Reunion Reminiscences

Who Can Decorate the Rainbow?

By: Sarwar Morshed*

â Memory is a st
range bell-Jubilee and knell.â
- Emily Dickinson.
Memory is a bizarre bell. On the occasion of the 3rd CU English Alumni Re-union,
the 'jubilee metaphor', I am sure, has preoccupied the hearts of the alumni. Bu
t when I cast a retrospective glance at my university days, I feel elated and de
jected simultaneously. I feel overjoyed when I hear that my friends are going up
wards, rung after rung, in the professional ladder. And the 'knell metaphor' als
o sends shock-wave to my neurons when I look back in anger and frustration. Leaf
-like, some of my friends dropped from their courses. On the eve of this diachro
nic meeting, the great 'marriage of minds', some of my bounduley friends and acq
uaintances make parade in my memory. Here they are to tread the tabula rasa with
their sovereign gait. From 'God's plenty', I have singled out only three â bohemiansâ b
cause of their irresistible beauty and of course, time and space constraints do
not let others in.
Prabhat : Picaresque hero let loose
This friend of mine was a Jack of all trades and master of everyone. He could ac
t as an Imam in a jamaat, sing a Tagore song with the skill of a maestro, indulg
e in philandering a la mode Casanova. I frequently recollect his heroics in a cl
ass of NS madam. She was rebuking us en masse for coming to study literature wit
hout any genuine love for it. Then NS recited two lines from Tagore and asked us
to continue. The class proved to be a bunch of aphasiacs. Some started paying e
xtra-attention to their note-books. The moment she showed the 'I knew it was bey
ond your means' type of facial expression, our Prabhat stood up and kept recitin
g the poem till he was asked to stop! Madam was impressed and we were puffed up.
Everyone thanked the Messiah profusely after the class.
But unfortunately, this talented boy left the department without a degree at the
fag end of his honours course. Prabhat was an orphan. He might have some financ
ial problems but still that was not the biggest factor. What worsened his condit
ion, I think, was his inborn bohemian nature. He was a bit restless and uncalcul
ative. I remember one morning we were having breakfast in the campus. I was stru
ggling with the second paratha and my stomach refused to host 50% of it. So, I s
urrendered and started to pay attention to the fuming tea. By this time Prabhat
had devoured seven parathas. Proudly, he declared that he could consume 20 parat
has in the breakfast if he had the money. I was sure it was a 'gul' and egged hi
m on to eat 20 parathas with the assurance that I would finance his breakfast bo
nanza. He went up to the 15th paratha and discovered that even the kitchen staff
started to look at him with the interest of a Peeping Tom. The manager increase
d the volume of the stereo-set. The attending boy was all smile and performing h
is task with unusual sincerity. Seeing that he had become a zoo-item, he stopped
. I am confident that he could gulp parathas had he not been made the cynosure
of all eyes by the waiter. This was our Prabhat.
This JaiJaidinophile was a bit of a girl-killer. Nymphomania chased him and he c
hased the highly hormonal group of the fair sex. Whenever he used to stage a com
eback to the campus after a sojourn in his village home, our auditory organs wer
e bombarded with his success stories with girls. May be he reaped cathartic plea
sure by sharing his 'pre-mature' and forbidden experiences with us. But he was t
he incarnation of paradox to me - he used to say his prayers regularly and yet h
e indulged in unbridled passion. Passion he had for reading. He was a good reade
r and a better writer. As the born bounduley he was, he ignored the prescribed t
exts and his result belied his intellectual stature. His time and stamina were c
onsumed, in the words of Swinburne, by the 'perfume of old passion'. This obsess
ion, euphemistically speaking, made him an underachiever. He seemed to be consci
ous about that but his actions did not speak louder than his words. I can vividl
y remember my last meeting with him. The night before Eid-ul-Fitr in 1999 when h
e was preparing himself for the final examination with the determination to cele
brate his maiden Eid in Chittagong, Prabhat came to my house and convinced me th
