Dateline: January 22, 2015 A robot arrives at dawn and lifts you from your bed, then drops you to the floor. Thump! Even after this, won't you wake up? Of course you will! Then what? Will you be furious? Feel like grabbing the robot and giving it a beating? So? Go ahead, beat it! Do robots feel pain? Rather, your hand will split open, and you'll be the one hurting. Will wounds heal in this cold? Think about it! And what fault is it of the robot's anyway? You bought it precisely to wake you up. It waits all night long for five o'clock to strike, and then immediately lifts you with both hands and drops you down with a thud to wake you up. You set an alarm on your mobile, the alarm goes off right on time, and you turn off the alarm and go back to sleep. That's exactly why this robot was specially made for you. Just imagine, what would it be like if such a thing existed? This morning my roommate was talking about just such a wake-up robot. No robot here, just a mobile phone, and that's what woke us up. Walking briskly, I heard the sharp sound of a horn piercing through the body of darkness in the distance. The cars never sleep. Throwing red spinning lights, an ambulance races through the fog to bring the Rector Sir. Being sick during this blockade is actually the safest thing. The other side of the square, with its Christmas tree, reminds us that Christmas has passed. These trees have a touch of aristocracy about them. Layer upon layer touched by an artist's brush. A track runs through the middle of a row of areca nut trees. We walk, leaving the palm-leaf sentry-like trees on both sides. No light, so no shadows either. Some people are exhaling vapor from their mouths. We're smart, we don't smoke, we just emit vapor. Light pierces the sky's body and emerges. In this dim light, the crooked arrangement of medium-built trees reminds us that scattered doesn't necessarily mean disordered. This very scattering is their order. Running and running on this wet earth, I feel like getting lost in that maze of trees. Tell me, if someone gets lost, who will search for them? Can someone who has no one to look for them really be lost? Why would someone who has no one to feel hurt by their absence disappear? I think, if someone had searched for me, would I not have gotten lost? PT begins on the tennis court. This brown-green ground is fenced all around with thick iron wire. The wire arrangement twists and curves upward. (Or does it descend downward?) Frozen dewdrops roll and fall along the thin bodies of the wires. This scene of dewdrops rolling down is quite beautiful. Descending little by little, resting in the lap of a groove, when another friend arrives, embracing it to the chest, the drop grows larger, and with its heavy body unable to hold itself anymore, like Russian 'Ivan, the Fool,' it tumbles and hides in the earth. This continues. Let no one go in this old race, this race has no end. PT began. Could Sir AJ (Ananta Jalil), who knows how to make the impossible possible, dance this cadet-dance too? Swaying hips, spinning arms, kicking feet, with the constant explosion of the neck—what a dance of plaster of Paris statues! PT dance. Spreading, scattering, throwing the body horizontally, diagonally, vertically, swinging it in the air—all of our wild, exuberant, uninhibited physical exercises. There's one exercise where you have to keep both feet completely on the ground and squat by bending your knees. You bring both hands together, place both elbows in the gap between the two knees, press downward and lean the whole body forward. Who knows why they make us do this exercise! I mean, we all have to do this exercise every day anyway! After PT, everyone brings their hands together, spreads them toward the sky above their heads, and while shaking everything around and going hahahoho, throws the entire upper part of their body downward as much as they want. This supposedly keeps the heart healthy. Finishing PT with laughter and returning to the dormitory in that line. Tell me, if you have two buckets side by side, keep slightly less cold water in one and pour water from the other bucket on yourself first, doesn't it feel comfortable to pour from that one afterward? You can try playing this psychological game. Good thing, today's bathroom song was "Ye dil deewana..." along with "Sakhi, bhavana kahare bole..." Today's first two sessions were Liberation War classes. Rector Sir would take them. Sir himself is a freedom fighter. In today's class, I understood where a freedom fighter's real strength lies. In emotion. If intelligence is also combined with it, then that combination becomes something to behold. What's it like? I often speak of 'emotional intelligence.' What is this really? Let me explain a bit. Suppose you have tremendous emotion about something. What people can accomplish with this emotion, much of it would never be possible to do in a normal state. Emotion brings courage, brings strength, brings determination. If you also have intelligence along with this, then it's possible for you to accomplish masterpiece-level work. If you can spread your intelligence even a little into the space of your emotion, and if the goal remains correct, then you can do anything that humans are capable of doing. Now let's return to Sir's words. Sir is 58 years old. Teaching history at this age is not easy. Yet we saw how Sir, without any slides, told us everything significant about the pre-history and post-history of the Liberation War completely intact. Along with the events behind the main events, fragmentary parallel insights. Sir is an officer from BCS batch '83. Despite having the opportunity, he didn't apply to BCS using his freedom fighter certificate. His reasoning behind this: "I had gone to war to die. I didn't die, that's already too much! What more could I possibly want?" Anyway, Sir started the class by saying, "I'm very happy with your performance these past few days. I don't want any of you to receive a show-cause. If you get a show-cause, there will be no chance of staying in the top thirty." Hearing this, I felt a strong urge to receive a show-cause. I want freedom from the burden of people's unnecessary concerns. I won't be able to stay in that top thirty anyway. If I received a show-cause, at least people would think I was supposed to be among those 30 people, but was deliberately not kept there because I received a show-cause! Ha ha ha... I started feeling like life would be meaningless if I