The Indians who found out about my monograph "English-language Literature of India" translated it into English. The book was published in Ghaziabad, near Delhi, by Vimal Distribution, a publishing house specializing in English-language literature in India and publishing the series "Indian Writers Writing in English". I was even proud of the fact that the Indians published my work on their own initiative, and not our Progress publishing house, which usually translated books of a certain ideological orientation on the recommendation of the propaganda department of the CPSU Central Committee.

VIMAL RENTAL PUBLISHING HOUSE

In our country, in the literary sphere, the translated book was deprived of any advertising. I also did not advertise it particularly; it's a sin to hide: the fear was triggered-suddenly I would become "banned from traveling". But for me, the book published in India, now "twice born", or "foreign twin" in a different guise, excited and pleased. I liked everything about it: the scientific apparatus, the font, the arrangement of scientific material, the hard cover, not the paperback, the bright" supercaver " made of glossy paper, on the inside of which my small portrait and brief biography were sheltered ^.1 Another dream came true: my book in English is read in India.

I am very grateful to Virendra Pal Sharma, a diplomatic officer of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of India, who worked for several years at the Indian Embassy in our country and, knowing Russian perfectly, drew attention to my book and translated it into English. I am also grateful to editor K. K. Sharma, professor of English literature at Allahabad University and head of Vimal Proclamation Gupta, who corresponded with me and published my main work without much red tape. My low bow to all three Indians.

Letters came to me from India and other countries, they were addressed to Dr. or Professor Kalinnikova, and I... still (25 years) remained a "junior researcher". But I did not complain, because my philosophy of life is akin to the Indian dharma, the moral law. The purpose of a person is to do good to people, to give joy and not demand anything in return. Just because you are useful to society, you should be satisfied. Giving is always more noble than taking. It may be a utopia, but it feeds on high morals.

The time came when I wrote and discussed in the literature department the third book, "Mulk Raj Anand" for the series "Scholars and Writers of the East", and in addition I had published 70 articles and reviews. Only then, a year before the retirement age, the director of the Institute of Oriental Studies, E. M. Primakov, signed an order appointing me to the position of senior researcher.

INDIAN LITERARY CRITIC FROM THE USA

Once, back in 1970, while studying at the Fundamental Library of Social Sciences, I noticed a stand with new arrivals. I was drawn to a nondescript book, Indo-English Literature in the Nineteenth Century, published in Mysore in 1970. The author was a Hindu John B. Alfonso Karkala, a Kannada native of Bangalore, South India, but residing in the United States. The book was not only useful, but also invaluable to me. At that time, I was just writing the book "English-language Literature of India". Such unexpected help suddenly fell into my hands! Since I had already studied the catalogues of all the libraries on the subject of interest, including two bibliographies - Mary Dorothy Spencer (1960) and Sushila Kumar Jain (1965), I was able to navigate through the material Karkala used. I wrote him an enthusiastic letter, thanking him for his work and, moreover, advised him to add something, pointed out some inaccuracies and "caught" even typos. In response, I also received an enthusiastic message from him and an autographed book. We began to correspond for many, many years. It happens like this in real life: people correspond with each other, but they don't know each other personally. A sincere attachment arises between the addressees. A similar fact occurred in the life of R. K. Narayan. Names'-

Ending. For the beginning, see "Asia and Africa today", 2000, N 6, 9, 11, 2001, N 1.

¹ Kalinnikova Elena. Indian English Literature, Ghaziabad, 1982, 232 p.

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but such a correspondence friendship connected the Indian master of the artistic word with the English writer Graham Greene.

John B. A. Karkala turned out to be a very versatile scientist. In addition to "Indo-English Literature in the Nineteenth Century", "Comparative World Literature", he is the author of "Vedic Vision", a specialist in the comparative analysis of various epic literatures: for example, he compares the characters of "Mahabharata" and the Finnish epic "Kalevala" in one of the chapters in the monograph " A Critical Frame-Work for Examining Epic Genre in World Literature".

