LOSING

Losing anything is good. As a matter of fact the loss would put anyone in the state of regression and try to take a reversal of the progress. Many would contradict. A sudden loss of life of a bread-winner of a family would never be a good thing. It is costly and will never be easily supplanted. Still it is good. It would definitely pave way for some new blossoms and horizons. Losing something would surely upset one's rhythm, i.e. the rhythm of the kind of routine that one has learned to adopt for a period of time. The routine would never be congenital and would be dismounted at any time. One picks up a style of routine, on many occasions unconsciously, by periods of doldrums. However the act of losing or for that matter losing itself will seldom be goodness as a whole. It comes with a mixture of things. It sometimes puts the losers stagnate and rooted to ground and makes them ponder over their immobility.

'La Belle Noiseuse'

Honore de Balzac's 'The Unknown Masterpiece' is the title of his French short story 'Le Chefd' Oeuvre inconnu', in English. Nicolas Poussin is a young and upcoming painter who is not sure of his talent and has had an obsession of indescribable nature with his success as a renowned painter. The story opens with Nicolas sauntering before the chateau of a famous painter Porbus. He is reluctant to get in. His poverty is one of the reasons for his stagnancy. It is the Paris of 1612 that has drawn the poor painter from his native place hoping to find a foothold in the world of artists. One of his friends, who is rich enough to support him has seen to it that Nicolas reaches Paris safely. It usually happens to gifted individuals in the world. Within a very short while from his arrival, he is spotted by a very beautiful, rich young woman Gillette. Gillette is that sort of a young girl who would do anything for a poor artist who wants to realise his dream. She falls in love with the young man and sheds all her riches to be with the hapless artist. His intention to meet Porbus is to get inspiration and promotion in the field of art as he has nothing but a few canvasses, pieces of chalk and charcoal and not palette with paints and brushes.

A stranger overtakes Nicolas on the flight of staircase and knocks at the atelier. It is opened by an emaciated man and Nicolas gets a feeling that the figure is Porbus. The stranger is old and bald-headed and has a promising visage and spirit in his eyes. The stranger looks at the canvass at the easel, that upholds a recently done portrait of St. Mary of Egypt at a boat with a boatman. Porbus is all ears as the old man begins a discourse on painting, use of light and tint and bringing life into the painting. He dismisses any painting that merely copies things as they are, which is nothing but a prising of objects off nature and making them lifeless. He wants the veins of women in portraits blush with flowing blood. Nicolas is roused by the criticism as he finds the portrait promising. He intervenes with a raddled face to praise the painting. The old man wants Nicolas to prove his mettle as a connoisseur of art and Nicolas draws a line drawing, a reproduction of St. Mary of Egypt and signs on the canvass as Nicolas Poussin. The old man and Porbus admire his talent and approve him of a painter and the old man begins his lesson of improving the portrait of Porbus. The old man is Frenhofer, a student of a great artist, Mabuse. Mabuse taught him about the employment of light and shade on portraits. Frenhofer was rich enough to sponsor Mabuse and learn everything from him. He starts working like a possessed spirit on Porbus' portrait and improves it with his magical brush-strokes.

Frenhofer's talent is admirable and uncanny. He compares this with his life-time work, 'Belle Noiseuse', as he has been working on it for ten years, and it titles itself to be his masterpiece. It is a portrait of a courtezan, Catherine Lescault, that remains incomplete as Frenhofer is incapable of combining light with shade and cannot produce shape of the body successfully. He does not want to show the portrait to his hosts, as he takes Porbus and Nicolas for a drink to his studio, where Nicolas is flabbergasted by the portrait of Georgina, as he considers the figure of the woman as his lover, he her creator, lover and husband. Three months pass and the man could not finish his masterpiece, as his efforts to perfect it on seeing the paintings of great masters and he is in dire requirement of a perfect model. Porbus meets him and tries to strike a deal with him. Gillette is conveyed of Nicolas' admiration for Frenhofer and his masterpiece and is requested by Nicolas to pose for the completion of it. Gillette does not want to do so. However her love for Nicolas and the future of Poussin drive her to accept the proposal. The deal of Porbus is that Frenhofer should show his masterpiece as they swap women, Gillette for Noiseuse.

