Dateline: January 21, 2015 The very first line of Kamalakumar Majumdar's 'Antorjoli Jatra' reads, "Light is gradually coming." We rarely find dawn breaking with such timeless Sahajiya pathos in Bengali literature. This tone is very common in French poetry. When Jean Renoir, the guru of our guru Satyajit Ray, came to Calcutta for the shooting of 'The River'—the film that earned a place in the Criterion Collection—he was enchanted by Kamalakumar, who was a scholar of French. He had said that the memory of being in the company of someone like Kamalakumar was an important event in his life. But enough of all this. Let me get to the thought that brought this line to mind. This morning I woke up before my roommate, and while waiting in my usual expectation for him to wake up, at some point I ended up rousing him from sleep. We both went for PT together. But that's not the point. The point is, this shouldn't have happened! Could it be that I've actually become punctual? This too is possible! Coming out of the room, I saw that the light Sunil-guru spoke of after Kamalakumar hadn't arrived yet. A hazy darkness wrapped in fog. Watching nature's hidden play of light and shadow, we all gathered for PT. I felt droplets hitting my head and face—not rain, but fog. When I started walking, I saw that even the walking track was wet. So much so that it seemed as if there had been a good shower last night. You couldn't quite tell—the road wasn't rain-bathed, it was dew-bathed. On our first day at PATC, we had given our word about norm-setting—how we would conduct ourselves, how we wouldn't—Pacta sunt servanda, meaning 'agreements must be kept.' Among the agreements, 'flowers must not be plucked' wasn't there; 'tree leaves must not be touched' wasn't there either. Flowers can't be plucked, fine; but leaves can surely be touched. I touched them. The shiver that dew-soaked leaves suddenly send through fingers numbed by cold—that can't be described in writing. The mind was then murmuring, on leaf after leaf falls the night's dew... There were no birds, they were still sleeping. Birds don't have PT, they have winter. In the fog you couldn't see things even a little distance away. Something seemed to be hanging from the goalpost over there. What? What was it? Not a corpse, surely? Moving a bit toward the field, I saw in the light of a dust-covered lamp post through the fog that what was hanging from the goalpost was a large overcoat; in the gap around its neck area, I noticed that someone had forgotten to turn off the light on the second floor of the post office last night. The grayness-tinged old field where winter night and dawn meet in conjugal bliss. The friendship between dust and frost particles. The entire set of Saptapadi is there, Uttam is there too, only Suchitra is missing... ha ha ha. In the sun's sweet slumber, our walking or shivering. Trembling on lips, 'Muktisnan'..."From the assembly of melodies I've brought my heart to the bridal chamber of flowers (friend)—if you can, don't catch me, don't bind me with garlands..." Right beside me I hear a colleague singing, "Seeing you makes me feel as if I've known you for a thousand years, as if there was acquaintance..." No, Hemanta fell silent, defeated by Andrew Kishore. By then the sun was slowly stretching. Behind us, a masculine voice was spreading tenderness with grace... Here my drop-by-drop offering,/ These compassionate moments drink deeply/ From my heart's cupped palms./ O you who are incomparable,/ O prosperous one,/ What I have given you is your own gift—/ You have made me as indebted as you have accepted... With just a little peek of sunshine it began... Say, hero—say, lift high my head! Bowing my head, I see that lofty peak of the Himalayas!... It felt wonderful. The touch of melody washed away all the discord of PT. Who says police voices have no tune, no tenderness? Ah! That melody-destroying twin-armed brother must be fed two and a half cups of Nescafe. We were passing by the lake. The trees on the other side were about to slip down the damp, slippery banks of the lake and fall into the water when the mist stopped them; that mist wasn't from fire, but from water. There's such a strong urge to dip fingers in it and touch them to lips. Shadow of mist on the water's body. The water's form is evaporating but not ending. What an ethereal scene! A little over there, the small bonsai-shaped shrub-like trees, trimmed small, mark boundaries. They're not rangon, but rangon's brothers. Well, what are their names? This not knowing the names of trees—it's very disturbing! Coming to PATC and being plant-ignorant and flower-ignorant is causing me tremendous distress. I'm thinking of befriending someone who knows tree names, knows about flowers. Is there anyone like that? Those head-bowed trees on the other side stand silently by the roadside in a forest atmosphere. The chirping of