Sanskrit phobia? Not in this class

KOLKATA: If you thought you have to travel all the way to the tols of Nadia to learn Sanskrit from scratch, a trip to Shakespeare Sarani is all what you need to do. Here, Samskrita Bharati, a voluntary organization, holds two-hour classes through the week to help people converse in Sanskrit. You will have in company people from all walks of life, from IIT engineers and scientists to Sanskrit scholars and school passouts.
“I passed MA in Sanskrit, but failed to speak the language. So I took admission in the course and mastered the art of speaking Sanskrit. People are afraid of Sanskrit because of its grammar, but here stress is on communicating in Sanskrit,” teacher Nibedita Dutta said, busy teaching her students. She has 10 days in hand to teach them the tricks to speak in Sanskrit.
Retired scientist Ajit Bardhan, 78, joined Samskrita Bharati so that he can communicate in Sanskrit. “I try to speak in Sanskrit while communicating over phone with students of Samskrita Bharati as I can not commute regularly,” he said.
Prof V R Desai of the civil engineering department of IIT Kharagpur is one who had gained much by learning Sanskrit. He now holds weekly classes on the IIT campus on behalf of Samskrita Bharati so that he can spread the language.
“Our aim is to spread Sanskrit language so that those who are not acquainted with it can also speak it,” said Pranab Nanda, secretary of Samskrita Bharati, which is teaching Sanskrit in Bengal since 2008. “If we get 25 students, we can conduct a free course on spoken Sanskrit. We also have residential programmes,” he said.
There are young learners too. Partha Mondal, who passed HS this year and will study Bengali honours, said, “I hope learning Sanskrit will help me a lot. Here learning process is easy. I am not facing any difficulty.”