Reunion Reminiscences

Who Can Decorate the Rainbow?

By: Sarwar Morshed∗

‘Memory is a strange bell-Jubilee and knell.’

- Emily Dickinson.
Memory is a bizarre bell. On the occasion of the 3 rd CU English Alumni Re-union, the
'jubilee metaphor', I am sure, has preoccupied the hearts of the alumni. But when I cast a
retrospective glance at my university days, I feel elated and dejected simultaneously. I
feel overjoyed when I hear that my friends are going upwards, rung after rung, in the
professional ladder. And the 'knell metaphor' also 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 diachronic meeting, the great 'marriage of minds', some of my
bounduley friends and acquaintances 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 ‘bohemians’ because 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 act as an
Imam in a jamaat, sing a Tagore song with the skill of a maestro, indulge in philandering
a la mode Casanova. I frequently recollect his heroics in a class of NS madam. She was
rebuking us en masse for coming to study literature without 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 extra-attention to their note-books. The moment
she showed the 'I knew it was beyond your means' type of facial expression, our Prabhat
stood up and kept reciting 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 financial problems but
still that was not the biggest factor. What worsened his condition, I think, was his inborn
bohemian nature. He was a bit restless and uncalculative. I remember one morning we
were having breakfast in the campus. I was struggling with the second paratha and my
stomach refused to host 50% of it. So, I surrendered 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 parathas in the breakfast if he had the money. I was sure it was a
'gul' and egged him on to eat 20 parathas with the assurance that I would finance his
breakfast bonanza. 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 increased the
volume of the stereo-set. The attending boy was all smile and performing his 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 chased
the highly hormonal group of the fair sex. Whenever he used to stage a comeback to the
campus after a sojourn in his village home, our auditory organs were bombarded with his
success stories with girls. May be he reaped cathartic pleasure by sharing his 'pre-mature'
and forbidden experiences with us. But he was the incarnation of paradox to me - he used
to say his prayers regularly and yet he indulged in unbridled passion. Passion he had for
reading. He was a good reader and a better writer. As the born bounduley he was, he
ignored the prescribed texts and his result belied his intellectual stature. His time and
stamina were consumed, in the words of Swinburne, by the 'perfume of old passion'. This
obsession, euphemistically speaking, made him an underachiever. He seemed to be
conscious about that but his actions did not speak louder than his words. I can vividly
remember my last meeting with him. The night before Eid-ul-Fitr in 1999 when he was
preparing himself for the final examination with the determination to celebrate his
maiden Eid in Chittagong, Prabhat came to my house and convinced me that he was
under compulsion to go to his village. Considering the weight of 'reasons 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 with 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 two years,
reportedly joined a college in a remote corner of the country. Because of his distinctive
projection of himself through tonsorial and sartorial uniqueness, Riku Bhai was not an
unknown quantity in the English Department of the University 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 hangs 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 rolling stones, the authorities housed Riku Bhai in the principal's quarters.
Our Riku Bhai ousted the principal from his palace! The catalogue of his achievement
does not end here. He was given a blank cheque in planning his class routine and offering
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 marriage ceremonies. He even had
to inaugurate a local KG school! Money is, undoubtedly, 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, lukewarmly 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 goes 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 might have incensed the local budding mastaans. They started to pelt stones at
the tin-roofed palace of the most eligible and sought-after bachelor of that locality. Most
of the attacks were launched nocturnally with the end in view to create an eerie
environment. Who commanded what did not reach the ears of the eager-beavers, but it
was reported that Riku Bhai started to teach English in three colleges simultaneously in
the neighboring thana with permanent (mind it!) accommodation in the house of the one-
daughtered Chairman of the college governing committee. The sun may set in the British
Empire, but Riku Bhai has proved that the sun 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 back 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 gentleman appeared in the tea-
stall. The gentleman was impressive and seemed to be the anthropomorphic version of
Apollo. Leaving Heguita perpetually in the middle of the field like the Keatsian lover on
the vase, Jasim started to brief me about 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 university 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.
His 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 intended) 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 achieve 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 Guinnesswallahs.

[∗ Sarwar Morshed is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English, University of

Chittagong.]