birds has begun in their branches. This dawn looks like evening. At this moment 'Aranyer Dinratri' came to mind; not Sunil's, but Satyajit's. Ah! How one simply wants to love that path! If Jibanananda had come here, he would have said again, "Here near the forest I have pitched my camp; all night in the southern breeze, in the moonlight of the sky, I hear a doe calling—whom does she call!" Suddenly I discovered, calling! Who calls? The trainer's whistle calls, a little distance away the swans call. They call to teach, call to say something. What do they teach? Body stretching, a little exercise, a bit of running around. That's it! PT is over, not the swan's call. They call. A group of white, good-natured people who don't bow their heads. (I'm thinking other thoughts. From now on, won't eating swan meat become difficult? This idea that I'm having about going to Jahangirnagar University this Friday to eat duck meat—what will become of that? Well, do they only cook swans there?) Watching the romance between butterfly and rose in the shadow of the morning sky, I returned to my room. On the way back, a colleague said, "Today we have so-and-so sir's class. He 'kills you while making you laugh' in class. I'm waiting with eager anticipation to attend his class." I too, swaying with these thoughts of the joy of this future happy death, climbed the dormitory stairs. I began to prepare mentally with great concentration for the laughter. The room boy came and asked, "Sir, what do you need?" I disappointed him by saying, "Nothing needed." Turning him away like this has become the scenario for most of the time every day. What to do! Apart from a few books and this laptop, nothing else is needed! A little later at 7:25, my roommate left for breakfast. I'm alone in the room. Now if I want, I can change out of my PT clothes directly without using any lungi or anything, I can dance throwing my arms and legs about as I wish, I can shower with the door open, while showering I can scream and sing the ugliest songs in the world in a hoarse voice at the top of my lungs. Even when coming out after showering, I can wrap the towel just to ward off cold, not shame. I can return to primitiveness whenever I feel like it. The joy of shameless solitude brings great happiness. I shaved, made faces at the mirror to see if making faces makes me look better than last time. I went to the bathroom for a shower. A song somehow entered my head. Turning on the tap and letting the water fall into the bucket, I began singing that very song at the top of my voice, matching the scale of my voice to the scale of the sound of water falling. The scale of the water falling sound became the scale of my bathroom concert. There's a ritual for bathing on winter mornings. You have to look at the water, muster up courage and pick up the mug, then take water in the mug and pour that water on your feet while making "ooh ooh" sounds, pour the next mug of water on your head and body with a heroic roar, and if you can somehow get through the challenge of the next mug, that's it! Victory is yours! You've won! The subsequent mugs no longer seem as unbearable as those famous boys who like your girlfriend's photos. Today while bathing, I felt that the happiest and most peaceful thing in this world is to pour ice-cold water on your head while screaming and singing 'Mere Samne Wale Khidki Mein Ek Chand Ka Tukra Rehta Hai' on a winter morning. Ah, what joy bathroom by bathroom! No, I came out wrapped in the towel and got ready. I'll go to class. The first class was with the Rector Sir. Sir always inspires us by giving life-oriented lessons. Today was the same. No one sleeps in his class. Whether or not sleepiness comes in a training session depends less on the trainees than on the trainer. I'm sharing some of Sir's words in my own way: # If any junior colleague of yours does some work under your instruction and later any problem arises regarding that work, then taking all the responsibility for that work on your shoulders is your duty. # Don't say anything negative about your boss to your boss's boss. If he asks about this matter, then admit your own fault. Tell him that you're trying to correct yourself. # If someone tries to be hostile with you, if you don't pay attention to their mischief, speak with them with a smiling face, and silently, quietly continue doing your work, then you'll see that this will put them in the greatest discomfort. # Give time to your family as much as possible. Even if you can't manage lunch, try to have dinner sitting together with everyone in the family. Inquire about everyone. This will strengthen your family bonds, reduce gaps with family members, and you'll be able to solve small problems right at the table. Sometimes invite your children's friends to your house, talk with them, give them time. You need to know who your children associate with.