at he was under compulsion to go to his village. Considering the weight of 'rea
sons unavoidable', I bade him good-bye at the dead of night. This paratha-eater
and girl-killer of Sundarpur never turned up again to the campus. He was gone wi
th the wind from our lives.
The empire where the pedagogic sun never sets:
After being laurelled with the MA degree in English, Mr. Riku, senior to us by t
wo years, reportedly joined a college in a remote corner of the country. Because
of his distinctive projection of himself through tonsorial and sartorial unique
ness, Riku Bhai was not an unknown quantity in the English Department of the Uni
versity of Chittagong. So, news about his joining and heroics in his new station
started to pour in the campus. The 30/12 'coated and tied' Riku Bhai, thereby h
angs the tale, received five-star treatment from the authorities of the college.
As the members of the English teaching tribes in the mufassil college are rolli
ng stones, the authorities housed Riku Bhai in the principal's quarters. Our Rik
u Bhai ousted the principal from his palace! The catalogue of his achievement do
es not end here. He was given a blank cheque in planning his class routine and o
ffering tuition to the students in the residence which he has usurped! So, lucre
started swelling his multiple-pockets cats and dogs. Reportedly, students even
arranged sit-in demonstrations demanding their inclusion in the demographically
super-saturated tuition batches of Riku. His presence was a must in the local ma
rriage ceremonies. He even had to inaugurate a local KG school! Money is, undoub
tedly, concomitant with status. Riku's village club 'Torun Songho' accorded a h-
u-g-e reception to him for which he had to sacrifice 5,000 Tk. to the club, luke
warmly though. Last but not the least, who does not know that money never comes
alone? Money attracted the locust of goat-bearded, umbrellaed and unbearded and
un-umbrellaed match-makers! Riku was inundated with matrimonial offers. Story g
oes to the extent that the local beauty queen and the daughter of the principal
discovered her Prince Charming in Riku Bhai! This mega-star popularity of Riku m
ight have incensed the local budding mastaans. They started to pelt stones at th
e tin-roofed palace of the most eligible and sought-after bachelor of that local
ity. Most of the attacks were launched nocturnally with the end in view to creat
e an eerie environment. Who commanded what did not reach the ears of the eager-b
eavers, but it was reported that Riku Bhai started to teach English in three col
leges simultaneously in the neighboring thana with permanent (mind it!) accommod
ation in the house of the one-daughtered Chairman of the college governing commi
ttee. The sun may set in the British Empire, but Riku Bhai has proved that the s
un will never set in the empire of English language pedagogy.
Robert Bruce meets his Waterloo!
It was the year 1994. The whole university was throbbing with football fever. We
were discussing football in an evening adda and researching what was at the bac
k of the mind of Rene Heguita when he started running with the ball leaving the
goal-post orphaned as if there were no tomorrows, a handsome and well-dressed ge
ntleman appeared in the tea-stall. The gentleman was impressive and seemed to be
the anthropomorphic version of Apollo. Leaving Heguita perpetually in the middl
e of the field like the Keatsian lover on the vase, Jasim started to brief me ab
out the professor- like 'green' gentleman. According to Jasim and others around
us, 1994 World Cup (WC), was the fourth tournament for our Adonis in the univers
ity hall of residence! Seeing me engrossed in arithmetic, the addarus assured me
that it was a fact and every son of a gentleman in the campus knows about it. H
is was a case of excessive attention to the fair-sex and the reverse to academic
matters. The end product was his emergence as the 'fajil' (senior-most, pun int
ended) student in the university. The silver-lining in the cloud was that he did
not leave the university without a degree and his divided loyalty made him achi
eve a world record. The longest period of studentship and the highest number of
WCs enjoyed in a university dormitory! I suggested immediate contact with the Gu
innesswallahs.
[* Sarwar Morshed is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English, Univer
sity of Chittagong.]