Days of Laughter and Forgetting
I am used to seeing my teachers in our classrooms or in their offices conducting tutorials. I have sometimes seen them walking slow in silent processions from the Arts Building to the Shaheed Minar and sometimes running fast across the Mall greens in order to achieve cardiovascular excellence. I remember how a friend at Rokeya Hall took quite a considerable number of days to recover from the deep shock of seeing one of the most popular teachers buying “Fauji Atta” at a Fuller Road grocery. She presided over a mourning session in the overpopulated TV room of the hall till late in that night and we all kept vigil. How could that person, who brought Shakespeare alive for us, buy something as insignificant as “Fauji Atta”? "His wife should be beaten up", suggested one agressive action-oriented friend of mine. To us, they were always too extraordinary to fit into an ordinary and mundane reality.
My mind was crammed with these thoughts and other memory bubbles when I spotted out one of my teachers in cyberspace. A mail from a young and hyperactive teacher was waiting in my Yahoo mailbox with an earnest call to submit memoirs, reminiscences or reflections for the next issue of the Alumni News. I, not yet fully an alumnus and never a writer (not in the most liberal terms), immediately decided to answer his call. I decided to write about my very fresh memories from the English Department. Teachers, said my best friend, have strange ways to make you work. I could not fully agree because the person who made us work the most in the department was Shushilda, our office assistant.
Let’s suppose you don’t know the location of the English Department. You climb up the stairs to the first floor of the Arts building; you look right and left and then take the less crowded corridor. You wonder why the corridor is so empty until you come to a department office. If you see that the students are all lined up (no overtaking please!) in front of the secretary’s table waiting to get their jobs done while listening to great secrets of physical fitness, Bingo! You have come to the right place. Meet Shushilda (popularly abbreviated from Shushil Dada); anybody who has studied in the English department after 80’s has at least one story about him. Most of us have more!
During the last six years, I had to line up several times in the department office for Shushilda’s mercy. I too, who is universally regarded as an impatient listener, had to listen to his “fitness” monologues or stories about his unrequited puppy loves. I was at the end of a long trail the first day I went for my BA admission when some smart-alecky fresher asked him “Who is the new chairman, Mama?” if only Shushilda was the mythological Medusa, we all would end up as stone-sculptures decorating various corners of the campus. “Am I your Mama?” Pause 20 seconds. “Why did you call me Mama?” Another 20 seconds. “Here, give me a tight thappor but don’t call me Mama.” Angry and disappointed, Shushilda left keeping the long trail of would-be English students plunged into deep perplexity. When he came back after some twenty minutes, we already knew that keeping the queue straight was highly important, calling Mama was a great offence and the current chairman was Professor Niaz Zaman. Some of the peace-loving students actually started calling Shushilda “Sir” to avoid further problems. The queue this time was much longer and incredibly straight.
My first year was quite dull and uneventful. Some of our friends quickly coupled. They would hang around the Arts Building dripped with the delight of new-found love, while we would watch them from the windows of our late afternoon foundation-course classes with envious helplessness. On one such carefree strolling occasions, one of our friends got into trouble. She and her new-found love were probably appreciating the beauty of the graffiti-laden walls of the Arts Building, when two rival groups of JCD staged a pre-clash display of power with hockey-sticks and cocktail bursts. Nobody was hurt, only our newly in-love friend ended up with a splinter scar in her cheek. The scar vanished quite quickly with the aid of Band-Aids but her name changed to “Boma Mitu” or just “Boma”. Some chicken-hearted cynics in the class expressed their renewed faith in poetic justice; after all, bunking classes was never free of charge! However, Boma, a fledgling journalist at the moment, always remained my good friend; she is now all set to start a lifelong companionship with her university love in some months.
It was not long before I started being seen sauntering across the corridors of the Arts Building or singing passionately in the lush green lawns of TSC or simply enjoying the breathtaking view of Krishnachura from the top-floor of the International Hall. This was the time when I became friendly with a rather mediocre girl; all my other friends were highly disappointed. I enjoyed with her the mornings of the Probhat-feri and the evenings of Lalon songs at the famous Bokultola of the Charukola Institute. She introduced me to the exciting world of university debating, which later became my prime passion. Together with her, I represented Rokeya Hall for the first time in an inter-hall debating championship. My debating career took off from there which eventually took me to various national and international tournaments across the globe.
I will forgive her today for a callous betrayal which at that time had affected me greatly. My unforgettable association with debating today can, in every sense, discount that truly inconsequential episode. I will also forget how after rehearsing for months I was out of a theatre production I always wanted to be a part of. I will erase from my memory how the man I had loved most left me in the pouring rains to meet someone he considered to be more important.
Our days of laughter and forgetting will come to an official end in some days. The old familiar faces of the corridors have already been silently distributed amongst different private universities or in various telephone companies across Dhaka. I am all ready to go to the next alumni get-together: no, not to sing “Yesterday Once More” as a miming member of a 25-member chorus or as a volunteering flower-girl, but for the first time as a true alumnus. Meanwhile, I must thank my hyperactive teacher for getting me into the shoes of an almost-writer.
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