistic endeavours and whatever trifle attainments I may have had by the grace of the Mother of all Word, Saraswati. Music also has been my forte in this regard as I am keenly attuned to it and have also undergone training in the Hindustani classical vocal genre under an eminent Guru. This happy blending of musical harmony, the sense of the metre, the balance of syllables, the alliteration which is optimum and never over-exceeding which is the bane of many a writer's output in print, and the harmonic association of the right set of words in a phrase, a sentence, a paragraph and an entire passage, carried out in a spontaneous flow -- for all good writing must be inspired by spontaneity and never sullied by enforcement -- perhaps, is the hallmark of what I would deem to be my distinctive style of writing. The rest rests on the writer's capacity to please his inner sense of beauty instead of playing to the gallery to please the audience. In self-communication is writing best communicated to the larger self immanent in humanity.
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