As a hobby, he wrote a collection of poems and two novels. However, Karkala's most important work, the main opus of his life, was the 600-page Anthology of Indian Literature, which covers the literary process from the hymns of the Rig Veda to the poetry of Tagore, from the Dhammapada to the philosophical treatises of Mahatma Gandhi. The demand was great, and in 1987 the volume was published in a second edition. Karkala has accumulated such spiritual baggage due to his rich life experience. He graduated from three universities: Bombay, London and Columbia (USA), worked in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of India, was in diplomatic work in Switzerland and England, and was also the representative of India to the UN.

Subsequently, Karkala switched to teaching. He is a professor of Indian literature and philosophy at New York University. John Karkala lives with his family: his wife Lina, Suomi (Finnish), born in Tampere, and three children who bear the traditional names of heroes from Indian mythology-Sita, Krishna and Uma. Despite the fact that Lina is a Baltic fair-skinned beauty, all the descendants inherited the dark skin color of their Dravidian father.

Not only me, but also my daughter Olga, who has long graduated from the Institute of Foreign Languages. Maurice Thorez, who had taught English at the Institute of International Relations for many years, began to correspond with Karkala as a teacher at an American university. They shared their teaching experience, and John Karkala became not only my fellow indologist, but also my daughter's colleague. As a result, it turned out that there were not enough teachers in the Russian language department at the University of New York College, and the administration invited Olga, a candidate of pedagogical Sciences, to fill the vacant position for a year. I never thought that my "knowledge of India" would lead my daughter to "knowledge of America." Olya became friends with the Karkala family.

In contrast to Olga, my son Sergey has the gene of Orientalist parents in his blood. He spent his childhood in Turkey and Syria, and after graduating from the Arab branch of the ISAA, he worked for ten years in the Arab countries as a correspondent for TASS and Literaturnaya Gazeta. He is a candidate of Historical Sciences, co-authored with D. Osipov's guide " All of Syria "(Arabinform, 1995, 606 p.). Each vocation has its own knowledge.

THERE IS SUCH A KARNATAKA UNIVERSITY

One of the states of south India is called Karnataka, and the main cultural center in it is the Karnataka University (Dharvad city), where people work, with whom, as with Professor Karkala, I correspond "on a scientific basis". The main one is the "doyen" of English-language literature in India, Professor Madhukar Krishna Naik, a Marathi by nationality from a Brahmin family. In terms of the scope of my work, the scope of my lecturing work, and the analysis of contemporary novels by English-speaking authors, I can compare M. K. Naik with his predecessor from Andhra Pradesh, Professor K. R. Srinivasa Ayyangar, whose book Indian Writing in English, published five times between 1962 and 1985, served as the main reference point in my work. activities. And now the attention of the literary community is focused on M. K. Naik. It is no less active than Ayyangar, and in terms of the number of books written, it is probably not inferior. The main works of M. K. Naik include: "Dimensions of Indian English Literature" (1984), "A Histori of Indian English Literature" (1989), "Studies in Indian English Literature" (1987) and others.

Good-natured and sympathetic, M. K. Naik readily responded to the letters of a foreign woman, sent books with gift inscriptions, which I was very pleased with, since during the period of perestroika, the flow of Indian publications to domestic libraries first sharply decreased, and then simply stopped. Accordingly, I sent my books in Russian, which he judged only by the table of contents and paragraph titles I had previously translated. But some of the articles that were published in Indian magazines, as well as in separate publications of Vimal Promotion, dedicated to R. K. Narayan, Bhabani Bhattacharya, Raja Rao, reached him without my help.

One day, M. K. Naik, talking with his colleague - Dean of the Faculty of Foreign Languages, Professor Dinbandhu Dhawan, who had completed his postgraduate studies at Moscow State University, told about me and my book from the series "Scientists and Writers of the East" - "Razipuram Krishnaswami Narayan". As a result of this conversation, I received a letter in Russian on the letterhead of the Karnataka University:

Dear Prof. Elena Yakovlevna!

