Don’t stop learning

“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.” If one takes Mahatma Gandhi’s advice with some seriousness, then the city has a lot to offer to the initiated ones. While universities have always been more than happy to provide continuing education, there are para-academic institutes in the city that are becoming quite popular among the city dwellers.

Places like Jnanpravaha, Somaiya Centre for Lifelong Learning and New Acropolis are instilling enthusiasm to learn new languages, ideas and skills in not only students, but also in working professionals.

For one, Somaiya Centre for Lifelong Learning, at Fort, offers non-formal learning across a wide range of subjects, with a definite slant towards culture, tradition and the arts. With courses, workshops, and lectures ranging from spoken Sanskrit and Urdu to Zen Meditation, Somaiya believes in non-formal learning being the way to go.

“Throughout the year we have several courses. Most often the participants who come here are working professionals. So the average age of the students would be around 40 to 45. But for a course on The Upanishads, we had someone as young as 22 and someone as old as 68,” smiles Kajal Tulsiani, who has been associated with the institute for the past three years.

The idea of para academia, she says, is to bring anyone with a curiosity for a certain subject together. “One need not be a expert. One only needs to come as a blank board and then they can write whatever they like,” she explains.

“There is a certain intimacy that comes at these classes,” says a former participant of a course on cinema at Somaiya on condition of anonymity. “At least the course that I took up didn’t have too many people and therefore the interaction was extremely informal, the timings were quite accommodative and I was more than happy to pay `3,500 for the course. However, the best part about these courses is they help me learn a new subject even while I work. I would look forward to the class every week, and this had become my only escape from the drudgery.”

Originally an international organisation and with 50 branches worldwide, New Acropolis in Colaba now conducts courses on various subjects with a special focus on philosophy and theology.

Jnanapravaha, at Fort, provides a space for the global exchange of creative Indian thought. “Our parent organisation, Jnana Pravaha, Varanasi, is devoted to the study of Indology, epigraphy and Sanskrit, while we at Jnanapravaha, Mumbai, are committed to Arts Education in the broadest sense of the term,” says a note.

As part of their activities, they organise regular talks by visiting scholars, some restricted to an evening or two, some of a longer duration affording a deeper investigation into the field. However, Janpravaha is an institute, which offers diploma courses in Indian Arts and Aesthetics and also on Critical Theory, Aesthetics and Practice (CTAP).

With more spaces opening up to various workshops, lectures and screenings, it seems Mumbai doesn’t want to stop learning and it shouldn’t.