What Prof  Pushp Meant to Us

39 Dr R L Shant  

Just one month back I went to see Prof. Pushp at Pamposh Enclave, where he was undergoing treatment under the strict and affectionate supervision of Pratibha Jee, his daughter. For me it was a godsend chance, the only one provided by providence during the last seven years, when I had succeeded in locating my professor, my guide and my well wisher after a long search. I had not received a reply to any of my letters that I posted to him on his different addresses, acquired by me somehow. It would transpire to me later that he had changed the place and left for his new residence. Little did I know at the time of my meeting at Pamposh that the next time I would venture to see him, he should have changed his place again, this time for good, never to return.

Obviously Prof. Pushp was not well and I can guess that he knew he was not going to live much. Nothing, however, deterred him from being his real self. And if I may, I would say that he remained, from his days at college to his last day in his bed, a crusader-scholar-teacher. He taught us at A.S. College, Srinagar. He participated in, lectured at and presided over scores of literary and cultural meetings that I can recall. He read out research papers of very high standard in seminars and conferences of national and international level. But all through he crusaded for the right, the precise, the well considered concept of the world that was originally his. He did not yield till he made a point and convinced you of the viability of his idea. While doing so he never fell short of argument, example or reference. In the first place, he was a scholar in the real sense of the word. He did not rest till he studied his subject thoroughly and reached conclusions. He was a very knowledgeable person. References from books of literature, history archaeology, religion cutting across barriers of languages (for he knew a few foreign languages in addition to English and many Indian languages in addition to Hindi, Urdu Kashmiri Dogri and Punjabi) came handy to him.

There are teacher scholars and scholar teachers. The former prefer to look like or be considered scholars while they are teachers basically. In them we may notice a tendency to talk tall. They may be good teachers but their craving to be seen as teachers robs them of the good demeanour and countenance that they present as teachers. Scholar teachers on the other hand, are not quite teachers and are usually pushed into the profession by worldly exigencies. Prof. Pushp was both a teacher and a scholar, but I can not recall a single occasion when one aspect of his personality interfered with the other. At college he talked to his students, provoked them to pose questions, entered into discussions with them and lead them through the lesson, never making them conscious of the exercise they were going through. Be it a prose passage from 'Dandi' or 'Bawa' or a sloka from Kumarasambhava or a scene from Shakuntala, we sailed through our lessons so smoothly that we never knew how we had quietly absorbed and to some extent mastered the etymology, grammar stylistics and semantics of the language, we read. We did not require that the nuances of sanskrit grammar, notorious for its terseness, be taught to us academically. It was Prof. Pushp's scholarship and mastery over the skills of teaching both integrated in one-that made him and his teaching so dear to us. And simultaneously we were being introduced to methods of deep inquiry. acquiring wide information and comparative study Rarely can we find such a balanced amalgam of teaching students while forguing to be one of them and scholarship that provides one with a number of analogies, cross references, parallel vocabulary and what not. Prof. Pushp never gave us a word for a word, never even an easier Sanskrit word for a difficult one, not to speak of a Hindi word. But the parallelism and the anology occurred to us naturally. I fail to formulate expressions to describe such a prodigy of a teacher.

To some, such illustrative and naturalising way of teaching seemed to be an overstretching exercise on behalf of the speaker. His barrage of references and analogies seemed belittling the basic importance of the subject, Prof Pushp talked on. In reality that was not so. A good teacher has the lowest and the least in the class in his mind, notwithstanding his knowledge of the rest of the audience. His analysis adds to the information his better pupils already possess. Those of us who attended Prof. Pushp's lectures on highly technical subjects like lexicography and wordology (with reference to Kashmiri) textual criticism and stylistics (with reference to ancient Kashmiri poets like Lal Ded and Nund Rishi), will recall that it was the basic instinct of a teacher by which he put his point across the audiences consisting of subject-scholars. In early eighties in a seminar on linguistic studies in Kashmiri, held at the NRLC Patiala, Prof Psuhp was the only Kashmiri, who stood upto the mark and rubbed shoulders with linguists of national and international repute. There were a dozen of us, (writers and poets mostly) from Kashmir who looked at the black board with mouths wide open with reverence and awe Linguists presented theories and drew graphs which we hardly followed. But it was Prof Pushp whose analysis, though highly technical, was free of the technicalities such subjects evince.