Professor M. K. Naik, Head of the Department of English, gave me your book Razipuram Krishnaswami Narayan to read, and I had a desire to translate it into English so that others could read it, because the book is very interesting and will appeal to our public.

With this letter, I ask your permission to translate this book and publish it in India.

D. B. Dhawan, PhD (MSU), Dean of the Faculty of Foreign Languages

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I will not hide the fact that it is pleasant to receive such emails. I, of course, thanked the " Indian Moskvich "and gave permission for the translation. It remains to "wait for the promised three years" and be patient.

Over time, I got a third "correspondent" from the same Karnataka University with a particularly long and hard-to-remember last name. The new head of the Department of English Literature, Professor S. R. Yaravintelimath, addressed me with a noble request. Madhukar Krishna Naik was 70 years old, and the department was going to publish a "festschrift", or a collection of articles dedicated to this solemn event, in honor of the anniversary of the scientist. S. R. Yaravintelimath asked me if I would like to take part in this event and asked me to give an answer. After my consent, he informed me about the deadline for submitting the material. Knowing that M. K. Naik has a monograph on Raja Rao, I wrote an article "Raja Rao and Dostoevsky"for festschrift. Another letter from S. R. Yaravintelimath informed me that the article was received on time and lavished words of gratitude in my address. The anniversary collection of articles by authors from different countries, New Perspectives in Indian Literature in English, was edited by S. R. Yaravintelimath, G. S. Balarama Gupta, K. V. Venugopal and Amritjit Singh at Sterling Publishers Private Limited in 1987.

"HAND-FRIENDLY" PEOPLE

It is sad to admit that our library is currently unable to provide the necessary information for researchers due to lack of funds. Everyone tries to get at least the minimum amount of books they need in their own way. I was sometimes helped out by the writers themselves, and sometimes by friends living in India. But today the political situation in the world is so complicated, and religious relations are so strained, that some writers are being persecuted. There is a talented Indian writer who has touched on the subject of Islam in his work, and he is declared persona non grata in India, and his novels of acute critical orientation are prohibited. The age-old question: what should I do? And I got a lucky break.

Since time immemorial, the bibliographer S. D. Miliband, whom friends affectionately call Zosia, has been working in the library of our institute. A wonderful woman, a person of high culture and hard work, she has published the Bibliographic Dictionary of Russian Orientalists in recent years. This two-volume book is a kind of " Who is Who?" soviet and Russian orientalists. Her encyclopedic work has taken its rightful place in London on the library shelves next to Britannica. I knew that the book would reach our mutual friend, Sasha Pyatigorsky, and I asked him, through Zosia, who was on her way to London, to pass on the novel of the rogue writer that I needed. And he hasn't forgotten me for years - he found me and sent me here. Thank you for your kind deeds, for your memory, for your attention.

Sasha received Zosia very warmly in the office office and shook her hand. It had a special meaning. Pyatigorsky had a special epithet for people who wrote denunciations of dissidents while still living in the USSR. He called them "unkillable" because he never shook hands with them. Well, Zosia wasn't one of them.

In the 90s, several books by A. Pyatigorsky were published in Russia. In his " Selected Works "(Moscow, 1996), he collected articles from the journals "Continent", "Syntax", "Conversation" and others, among which is the treatise "Philosophy of Literature", where he analyzes the philosophy of B. Pasternak, V. Nabokov, A. Sinyavsky. This is probably why the authors of the recently published book "Worlds and Collisions of Osip Mandelstam" by Grigory Amelin and Valentina Morderer asked A. Pyatigorsky to write a preface, which he titled "Literature and Power".

Of course, time does not spare anyone, including once "our young kneeling knight": the lush head of hair disappeared, but the gray mustache, "crow's feet" at the eyes, wrinkles on the forehead were cut out, but his thought still does not age, and his heart beats like a young one.