couldn't get a show-cause in training! I noticed something interesting today. The people in villages actually know Bangabandhu as 'Mujibor' or 'Sheikh Saheb.' No matter how great a person you become, your close people or village folk will still call you by your familiar name. Once again today I could feel how deep and clear the appeal of Bangabandhu's March 7th speech was! Many freedom fighters carried the words of that great speech in their minds and blood even more than they remembered their parents. Just listening to the March 7th speech, many people went to war without thinking ahead or behind, leaving everything behind. What greater quality could a leader possibly have? A question came up: who are the freedom fighters? Sir gave the answer in a roundabout way like this: a few days ago it was in the papers that the last living soldier of World War II had died. Yet he had not participated in World War II; during the war he was training to go to war, and the war ended before his training was complete. We all understood what we were meant to understand. Quoting from the famous book 'Pakistan: Failure in National Integration' by the renowned scholar Dr. Rounaq Jahan, Sir showed how a state can break apart due to political shortsightedness. Rounaq Jahan married another great scholar, Rehman Sobhan, at age 65. She says, "When people get married, I didn't. So when people don't get married, I did." There's a story that during her time at Dhaka University, she was in love with Dr. Mizanur Rahman Shelly, one of the best students in Dhaka University's history. They were in the same class. Rounaq Jahan realized that if she stayed in the same class, it would be impossible for her to beat Mizanur Rahman Shelly and come first. Understanding this, she took a gap year and enrolled in the next year's course. Rounaq Jahan came first in her class. This incident made a deep impression on Mizanur Rahman Shelly's mind and he reached this conclusion: "A woman who cannot accept her husband being more qualified than her—whatever else might be possible, living under the same roof with her is impossible." I don't know why, but hearing this story reminded me of the 'failed' love story between poet Binoy Majumdar and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, the most famous scholar of post-colonial theory. Using mobile phones in classrooms or corridors outside classrooms is prohibited in PATC. This week I've been spending from morning to evening without a mobile phone. In the evening I return to my room and sit down to write the 'PATC Diary.' When someone comes to the room, we have to talk, and meanwhile fingers keep moving on the keyboard. When the writing is finished, I post it, talk to my parents, and fall asleep. The most peaceful thing in the world is: living without a mobile phone; living in such a way—which is needed by time, which no one will misunderstand as intentional. The fact that I can turn off my mobile phone for as long as I want whenever I feel like it—this is one of the most beautiful feelings in the world. In PATC, mobile phones have to be kept off most of the day. What a delightful rule! The taste of freedom from mobile-torture is truly wonderful! Today an incident happened in Rector Sir's class. A girl's mobile phone rang. Yet mobiles were supposed to be left in the room. The funny thing is, the girl happens to be one of the most serious students in our batch. Everyone is thinking, how could she make this mistake! Meanwhile, I'm thinking something else. In this world, it's always the most serious people who make these kinds of silly mistakes—it has happened, is happening, and will continue to happen in the future. The easiest way to avoid such embarrassing situations is to be not serious, but sincere. Being aware of what I'm doing, what I'm not doing. If I become busy showing and being busy with whether others are aware that I'm being aware... I don't see what I should actually be busy with. We all received punishment for her mistake. What punishment? Two extra sessions were given after lunch. Someone was telling me, "She is really serious. Why did she make such a silly mistake?" I replied, "Maybe it was a serious call!" After class, there was a scolding session. Due to lack of time, many of us went to the next class without having breakfast.
Remember the protagonist from the movie ‘Yojimbo’? Right after Rector Sir’s class ended, a joint secretary who looked exactly like him came to take our class. A class on the whole saga of research. What it is, why it matters, how it’s done—everything! The sir was saying in the course of conversation, “Research is like cooking. Everyone can do it.” Just then, a conversation from ‘Ratatouille’ flashed through my mind:
Gusteau: What do I always say, Rémy? Anyone can cook.
Rémy: Well yeah, anyone can. That doesn’t mean that anyone should.
After the afternoon class ended, walking toward the cafeteria down the corridor in the blazing sun, I was thinking with a heap of irritation that I’d have to return to that red-carpeted room again at 2:15. But why should we all suffer this punishment? Punishment is what you get, not what you deserve. What else could be done! I noticed the sun-baked bricks of the building beside the open garden gleaming in the light.
I made some observations about asking questions or making comments in class:
One. You can judge a person by what he asks.
Two. Those who have the habit of talking too much will talk anyway. What’s it like? Let me tell you a story. Someone was asked, “Have you had breakfast?” He replied, “Oh no, brother. The maid didn’t come. The maid’s little boy has been sick for the past week. She took him to the doctor. The doctors are apparently on some kind of strike, so the doctor isn’t seeing patients. What will become of this country!”
Three. There’s no need to ask anything in class. Someone or other will ask it anyway. There’s no need to be irritatingly forward with your comments in class. Someone or other will faithfully do this job for you. Hearing certain comments, I’m reminded of something Plato said:
Wise men speak because they have something to say;
Fools speak because they have to say something.
Today’s diary got posted late. Not that I was particularly busy. In fact, I was freer than most other days. Then why the delay? When you have no work at hand, busyness increases. Idle people are busier.
Tomorrow at 10 AM I’m going to visit Jahangirnagar University. Not today. Let me lie down. Good night.