Though Poussin initiates the suggestion of Gillette posing for the portrait, he rues for his decision as he sees the eyes of the old painter gain unusual energy on seeing the silhoutte of Gillette's body. She wants Poussin to wait outside the studio with a dagger in his hand, strongly clutching its hilt and rush in if hears a squeal from her. After waiting for several hours, the gentlemen are let in to find a hazy, foggy portrait, that Frenhofer claims shrouding the figure of a fantastic woman. Poussin and Porbus point out the artist's failure that Frenhofer refuses to accept and accuses of them trying to cheat him. The artist Poussin is distracted by the cry of Gillette and the lover in him wakes up to take her out of the atelier. Frenhofer is discombobulated and bids a nasty farewell. The story ends the very next day when Porbus discovers that Frenhofer died the previous night after setting his portraits on fire including his masterpiece.

In 1991, Jacques Rivette, a French director made a film La Belle Noiseuse, a very liberal adaptation of Balzec's twenty page short story. It is a near to four hour film extensively detaililing the recuperative artistic energy of Frenhofer. The film begins in a village inn with Marianne and Nicolas (Gillette is Marianne in the film), as they are waiting for Porbus to take them to the chateau of Frenhofer. Marianne is interested as Nicolas talks a lot about the painter and has given arresting looks while looking at the portraits of him. She does not know much of the painter nor has she been acquainted with his paintings. The painter lives with his ex-model wife Liz, who has been the painter's model for many of his famous paintings and he has later confined her beauty to himself by not letting her pose after the marriage. Marianne is good looking and lures the painter's chances of reviving his effort to produce the la belle noiseuse masterpiece. Unlike in the story, Marianne has many a modelling session with Frenhofer for almost a week, visiting the chateau everyday, much to the discomfiture of Nicolas from the third day onwards. In the film, Liz warns Marianne not to see the finished product and which is snubbed by Marianne. The finished masterpiece is not shown to the audience and is known only to Marianne, who gets angered by the portrait, Liz and the servant-maid's daughter. Frenhofer seals the portrait with bricks and mortar on a wall and shows the nude back and buttocks of a woman as his masterpiece. The director takes a lot of liberty with Balzac's story as the film has a model-ex-lover to Nicolas. The film ends with a scathing opinion of Nicolas on Frenhofer's masterpiece as a lampoon and anti-climactic comic relief.

A great feature of the film is, it depicts real-time sketching of portraits with the lending of hand by the painter Bernard Dufour, a French painter notable for abstract painting.

The Bull

The Bull

See an old unhappy bull,

Sick in soul and body both,

Slouching in the undergrowth

Of the forest beautiful,

Banished from the herd he led,

Bulls and cows a thousand head.

Cranes and gaudy parrots go

Up and down the burning sky;

Tree-top cats purr drowsily

In the dim-day green below;

And troops of monkeys, nutting, some,

All disputing, go and come;

And things abominable sit

Picking offal buck or swine,

On the mess and over it

Burnished flies and beetles shine,

And spiders big as bladders lie

Under hemlocks ten foot high;

And a dotted serpent curled

Round and round and round a tree,

Yellowing its greenery,

Keeps a watch on all the world,

All the world and this old bull

In the forest beautiful.

Bravely by his fall he came:

One he led, a bull of blood

Newly come to lustihood,

Fought and put his prince to shame,

Snuffed and pawed the prostrate head

Tameless even while it bled.

There they left him, every one,

Left him there without a lick,

Left him for the birds to pick,

Left him there for carrion,

Vilely from their bosom cast

Wisdom, worth and love at last.

When the lion left his lair

And roared his beauty through the hills,

And the vultures pecked their quills

And flew into the middle air,

Then this prince no more to reign

Came to life and lived again.

He snuffed the herd in far retreat,

He saw the blood upon the ground,

And snuffed the burning airs around

Still with beevish odours sweet,

While the blood ran down his head

And his mouth ran slaver red.

Pity him, this fallen chief,

All his spendour, all his strength,

All his body's breadth and length

Dwindled down with shame and grief,

Half the bull he was before,

Bones and leather, nothing more.

See him standing dewlap-deep

In the rushes at the lake,

Surly, stupid, half asleep,

Waiting for his heart to break

And the birds to join the flies

Feasting at his bloodshot eyes, -

Standing with his head hung down

In a stupor dreaming things:

Green savannas, jungles brown,

Battlefields and bellowings,

Bulls undone and lions dead

And vultures flapping overhead.