Regarding that last point, let me share something about my own family. I was very fortunate that we didn’t have a UPS at home when I was little. In the evenings when the power would go out, my father would take us two brothers and sit with us on the veranda. We would wait eagerly every evening for the electricity to fail. My little brother and I would sit on father’s lap and listen to him tell us how electric lights had stolen the moonlight and kept us enchanted and deceived. Father would teach us to recognize the stars, how to touch and feel moonlight, what it looked like when moonlight came and slipped away across the leaves of trees—father would tell us all these things. There wasn’t a single holiday when father didn’t help mother with household chores—cutting fish and vegetables, sweeping and cleaning the house, washing clothes. Father might not have brought home the most expensive food, but we ate it in the most precious way possible. Father would say, “It’s because your mother manages the home all day that I can go out and work.” I never once saw father criticize mother’s cooking. Father called mother (and still calls her) the Home Minister. Mother was often ill. When there was only dal and mashed potato for dinner, I never learned from childhood to sit at the table and ask, “Isn’t there anything else?”…Rather, father would repeatedly acknowledge that mother spent her busy days with us two brothers despite her weak body. He would praise all of mother’s work. Mother would become happy like a little child and forget all her troubles, sitting down to chat with father, telling him everything that had happened during the day.
Father says, women are very childlike. If you hurt their feelings, it comes back manifold. My mother taught children at a kindergarten school. She did this purely for pleasure. Running around with us, managing all the household work, maintaining social obligations—mother had to do all of this too. I can say with certainty that if you give your wife the respect she deserves, even if you don’t reap the benefits, your children will. The person in the family who doesn’t earn money also feels just as tired as you do. There’s no connection between earning money or not and feeling exhausted or not. I’ve observed that if all household work were paid for, my mother’s salary would be at least double mine. If life’s small joys can be enjoyed with love, then not only does life’s accounting balance out, but there’s a bonus too. Food tastes good not because of flavor, but because of love. That’s why everyone’s mother’s cooking is the most delicious food in the world. Those who have been away from home for a long time know how easily one would say goodbye to all the world’s riches just for the longing to eat mother’s lentil dal and fried eggplant!
Leaving personal matters aside, let me return to PATC. After the class ended, walking through the corridor to another classroom, a kind of foolish envy arose. Remember the montage plot of past and present events in the old professor’s life near the garden by the pine grove in ‘Wild Strawberries’? As I was thinking of rushing to touch the intoxicating beauty of the pine grove beyond the rose garden after crossing the corridor, I noticed two gardeners in the rose garden tending carefully to the red splendor of the roses up close. They were loosening the soil around the roots and watering the plants. We’re not allowed to wander in the garden. I began to think that if I had to become a gardener to get close to the roses, I’d be willing to do even that. How much the beloved does to gain proximity to the beloved! This is just a simple job! Uttamkumar in ‘Chhadoreshi’ and Sushanta Pal at PATC! The heroine in the movie and the flower in life. Both keep the heart alive! What does man live by? Man lives by loving, in love.
While wandering in this topsy-turvy kingdom, I came to learn Total Quality Management; a Joint Secretary of the government was to teach us. When teaching how systems work in quality management, the audio-visual system kept failing repeatedly due to the poor quality of the projector. The sir spoke about many things. I follow one of his ideas too. I call it Leave to Live. In the nail box at your home, you’ve seen several times that there are many nails that are useless because their pointed ends are blunt or defective. Now the question is, why haven’t you thrown away that junk? Why have you kept them in the box? What use will they be? Rather, they delay finding good nails. If you can’t let go of attachment to bad things, good things get lost or can’t be found when needed for work. These old habits and problems must be fixed bit by bit every day. The Japanese call this Kaizen, meaning gradually improving a system bit by bit until the entire system becomes quality at some point.
