by Parminder Singh
“That man is insane. I always told you that Bengalis are eccentric,” chuckled Prof. Karnail Singh Poonia, dipping biscuit in hot tea. “The day before, I waved at him. The shameless fellow did not even have the courtesy to wave back. Have you seen anyone else like him who never enters the staffroom as if the nincompoop would catch plague if he sits with us?”
“There are people of all kinds. Let them be the way they are. What difference does it make to us? He does not harm anyone,” retorted Prof. Vikrant Ahuja, forcing Prof. Poonia to seal his mouth.
Professor R K Mukherjee had been teaching English in the college for thirty-two years. He was almost six feet tall with broad shoulders and dark brown eyes which exuded the wisdom of a philosopher. He mostly wore outdated double-breasted suits in olive and brown and often gave his shoulders a slight upward jerk at intervals. He didn’t really remember the name of the last few principals of the college and had not visited the staff room in the last ten years. He still rode a 1980-model Lambretta scooter painted blue and white while his colleagues boasted of owning expensive cars. A favourite among students, Prof. Mukherjee was a no-nonsense, straightforward man of few words. He was an expert when it came to his subject. Students called him a walking thesaurus. As a rule of thumb, he would tell three to five synonyms and an antonym for each word raised by a student in any class.
While most teachers would sneak out of the class on pretext of some work or would simply relieve students after marking their attendance whenever the classroom was almost empty, Prof. Mukherjee would teach even if there was a single occupant in the whole classroom. His lectures were interspersed with anecdotes from mythology, religion, history and cultural conflicts and philosophical deviations here and there. He was influenced by the teachings of Swami Vivekananda and had translated his teachings into a book of quotations with chapters ranging from Love to Death, Happiness to Suffering, and Self-Belief to Destiny. He enjoyed the company of intellectuals or promising students or books rather than killing time by gossiping and babbling with his colleagues in the staff room.
Prof. Gurmukh Singh, a young man who had recently joined the Department of Information Technology, was intrigued by whatever he heard about Prof. Mukherjee. Barely a week after he joined, he overheard some professors from the English Department, grouped in the staff room cracking jokes over tea about a professor from their own department. They were referring to him as Meursault, after the existential protagonist of Albert Camus’s novel The Outsider. Gurmukh had grown curious and upon enquiring his colleagues, learnt about Prof. Mukherjee.
Following the four ashramas of the Vedic way of life, Prof. Mukherjee had spent the first twenty years of his life in brahmacharya. He then got married to a fellow professor. His wife shared the same passion for teaching as well as for life. Prof. Mukherjee lived the life of a grihasthi during next twenty years. He had two daughters and he raised them well. At the age of forty, he chose vanaprastha and convinced his family to allow him to live alone. During this period, he supported them in every way but he began readying himself for sanyasa that he was about to embrace after retiring from the college. This was his last year at the college.
Even though the story about Prof. Mukherjee was told in a sarcastic vein, Gurmukh could not help admiring the man. He requested Prof. Ahuja to introduce him to Prof. Mukherjee. When Prof. Mukherjee and Gurmukh eventually met, Prof. Mukherjee remarked, “Your name suggests you are a Sikh.”
Gurmukh nodded.
“What does your name mean?” he asked.
“…the one with a face like that of the Guru,” responded Gurmukh.
Prof. Mukherjee asked him why his name was Gurmukh when his face did not resemble his Guru’s. As Gurmukh stood speechless, Prof. Mukherjee continued, “It is very important to follow some ideology in one’s life. If there is none to follow, one should lead by creating one. That is what all these messengers of God have done. This identity has been given to you by your Guru and it has been earned after a struggle of centuries and sacrifices of thousands. This is nothing less than betrayal to all those who laid their lives for creating an unparalleled history unless you have an answer for committing this sin. Inner peace and strength cannot be earned without pure submission.”
