Crossing borders and boundaries.

This essay is autobiographical. It is an attempt to come to terms with the series of world views encountered in half a century of very different kinds of educational ventures in post-independence India. These have included traditional Sanskrit education at home, Anglicist High School and College education in Delhi, Orientalist university education in Germany and then attempts at teaching modern Hindi language and literature in Germany and the United States. Each venture has meant a cultural and political questioning of that which preceded it. The culmination of what can only be described as a life long struggle to reach equilibrium is the acceptance of the quest to establish meaning in a series of cross checking operations.