The Learner

Something.  Yes, something, for you have already read some words .  The piece is purposely entitled so, for one title may not capture the subject matter it contains. It’s a compendium of discursive thoughts of an amateur Nigerian living beyond the borders of his country, and in a far South Asian country, India, the country that defies any all-encompassing classification and codification. One cannot mention a single religion, culture, race/colour of Indians as there are numerous in place.  The country is the world’s second-largest by population, after China. Therefore, a foreigner will never stop learning here. Every day, every moment, will present new challenges, new things, new human dynamics, and, sometimes, even new problems to solve. There can — and should — be many failures along the way—clashes of culture, misperceptions of a particular gesture, language barriers, name it. This is, however, part of the human endeavours. The foreigner shouldn’t hesitate to make as ...

Muhsin Ibrahim @muhsin234 INTRODUCTION The art of acting is the heart of theatre; direction breathes life into the heart, and other crews, alongside the audience, put flesh and blood onto the skeleton carrying the heart to make it fully functional. Everything—the story, stage, costume, the audience, etc—revolves around the actor. This undoubtedly makes acting a very gigantic task, challenging and it easily becomes problematic if not well handled. This, therefore, calls for the use of many and different objects to facilitate and further the action onstage, to make it more realizable, attention-grabbing and entertaining. There is no boundary to this. However, the success of an actor calls for a collective works of many professionals in harness with the director such as set designer, and costume coordinator, props coordinator, make-up coordinator, etc who are in charge of selecting any object seen befitting for a certain role, performance, and broadly, the setting of a pla...

Muhammad Muhsin Ibrahim Bayero University, Kano muhsin2008@gmail.com INTRODUCTION Some might think the title suggests a banal subject, which has been at the centre of hot debates among many writers, particularly the Nigerian Chinua Achebe and the Kenyan Ngugi wa Thiong’o, for many years. However, India is exceptional, as the country is unique in the world. India is a place of myths and legends; a birthplace of some of the world’s leading religions and creeds; miscellaneous cultures and traditions, and other peculiarities. It is the second most populous country after China—and would, as projected, overtake China in the ranking within a few years—with over a billion inhabitants. People are divided mainly into mass and massive ethnically heterogeneous societies with little or nothing in common. It was gathered in a recent report that ‘ Over 1652 languages belonging to four different language families…’ ( http://www.ciil.org ) —eighteen of which were given recognition by t...

Muhammad Muhsin Ibrahim Bayero University, Kano @muhsin234 INTRODUCTION The world can no longer escape being ‘exposed’ through the media—print and non-print. It is no longer what it used to be. Globalization, now at its peak, is tied with media like a computer to its screen. Hence wars are fought through the media; election campaigns conducted there; products advertised; and there is virtually no place uncovered by the media. Films, as vital machinery used by the media, are accorded with ample efficacy, for via this much propaganda—for good or bad—of the so-called world superpowers were said to have, and are still being, sold to, and devoured by, people. This is possible for, almost everybody can understand the language of film and its universal appeal; film is endowed with the communicative power that can mobilize people to frenzy or lull them with dreams and illusions. This is very evident especially in Hausa-land where both its teeming youth and elderly so much used ...

Muhammad Muhsin Ibrahim Department of English and French, Bayero University , Kano muhsin2008@gmail.com Abstract The paper seeks to answer some triggering questions on reading: why, when, what and how, through demonstrating to the students some of the many (positive) impacts of good reading culture, exploring the probable 'reasons' why students don’t, or hate to, read, and by offering ways on how to overcome such problems. In the discussion, the writer highlights on how achieving this would contribute to the development of the student’s academic pursuit, linguistic competence and performance, and life in general. In conclusion, a call is made to the “stakeholders” and the people in general to assist the students as their success means, in wider perspective, the nation’s success.   Being a Paper Presented at a Special Lecture Organized by the Department of English, Girls’ Science College, Garko, Kano; 03 rd March, 2013 INTRODUCTION The issue of ed...

Preamble The question on, if not the whole issue of, Indian Theatre, whether classical, folk, modern or whatever appendage is affixed to it raises eyebrows. Why? There was no India as known today prior to a certain and recent period of time, which is following the British colonial masters’ declaration of independence to a people who hitherto shared no language, religion, norm and culture; the group of people who were even sometimes hostile to one another. Many scholars and theatre historians and critics have intensely argued (and the argument still continuous) on the true origin, and, again, the existence of an all-encompassing concept called Indian theatre. Reasons ascribed to such contentions are many: Is this the Hindus’, or the Muslims’, the Sikhs’, the Buddhists’, or other religions’ performance that is more befitting to be tagged Indian Theatre? So also the ethnic dispensations; Hindi, Punjabi, Kannada, Bengali, etc all rightly belong to the India; or the recently emerged b...

This is a short-story culled from my novel, A Weird Hope (2012). It was, again, published in   Voices from the Savannah (2010), an anthology of the National Association of Language and Literary Studies, Bayero University , Kano Chapter, vol. 3.  It's told to a girl, Shahada by her nanny, Gwaggo. The story is about one of the latter’s peer’s eventual marital life. GWAGGO CLEARED her throat—emulating her master's (Shahada’s father) habit. “The story began when we were in our early youth, now about five decades ago. Surely I won't use her right name because she still lives; thus, let me call her Ummi, as the house-hold name in the Hausa communities, was betrothed to a young man called Audu. “Audu?” she tried to recall the exact name. “Yes Audu.” The gentleman was a common farmer like his father who was also a great scholar in our village. One day, a fortnight to their wedding, one of the eminent wealthy men living in the village heard about it through one of his ...