Anjali Nerlekar – Part 2

Impactful Educator and Author

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Hosted by

Melwyn Abraham

About Anjali Nerlekar

Impactful Educator and Author

Anjali Nerlekar is an Associate Professor in the Department of African, Middle Eastern and South Asian Language and Literatures. She has authored the book, Bombay Modern: Arun Kolatkar and Bilingual Literary Culture (Northwestern University Press, 2016; Speaking Tiger, 2017). She has co-edited a special double issue of Journal of Postcolonial Writing (“The Worlds of Bombay Poetry,” Spring 2017) and is co-editing a forthcoming special issue of South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, along with Francesca Orsini, on “Postcolonial Archives.”

Her other publications and research include work on multilingualism and literature, Indo-Caribbean and Postcolonial literature, and comparative Indian and postcolonial modernisms. Her ongoing project (in collaboration with Dr. Bronwen Bledsoe at Cornell University South Asia collections) is the archive of multilingual post-1960 Bombay poetry at Cornell University titled “The Bombay Poets Archive.”

About this Episode

This is part 2 of Melwyn’s conversation with Anjali.

In this episode, they talk about poetry, Jejuri, meeting Kolatkar’s friends, and some more stories from the Symbiosis trekking club.

This is one not to miss!

“They’re the pillars of my literary world and very dear friends, several of them. So, the best part of writing the book was during this research and getting to know them and becoming friends with them“
Anjali Nerlekar

“The most important material that I was looking for and I found was in the homes of these people. It was not in the libraries. This material was not collected in the library.”

– Anjali Nerlekar

Show highlights

Be less judgmental of your own self, to be more in the moment. - Anjali Nerlekar Click To Tweet

“My own history with the hills again was back to my childhood, in my father’s ancestral village Kanikodi Karnataka, which we used to visit every summer as kids, my brother and I. It is a village by the sea with the hills on the side actually, gorgeous location.”
Anjali Nerlekar

“Got to know the beautiful wide open landscape around Pune but most importantly, saw the friendships and the camaraderie that it made which is lasted my entire life.”
Anjali Nerlekar

“I have ended up seeing aspects of students, leadership, qualities, students’ strengths that I wouldn’t have seen, so I think it revealed different elements of students’ characters and students’ abilities that was just transforming for me.”
Anjali Nerlekar

“The trekking club was really a saving grace for me. It was a way for me to keep up my motivation to teach, my interest in what I was doing to make it meaningful for me.”
Anjali Nerlekar