Gurmukh was often questioned about his appearance by many elders in his family and by preachers of the faith but words of none had pierced his heart like Prof. Mukherjee’s did. That evening, he saw himself standing teary-eyed in front of the mirror with Prof. Mukherjee’s words echoing in his ears. He promised to himself that he would take up the identity that he had abandoned during his college years to look stylish and avoid peer pressure. He did not shave thereafter, maintaining his stubble. He started wearing a turban a few days later.
When he met Prof. Mukherjee after a few days, Gurmukh touched the professor’s feet and thanked him for making him realise the importance of his identity. Prof. Mukherjee grew fond of Gurmukh and they began spending time together and discussed many topics. Gurmukh would brief Prof. Mukherjee about the latest in the IT field including how computers were to centralize everything in all arenas of life. Prof. Mukherjee would listen to all this with a childlike curiosity and would ask questions like a keen student. But Gurmukh enjoyed being the listener when they were together. The philosophical insights and the words coming from a perceptive soul who had lived life on his own conditions enriched his spirit in a way a mystic would feel when blessed by his murshid at dawn. Gurmukh would express time and again that these were the most useful months of his life. Time ticked away and soon it was the last day of December, the day on which Prof. Mukherjee was to retire.
The college arranged Prof. Mukherjee’s farewell party. When Gurmukh went to the professor’s residence to pick him up, he offered Gurmukh some authentic Kolkata rosogollas and said, “Do you see this chashni, the syrup in the sweets, Gurmukh? If it is beyond a limit, it would mar the taste. We have learnt a lot in each other’s company. I have not grown so attached to any person in many years the way I have with you. Your selfless love entangled me. But my destiny is decided. My path is calling me. I have to leave next week.”
“Where will you go?” asked Gurmukh.
“A sanyasi doesn’t know that,” he replied.
Gurmukh was teary-eyed but Prof. Mukherjee stood calm and with a lopsided smile, patted Gurmukh’s back saying, “Let’s go. It is almost nine. I don’t like reaching late anywhere.”
At the farewell party, the principal read a readymade welcome note for all those present to witness the retirement of this man of colossal inspiration. Gurmukh was not amused by the shallow speeches that Janus-faced colleagues from the department of English gave and expressed his wish to share the concluding thoughts. When Prof. Mukherjee was invited to speak, he spoke on the importance of self-realisation and self-assessment in one’s life and accepted that all his years at the college had played a crucial role in making him the man he was.
The host then invited Gurmukh to say a few words.
Gurmukh, for a moment, thought he had gone speechless. He had so much to say about Prof. Mukherjee that he felt his words would fall short in expressing the accolades the wise man deserved as a parting gift. But when Gurmukh’s eyes met Prof. Mukherjee’s, he instantly received the inspiration he needed. His emotions choked his initial words but he gathered strength and started off his speech: “We all come from different backgrounds and a hope is kindled from this diversity – the hope of learning from each other, the hope…. the hope of dialogue… the hope of celebrating our differences. Though I personally neither believe in renouncing the world, nor consider of any significance the compartmentalization of life into splits, the way Prof. Mukherjee has lived, it is his way of living and we should respect that. He taught me how to follow what one believes in. I learnt from him that a good teacher teaches what is not there in the books. I am lucky to have been a colleague of Prof. Mukherjee and to have had an opportunity to be near him for a little while. He has been a true teacher who taught just by being the way he is. He is nothing less than a prophet, and prophets are always mocked and browbeaten by their contemporaries.”
Gurmukh continued speaking his heart out, “What people have been talking about Prof. Mukherjee is not shocking. We actually fear what we lack. We lack the inner strength and therefore when we witness someone equipped with that, that lack dangles in front of us and dreads us. For coming out of that complex, we gratify ourselves by mocking at the back of people like Prof. Mukherjee. I could never muster the courage to speak these words here. I owe this courage to say the truth when and where it matters the most to Prof. Mukherjee.” He ended his speech with the words, “We need to grow up.” His voice choked and he stepped down from the stage. Some of the faces in the gathering had gone pale. Suddenly, there was a gush of cheer all around and the firecrackers rocketed towards skies illuminating the New Year.
Great sir ji…