Divya Padmanabhan alias Divya Gireesh Kumar,former student of the department of English, Payyanur college visited the department and addressed and interacted with the students and faculty on 16.09.2010. She is expected to join Cardiff University in the immediate future on the Commonwealth Scholarship for Ph.D in literature and she visited the department to share her happiness. It was a rare moment of immense happiness and pride for the faculty and present students to have her with us for some hours. She began her address detailing her experiences as a graduate student in the department underscoring the contributions of each teacher to her overall development as a student. Her reminiscences brought forth the books handled by the various teachers and the exemplary ways in which they did it in the class. She said she was greatly indebted to Dr. V.M.Santhosh for guiding her translation project to a meticulous finish. Then she revisited her postgraduate years in School of Letters in Mahatma Gandhi University. She made a brief mention of her preparations for the Commonwealth Scholarship also. In the interaction session,students were given tips regarding the preparation of synopsis, importance of extensive and in-depth readings, ability to incorporate what one reads into writings, significance of attending and presenting papers in seminars and developing the skill of writing. Discussion touched upon some aspects of research topic and authors focussed on in the study she intends to do in Cardiff. Abdul Rasheed, Aswathi Babu (both III dc), Athira G (III sem), Amal Baby, Dheeraj, Julie George and Jesna Sasidharan (all I sem) participated in the interaction actively. The climax of the function was the surprising offer of a giftpack of books for the department by Divya. It was received with applause. We acknowledge with immense gratitude that she is the first former student to gift books to the department and what made us happier was that she expressed her intention to continue with that in future also. The function was concluded with the vote of thanks extended by Deepak Kumar, Secretary, English Association. http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/
