After a fairly long time I was at the College once again; before you correct me and say it is now an University, my response would be, yes it is so, but I was revisiting the College (hereafter PC) I studied in during 1961-64. The job which brought me to Presidency University (hereafter PU), was to attend the meeting of a Committee formed to select teachers. I had landed up at the premises way ahead of schedule, and took the opportunity to revisit the College and walk around. I asked, at the foot of the famous stairs, whether there was a lift these days and was told that yes but it was closed at that moment. So I decided to walk around to while away time and stood in the shade and looked across the playing field in front of the building housing Baker Laboratory. Standing near the Main Building, across, were newer buildings adjoining the Economics and Political Science Buildings. And I thought about many things: the match against St. Xavier’s when Dipak Ghosh thrashed a memorable hundred and I rushed out to get his autograph! And a senior student’s tirade against the umpire beginning with “thrice born yellow b****rd” before moving on to more colourful terms when Dipak was given out LBW, remain etched in my memory. Other memories too come flooding in.
At the selection committee, many people felt that the pay scales that the PU was offering was inadequate when compared to other Central Universities; even senior administrative officials felt the pinch. On my way back, I started thinking of the College as it was and the teachers we had then. The teachers then too did not receive the pay they could have got in Central Universities. And as any student of our time will testify, they were more than competent to be in the Universities and slowly, very slowly of course, the movement started then. But we were supremely lucky to get the kind of teachers that we were fortunate to get.
I studied Mathematics as my honours subject with Economics as subsidiary and there were the papers in English and Bengali. The people who taught us the subsidiary and language papers, were each legendary teachers; for instance in Economics we had Dipak Banerjee, Sukhamoy Chakravarty, Nabendu Sen and Dipti Bhushan Dutta: the people who taught the major honours papers were teaching the subsidiary papers. Surely this does not happen any longer? In English, we had Amal Bhattacharyya, who even took a tutorial class. I remember his asking us to write a paragraph on “The Street Where I live” and he would go around the class room of 30 odd students reading and correcting. He came to my seat and took the sheet I was writing on and in his typical manner of speaking said “Where do you live” and when I told him, he said with a smile, this is fine, you may go.
I had come to the College from a Patna school after completing the Senior Cambridge after 10 years of schooling; my knowledge of Bengali was weak and had requested my uncle, who taught in Presidency and with whom I stayed, to support my application for studying Alternative English, which was the normal route for all students form the Senior Cambridge. He said what language do we use at home and of course, we spoke Bengali and he claimed that given this, I better learn the subject. So that was that and I was attending the Bengali lectures. It was a difficult course; we read Bankim Chandra, Rabindranath and of course the history of Bengali literature. We were taught by many people but the notable ones were Haraprasad Mitra, Bhabatosh Dutta ( often called Banglar Bhabatosh Dutta ) and Bhudev Chaudury. The last, naturally was known by his Bengali initials, Bhu Chau and taught with great emotion and spoke in a monotone, so that if one was not paying attention, he or she would not notice that Bhu Chau has said “you there, in the corner, stop talking” or words to that effect and may carry on and receive a severe scolding. I was actually enjoying these lectures learning about the richness of Bengali literature, when one day a class mate decided to create a disturbance. He had one of these things which make a bullfrog croak and he started making this noise periodically; there would be smiles all around and Bhu Chau would look around angrily and continue, getting angrier by the minute. Finally the inevitable happened, he burst and rushed towards the benches and caught hold of me, to my complete surprise and indignation. He asked me for an explanation before throwing me out of the class and threatened to throw me out of the College. I of course, could not point to the offending student and could only protest my innocence. But since this might have led to my expulsion, I was naturally rather worried and informed my uncle about it. He laughed quite a lot and said, let us see what direction this takes and I felt relieved. It had begun with an ill-conceived prank and was turning into a first class mess, till the offending student went up to Bhu Chau and said that it was he and not Anjan. What happened thereafter needs to be mentioned.
The next class began with Bhu Chau seeking a public apology and said how sorry he was for making this error. The offender too was talked about with some praise for having the courage to own up and then promise to be on good behaviour thereafter. And we all felt that we had crossed the Rubicon. But Bhu Chau’s effect on my learning Bengali did not stop. At the end of the half-yearly exam, Bhu Chau caught hold of me and said that I should practice writing Bengali because I was mixing up two types of Bengali.. the formal one with the version we use while talking. He asked me where I stayed and finding it was within walking distance from his own, advised me to come to his home on Sunday mornings. Thereafter every Sunday morning I would reach his home and be greeted and made to sit down and given a task of writing a paragraph while he got ready and went to the bazaar for buying things. He would come back after an hour or so, examine what I had written, advise me how to improve and tell his wife to give me tea and samosas and I would be on the way. I did this for several months till my examinations. I did not have the courage to ask him if any remuneration was required but just tried to learn as much as he had to offer. His commitment to teaching was surely unique.
While visiting PU, on my way out, we met Dilip-da, in the Alumni association office. He was the person manning the office when we studied and I remember that when our BA Part I results had come from the Calcutta University, he said that they were sorting things out and would post the results soon. On our persistent queries, he said that there was some one, a Mukhopadhyay, who had failed in Bengali. I was sure it was me and went to the Coffee House to while away time. Failing in Bengali was the end of the road, so far as I was concerned, since improving my Bengali could not be guaranteed. To my great relief, a class-mate, studying History also a Mukhopadhyay came in and told me that it was he who had failed to secure pass marks. In my euphoria, I jumped up and hugged him screaming, you have saved me. I must say our relationship did not improve. When I recounted this story, recently to Dilip-da, we were laughing, but it had not been a laughing matter then. And Bhu Chau’s help had paid off. Very few teachers would take so much trouble for a weak student.
We had great individuals as teachers; some were eccentric, some were aloof but many of them were extra-ordinary scholars. Those of us who took up teaching and research as our way of life used these as our role models. We used to be scared of Biren Babu, but those of us who learnt mathematical analysis would surely admit that we learnt because of him. OR consider Sujit babu, who during the 1962 war with China decided to give away all his gold medals (there were several) to the Government as his contribution to the war effort. This handover was captured in the news documentary that used to be shown before cinema shows, there being no TV then. One can go on and on. Such teachers are rare. They do not exist any longer because we have neither nurtured them nor appreciated them, as they deserved to have been. And if only Presidency U can find out such people and retain them, only then, can it hope to attain the standards of Presidency C in the 60’s.
This was circulated some time back but I thought that it should be here, otherwise, I may not be able to track it down.
Anjan Mukherji 