My Campus Days at Chittagong University: Looking Back With Delight and Wistful Glimpses

 

I love my varsity days more than I can explain in words. The lovely years I spent with my beloved friends on the beautiful campus of Chittagong University (CU) are simply unforgettable. I know every bit of the time wasn’t equally favourable. The menace of student politics prevailed at that time too like it has been affecting our educational arena till now. We were hardly happy with the meals served in the dining rooms of the residential halls. During our time there were no ceiling fans in the rooms of the dormitories. Readers can easily imagine how terrible it was to live inside the halls on scorching summer days. Anyway, I don’t want to elongate the list of drawbacks because the delight we had living in the halls with friends from different departments was immense. Another amusing part of our lives in Chittagong University was the shuttle train. It plied between the city and the university campus several times a day. Traveling to and fro the campus by the shuttle train was extremely joyous. Students gossiping, laughing, joking, singing, even quarrelling over seats—all these made every day’s trips by the train all the more interesting, equally on hot summer middays and chilling winter mornings. It used to make us sad if we ever missed the train while going to the campus or coming back.

When I first visited the CU campus, I was attracted by its wonderful natural features—lots of green trees, hills, brooks and birds all over the area. During our student lives on that eye-catching campus, the most favourite place for us to visit frequently was the ‘jhupri’—a cluster of huts vending tea, snacks, bananas, breads, fast food and so on. The jhupris kept us going ahead with our classes, exams, tutorials throughout the academic tenures, mitigating our thirst and hunger almost everyday. We gathered at the jhupris not just for casual foods, it was a confluence of students from all departments to chat, eat and drink together.

The university central library played a very beneficial role to enlighten us during that time. We visited the library almost every evening after the classes to read analytical works on difficult textual matters. The university museum was another nice place displaying valuable aspects of the university’s background but I was rather surprised to find that it was quite unknown to the students. Even it took me a couple of months to explore that the university had a museum. Beside materials and documents related to the university’s establishment and progress over the past years, the museum also contained some rare exhibits dating back to the British colonial regime and Mughal Empire. I was further impressed viewing some evidential photographs and documents representing the glorious period of our Liberation War. To get the museum closer to the students, I decided to do something for it because I believed by visiting the museum, students would come in touch with some didactic stuff in terms of history. It was 1996. So, I ventured to write an article in a leading English newspaper about the museum, its role, artifacts etcetera. I managed to have an appointment with Professor Shamsul Hossain, who was the museum’s Curator at that time. He was kind enough to let me see him a couple of times to get relevant details about the museum. With the help of some pictures and information he had provided me, I prepared a long article in my own humble words and sent it to the Daily Independent for publication. I was not much sure whether my feature would be selected by the newspaper authority for publication. On one Friday, my roommate Mr. Shahid Imon brought me a copy of the Independent in which the feature appeared. It was a memorable moment. I was so glad and excited going through my article along with a photograph of the museum that I couldn’t wait to see the Curator. Anyway, next morning I woke up much earlier than I usually did. I quickly took shower, finished breakfast and rushed to the museum to show the feature to Professor Shamsul Hossain. He turned out to be even faster than me. He said he had meanwhile purchased a copy of the newspaper and arranged to keep it in the museum’s archives. He thanked me again and again, appreciating my efforts to expose the museum to the students of the university and beyond. Professor Shamsul Hossain passed away a couple of years ago.

Among our teachers in the Department of English, first I would like to name Professor Dr. Masud Mahmood as one of my favourite teachers. He was an extraordinary professor with profound learning on all segments of literature. His diction was also impressive. His references to numerous authors and books while lecturing on one particular subject used to hold me spellbound. I was upset not to find him in the department’s alumni programs which were held a number of times. I remember he had sort of an aloof personality, didn’t want to interact much with students outside classrooms. That didn’t hurt us while we were students because the lectures he used to deliver were far more satisfactory than we had expected. The classroom was full of students while he gave lectures.

Professor Dr. Sujit Kumar Dutta was another nice teacher. He had a very pleasant personality and was friendly with the students. He had a smiling face all the time and used to teach us in a lively manner walking all over the classroom. On the other hand, Professor Tapan Jyoti Barua was very rigid to the students if they didn’t carry textbooks to the classroom. He did it to get students closer to the original texts rather than paraphrased notes. His special feature was asking us antonyms and synonyms. He spent most of his class time putting us in trouble with difficult words, spellings and meanings which, as I figured out later on, proved to be very helpful for improving our vocabulary.  Moreover, I am grateful to him for his translation of Seamus Heaney’s poems which I found superb. Professor Dr. Mohammad Sirajul Islam was another senior faculty member during our days. He at times talked about some interesting matters not directly related to classroom work but we liked it as it was some kind of a break from regular lectures.

Over the last few years some of the veteran teachers of Chittagong University’s Department of English have resigned from there and joined as professors at different private universities located in Dhaka. It is a little disappointing to me. When erudite, experienced teachers leave an institution, they can’t be easily replaced and students get deprived of proper enlightenment and academic guidelines which can’t be imparted by newly recruited pedagogues. Teaching doesn’t just mean taking classes and scrutinizing exam papers; it includes the mammoth task of ensuring students’ physio-spiritual elevation. So, when teachers leave their original institution while students are still in need for pedagogical guardianship, it’s no less painful than the premature separation of a child from its mother’s umbilical cord. I hope my valued teachers would not mind reading the above lines. I learned a lot of priceless things from them which have been highly conducive so far in my professional life.


Mahfuz Ul Hasib Chowdhury is a 
contributor to different English 
newspapers and magazines.