When BOSS indulges in bosh

Posted by Subhajit Ghosh on Tuesday October 24, @10:29AM

When I look back now, after nearly a decade, to the days when I was in college and leaf through my memories, I succeed in retrieving only a fraction I still do remember most of the names of the Professors and Lecturers who taught us. Of them, I still fondly remember our Physics teacher, who was indeed a very unique teacher. And among his many qualities, his quaint way of speaking English still provides me with some moments of lightness amidst my dreary existence.

It was my first year in college. The year was 1983. We were just freshers in college, and so quite expectedly, was enjoying the initial relaxed atmosphere. The intricacies of the world of Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics was still away from us.

Out of these three subjects, I held a particular fascination for Physics. Physics always intrigued me and I used to dream that one day, I will be a Satyendranath Bose or an Einstein. It is another matter that it never happened that way. However, our Physics teacher, a respectable man in his field caught our fancy, both for his erudition as well as his foibles.

In this piece, I have concentrated mostly on his foibles, which provided some humorous moments ( no malice intended), and would like to share some of these with my readers. And so, I begin.

After a few days of classes, we arrived at a unit of scientific experiment. He started explaining to us about the experiment. He began his sentence thus "Take a piece of water."

At this utterance some students at the back benches chuckled. This infuriated our teacher. Angrily, he shouted "Last bench, don't laugh. If you laugh, I will make last bench first bench." (It seemed our Physics teacher had a penchant for using conjunctions)

He also had a habit of eliminating words from every sentence and such sentences became incomprehensible at times. He was taking our class on one windy day. He had already closed the Entrance/Exit door. All of a sudden, he turned towards the last bench and ordered " Close the door. Air force coming" (He obviously meant the window, since there was only one door which was closed. Air force implied a gusty wind was blowing outside)

As we progressed with General Physics, the unit on Projectiles came up. That day, he said he will narrate a story as to why he considered our scientists the best in the world. His story ran thus. " The American scientists was about to launch a satellite into space from their cosmodrome. All had assembled at the launching pad, and the rocket is to be shot to outer space. Just at this juncture, when everything is ready, and the necessary commands initiated to set off the rocket, it remained static. The American scientists were panic stricken. Try as they might, yet all efforts to get it started proved in vain. Soon, expert scientists from across the world was called to help out in this crisis situation. Yet no scientist was successful. Scientists from Russia, UK, France, Germany and elsewhere, all proved failures. Finally, it was the turn of one Indian 'Sardar' scientist. He just took a look at the rocket, tilted it one way and then the other, and just kicked the rocket. And lo, it started! All gathered scientists was amazed at the genius level of our scientist. (when asked the secret how he went about his troubleshooting job, he said Indians are accustomed to their machine being thrown out of gear regularly. For example, Indian kick-start scooters rarely start when we kick it the first time. We have to tilt the scooter this way and that, kick it a number of times, before it actually starts off. I applied the same principle in this case."

Soon, our first year classes came to an end. We did fairly well in his paper. We were lucky to meet him again in second year. He was assigned to teach us Modern Physics.

One day, he was taking the unit on Atomic Physics. While discussing cosmic rays, he told us "Cosmic rays are coming to our planet from a very distant place. It is still coming, coming, coming" By now he was excited, and was using his hand as indicator to demonstrate how cosmic rays reached us. One mischievous back-bencher was mimicking him all along. Suddenly, he sighted him. The student was then closing his palm, as if to conceal something. He blurted out "Look, look, look at that stupid fellow (indicating the back-bencher). He is trying to catch cosmic rays."

Another interesting incident happened one day. He was trying to get the attention of a pretty girl in class. The girl could sense this. Suddenly, in the electrical connection outlet of our class, there was a huge spark. Out came a repartee from the girl "The circuit must have choked due to your magnetic personality."

Our teacher's appellation was Mr A. K. Biswas. He has his name written at the door of his room. One mischievous Bengali student added the words "koro na" (Translated, it would mean don't trust Mr A. K. Biswas)

Inspite of all such occasional pranks, our Physics teacher was really dear to us. He used to regale us in class with his lessons and jibes, and his lectures were never boring. They, interspersed with intermittent bungling of sentences like "Value putting answer getting," "if it is be the case," "Viscosity will come tomorrow" etc. etc. , always helped to keep me in a jovial mood for the rest of the day. Even now, at times.

A couple of years back, I bumped into him suddenly one day. He is leading a retired life now. He still retains an elephantine memory, and asked me about my classmates who were in his class, and what they were doing. I found that he still has his humour, and age hasn't withered him down. He invited me to his place, which I couldn't decline. I discovered several unknown facts/traits about him, which I will write in another piece shortly.