Studia Humanitatis

I proudly proclaim that I am a humanities student. Back in the early 90s (and perhaps even today), when school toppers signed up to study science so that they became engineers and doctors, I applied for English Literature, World History and Indian History for my pre-degree course (the precursor to class XI and XII). The particular grouping was rare, offered only in two colleges by the university. My father was called by the admissions department to check whether the family had made a mistake. Apparently, these were subjects that girls studied till they found a suitable boy. He humbly registered my preference and his own agreement with it, despite being an engineer. And so, I studied poetry, history, phonetics and grammar at 17. I read Shakespeare and Dostoevsky, cried with Milton’s blindness and painted with Sarojini Naidu’s vivid poems. 

I was remembering my college days when I read the recent reports that Humanities 10, one of the introductory courses at Harvard, had 180 freshmen applying for the 90 seats, indicating that humanities were once again back in the reckoning. That this came as a surprise to the world does not surprise me at all. Ask any humanities student worth her salt and she is used to being questioned on the utility of her subjects, her employability and finally the scorn with which they rubbish the collective literary works of the world. They can imagine you reading poetry for leisure, but studying it, with term papers, assignments and examinations, beats them. 

Early in October, when Karl Deisseroth was awarded the Nobel Prize in physiology, the world listened to him talk about poetry and feeling. In his interview, he talked about how understanding feeling was the starting point of his research. He famously wanted to be a writer and joined writing clubs and writing classes. Perhaps he is a good example of why academics should have inter-disciplinarity. An engineer could read an elective in Kalidasa and a doctor should be allowed to read on leadership through literature. 

The 1989 Robin Williams-starrer Dead Poets Society has a famous dialogue, that is delivered by the teacher hero with guts and gumption to his students and it goes, 

"We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for."

Perhaps the surfeit of digital slop and machine vomited summaries have once again put back human effort and feelings at the centre of things. People now want connections and feelings and experiences. Things that make them feel alive. They want to read books, classics in fact, think through things, weigh it against their experiences and form their own opinions. Original ones, not prompted and paraphrased. 

The proliferation of supper clubs and intimate musical gatherings like baithaks suggest that people want to do people things. Unlecture, started by three alumni of St Stephen’s College, New Delhi focuses on expert lecture series, but in informal settings, say bars and cafes. Expert, in person, long lectures, with fellow humans, who are curious and hungry. Run clubs that are a rage in cities are again a symbol of our commitment to not only good health and endurance but also community. 

The slow sapping away of energies, the near frozen state of minds and the emptiness one feels after doomscrolling and consuming brainrot is an experience most of us testify to. Jenny Odel, in her 2019 best seller How To Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy, talks of attention building exercises as the antithesis of enshittified and encapsulated content on the internet. The counter movement is picking momentum and academia is not far behind. 

Retro content is always a crowd favourite in the internet. When #80slook became viral on Instagram, it was sepia and soft light, frizz and face framing bangs. It is always a hark back to cousins meet up during summer holidays, street cricket and picnics. Perhaps it was nostalgia of how real neighbourhoods pulsated with familiarity, that made the Malayalam movie, Bethlehem Kudumba Unit a massive hit. It was very 80s coded, reminding one of a Gandhinagar second street (1986) or a Nokkethadoorathu Kannum Nattu (1984) with neighbours flitting in and out of each other’s houses exchanging food and celebrating festivals together. The movies that get the ‘feels’ right.

I was amused to find reels on Instagram that celebrated kitty parties as intimate gatherings of friendship and sorority. Real life friends over digital strangers. Apartment Diwali parties, card nights, Antakshari afternoons, urban India is reinventing ways to connect and bond in real time, all of which point to an exhaustion with screen life. 

I recently watched Ramayana in theatre and was electrified when the crowd erupted at Yash’s entry. Perhaps the case for watching art in a community is precisely about feeling. I watched Kapila Venu bring Kannaki to life in Silappadikaram in Habitat Centre recently. Her eyes, it was her eyes that did all the talking. Can one grasp that moist red in a recording? And what of the pleasure of exchanging notes with fellow audience? 

In the days of online shopping, going to a Craft Bazaar is about tactility and conversation with the artisans and weavers. As they fold the ajrakh fabrics with hands stained with indigo, they will offer their knowledge for free-- how traditional motifs cannot be put on feet in a sari border or motif names-- ashrafi for coins and saaz for cypress trees.

Textiles, art, fashion and design bring human creativity and curiosity back into our lives. Humanities explore those motivations. Civilisations are studied, trade winds are charted, connections are formed, poems are read aloud and patterns are recognized. It builds empathy, value and critical thinking. It allows you to accept humanity as a whole, recognising that the world is more connected than we think and our cultural heritage is shared. They are beyond the purview of proving a hypothesis and neatly stackable formulae. But surely life is not two plus two either, isn’t it?