Just as in science Pyatigorsky expanded his horizons from ancient mythology and Buddhism to the search for truth in Russian literature, and more precisely, the philosophy of O. Mandelstam, I. Annensky, V. Khlebnikov, so in his personal life he did not stop there. Sasha doesn't share Yesenin's phrase: "I've become stingier in my desires now."

He is full of energy, continues to worship the goddess Shakti and the new Muse in the guise of his daughter's friend. Probably, the search for constant renewal and inspiration is the real meaning of his life, although not always the new creates harmony with the past lived.

The situation with Pyatigorsky evoked an association with another outstanding Orientalist. One day, Academician N. I. Konrad was consulted by Yuri Vladimirovich Rozhdestvensky, an mivovite Sinologist who was still writing his doctoral dissertation. After discussing linguistic problems in the typology of the word, Nikolai Iosifovich became curious: "Yura, please tell me, what is your current state? Are you married or divorced?" The question was answered: "Nikolai Iosifovich, you know, I'm a recidivist husband."

This dialogue now exists among Orientalists as an anecdote, and, perhaps, as a true story, preserving the memory of the meeting of two of the most intelligent orientalist academicians who have already left us.

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Alexander Pyatigorsky is now in this guise of a recidivist husband. He is married for the fourth time.

But he has another hobby of philosophical and philological direction. He has written two novels. First: "Philosophy of one lane "(Moscow, 1992). Everyone imagines that this is the Armenian Lane where our IVAN used to live. Nothing like that. A novel about a talented boy who is sent to Paris in 1938, away from the "Soviet way of life". And the second novel: "You will remember a strange person "(Moscow, 1999). Everyone thinks that a novelist writes about himself. You didn't guess right again. It tells the story of the millionaire Mikhail Tereshchenko, Minister of Finance and Foreign Affairs in the Provisional Government. For this work, Pyatigorsky was declared a nominee for the Andrey Bely Prize. Each novel is unconventional, the style is original. There are many allusions and the subtext is not always clear. Novels, perhaps, are not literary, but historical, because the author focuses on the philosophy of consciousness and the relationship of a person with historical events, and not with culture. Sasha himself declares: "I am a man of no culture." Such intellectual coquetry forces us to say that he is a person of global culture and belongs to science and philosophy-from ancient Indian to European, from Tamil to Russian classics of the Silver Age. According to Merab Mamardashvili, "philosophizing is thinking about consciousness", which is not accessible to every reader. This" thinking " is recorded on Sasha's forehead, even in the attached photo. It is impossible not to take into account Pyatigorsky's recognition: "The East, Indian philosophy were, of course, important for me... and it remains important now... "(Izbrannye Trudy, Moscow, 1996, p. 311).

This is the kind of person who lives and creates in London a "hand-loving" orientalist, a person of an unconventional mindset, an ex-indologist of our institute.

SSOD AND OLED

On Arbat Square, in a unique architectural mansion, for many years there was the SSOD-the Union of Soviet Friendship Societies, which emerged in 1958 on the basis of the previous BOKC'a-the All-Union Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries. Indologists were "concentrated" in the OSID, the Society of Soviet - Indian Friendship, which was set aside for them.

I first entered the SSOD building in 1959 and walked through the romantic underground passages to the OSID office. There was a sign on the door that read "Yershova I. K." And I opened it to find a young, beautiful woman sitting busily at her desk. Looking closer, I recognized her as a classmate from the Hindi group. The same Irochka Ponashchatenko, who studied with me for five years in Sokolniki, with whom we participated in amateur concerts and danced Indian dance. At the beginning of my memoirs, her appearance is recorded in a photo in the magazine " Asia and Africa Today "(2000, N b, p. 59). Immediately after graduating from MIV'a Ira, or after her marriage, Irina Konstantinovna Yershova began working at BOKC'e, and then at OSID'e. The meeting after seven years of separation was warm and friendly, and since then we have seen a lot of each other.

