To ‘Barty’, With Love

The preoccupations of the present often have a way of edging out the past. In some cases, however, the inspiring memory of iconic teachers like Rati Bartholomew (January 4, 1927 – September 23, 2021), who taught English literature at Delhi’s Indraprastha College, remains with students all their lives. It has been so for socio-political activist Aruna Roy. In the last four weeks since Rati’s passing, as Roy writes in the piece below, her memories have sharpened, making her see how in Barty’s nurturing presence her love of literature evolved into a deeper understanding of its relationship with politics.

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Rati, as I came to think of Barty later in life, is tucked away in one of my special spaces of cherished memories of the years I was in Indraprastha College, from 1962-67. She was an inspiration. Along with Sheila Uttamsingh and Urmila Khanna, she was my real connect with the passionate world of books, words, and emotive intellectual delight. Not just that: Rati brought into the classroom and our lives the world beyond the walls of a women’s college and intellectual pursuits beyond that of a restricted society. She widened my understanding of politics as a woman conscious of inequality.

Rati would walk briskly into class in her Kolhapuri chappals, her striking cotton sari high at the back, a huge bindi made by a lipstick adorning her forehead – the stick-on bindi, thank god, had not been thought of then – her hair tied up in a careless coil, and spectacles perched on her nose. In one hand would be her handbag, in the other some books. The sum of her was much more than her parts.  

She was different, distinctive in her sartorial choice and elegance, and she always made a statement with her clothes. She dressed in handloom, and that spoke to me. I had studied in Kalakshetra, Chennai, and knew both the beauty and politics of wearing hand woven cloth. It spoke of her sensitivity not only to preserve our heritage but expressed her concern for those who spun and wove. Her voice was of a tone that I liked. Low and husky. She appealed to my aesthetic as much as she did to my mind. 

I was 16 years old when I joined Indraprastha College as a student of English literature in 1962. Shakespeare’s poetry and imagination had captivated me even before I joined College, but Rati led me into the intricacies of Shakespeare the dramatist, his abundance, his world of unending nuances and variations. 

I have a vivid memory of the topic she gave us for our Dusshera holidays tutorial in 1962. The subject was “just” a review of “all the romantic comedies of Shakespeare!” We croaked, “Did you say all?” She said, “Yes. Read the plays and tell me what you feel and think.” My friends recall that she took away all the reference books from the stacks, lest we plagiarise from them. There was no better way to make us read the romantic comedies. 

When I saw the Comedy of Errors at the Globe some ten years ago, I blessed Rati for making us read them all. We were then youthful, energetic, enthusiastic and afraid that we would be put to the test, and religiously read them all.

Even though I knew Shakespeare in school, and had begun to like him, it was Rati who brought   him alive and made us sensitive to his language – of poetry and prose. Even his most flimsy plays like Henry VI came strongly alive when I watched the Royal Shakespeare Company perform the play 30 years after in London. 

It was in her class that I understood that great drama is born of the phenomenal instinct of knowing what works on stage. Shakespeare made sarcastic political comments even in his early comedies, which I saw in performance. I was surprised at how contemporary he was even in the 21st century. Rati’s words echoed in my mind, when she persuaded us to see the irony and sharp political commentary in the use of characters in the sub-plot to parody the absurdities of the main plot. 

Rati did not limit her classroom teaching to the syllabus. That is how the love of literature in some of us flowered into a deeper, cultural understanding of its relationship with politics. I was drawn to the works of John Osborne, the Angry Young Man, and later Brecht and Samuel Beckett. Rati taught in order to share her love and passion. Her class was always much more than a routine class – she chose issues and parts of literary creation which she knew would introduce us to a world peopled with thought, imagery and the beauty of expression.

Also read: Remembering Rati Bartholomew: Teacher, Friend and Mentor to Generations of Theatre Practitioners

The manner in which Rati communicated her love for the world of literature and theatre was infectious. It expanded and deepened my love for Garcia Lorca, Ibsen and Chekov.  Her enthusiasm for the theatre compelled us to see the Bristol Old Vic perform Hamlet, Arms and the Man and A Man for All Seasons at the All India Fine Arts and Crafts Society (AIFACS) auditorium in Delhi in 1962-63. We understood why the plays of Shakespeare, Shaw and Bolt were considered such good theatre. 

They were exciting evenings and made us understand why it was natural for anyone who loved literature to be in interested in the theatre. Rati the theatre-lover and scholar made much more sense. Every scene and dialogue in performance took on so much more significance.

Rati and I continued to meet in the five years I spent in Indraprastha College as a student and in the year (1967-68) I shared the staff room with her as a lecturer. We talked and disagreed and talked again to settle arguments. We talked about T.S. Eliot, Yeats, Blake and Keats. She was always forceful, ironic, well informed and opinionated, and a fund of literary gossip and information. 

When Sheila Uttamsingh joined us, their distinctly different partialities made for interesting learning. These moments outside teaching a redoubtable class of third year honours, were the high points of my teaching life in the rather drab staff room that we inhabited. There was a sense of equality in her relationship with us. She even quarrelled with us. This laid the foundation of an understanding that quarrelling with someone younger is a compliment – an affirmation of intellectual equality. 

Rati was wrapped up in her world of theatre and drama, and I was initially in the civil service and later in the world of social work and activism, working for the marginalised in rural Rajasthan. Our paths did cross in 1983 when I persuaded the theatre group from Social Work and Research Centre (SWRC,) Barefoot College, Tilonia in Rajasthan, to join a workshop with her colleagues Tripurari Sharma and Lakshmi Krishnamurti. 

It was a transformative workshop which once again iterated the use of language, crafting of words, and performance to fight for justice and equality. In later years Tripurari became a part of our struggles in helping us use theatre for communicating the complexities of an unequal society. 

Rati and I did not meet as often as we could have. Her association with Sahmat and mine with organising the poor did have some abstract over-laps. We mourned Safdar Hashmi, and later I was part of a group that attended the Safdar Hashmi festival in Lahore, in 1989. Street theatre with the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS) drew Rati into my life of politics. When we used theatre for the Right to Information (RTI) campaign, with the help of Shankar Singh (MKSS) and Tripurari Sharma, Rati was with us in spirit. 

Years later I went with friends from the class of 1962 – Rekha Bezboruah, Nisha Malhotra and Jayanti Bannerji – to meet Rati in Gurgaon, where she lived with her younger son. A stroke had bound her to bed. Her eyes still sparkled with humour and joy. 

But the real continuation of Rati’s presence in my life was through her elder son, Pablo. I had met Pablo and his younger brother as youngsters waiting for the Modern School bus, outside college, as they lived on campus with Rati and Richard. As in the case of many others, my friends’ children kept my bonds with their parents alive! Pablo came to Tilonia in 1975 with a camera slung across his skinny shoulder on the recommendation of Shona Ray, a well-known designer and progressive artist. As he continued to visit us in MKSS and Tilonia, I continued to get news of Rati, sharpened by a chance mention of a play or cinema.  

Rati leaves behind rich memories and her wry comments on life. I will think of her often, not only when I read poetry and literature but also when I strive to live life with the courage of my convictions. 

Aruna Roy is a socio-political activist with the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan.