Those Who Never Got a Chance 'Anywhere'

To those who couldn’t win, I say this: you couldn’t win, fair enough. But that doesn’t mean you should lose either.

Now, what does winning even mean?

When I got into CUET, Computer Science was the top subject in engineering. By “top subject,” I mean there was a craze for CSE at the time. Everyone believed that studying CSE would land you a good job. I came second in the admission test, which meant that in the eyes of those who didn’t get into CUET, I was perhaps second among the most qualified in the race to become an engineer. To put it even more simply, I was supposed to become the second-best engineer! Right? Or not?

But look at what I’m doing today. Why am I doing it? I never wanted to study engineering. I wanted to study literature. You know, those who study literature at university are considered second-class citizens by everyone. (Though literature, philosophy, history, anthropology, sociology, theology—these subjects make people wise in aesthetic knowledge. People remain preoccupied with factual knowledge—science and commerce—while neglecting aesthetic knowledge like literature and philosophy. This way everyone becomes human, but not humane. Aesthetic knowledge stands far above factual knowledge.) And parents don’t want their children to grow up as second-class citizens. Why do they think this way? Many still hold the belief that if you study literature, what else can you do after graduating except teach in schools, colleges, or universities? And teachers are poor, so what’s the point of becoming such a teacher? This means our parents want to see us as “something.” The question is, what is that “something”? It’s financial prosperity and a socially recognized position. We go to university not so much to study as to secure a well-paying job after graduation. In today’s world, Learning = L(Earning) = Love Earning!

In other words, the purpose of education is not knowledge acquisition, but earning money respectably. Now, for those of you who didn’t get into where you wanted to be—how successful will this purpose be? I’m trying to answer this through a bit of personal narrative.

When I was studying at Chittagong College during my intermediate years, I had a reputation as a simple, somewhat naive, studious student. Well, studious… so what did I study? Whatever I enjoyed reading. What did I enjoy reading? Certainly not physics, chemistry, or mathematics. Earlier, during my school days, I used to hear that good students should like mathematics. Isn’t that amusing? We grow up in a society where even what we should enjoy is predetermined for us. Like in the movie 3 Idiots, right after birth we’re stamped as either doctors or engineers! There shouldn’t really be anything called “should enjoy,” should there? Take this example: there’s no such thing as “you should enjoy Rabindranath”; even if enjoying Rabindranath becomes fashionable, still. Why should everyone have to live the same way? Not everyone will read Rabindranath—some will read newspapers too. Anyway, whether due to everyone’s pressure, fashion, or my own desire, I managed to make myself like mathematics before entering intermediate. I already had the habit of reading books outside the curriculum. After entering intermediate, when I began to realize that I genuinely enjoyed reading literature—”enjoyed” meaning truly enjoyed, not forced enjoyment—I thought that since everyone reads science fiction and “enjoys” it, as a science student I too should enjoy some scientific stories or scientific essays. I hadn’t read much science fiction before; I deliberately chose to read only non-science classic texts. I started reading. I tried to force myself to enjoy it. But I discovered that my mind was less captivated by scientific imagination than by non-scientific imagination. Science was a wrong journey for me. I didn’t share this with anyone. A few years earlier, I’d had a bad experience regarding this. When I was in sixth or seventh grade, I used to write poetry in secret. I even had two poetry notebooks. One day, after my mother caught me, she gave me a thorough brainwashing session, convincing me that writing poetry during study time was bad. With my innocent mind, I believed her words and kept my imaginative realm hidden within myself. (Of course, not believing would have risked getting beaten by my mother. My mother’s intention was undoubtedly noble, though destructive.) Imagination holds immense importance in life. If you want to achieve something good, you must practice imagining.

During my intermediate college years, I fell deeply in love with literature and the architecture of language. I would spend entire days immersed in literary works. In our time, there was no creative methodology—we had to study English and Bengali prose and poetry, write lengthy answers to elaborate questions. I could feel it within myself: while others grew weary reading even a short story, I could devour an entire novel in one sitting, hour after hour. Not every literary piece from the English and Bengali textbooks was part of our syllabus. I read everything—both what was prescribed and what lay beyond the curriculum. While others spent their time leafing through dictionaries when reading an English poem, I could contemplate what hidden meaning the author intended to convey without explicitly writing it (parallel meaning). Through this constant engagement with English and Bengali, I fell in love with the play of words. I didn’t know that memorizing dictionaries was impossible, so one day I foolishly decided I would memorize entire dictionaries. I began memorizing the Bengali Word Treasury, Sahitya Samsad’s English to Bengali Dictionary, Jathashabda, and Chambers Dictionary of Synonyms and Antonyms. While reading dictionaries, whenever I encountered a word in the last book that wasn’t included as an entry, I would pencil it in myself. I bought hundreds of language-related books, including Chalantika, dictionaries from Sahitya Samsad and Bangla Academy in both Bengali and English, various Penguin dictionaries. But I never told anyone about this. A boy studying intermediate couldn’t bear the mockery about his dreams. This is how my ex-girlfriend in mathematics got displaced by two new girlfriends: Language and Literature.

I began seeking out senior students majoring in Bengali or English literature, learning what they studied at university. Naturally, they didn’t want to give me much attention at first, but I was confident that my knowledge of language wasn’t something to be dismissed. Gradually, I started buying and reading the literature books prescribed for honors courses. I would skip classes and spend hours at Chittagong’s public library. (This truancy led to my discollegiate status during intermediate.) No one knew about any of this. If they had, they might have tried to convince me that such obsession was pointless. And perhaps I would have turned away from my passion. A person who cannot live with their passion cannot accomplish anything that stands out, anything remarkable enough to catch the eye.

Someone comes to mind very vividly at this moment. An elder brother who was studying English honours. I used to talk with him a lot. He would quiz me on English words from the dictionary. (This was a game that several of us college friends would play together.) Since I knew more grammar and vocabulary than he did, he regarded me with a mixture of envy and affection. I remember one day he said angrily, “What’s your problem, Bappi? Who gave you the bright idea to read Fowler’s ‘Modern English Usage’?” I replied, “Why, dada, what happens if I read it?” “Your results will suffer, your family will scold you.” “But that’s not happening yet, which is why no one at home says anything to me.” He said nothing more that day. If he had said anything else, perhaps I would never have gone to him again. At that time I thought Dr. S. Sen and Ramji Lal were great scholars. Guidebooks written by these two were taught in English honours classes. Since I didn’t have the intellectual capacity to read original texts directly, I had read quite a few classic texts through guidebooks written by them. I had also bought many world-famous books on physics, chemistry, and mathematics. (At this moment I recall Max Born’s Atomic Physics, Glasstone’s Physical Chemistry, I.L. Finar’s Organic Chemistry, G.H. Hardy’s An Introduction to the Theory of Numbers, and at least a hundred other authoritative books. I had even bought 10-12 world-renowned authoritative books on economics. Why had I bought them? To escape the discomfort of not having them.) But I discovered that my inner self’s most beloved subject was literature. I could write nonstop on any topic, experimenting with intricate wordplay and various aspects of linguistic beauty. More difficult words earned higher marks—this was the unwritten rule of those times. Back then I would read ‘useless subjects’ until 1 AM and then begin my ‘useful studies.’ ‘Useful studies’ meant academic coursework. Since my results were never poor, no one at home would scold me about this. I never once experienced asking my mother for money to buy books and being refused.

That foolish version of myself was lost in the dream that after intermediate, I would go study English literature at Delhi University. Why Delhi specifically? Because there I would meet Dr. S. Sen and Ramji Lal—they taught at that very university, and I could attend their classes. They were my heroes of that time, heroes whose company I could actually seek if I tried. Quite childish thinking, wasn’t it? The utterly linear thoughts of a foolish adolescent. Why foolish? What else would you call a boy who commits the ‘crime’ of studying science in intermediate while dreaming of studying literature in honours? After the test exams, I was struck by severe typhoid. Being so ill, I couldn’t study properly for the next 3-4 months and forgot much of what I had learned. Everyone advised, “If you take the exam now, you won’t be able to stand; take it next time.” In our time, there was this wonderful dream called ‘board stand’—in each group, the top 20 students in the merit list based on total marks obtained from any educational board were considered to have ‘stood.’ Only my mother said, “Give the exam. Write however you can and come back. Whatever the result, let it be.” My father, of course, never worried much about our results. As long as his son was passing, he was content.

Sometimes, even if it means going beyond the entire world,
listening to mother’s advice leads to a good ending. I took the exam and received star marks.
Star marks meant you needed at least 750 in total. In our time,
70-80 of us from Chittagong College got star marks. (I mention this so that when you compare it with how many get golden A+ from Chittagong College now, you’ll understand how difficult it was to get star marks back then.) Something interesting happened at that time. After the test exam,
I fell seriously ill for about two and a half months before the final exam, so I couldn’t study properly for a long time, couldn’t do revision, and most of what I had studied earlier had slipped from my mind.
I got very low marks in Physics-Chemistry-Math, averaging 72.60. But in English I got the board
highest (140), and in Bengali the third board highest (156). What did this mean? It meant that whatever I had made up and written in the exam papers for language and literature was the ‘best.’ What you do well, if you love it, that alone will make you the best.

My uncles live in India. Back then there was a culture of letter writing,
everyone wrote letters with beautiful, elaborate words. Each letter was like a heart itself. I wrote to them
asking what one needed to do to study English at Delhi University,
how much it would cost, and other relevant matters. My uncles immediately assumed I had lost my mind. They called my parents and said, “What’s this, isn’t Bappi going to study engineering?” How would a foolish teenager know that not wanting to be an engineer was also a crime? That criminal teenager couldn’t take the BUET admission test. That year BUET’s minimum requirement for science subjects was
an average of 72.66, and mine was 72.60. Now you tell me, how much can 0.06 marks define a boy’s merit? But right or wrong, that’s the system. Just because I didn’t have the qualification to take the BUET exam or get admitted doesn’t mean I didn’t have the qualification to study at BUET. You might not get the chance to study at your
or your parents’ preferred place, but that doesn’t mean that 10 years from now you’ll necessarily lag behind friends who graduated from those places. I came 2nd in CUET’s admission test, 7th in Leather. I took Dhaka University’s admission test in one unit (Ka-unit) with minimal preparation
(I didn’t even know the question pattern) and ranked 120th in that exam. I couldn’t even take the BUET exam, and didn’t collect forms from anywhere else. Since there were no doctors in our family, I was afraid that if I took biology in intermediate, my parents would force me to become a doctor no matter what, so I convinced my parents with nonsense like ‘taking stats would make it easier to stand out’ and took stats in intermediate. When I was studying for matriculation, there was one subject I feared like death itself, and that was biology.

I pleaded with my parents through tears, trying to convince them to at least let me study English at Dhaka University. They refused! In anger, I didn’t study properly at CUET either. I was always buried in literature, language, GRE, GMAT prep; I tutored, I did business. I studied engineering, got the certificate too, but never became an engineer. Now tell me—does studying at the best place in a field guarantee you’ll become the best in that very field? Ask yourself: what do you truly love doing? What doesn’t exhaust you completely when you do it? What makes you want to think even more when you think about it? What could you work on non-stop without wanting to quit? You are unique, just like the other 10 people in the world; your thoughts are yours alone. There’s no rule that says you must be able to do everything others can do. Did the poor elephant become good-for-nothing just because it couldn’t climb a tree in the tree-climbing test? Ask your intuition: what can you do that others cannot, something that will distinguish you and make you recognizable?

(But yes, if you’re exceptionally good at something compared to your friends, but that skill serves no real purpose, then you won’t be able to build much of a life around it.) Nurture that ability with great care. For instance, I could write, I could read “useless” books, I knew Bengali and English better than any of my friends. I understood from the beginning—something inside me kept telling me I wasn’t born to be an engineer. That wasn’t for me. Apart from the printf “Hello World!” from Balaguruswamy’s C programming book, I don’t remember ever writing any program using my own intelligence. Yes, you’ve guessed right—I’m a copy-paste pass-getter, an accidental computer engineer.

Whatever subject you study, wherever you are, always remember this: university is your grooming ground. Why must you become a doctor just because you graduated from medical school? If you don’t love medicine, then you can serve your country best by not serving it at all. If I had become a computer engineer after graduating from CUET, everyone would have pointed fingers at me saying, “Look, look! See what a terrible product CUET produces!!” I can endure my own humiliation, but how could I bear my mother’s? I didn’t let that happen. Perhaps you love photography. I’d tell you, Go for it! Give it your absolute best. Win a couple of international awards and show the world that photography is the right girlfriend for you to live your whole life with! Not everyone can do everything. If you asked me to take a photo like you do, I’d probably break the camera—but that doesn’t mean I’m good for nothing. It’s just that photography is not my cup of tea. I wasn’t born for photography; you were.