And in the 80s, when I flew to Delhi for international conferences of literary critics, Irina Ershova already held the high post of director of the USSR Cultural Center in India and carried out her cultural registration mission with a deep sense of responsibility.

I remember the OID for a long time, because my work in it as an executive secretary in the Commission on arts and literature took place in parallel with my scientific work at the Institute. It lasted not much-not a little thirty years.

The first memorable event of OSID in 1961 was the celebration of the 100th anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore under the leadership of the Chairman of the commission, E. P. Chelyshev. The preparation was colossal: first, a solemn meeting in the Bolshoi, the presentation of cast medals with Tagore's profile and a concert. The Commission on Culture and Arts mobilized all the sections, and there were several of them; the main ones made a considerable contribution: the cinema section (A. M. Zguridi), the music section (Giovanni Mikhailov, S. A. Balasanyan), the literary section (E. P. Chelyshev, M. L. Salganik), the historical section (I. I. Zguridi).D. Serebryakov, G. G. Kotovsky), fine arts: painting (ed. by S. I. Potabenko), sculpture (N. A. Ponomarev), architecture (ed. by A. A. Korotskaya), philosophy (ed. by A. D. Litman), theater studies (ed. by N. R. Guseva, G. M. Pechnikov) and others.

The last two figures should be mentioned in particular. Senior researcher Natalia Romanovna Guseva at about the same time, shifting the plot of the Indian epic "Ramayana" into the dramatic fabric of a children's play, staged it at the Central Children's Theater in Moscow. The premiere was attended by Indian Ambassador Krishna Menon and his wife, and together with the audience they were indescribably delighted. " But the highest culmination was Jawaharlal Nehru's visit to the Ramayana in September 1961, during his last visit to Moscow. The Prime Minister got acquainted with the artists, thanked all the creators of the performance, and assessed it as a significant contribution to the growing friendship between our countries," N. R. Guseva herself writes in her memoirs.

One of the actors with whom J. R. R. Tolkien was photographed. Nehru, was G. M. Pechnikov, who played the role of the main character Rama. Who would have thought, but it was this performance that turned out to be fateful in the career of the actor. "Ramayana" was performed in Moscow for several years, and the title of People's Artist helped Pechnikov win his Indian hero. And in 1974, the Central Children's Theater, in accordance with the agreement on cultural exchange between the USSR and India, went on tour to the country of Rama. The CDT performed in Delhi, Chandigarh and Madras, and everywhere it was a success, the reviews in the press were uniformly laudatory.

This has never happened in the theater world before: in 1977, the CDT was invited again. This time, in addition to the capital, Soviet artists played in Lucknow, Patna and Bhubaneswar, and again thousands of Indian spectators gave them a standing ovation.

The 70s and 80s were also very active in OSID. Literary evenings dedicated to memorable dates come to mind:

The 75th anniversary of the Hindi poet Suryakant Tripatha Nirala in 1970; the 100th anniversary of the philosopher, poet and social activist Aurobindo Ghosh in 1972; the 75th anniversary of the Urdu poet Firak Gorakhpuri; the 100th anniversary of the poet and political activist Sarojini Naidu in 1979; and the 100th anniversary of the "Tamil Shelly"-Subramania Baradi in 1981 year and

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to many other prominent figures. By the way, in 1986, the Ministry of Culture, the OLED and the All-Union State Library of Foreign Literature solemnly celebrated the memorable date of Rabindranath Tagore, but already the 125th anniversary of his birth.

As for January 26, mass evenings of Soviet-Indian friendship are held annually in honor of the Republic of India Day, and on August 15-in honor of the country's independence.

It is hard to imagine how much time my social work took up, but it also contributed to the knowledge of Indian culture, and I even compiled an index for Russian tourists traveling to India: "Literature and Art of India" (Moscow, 1978, 55 p.), reproduced in OSID on rotaprint.

