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One evening around 1972 while I was basking on the lawn bench of our crazy Faculty Hostel at IIT KGP, a tall and stocky gentleman arrived in a rickshaw and asked me the way to the Manager's Office. That was the beginning of a one-sided admiration for me in the couple of years he stayed with us.
I got to know that he was BG, a new Lecturer in English. It was also evident that he was a chain smoker and a boozelover.
Since I was sort of a fixture on that lawn bench every evening and an equally dedicated smoker, we got to know each other quickly. He was a topper in English at the Calcutta University. I have seen many toppers but not everyone is a BG. Love for English language and literature and an enormous appetite for speaking it were written all over his frame. He would ask me who my favorite author was and when at random I say Bernard Shaw, he would ask me which play of his I liked best, and when I at random say Pygmalion, he would recite pages and pages of its dialogue with gusto and relish to my utter astonishment.
The next day it could be Nirad Chaudhuri...the next Robert Frost. It went on and on. And when I ask (rarely) his favorite author, he would invariably declare without any hesitation: John Donne (I never heard his name before) and would recite his poem going..."For God's sake hold your tongue, and let me love..."
As RK left our Hostel by then, I turned out to be his only admirer there. In fact I was simply stunned and dumbfounded by his scholarship and his enthu for English. And we used to go for short after-dinner walks peppered with his recitations from Milton to Auden. But the best time to catch him was when he was half-drunk and would tear his colleagues to pieces one by one by name for their perceived utter ignorance. A couple of pegs more and he would go to sleep on the floor...
Quite obviously he was soon very unpopular in his Department.
But, Narayana notwithstanding, IIT students have always been discerning customers right till I retired in 2005...Infosys database must be post-2005 {;-}
So, within a few weeks of his joining, he was a roaring idol of all students and he was all over the Hall Functions as Judge, Speaker, Moderator, Raconteur and Bigbasher of small minds. Students of all years and all Halls loved him to distraction.
I was naturally curious what such a chap was doing in an IIT...he should have been a Professor of Calcutta University or JU.
In general he was very secretive about his career, but you know, a little ethyl spirit opens up bottled emotions and I gathered that he had offers from CU and JU for a faculty position...the only requirement was that he should write something...anything...of 30 pages...it could be an original piece of prose, poetry, analysis, review...any damn thing of just 30 pages..and he could walk in...
He never could write...
He told me that whenever he starts writing a couple of sentences for submission, he would tear them up as not to his liking, not up to the standard of his literary heroes, fifth rate, unpublishable, mean...
And he would sink into deep depression and booze heavily...
In the couple of years of his stay at KGP, he descended into that abyss known only to frustrated souls.
One fine morning he left KGP as suddenly as he arrived and no one knew where he went.
And pretty soon I left the Faculty Hostel and discreet inquiries of his whereabouts from his Departmental Colleagues gave me only the relieved reply:
"BG, who?"
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One evening around 1972 while I was basking on the lawn bench of our crazy Faculty Hostel at IIT KGP, a tall and stocky gentleman arrived in a rickshaw and asked me the way to the Manager's Office. That was the beginning of a one-sided admiration for me in the couple of years he stayed with us.
I got to know that he was BG, a new Lecturer in English. It was also evident that he was a chain smoker and a boozelover.
Since I was sort of a fixture on that lawn bench every evening and an equally dedicated smoker, we got to know each other quickly. He was a topper in English at the Calcutta University. I have seen many toppers but not everyone is a BG. Love for English language and literature and an enormous appetite for speaking it were written all over his frame. He would ask me who my favorite author was and when at random I say Bernard Shaw, he would ask me which play of his I liked best, and when I at random say Pygmalion, he would recite pages and pages of its dialogue with gusto and relish to my utter astonishment.
The next day it could be Nirad Chaudhuri...the next Robert Frost. It went on and on. And when I ask (rarely) his favorite author, he would invariably declare without any hesitation: John Donne (I never heard his name before) and would recite his poem going..."For God's sake hold your tongue, and let me love..."
As RK left our Hostel by then, I turned out to be his only admirer there. In fact I was simply stunned and dumbfounded by his scholarship and his enthu for English. And we used to go for short after-dinner walks peppered with his recitations from Milton to Auden. But the best time to catch him was when he was half-drunk and would tear his colleagues to pieces one by one by name for their perceived utter ignorance. A couple of pegs more and he would go to sleep on the floor...
Quite obviously he was soon very unpopular in his Department.
But, Narayana notwithstanding, IIT students have always been discerning customers right till I retired in 2005...Infosys database must be post-2005 {;-}
So, within a few weeks of his joining, he was a roaring idol of all students and he was all over the Hall Functions as Judge, Speaker, Moderator, Raconteur and Bigbasher of small minds. Students of all years and all Halls loved him to distraction.
I was naturally curious what such a chap was doing in an IIT...he should have been a Professor of Calcutta University or JU.
In general he was very secretive about his career, but you know, a little ethyl spirit opens up bottled emotions and I gathered that he had offers from CU and JU for a faculty position...the only requirement was that he should write something...anything...of 30 pages...it could be an original piece of prose, poetry, analysis, review...any damn thing of just 30 pages..and he could walk in...
He never could write...
He told me that whenever he starts writing a couple of sentences for submission, he would tear them up as not to his liking, not up to the standard of his literary heroes, fifth rate, unpublishable, mean...
And he would sink into deep depression and booze heavily...
In the couple of years of his stay at KGP, he descended into that abyss known only to frustrated souls.
One fine morning he left KGP as suddenly as he arrived and no one knew where he went.
And pretty soon I left the Faculty Hostel and discreet inquiries of his whereabouts from his Departmental Colleagues gave me only the relieved reply:
"BG, who?"
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