Prof. Pushp's warmth in personal relations was only the other side of the coin. It was in a way the extension of his qualities of being a crusader teacher scholar. You noticed him standing by the roadside holding the hand of an old colleague, his arm over the shoulder of a never-forgotten-student, calling an acquaintance on the other end of the road, answering the salutations of somebody passing the way and yet keeping all those who stood around him engaged simultaneously. I recall one such occasion when he held my left hand and involved me in the circle of people already around him, while he extended his right hand to shake GM Sadiq's hand who passed the road. Sadiq was out of power at that time, but made it a point to alight from his car and wish Prof. Pushp. Perhaps the politician knew that he could not bypass the burgeoning rays of warmth emitted by the unconventionally humane professor

I do not think even the worst detractors of Prof Pushp (those who either felt jealous of him or could not equal his achievements) can recall or quote one instance when they heard him speak ill of even his known adversary.

[Hopefully there was no-Editor] Whenever you mentioned the occasion or the person out of your own reaction to the unbecoming attitude of an opponent scholar, Prof. Pushp simply laughed the matter away without giving you the least impression of his personal reaction. On such occasions the best of Pushp as a creative person came out by way of comment and satire, least directed at the adversary, though, I recall an occasion when I was walking the Residency Road in Srinagar alongwith Prof. Pushp. We were returning from Doordarshan, where I had interviewed him and had found myself handicapped more than even before. I had not been able to cover even one fourth of Prof. Pushp's genius in the limited recording time and was cursing myself for not having been faster and sharper in putting questions on his multifaceted activities. But Prof. Pushp was too great a person to recall, let alone discuss, his student's lapses or his own exaltations.

As we reached Regal Chowk, an incident took place which uncovered yet another adorable facet of his personality. An elderly college teacher emerged as if from nowhere and wished Prof. Pushp The latter introduced him as a history professor and extension of his qualities of being a crusader teacher scholar. You noticed him standing by the roadside holding the hand of an old colleague, his arm over the shoulder of a never-forgotten-student, calling an acquaintance on the other end of the road, answering the salutations of somebody passing the way and yet keeping all those who stood around him engaged simultaneously. I recall one such occasion when he held my left hand and involved me in the circle of people already around him, while he extended his right hand to shake GM Sadiq's hand who passed the road. Sadiq was out of power at that time, but made it a point to alight from his car and wish Prof. Pushp. Perhaps the politician knew that he could not bypass the burgeoning rays of warmth emitted by the unconventionally humane professor

I do not think even the worst detractors of Prof Pushp (those who either felt jealous of him or could not equal his achievements) can recall or quote one instance when they heard him speak ill of even his known adversary.

[Hopefully there was none-Editor] Whenever you mentioned the occasion or the person out of your own reaction to the unbecoming attitude of an opposing scholar, Prof. Pushp simply laughed the matter away without giving you the least impression of his personal reaction. On such occasions the best of Pushp as a creative person came out by way of comment and satire, least directed at the adversary, though, I recall an occasion when I was walking the Residency Road in Srinagar alongwith Prof. Pushp. We were returning from Doordarshan, where I had interviewed him and had found myself handicapped more than ever before. I had not been able to cover even one fourth of Prof. Pushp's genius in the limited recording time and was cursing myself for not having been faster and sharper in putting questions on his multifaceted activities. But Prof. Pushp was too great a person to recall, let alone discuss, his student's lapses or his own exaltations.

As we reached Regal Chowk, an incident took place which uncovered yet another adorable facet of his personality. An elderly college teacher emerged as if from nowhere and wished Prof. Pushp The latter introduced him as a history professor and showered epithets on him profusely. There was no satire in Pushp's words but the history professor begged his admirer's pardon everytime the latter uttered a word of appreciation. He confessed that the embarrassing questions he had put to Prof Pushp at a paper reading session of the Kashmir Residential Council on the previous evening were all motivated. Prof Pushp laughed and made fun all through the encounter and never mentioned either his paper or the professor's inept questions that obviously smacked of mediocrity and jealousy.

Of Kashmiri literature, ancient and contemporary, is discussed or referred to by scholars in national forums today and if Kashmir language is a subject for deeper linguistic and structural probe by linguists in India, credit should rightly go to Prof. Pushp Today we can hold our heads high as heirs to a great tradition of scientific and objective literary criticism, the foundation of which was laid by Prof Pushp In his demise we have lost a standard as well as a standard bearer

Dr R L Shant

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Courtesy:  1996 November, Koshur Samachar