Professor R.N. Misra taught at the Universities of Sagar, Gwalior, Allahabad and Gwalior again (1959-2001), was also Fellow (1973-75; 2002-05) at IIAS, Shimla and Tagore National Fellow (2012-15). His recent publications include Rethinking Comparative Aesthetics in a Contemporary Frame (ed. 2019, in collaboration with Professor Parul Dave-Mukherji), Ascetics, Piety and Power: Saiva Siddhanta Monastic Art in the Woodlands of Central India (2018) and Outlines of Indian Arts (ed. 2014).
Veena Misra (1941-2019), a poetess, artist, home-maker and a person of wide academic sympathy. Deeply interested in Indian and western philosophy, especially G.E. Moore’s Principia Ethica for her unfinished Ph.D., she also found immense pleasure in literature and the arts; even in homely surroundings her expositions on kavya-sastra were spellbinding. She wrote popular articles, reviews and poetry for journals like Dinman, Vama, Madhyam, Kritasankalpa etc., and essays for academic volumes published from Delhi and Bhopal. She enjoyed her casual stints with All India Radio, Lucknow and Gwalior as an interlocutor, anchor and presenter. For several years she taught part-time at the Ram Krishna Ashram, Gwalior where young girls and boys, colleagues and the staff found immense pleasure in ‘Misra Didi’s’ company. But above all, she devoted her life in tenderly chiselling out three men, her husband and two sons the way she thought would ideally help them.
