Any reunion evokes emotions in association with a nostalgic journey down the memory lane. The reunion of the alumni of the English Department, the University of Dhaka, on Friday last was no different. There were the usual colours and festivities all around. Organised each year, the occasion by now has taken a known pattern where the driving force for the former students now well settled in life is to meet the old pals of the same batch. Sure enough, some among the most extroverts have no problem going beyond the batch bracket and turn effusive when they run into a junior or senior acquaintance in the buzzing crowd.
There is something unexplainably magical about an alma mater. All because it is the best of time in a man's or woman's life. Romance is in the air when a young man or woman gets admitted to the premier university. The students of English literature, in particular, discover a world they had no knowledge of. Their encounter with the English romantic poets like Wordsworth, Keats, Shelly, Byron, Browning and Tennyson gradually guides them to a world of wonder. Mysticism and the metaphysical produce in them conflicting emotions and feelings which they learn to come to term with gradually. Then the students of the department come to know about Shakespeare, Marlowe, Dr. and Ben Johnsons on the drama front and Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, EM Foster and DH Lawrence and many more on the fiction front. With further maturity students are initiated into TS Eliot whose poems are of a different genre.
Not all alumni pursue the course of literature in their professional life. A bachelor and a master degree from the department was no bar for many to becoming bankers, police and revenue officers. Some rose to the positions of secretaries of the republic and at least one illustrious man in the shape of AMA Muhith has earned the distinction of gracing the top position of the ministry of finance. Then there are some who have charted the course of literature. Shamsur Rahman, the country's premier poet, is one, for example. Men like SM Ali, one of the finest editors the country has had, pursued another creative obligation in the form of journalism.
Yet the literary bend in a few who had accepted demanding government services inimical to creativity did not die. They nurtured their love for literature and produced fine short stories, poems and fictions. A reunion of the alumni of the English Department is thus a collection of men and women of diverse professions and occupations well beyond the realm with which the graduates passing out from it are associated.
Sure enough, the world of ledger, account and balance in a bank is poles apart from the fresh life in the department marked by romantic hobnobbing with literature. But to human life nothing is worthless if one can take inspiration from it and make the best of the experiences. Creativity has its wings spread in the mental firmament and the challenge is to share the experiences with others in the most convincing manner. TS Eliot and Shankar (Mani Shankar Mukherjee) have accomplished the job notwithstanding their petty clerical jobs in banks and under a barrister respectively.
It is the impetus provided by creative urge that matters at the end of the day.
- Saturday, 23 November 2024 |
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