Dreaming things: of days he spent

With his mother gaunt and lean

In the valley warm and green,

Full of baby wonderment,

Blinking out of silly eyes

At a hundred mysteries;

Dreaming over once again

How he wandered with a throng

Of bulls and cows a thousand strong,

Wandered on from plain to plain,

Up the hill and down the dale,

Always at his mother's tail;

How he lagged behind the herd,

Lagged and tottered, weak of limb,

And she turned and ran to him

Blaring at the loathly bird

Stationed always in the skies,

Waiting for the flesh that dies.

Dreaming maybe of a day

When her drained and drying paps

Turned him to the sweets and saps,

Richer fountains by the way,

And she left the bull she bore

And he looked on her no more;

And his little frame grew stout,

And his little legs grew strong,

And the way was not so long;

And his little horns came out,

And he played at butting trees

And boulder-stones and tortoises,

Joined a game of knobby skulls

With the youngsters of his year,

All the other little bulls,

Learning both to bruise and bear,

Learning how to stand a shock

Like a little bull of rock.

Dreaming of a day less dim,

Dreaming of a time less far,

When the faint but certain star

Of destiny burned clear for him,

And a fierce and wild unrest

Broke the quiet of his breast,

And the gristles of his youth

Hardened in his comely pow,

And he came to fighting growth,

Beat his bull and won his cow,

And flew his tail and trampled off

Past the tallest, vain enough,

And curved about in spendour full

And curved again and snuffed the airs

As who should say Come out who dares!

And all beheld a bull, a Bull,

And knew that here was surely one

That backed for no bull, fearing none.

And the leader of the herd

Looked and saw, and beat the ground,

And shook the forest with his sound,

Bellowed at the loathly bird

Stationed always in the skies,

Wating for the flesh that dies.

Dreaming, this old bull forlorn,

Surely dreaming of the hour

When he came to sultan power,

And they owned him master-horn,

Chiefest bull of all among

Bulls and cows a thousand strong.

And in all the tramping herd

Not a bull that barred his way,

Not a cow that said him nay,

Not a bull or cow that erred

In the furnace of his look

Dared a second, worse rebuke;

Not in all the forest wide,

Jungle, thicket, pasture, fen,

Not another dared him then,

Dared him and again defied;

Not a sovereign buck or boar

Came a second time for more.

Not a serpent that survived

Once the terrors of his hoof

Risked a second time reproof,

Came a second time and lived,

Not serpent in its skin

Came again for discipline;

Not a leopard brght as flame,

Flashing fingerhooks of steel,

That a wooden tree might feel,

Met his fury once and came

For second reprimand,

Not a leopard in the land.

Not a lion of them all,

Not a lion of the hills,

Hero of a thousand kills,

Dared a second fight and fall,

Dared that ram terrific twice,

Paid a second time the price. . . .

Pity him, this dupe of dream,

Leader of the heard again

Only in his daft old brain,

Once again the bull supreme

And bull enough to bear the part

Only in his tameless heart.

Pity him that he must wake;

Even now the swarm of flies

Blackening his bloodshot eyes

Bursts and blusters round the lake,

Scattered from the feast half-fed,

By great shadows overhead.

And the dreamer turns away

From his visionary herds

And his splendid yesterday,

Turns to meet the loathly birds

Flocking round him from the skies,

Waiting for the flesh that dies.

Ralph Hodgson


Ralph Hodgson is a Georgian Poet. Georgian Poets are those whose poems have been published in anthologies named Georgian Poetry. There have been five anthologies under this title and the major poets include D H Lawrence, Rupert Brooke and Robert Graves. Hodgson is not much of a celebrated poet of the Georgian School, however has reached greater depths in his selection of themes and presentation. He went on to teach English and poetry in Japan in Tohoku University. He is credited with the theme of being more pastoral in his poems. ‘The Bull’ sketches the poignant life of an old bull, that was once sturdy, powerful and a ruler of a herd. The poem is more of a depiction of the agony of old age and the loss of support.

