Multiple phone calls for this piece have started or ended with one question — "Were you a student of Eunice de Souza?" The answer is no; she had retired by then. Those who have been in the classroom of someone who didn't just teach English but scooped out a piece of the world and told her students to make it their own have indeed been lucky. This Friday, a piece of the late writer will be unveiled at the Reference Library of St Xavier's College (SXC) — where she taught for 30 years before retiring as the Head of the Department of English — through a cubicle housing her personal collection of books.

A woman of words

It's safe to say her impression was like an etching. But another strand of de Souza's personality was her unpredictability. A student of hers in the 80s, writer Murzban Shroff had got into trouble for writing a "dynamic" piece in the college magazine and was exiled to Elphinstone College for a year. To get readmitted, the management made him swear he wouldn't write again. At the same time, a batch mate had written something offensive about de Souza in the magazine. "I was enraged. I rushed to Eunice and said, "Ma'am, I'm going to write and take this guy on'. She just said, 'Don't'," Shroff recalls. Then in 2017, she surprised poet Menka Shivdasani in a more physical sense. "I had organised a poetry reading in Bandra, and Eunice surprised me by agreeing to participate. I don't remember her participating in too many such readings that featured so many other poets. She was not too well at the time but she graciously agreed to make it," she shares.