Dr. Amitava Kumar: "How to Compete with a Billion People: Report from a Provincial Classroom in

Amitava Kumar is currently Professor of English at Vasser College, Poughkeepsie, New York. He is the author of several non-fiction books and films. His latest work A Matter of Rats, and his SF talk reflect on his memories of Patna, a historical city, his hometown in India, and a provincial city known for its corruption and crushing poverty.

Dr. Kumar started the lecture off by giving the audience some information about India and his hometown of Patna. Dr. Kumar told us about the troubling issues with poverty and poor living conditions, not only in his hometown, but all throughout India. He was very charismatic throughout the lecture, making small jokes about the stereotypes of some towns in India including his own. One of those stereotypes was the fact that people in those poor towns eat rats as a normal source of nutrition because of the lack of other food sources. He also made a joke that once a police man blamed the rats for drinking some of the liquor they had at the station saying that if you told that to other people around India they would look at you and say, “Hmm, that seems about right” (Kumar). This however, was the problem he said needed to be and was being addressed in India. The poverty, lack of education, and lack of infrastructure has hurt India’s progress to becoming a powerful nation. He introduced a man he knew from his town who began a very successful education camp where he takes thirty of the best students from around the country and trains them to make it into the India Institute of Technology which has a two percent acceptance rate. Over the years this man has had a lot of success and this is what Dr. Amitava Kumar believes is essential for India to overcome the stereotypes he spoke of before.

Dr. Kumar’s lecture was a serious yet light-hearted one. Although the topic was important and serious he was able to keep the audience entertained through jokes and funny remarks about the stereotypes in India. This lecture can be related to the poem, "Memorandum", by Billie Bolton. It relates to the poem not because of the content but because of the tone it creates with regards to the topic both of them talk about. In "Memorandum," the speaker creates a poem in the form of a memorandum with the subject title of, “Shit I Never Want to Hear Another Word About as Long as I Live” (Bolton 1248). Although the poem is serious with regards to all the things the speaker hates and doesn’t ever want to hear again it carries a comical tone because of its exaggeration. Almost everyone knows the feeling of intense hatred after a relationship ends and this poem reiterates that feeling. However, when the speaker describes the things she hates about her ex-boyfriend the reader can’t help but laugh at how ridiculous it is. Although Dr. Amitava Kumar’s speech wasn’t ridiculous he made it so the audience also couldn’t help but laugh when he talked about the rat problem in India. He also made jokes about Indian success in industries such as Technology and Medicine. These two works may not relate directly but both of their tones create a similar feeling in the reader and the audience.

#text