Adaptation

'The Man in a Case' is one of the beautiful stories of Chekhov. It begins late at night in a sleepy little village of Mironositskoe. Two gentlemen found lodging in the barn of the elderly man of the village, Prokofy. One of them is a school master who is well acquainted with the life in the village and begins discussing the wife of the elder. She is Mavra, an extremely well read and talented woman, however has confined herself to the village. One of the other gentlemen, a veterinary surgeon, expresses wonder on knowing that the woman has not seen a town or a railway line. Poked at that the school master begins describing a colleague of him known as Byelikov who almost lived all by himself. He always wore galoshes and kept every object that he used in a case. He was idiosyncratic as he was obsessed with the fear of violating rules and regulations. He made the whole of the school under himself as he expressed much fear in every possible act of both the masters and the pupils. He lived on the same storey on which the school master Burkin lived. His bed chamber was completely covered with mattresses and curtains and he used the curtains to sleep on in his bed and cocooned himself to a kind of atavistic behaviour of the primordial ancestors.

Ivan Ivanovitch, the veterinary surgeon, intercedes with the philosophy of life to the narration as he is of the opinion that the whole of the world and its populace spend their day to day existence in the same manner. In the case of Byelikov, it is an exhibition of extremism, as the man had the habit of visiting his friends and their colleagues in their tenements and spent an hour or two sitting glum and quiet observing their routine chores and exited with no manners. He is surprised to know that this figure of ridicule almost got married. A History teacher came to the school with his sister, who was almost thirty, however did not subject herself to the work of time on her beauty and complexion and retained a girlish behaviour. It only struck the acquaintances of Byelikov that he was very old enough to have got married and they too woke up to that on seeing a slim chance of uniting Byelikov with Varnika. The mill of marriage had begun its grinding and put the two together in the name of parties and outings. Byelikov procrastinated the marriage as he thought too much about family responsibility. The History teacher hated his intrusion into the private chambers and the deafening silence that he exhibited at such visits.

A naughty person came with a rue to make things public. He drew Byelikov and Varnika together under an umbrella and sent the pencil drawing to everyone. On one occasion, Byelikov, while walking with Burkin found the brother-sister duo cycling their way somewhere. He got horrified at the sight as he thought such an adventuristic display would create in students a tendency to freak out. He left school early the very next day, an act that was un-Byelikov, straight to Varnika's house to explain things and tender his apology for the pencil drawing involving himself and Varnika. The History teacher rose in temperament as Byelikov broached the matter of bicycling and gave a push to him from the top of the flight of the stairs. As he tumbled his way down off the balcony, found him a source of ridicule for Varnika, who came into the house while he was recovering himself from the fall. He became ill three days later and found himself in the bed of angels.

Wendy Wasserstein, a playwright of American fame, wrote a one act play, 'The Man in a Case' an adaptation of Chekhov's story. She makes use of only two characters in her play and alludes to the brother of Varnika. Wendy introduces them as joggers and meeting in a garden of the village of Mironositskoe. Varnika comes with apricots given in honour of the Greek and Latin school master Byelikov. He is annoyed at the fact that she goes on informing about their marriage to everyone and apricots give him hives. Varnika has fallen for him as he keeps everything in confinement including the leftover vegetables and fruits in covers. Byelikov is enamoured of their meeting and notes it down in his diary that he would place lilies on this day on his love's lock every year. As this requires celebration, Varnika wants to go to her brother's house on her bicycle and bring some cream. Startled to know about Varnika's arrival on bicycle, he sends her off on the pretext that he wants to work on the translation of Virgil's Aeneid and even tears the note that he has made a while ago down. Varnika leaves and the lights fade as Byelikov is found garnering the strewn pieces of his note. The play puts up a feministic reading of Chekhov's story and Wendy's adaptation never violates the original and gives a new thrust to the story on the contrary. Both texts provide a good reading.

Worldly Wisdom 2

‘The Umbrella Man’ is an enjoyable story of Roald Dahl. Roald Dahl is a British writer of Norwegian origin. He was a fighter pilot during the Second World War and served in the Air Force of England in prominent designations. He started his writing career in the 1940s during the war. He is a popular writer of children’s fiction. His popular novels include ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’, ‘James and the Giant Peach’ and ‘The Gremlins’. He is also credited with a lot of short stories too, written with the objective of reaching the children in mind. ‘The Umbrella Man’ is narrated by a twelve year old girl who accompanies her mother to a dentist in London.