Another example of Kaizen is: suppose you are an education officer of a sub-district. You have many schools under you. On the walls of those schools’ toilets, many things are written. Like P+R; friend, stay happy; you and I, the rest are all bastards; the leaves of trees sway and flutter, your memory comes to mind…and many other such things. You can take the initiative to arrange painting of those walls. It’s very small work, but its impact is very big. The sir taught quite wonderfully. The funny thing is, he’s the same sir that my colleague claimed would “kill you laughing.” I prepared myself for explosive laughter and ended up finishing the sir’s class like Ramgarh’s chick. Once again I understood that before believing anyone’s words, one must know well whether they’re speaking from knowledge or hearsay. One shouldn’t start jumping around before being sure.
Next came the most entertaining sir of the day. He gave us a class on Physical Education. There couldn’t be a better element for mimicry! Some are seriously humorous, some are humorously serious. The sir belonged to the second group. His seriousness was more enjoyable than watchable. Just to watch his gestures during teaching, one could sit in class holding back the urge for the toilet. Other speakers’ lips spoke, but with this sir, not just his lips—his eyes, hands, facial expressions, neck, belly, feet, waist, hair, even his tie and glasses spoke! The sir was trying to involve all of us in such a serious manner that it seemed like the poor man would burst into tears any moment! He taught in such a strange way, scrunching up his eyes, nose, and mouth, that it felt like watching ‘The Kid’ movie. One of us said, “Sir, it’s very cold. Much suffering.” The sir said, “Ah! We should not go against Nature. Respect Winter.” Having said this, he took off his coat and placed it on the chair. While teaching about various diseases, he was talking about cancer. “At one time people thought, If there is cancer, there is no answer. But this statement itself is a wrong answer.” Then while talking about cancer at various stages, lowering his voice somewhat strangely, he said that if someone has fourth-degree cancer, then their only task is to keep remembering Almighty God. Just like in the ‘Dhamal’ movie when the air traffic controller tells them to remember God’s name before the plane crashes, the sir’s manner and gesture looked exactly like that.
The sir has a funny habit. While speaking, he suddenly says, “Something came to mind…should I tell you?” Before starting to teach a slide, he’d say “This slide isn’t that necessary”…and then he’d teach it for a long time. Then he’d quickly skip six slides and go to the next one, saying, “Due to lack of time, I skipped some important slides, none of which are needed for the exam.” Someone asked, “Sir, is it better to breathe through the nose or through the mouth?” The sir said, “When needed, take from all directions, release in all directions. No problem!” While teaching, he said, “Listen, let me tell you all a story. Didn’t we all hear a story in childhood about two boys who found a monkey in the forest? Then what happened? What else would happen! What was supposed to happen…happened…you understand. Heh heh…” The sir’s story ended. Anyone seeing his strange seriousness and body language would inevitably remember the character of Preity Zinta’s grandmother in the movie ‘Kal Ho Naa Ho’! When he talks about TV, he does so in such a manner that it seems like he actually has a TV under his hands. The way he looks, the way he speaks, his hand and foot movements, the way he sways his head and body while talking—when all of this was happening before our eyes, it felt like watching a cartoon. The sir has no death. I’m sure the sir will become Casper after death. The sir is immortal. Remember President Abraham Lincoln’s definition of democracy? I’m saying the same about the sir’s class: It was a lecture of the health, for the health, by the health.
Now I come to the real point. “Doctor” is written before the sir’s name. Seeing the sir’s knowledge about our body mechanism and his extraordinary way of speaking about various diseases, I had assumed he was a very great doctor. Going to such an entertaining person, patients would get half-cured just by themselves. The sir’s class was so good that on the teacher evaluation sheet, I wrote “Excellent” for the sir in all categories. I learned about the sir’s background later. He did his honors and masters in Physics from Chittagong University. Then he took a course in Physical Education and did his PhD in the same subject. (He’s quite possibly the only PhD degree holder in this subject in Bangladesh.) He’s a famous consultant in this sector in the country.
A little while ago I went to the veranda and saw that even in the gray twilight, the soft, soft light of a distant lamppost that catches the eye is slowly spreading through the night. In the evening, the cruel paws of the white bear pack had trampled the grass, and the compassionate aged thin night’s sleepless ones have lent their ears to listen to that suffering, trembling and shivering. What fools these crickets are, to compete with those rascal jackals!