It is no exaggeration to say that almost the entire elite of Indology participated in the work of the OSID-doctors of Sciences, international political scientists: Bondarevksy G.L., Kutsenkov A. A., Yurlov F. N. and E. S., etc. In addition to the already mentioned figures, we can mention the names of other activists: O. K. Dreyer, editor-in-chief of the Eastern literature publishing house "Nauka", M. T. Stepanyants, Doctor of Philosophy, L. V. Mitrokhin, Doctor of Historical Sciences, Vladimir Makhotin, as well as poets and translators Lipkin S. I., S. L. Severtsev, Mirzo Tursun-zade, Yaroslavtsev G. B. It can be said that all of them contributed to the strengthening of Soviet-Indian cultural ties, as a result of which we have a galaxy of winners of the Jawaharlal Nehru Prize: academician G. M. Bongard-Levin, Professor, Honored scientist, foreign member of the Indian Council on Foreign Relations Bondarevsky G. L., Doctor of Historical Sciences Guseva N. R. A. A. Korotskaya , Senior Researcher, O. K. Dreyer, Editor-in-Chief of the Nauka Publishing House, A. D. Litman, Ph. D., and V. V. Zhurnalistov. Makhotin, Doctor of Historical Sciences Mitrokhin L. V., People's Artist of the USSR Pechnikov G. M., Professor Serebryakov I. D., poet Mirzo Tursun-zade, academician, Vice-president of the OSID Chelyshev E. P. If I missed someone, I apologize to the lowest.

RESEARCHERS AND FOLLOWERS

Undoubtedly, my 40-year career path has not always been cloudless. Periodically, clouds rolled in. Discussions of scientific papers in the sector and in the literature department were sometimes accompanied by conflicting opinions of colleagues. Sometimes the submitted manuscripts were not recommended for publication, because serious revision was required. There were also quite sad events: even if the long-suffering work overcame the "thorns of unfriendliness", the " black angel "sent a negative review to the editorial office after it, and my manuscript, at best, was" put under the cloth " for an indefinite period of time, and at worst, it was returned to the author, and I was in a bad mood. Everything was encountered on the way to learning about India from the Volga to the Ganges, but I believed that after the black band there would be a white one, because finally there is a bright underside to the "cloud". So I convinced myself, and, indeed, luck came.

In 1994, I took part in the All-Russian competition of research projects in the field of humanities, organized by the George Soros International Science Foundation. Naturally, "my" English - language literature of India, or as I affectionately call it "AYALI", acted as a research project. My optimism worked, and I became one of the winners of the contest. Probably, the competition jury saw the prospects of the project I proposed, since in recent years there has been a certain pattern of development of this "exotic plant" called AYALI. AYALA's books spilled out of Hindustan and became the property of an English-speaking audience around the world. Europe has praised India's talents and awarded the Booker Prize to novels by Salman Rushdie, Pravir Ruth Jhabwala, Vikram Seth, V. S. Naipaul, Rahinton Mistry and Arundhati Roy.

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Usually, a person in old age asks himself if he has lived his life in vain. This question did not leave indifferent the poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko, who, developing the theme of the meaning of life, answered as follows:"It does not matter if you have researchers; it is important: whether you have followers." At first I thought about it, but then the poet's statement provoked me to project his words on my literary environment and the critical resonance of my works. First of all, I remembered a letter from Dr. I. C. Bhatnagar of Aurangabad, Marathwada University, Department of Foreign Language:

Dear Dr. Kalinnikova, I have received your book "English-language Literature of India" from the Library of St. Petersburg. Lenin street. I ordered and read it out of curiosity. I really liked your interpretation and approach to this literature, and in order for Indian critics to know your point of view, I translated one chapter from your book.

The fact that I speak Russian well is due to the Department of Russian Literature of the XIX century, where I defended my PhD thesis. A.V. Alpatov was my supervisor (unfortunately, he is no longer among us). I studied at Moscow State University at the Faculty of Philology for almost five years, and when I saw your photo in Moscow News, for some reason I thought that your face was familiar to me. By translating your work, I was simply doing my academic duty.

