A Student

 

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I was going to my village. My village was more than one hundred and fifty kms from the place where I was working, and I had to change three buses to reach my village. I started early, reached Cuttack at around 9, in the morning. I entered into a restaurant near the bus stop to have my breakfast. I was eating chhole bhature. I had not yet finished, the restaurant boy served me chhenapod, a sweet dish.

I had not ordered Chhenapod, but I would have. I had a sweet tooth, chhenapod looked fresh and alluring in the morning. I was, perhaps, the first customer they were serving after cutting into pieces the sweet pancake, cooked last night. I thought the boys working in this restaurant, perhaps, could guess the taste of the customers, and to increase the sales of the restaurateur, might be serving before the customer asked for it.

I started chhenapod after chhole bhature.

Before I finished chhenapod, the boy placed sweet curd on my table. I had also not ordered sweet curd, though I liked it also. I asked the boy, “I am not ordering, how do you serve yourself, one dish after another?”

The boy indicated a man sitting two or three tables away from me and said, “The gentleman sitting there is ordering for you.” I looked at the man. He bowed his head to wish me. The man had come to the restaurant before I, and was having his breakfast, enjoying the sweet curd. He finished his breakfast and came to me. He sat on the front chair and asked, “Sir, don’t you recognize me?”

I could not. I was trying to locate where I could have met him. Without giving me much time to think, he said, “I was your student.”

I was teaching in a college for two and half years before I entered into an administrative job. I had already left the college for more than fifteen years. The appearance of the boys changed a lot after they entered into a profession and their worldly life. I was trying to remember, but could not. I asked, “What are you doing?”

“Sir, what you once told us we would do, I am doing that. I am a bus conductor.”

I remembered. If the students were doing mischief; irritated, I would scold them by saying, you would become nothing, but bus conductor or amin (land surveyor). I used to say, “When we were students, our parents did not have enough money to spare for our education. With much difficulty we studied with meagre amount our parents could provide. The colleges were in the city, far away from the villages. The number of colleges were also very few. All the students who passed Matriculation could not get seats in the college.  Many good students could not study since the cost of staying in the city and studying in the college were beyond affordability of their parents. Now the colleges have come to the villages. You take your food in your home, walk or ride a cycle from your village to the college. You should take advantage. But your minds are elsewhere, not in studies. You are missing the opportunity. You are destined to be, at best, conductors or amins.”

I said to my former student cum bus conductor, “That was not my purpose. I scolded you since you did not read, but involved in mischief. I wish whatever you may do, you live in peace. One earns to keep living, but one should earn in honest means. Be good human beings, that’s important. You should not have any inferiority complex for the job you are doing.”

I had started sermonizing; a habit I had with me, perhaps, since my teaching days. Old habits had not died.

“No, sir, I don’t mean anything. I was joking. We did not listen to you then, now we realize. Where are you going to?” he asked.

“Going to my village, shall go up to Chandikhole now. From there I shall change a bus.”

 He said, “Then let’s go by my bus. Our bus is going to Balasore.”

My student cum conductor seated me in the conductor’s seat, his seat. He collected fare and issued tickets. He did not accept fare from me. Instead, he presented me with a pack of cigarettes and a match box. He knew I was smoking when I was in the college. Of course, I had not given up the habit.

I had heard this story from a friend. The student of a well-known professor joined Indian Administrative Service (IAS). He was posted as secretary, education department. The professor then was the Director of Public Institutions (DPI). Once, in a meeting, the director who was the former teacher of the secretary, addressed him by his first name. Annoyed, the secretary reprimanded, “You forget, you are speaking to your secretary!” The director immediately corrected himself and said, “Sir…”

The director and the secretary were both well known; two very important persons in the state.

This maybe a rumour. Some persons in the society, out of jealousy, concoct stories about achievers and established personalities; and people, for the same reason, love to believe them. Still, many have this impression; people in administration, particularly in the IAS, are also callous towards love and affection of their subordinates and people below them. They do not understand true feelings.

I believe, had my student been an IAS officer instead of a bus conductor, he would not have behaved as the secretary behaved with his former professor.

I was proud of being a teacher in the college for a few years.

*****