Eunice de Souza birth anniversary: Students, colleagues recall memories with the poet

Poet, professor, and organiser of rebellions, Eunice de Souza’s personality shone through the city she lived, loved and wrote about. Ahead of her 85th birth anniversary (August 1), we speak with students, colleagues, and poets who remember the literary great on the memories left behind

The verse and universe of Eunice de Souza: Students, colleagues recall memories with the poet

Eunice de Souza

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The verse and universe of Eunice de Souza: Students, colleagues recall memories with the poet

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Nothing mediocre about her

She was a legendary presence as a professor in the English Department when I was in college in the ’80s. I remember her superbly caustic wit and her ability to distil complex ideas without dumbing them down.

Those of us who loved poetry (and I certainly did) were very aware of her stature as a poet. The fact that she was a poet made her glamorous to many, but to me, it also made her more credible. Along with Nissim Ezekiel, Arun Kolatkar, Gieve Patel, Adil Jussawalla and others, Eunice was a reminder that poets weren’t just a breed out there in the remote ether; they actually lived.

Eunice has been important to me for various reasons. For one, of course, she was inspirational as a poet. For another, she offered me my very first job. I went back after my MA to teach at St Xavier’s Junior College, thanks to her recommendation. And what’s more, it was thanks to her that my very first newspaper article was published. She sent something I wrote on TS Eliot to The Times of India, and it was published when I was still an undergraduate. That probably led, tangentially, to my becoming a literary and performing arts critic later on.

Arundhathi Subramaniam, poet, author, former student

Literary celebrity in class

From a student’s point of view, she was a literary celebrity. We actually had some of her poems as course material in the second year. Unlike most educators, she treated you like an adult. She demanded critical thinking, not acceptance. We clashed often on many fronts. In fact, she kicked me out once in my third year (laughs). But then, I owe my career in theatre to her. I was 18 years old when she asked me to direct a play for Ithaka [the theatre fest]. Until then, I had never thought of myself as a director. There was a span of four or five years when a lot of us theatre guys, from Meher Acharya, Ayesha Dharker, myself, and Yuki Ellias among others, came out of the college. A lot of that is testament to her.

Quasar Thakore Padamsee, theatremaker, former student

Rebel with a cause

Eunice was always popular, even as a young professor in the 1970s. She was fascinating, and to an adolescent; her outspokenness to be anti-establishment, sarcasm, and wit with fresh insights into understanding literature with such insight were absolutely captivating.

She was fiercely protective of first-generation learners. She would give opportunity, and fiercely defend those students who were the first of their family to take up the subject, or even enter college. As a colleague, I greatly admired this quality.

Dr Fleur D’Souza, historian, former vice-principal and Head of Department, History, St Xavier’s College

Glamorous, and powerful

My first memory of Eunice is watching her walk across the St Xavier’s quadrangle in those beautiful sarees that she wore. She had such a magnetic presence. What I loved the most was her ability to keep students riveted to the subject of literature throughout her career as a teacher. But she also had a knack of picking students with a love for literature, skill and talent. Incidentally, my niece also had Eunice as her professor, and enjoyed her thoroughly. It is amazing that she retained the same passion and intensity for teaching even as she aged.

Arundhati Chattopadhyaya, theatremaker, writer, former student

Distinctive voice

Rochelle Potkar

It was Eunice de Souza’s narrative voice and style of writing — sharp, economical, and ironic — that set her apart. Hers was a unique perspective of a Goan Catholic woman hailing from Pune, and living and teaching, thinking and questioning in post-colonial Mumbai/India. It was also of a woman who lived singly and alone, firmly at a time when most others around her might have been in traditional arrangements of marriages. Eunice de Souza’s poems had mirth, wit, and biting humour and yet never compromised on all the things that needed to be said. She was the lean mean poet of our times.

Rochelle Potkar, poet