Who said you have to study at a public university to make something of your life? When Arnold Schwarzenegger first walked into a gym, he was skinny and frail. When he told the gym instructor that he wanted to become Mr. World within the next five years, the instructor and everyone else there burst into laughter. He walked out of that gym that very day and never returned. The rest is history. Let me teach you a simple rule: those who tell you that you can’t do something—either avoid them or don’t listen to them, even if they happen to be your parents! The universe is a strange place! Here, the relationship between talent and achievement isn’t particularly strong. Often, those who seem destined for greatness end up falling short. So I tell you: it’s too early to say anything definitive about yourself or about that friend of yours who landed a spot somewhere prestigious. Just because you didn’t get into “somewhere,” committing this “grave sin,” the entire world now stands ready to lecture you. Yes, that’s their right too. You can’t deprive them of their rights! But tell me, what does “somewhere” even mean? “Somewhere” means a university whose name alone can land you a good job. Brother, why should you have to coast on your university’s reputation? You’ll make your mark with your own name. Do whatever it takes for that—even if you have to give your last drop of blood. What do you say? Can you do it? Maybe you were young during your intermediate years, but you’re not young anymore. Your job now is to silently digest the words you hear, build tremendous determination within yourself, and prepare to move forward every single moment. Don’t let anyone around you define your capabilities. Your university can’t actually teach you anything unless you learn it yourself. I’ve never seen university as a learning factory—it’s always seemed like a degree factory to me. What you can learn during your undergraduate years is your proper attitude. Look through the history of the world—of all those we consider great, only 15% were considered “brilliant” in their early lives. The remaining 85% belonged to the ranks of the unexceptional, just like you and me.

Listen! The CGPA I graduated with from CUET wasn’t easy to achieve. Because to get it, if you ‘wanted to,’ you’d have to work very hard at not studying and just sit around doing nothing. What fault of mine was it! I was kept in a place for praying which was not my temple. That’s why, I couldn’t pray. Simple! I got many F’s. That doesn’t mean I failed multiple times. I never regretted as I was not born to be a good computer engineer with good academic grades. I graduated from CUET with a 2.74. And, I firmly believed, 2.74 was just a number, not what I was, let alone, my life. The question is, when should you feel dejected? When should you assume that nothing’s working out, nothing’s happening? Only when you can’t properly do what you love doing. As long as you can keep doing what you love well, it’s not yet time to say you’ve lost. But do understand this: how useful is what you love doing? I’ll say it again—university will just give you a certificate, nothing more! What you can become, what you can’t become—your university won’t tell you that. Where you’re studying isn’t the big deal; where you’re heading next, what you’re doing or not doing from now to get there—that’s what matters.

I passed my SSC from one of Chittagong’s worst schools: Chittagong Municipal Model High School. Worst, in the sense that good students didn’t study there—only those who couldn’t get admission elsewhere went there, and the school’s results weren’t very good. Just because I studied at a bad school doesn’t mean I had to mix with the bad students of that bad school, study badly like them, get bad results, and head badly toward a bad future—there’s no such ‘bad logic.’ Rather, I take pride in saying that because of alumni whose achievements force people to think at least a hundred times before commenting on Chittagong’s worst school, I’m one of them. I’m telling you, universities don’t make students great—students make universities great. An admission test is just a Twenty20 match. In such a match, for any reason, even a Tendulkar can get out for zero runs. But you can’t judge a Tendulkar by that. Maybe that just wasn’t his day. And it’s also possible that a number nine batsman, batting desperately, hitting ball after ball properly, might even score a century! But that doesn’t make him Tendulkar, does it?

A Sakib Al Hasan might not become Tendulkar, but so that someday others dream of becoming Sakib Al Hasan, Sakib Al Hasan must keep trying, right? And who knows—maybe while trying this way, continuously surpassing himself, one day our Sakib might even surpass their Tendulkar. Who can say?!

Good luck!!