Head of the Department of Foreign Languages I. C. Bhatnagar

I will continue the list of Indian researchers: Sharma Virendra Pal, Manu Chakravarty, Nagpal K. L., Annyah Gouda, Virendra K. Roy and Czechoslovak reviewer Anna Ratsova. Among Russian researchers there are such names: Serebryakov I. D., Senkevich A. N., Serebryany D. S., Danilin I. V., Pulatova Sharafjan, Prozhogina S. V., Maslov Yu. N., Rusinova E. S., Baynov Yu. S., Litvinova L. M.

There are only seventeen surnames, and some researchers wrote more than once, because they evaluated various monographs and not only in Russian, but also in English.

For a more specific idea, you can refer to the names of Russian magazines that had critical publications: "Peoples of Asia and Africa", "Moscow News", "Voice of the East", "Asia and Africa Today", "Soviet Woman" and the press in English: "Moscow News", " Asia and Africa today", "Soviet Literature", "The Literature Criterion", "Asia and Africa Studies", "Link", "National Herald", "Soviet Land", "Journal of the School of Languages Jawaharlal Nehru University", "Literature Half-yearly", "Youth Review".

And now it's the followers ' turn. If we take as a starting point the approved dissertations on the English-language literature of India, then after me there was a whole "English-language queue".

It is a pleasure to see how not only Indian literature develops in national languages, but also in English, which has brought Western culture to India as well. The Rise of the Indian Novel in English (New Delhi, Bangalore, Sterling, 1987, 305 p.). I was very pleased to read the lines of K. S. Ramamoorthy about the fact that two prominent scholars-K. S. Srinivasa Iyengar and John Alfonso Karkala, who are the most competent specialists in the history of English-language literature in India, played a particularly important role in popularizing it. In recent years, there has been an awakening of interest in English-language Indian literature in our country, so there are not only researchers, but also followers.

In 1978, a Latvian graduate student Sigma Yanovna Ankrava from Riga defended her dissertation on the topic: "The work of the Indian poet Sarojini Naidu", and in 1984 her book was published under my editing "Sarojini Naidu" in the series "Scientists and Writers of the East".

A few years later, in 1986, Zebo Abdugafarovna Mullojanova-Sementsova, a graduate student from Dushanbe, rose to the rostrum of the Academic Council. She successfully defended her thesis entitled "The Novel in the Works of Bhabani Bhattacharya". During the writing process, the applicant constantly consulted with me. I gave her all the Bhattacharya novels in my library and acted as an unofficial opponent in her defense.

A year has passed, and this time a researcher at the branch of our Institute in Leningrad, Eleonora Sergeevna Rusinova, has declared herself. The subject of her work is "The concept of Personality in the English-language Novel of India". The defense of the dissertation was held "with a bang" at the Tashkent State University.

If we take into account that I started studying the English-language literature of India in Russia, then together with me there are four candidates of philological sciences in this field. The pages of the fifth dissertation are already rustling, and it will soon be presented by Natalia Kolesnikova, an employee of our literature department. The subject of her research is an Indian - born writer based in London, Vidyadhar Suryaprasad Naipaul. Having thoroughly studied his work, N. A. Kolesnikova revealed the artistic talent of the English-speaking writer.

It is pleasant to know that the study of English-language literature in India, which I started in the 50s, did not disappear without a trace, did not "go into the sand", and the seed I threw into the Indological soil sprouted.

Sometimes a timid hope creeps in that life has not been lived in vain, and when, for example, you read such a message-the confession of a French professor from the Sorbonne, the level of optimism increases:

Paris 5.5.99

I send my congratulations and thanks to Madame Elena Kalinnikova for her article " Indians Fascinated by France ", which gave me the opportunity to discover the names of Indian writers whose existence I knew nothing about. This article was especially useful during my short visit to India, where I happened to visit and where I also learned about the very interesting cultural ties between India and France.

With heartfelt appreciation Robert Gianni

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