The story has values to be imbibed by children. The mother of the twelve year old girl often concentrates on teaching her child through participation in life-events. The girl emphasizes her ability to adjudge people rather better than her mother through the revelation of her height in the story. Her mother is thirty-six and not much taller than her twelve year old daughter, an indication of mental growth of the girl. One fine afternoon, the mother and daughter duo embarks on a trip to London with the mission of filling in the tooth of the daughter. The girl is much pleased with the work of the dentist as she has felt no pain while the doctor filling the hole of a tooth. On their way back home, the duo enters a café and the girl enjoys a banana split. As they come out at about six o’clock in the evening, the rain begins its act of drenching the city of London. The mother has not brought an umbrella and wants to catch a taxi to take them home. The daughter relishes the idea of sheltering in the café and having another of her favourite banana split. Then a little old man approaches them as they are standing on the pavement and fancy themselves whisked away by an un-occupied taxi.

The mother always caution her daughter about strangers and her advice to her is if the stranger is more pleasing then she must be more wary of the stranger. The girl comforts herself on looking at the shoes of the stranger, since, as per her mother, one who wears a fine pair of shoes is a gentleman. The man is very old and has a fluffy mustache. He is holding a silk umbrella very high over his head. The mother puts on an expression one of hauteur as she considers such a one is right in dealing with unknown people. The old man has informed that he is not such type as the one who stops gentle ladies on road side and demand money. However, today he requires money to get back home in a taxi, as he has forgotten to come with his wallet. The mother is not pleased and enquired how he has come there. The man has informed her that it is his habit to take a stroll in the evenings and get back home in a taxi as his legs would not stand him for long. Since he has walked long already, he could not go on foot further and he is ready to offer the silk umbrella, worth twenty pound, for one pound and it is not gentlemanly for him to accept money from anybody. The daughter is upset with the offer as the mother could exploit the situation to grab the costly umbrella for a pittance. The mother is seen thawing and in the end gives out a pound and praises the act of the old man who is considerate enough to offer them the umbrella to shield them from rain.

The old man has accepted the money with gratitude and is only found hurrying on his legs. The act has upset the duo and the mother is pricked with the sense of disappointment of being cheated. They choose to follow the man who evading the evening crowd gracefully enters into a pub. It is not decent for women to enter into the pub and duo stations outside and peers into the glass on the man. The man reaches the bar and gulps treble whiskey for the pound and comes back to the dressing lounge to take one of the umbrellas put there by the pub-users. The mother and daughter are shocked by the act of the man and the man further travels to the very place where he has just now sold the silk umbrella to find another one of his victims, this time a man with no protection of a hat or coat from rain, to sell his stolen umbrella for a drink. Further, he chooses not to go back to the same pub this time. The duo is flabbergasted by the strategy of the old man for a draught. The story ends with the duo finding themselves recipients of worldly knowledge and wisdom.

Worldly Wisdom 1

Vikram Seth was born in Calcutta. His father was a businessman, who for sometime worked in the Bata Shoe Company of Bata Nagar, West Bengal. His mother was a lawyer, who studied Law in England. She went on to become the first woman chief justice of India of the state High Court of Simla. Seth studied in England the elementary and primary classes or rather spent his first six years after birth there and came back to India to do the higher level of schooling. He went back to London to enrol himself as a student of Economics in Corpus Christy College and found himself attracted to poetry and music instead. Seth is a polyglot who has learnt German, French, Mandarin dialect of Chinese and Urdu. He plays flute and cello and a librettist. The volume of poems ‘The Frog and the Nightingale’ was published in the year 1994. He started his writing career in 1986 with the publication of his musical or verse novel ‘The Golden Gate’ and is currently working on the sequel of ‘A Suitable Boy’ titled ‘A Suitable Girl’.

‘The Frog and the Nightingale’ is a simple poem that speaks out a simple moral. It is a nature poem and built on the style of an allegory or parable. The poem features an ignorant nightingale and a conniving frog that marauds the spirit of the bird. It starts with a customary introduction to any story. There is a swampy land and which is home to several creatures. There lives a frog in that bog that considers itself a crooner and expends the nights in blaring out. Its baritonal tenor pierces the ears of the occupants of the bog and they spend their nights hoping for a remedy. However there is no stopping to this ‘jive’, lest the arrival of a nightingale. The frog lives under a sumac tree and always looks forward to the setting of the sun. One night, there comes a nightingale and perching on the sumac tree it has started singing. The song has soothed the dry ears of all animals that have been battered by the dry ‘croaks’. The song of the bird has attracted ducks, swans and herons. The bird has received much praise from the dwellers of the bog.

