Calcutta University MA English & BA English Honours/Major Tuition | International Conference Presenter, Researcher & Author | 20 Yrs Exp

I studied with PD Sir during my MA in English at the University of Calcutta (Main Campus), from 2008 to 2010, with Linguistics as my optional paper in Part II. One of my strongest memories is how he made me see the connection between linguistics and literary theory — something I hadn't expected to find so interesting.

Structuralism and Poststructuralism felt hopelessly abstract to me at first, honestly. But in his classes, ideas like signs, structures, and the instability of meaning stopped being just theory — they became tools for actually reading a text. He'd pick a passage we all knew well and show us how its meaning shifted the moment we looked closely at the relationships between words, the oppositions hidden within them, and the assumptions we hadn't even realised we were making.

That really changed the way I read. I wasn't just memorising theories for the exam anymore — I was learning how to use them to find meanings in a text that I would have completely missed on my own.

I attended PD's classes from 2006 to 2009, and even today, I haven't come across another teacher like him. He taught us Literature, Philology, Rhetoric, and Prosody — and made all of them fascinating. He had this rare gift of finding meaning in texts that most of us, and even some professors, would simply miss.

I still remember how our discussions after class would often run long, because nobody wanted to leave once he started explaining. A single line of poetry could turn into a conversation that lasted for days.

I never had a teacher who could interpret literature the way he did. He didn't just teach us the subject — he taught us how to actually think about it. I'd recommend him to any student who wants more than just good marks; he gives you a real love for meaning.

I first came to know of P Das through my seniors when I was an English Honours student at Bethune College in 2011. I continued studying with him throughout my Honours course and graduated with very good results in 2014. I later had the opportunity to pursue my MA in English at the University of Calcutta's main campus, which I completed with a strong result in 2016.

But for us, scoring good marks was only one part of his classes. What interested us most was the depth and range with which he explained literary texts from English literature and world literatures. A poem, play, novel or essay was never treated as an isolated piece to be reduced to a summary or a set of examination points. He situated texts within their historical, intellectual and cultural contexts, while also attending closely to language, form, imagery, rhetoric and structure. His discussions could move from Shakespeare, Milton or the Romantics to writers and traditions beyond the English canon, showing how different literatures illuminate one another while retaining their distinct histories and imaginative worlds.

His classes went beyond ready-made notes or examination-oriented explanations. He encouraged us to ask how a text creates meaning, why a particular form or image matters, and how apparently familiar passages can yield deeper or entirely different interpretations when read with greater attention. That intellectual engagement—the sense that every serious literary work opened into a larger conversation across languages, cultures and traditions—was the reason we hardly ever missed a class.