PEITC Diary: February 1st

Dateline: February 1, 2015
 
Vice Sir! Viiiice Siiir!! A Rector's Medal has been found. Please collect quickly with proper documentation. To receive the medal, you must correctly answer three questions:
One. Are you regularly buttering up as usual?
Two. Do you properly bring up irrelevant topics under the pretense of asking questions in class?
Three. Do you attend class with sleepless eyes?
Only if you answer yes to all three questions will this be awarded to you.

A few people were having fun saying this during PT walk today. Just three days ago, seeing the sun's peek-a-boo, I thought winter had fled! Far from it! Winter didn't keep its word. This morning the cold seemed to settle in more fiercely than yesterday. Dawn light broke—crisp, crystalline morning light. In the white dawn, everyone in their white morning-walk clothes looks somehow more beautiful. The shroud of whiteness covers all ugly forms.

The punishment for not going to class a bit early was having to sit in the front row. That's what I got today. Sitting in the front row in class, right before the teacher, drowsily listening, I heard: not "young woman," one should say "young lady." There's "young man" but no "young woman"—that sounds vulgar. "I love you"—this was written on a slide. The teacher made someone stand up and asked them to read what was written. That gentleman read aloud, "Sir, I love you." I sang to myself, I had nothing to say... I watched and watched, he fell in love...

After class everyone rushed out helter-skelter. The teacher's class had run a bit late. All this hurry was to reach the next class on time. I proposed that an elevated corridor be built so we could reach class on time. A cry arose: "Bravo! Bravo!" The next class was on IELTS speaking. Do you remember that magnificent speech from Charlie Chaplin's "The Great Dictator"? Today I understood that its extraordinariness lies not just in delivery but in several other aspects as well. I watched the speech again in today's class. That was the best part of today's class. Sometimes the accessories of a lecture give more pleasure than the lecture itself. We listened to "Let It Go" from "Frozen," and once again it was proven that to chase away students' drowsiness in class, providing entertainment is superior to imparting knowledge.

Then came Bhupen Hazarika Sir to teach. "Why salary, brother? You have a job, that's why." Having said this, Sir said that if your salaries were given based on evaluation, the country's people would get better service. I'm talking about all jobs, I mean yours. I liked this statement. "Paradise lies beneath mother's feet. But where is paradise really? Check and see—beneath mother's feet is just the floor. Then why was that said? The children who are here with their mothers need to take this learning: how to create that paradise. At the same time, know how to control children." Hearing this, everyone laughed till they were finished! One of Sir's verbal tics is saying "Haaaa..." repeatedly. Today Sir said this exactly 153 times! I counted by making tally marks in my notebook. I've decided to count teachers' verbal tics in class. Sleep doesn't always come. What else should I do in class when sleep doesn't come? Something needs to be done while sitting in class!

The one who came to teach next had a voice exactly like Sachin Tendulkar's. He conducted the class by having us give presentations. A very good teaching technique. This was the last class before lunch. There wasn't supposed to be any class after this one today. But there was. This is a very common occurrence at PATC. There's no class, yet class happens, it just happens. The one who came to teach pronounces Switzerland very beautifully as "Suicideland." One of his dialogues seemed like this: Bengali books are written in Bengali. English books are written in English. With Sir's this epochal discovery, our book review class ended.

Several activities always go on in class. Like writing something letter-like on small pieces of paper and throwing them at the person next to you or someone nearby. Drawing cartoons on paper and writing the teacher's name or some batchmate's name underneath. (How PATC has reduced our age! Ah, ah!) While doing all this, I counted that Sir said the word "actually" exactly 73 times in class (actually!). For book reviews, each of us was assigned a book through lottery. Most were dry, difficult types of books. My lot fell to: "Birds of Bangladesh." After hearing others' book titles, I'm feeling quite fortunate.

In the evening, after finishing volleyball, I sat chatting at the coffee corner. After consuming 6 cups of coffee, I went to the auditorium after evening to "see" and hear the cultural committee's musical practice. This rehearsal happens almost daily. After spending the evening in tune and out of tune, I returned to my room after dinner and watched the short French film "The Red Balloon." The 34-minute short film is by Albert Lamorisse. The story is about a small boy in Paris and a red balloon. Through Vittorio De Sica's "Bicycle Thieves," we got masterpieces like Satyajit Ray's "Pather Panchali" or Bimal Roy's "Do Bigha Zamin." Just think about that movie's final scene! Poor Antonio walking through the crowd holding his son Bruno's hand. Both father and son are trying to hold back tears. Where will they stop? This question has never been answered. Not even in the recent "The Pursuit of Happyness." Five-year-old son walks alongside father Christopher Gardner. Perhaps the credit of great filmmakers lies here. The actor Lamberto who played the central character Antonio in "Bicycle Thieves"—the movie that inspired Satyajit Ray to write his name in the filmmaker's ledger—had no acting training. He was a factory worker. In the short film I watched today, the main character was played by the director's son Pascal Lamorisse. The director's daughter also acted, holding a blue balloon. After watching "Bicycle Thieves," famous French aesthetician André Bazin said, "Bicycle Thieves is one of the prime examples of pure cinema. It has no actors, no story, no set; that is, in creating the perfect aesthetic illusion of reality, there's no (so-called) cinema left." The same French connoisseur's words apply to "The Red Balloon" with its straightforward story told in utterly simple thoughts, simple language, and simple words.

Having two terabytes of movie-laden hard drives within reach but not watching movies is like lying next to a beauty and falling asleep. Enough is enough, no more! From now on I'll write the "PATC Diary" a bit shorter and fill my bioscope notebook a little more with the saved time. This trusted old habit must not be allowed to disappear.