The following night when the bird is ready to sing, the frog has made its appearance by offering a critique on her last night’s performance. The frog introduces himself as the baritonal expert of the bog and has long been a successful practitioner of tenor. There the bird is attracted to commit first of its foibles. It enquires to the frog about her last night’s performance. The critic in the frog has come alive with the comments of the song being lengthy and the voice being too feeble to reach the possible listeners of the bog. The nightingale confesses that the song is not lofty but one of her creativity. The frog comes forward to teach the right methods of singing so as to improve the voice of the bird, and not for free of course, for a reasonable fee. As the bird has begun singing, with much energy and spirit to please the frog, a good crowd gathers and the frog fills its purse with a fee of admittance. The frog expresses his dissatisfaction and commences training in the following morning in the drenching rain. The nightingale, not used to swagger in rain, finds itself very uncomfortable. It is advised to put on a scarf and sash and imitate the cacophonic blaring of the frog. The frog is always hard to be pleased and wants the bird to reach a bass voice. The morning’s ordeal has exhausted the bird and the cool moon of the night has revived her spirit and voice. She sings in a high tone to attract and please the frog. However the animals could only listen to a dispirited voice of hers. She has been sold songs by the frog and advice too for emulating the baritone of it. The sorrowful nightingale can never please the frog and ‘raise’ herself to the level of the frog and she breathes herself last with an unfulfilled wish of hers. The angry frog announces to the animals that the wit-less bird is incapable of comprehending his lessons and dies out instead. So the bog has come back to the reign of croaking, screeching melody of the frog.

The poem deals with the concept of knowing oneself and knowing the world. The bird is unaware of its melodious voice and has heeded to the advice of a selfish, arrogant and inconsiderate figure of a frog. The bird is presented as a humble figure. However, humility at the expense of ignorance is dangerous. The poet makes use of ten-lined stanzas and the discipline of it gets violated here and there in the poem. The rhyme scheme is aa, bb, cc, dd, ee. There is an additional line tagging itself to a few stanzas to complement the meaning of them. The poet is selective in his choice of words and diction. ‘The frog and the nightingale’ is a fine poem indeed.

A Cliched Process

The act of suffrage, for many a long fought or a won-over privilege, as far as i am concerned, has lost its value. Gone are the days when the system was considered honorary, and a bestowed franchise on the citizens of a state, as the privilege is exercised equally, not being influenced by social diversity. Today, the exercise of suffrage is more or less a casual act as visiting a pub or a movie-theatre. The voters have lost sense of the right that they have been provided with and only think of monetary compromises at the time of exercising their mandate. Not all the wrong rests with the voters and the franchisers take up a prominent part in the blame-game. On the part of the voters, it is sheer indifference that has led them to hanker after the freebies and currency countermanding of their franchise. The elected show an uninterested attitude towards service to society and uplifting the poor. They are obdurate, callous and unmindful of the voters. They set their minds on only two things: money and cynosure. When it comes to facing elections, they unleash the arrogant power of money and extortion and try to bully the process of getting re-elected. In the recent Assembly elections to the state assembly of Tamilnadu, around twenty-four thousand people have exercised the option of not liking any candidate who contest in the election from a constituency. It means roughly, there are one hundred people in a constituency in the state of Tamilnadu who do not prefer to give the mandate to any of the contesting candidates. The elected never care to improve the basic infrastructural facilities. The free-noon-meal tenements are dilapidating and the rulers of the future are left to lurch in them. Many promises are given at the time of elections and they are immediately forgotten. The poor stay poor and the rich grow to a richer state, widening the gap between them, and also between togetherness, equality and harmony. India try to balance between people, who are inexhaustible with the liking for Cricket matches and spend a lot of money to get entertained and inexhaustible with the energy in search for staple food at least once a day. Only here, that the granary could feed rodents and reptiles and ignore the biped sapiens. Only here that tens and thousands of rupees is spent in deciding the winners of cricket matches and nothing to mend the hovels of the poor. India live up to its cliched definition of 'unity in diversity' in all walks of life.