Rituraj Kalita

[The author was among the first batch of students passing HSLC in 1985 from this school. Presently a Senior Lecturer in Chemistry at Cotton College, Guwahati, he did his B. Sc. and M. Sc. from I.I.T., Kharagpur (W.B.). He is a known Assamese essayist writing on social and political issues, and has to his credit several innovative computer-software as well as a host of free on-web study materials on chemistry and computers, mostly placed on his own web-page www.geocities.com/riturajkalita]

Towards the end of my Class VII academic year, in the winter of 1981 AD (I've reached that age when it feels justified to talk about the school years in ADs and BCs!), my mother showed some forms to me: "Baba, they're planning to open this very good school with great plans and ideals; I strongly feel you should sit for their Class VIII entrance". Unwilling to leave my local provincialised high school where I was happy to go without wearing shoes and neck-tie etc., I nevertheless sat for the entrance, and upon qualifying it finally joined this school, then housed in a small but well-equipped campus just opposite the Rabindra Bhavan.

What I found at FHS (Faculty High School) was thoughtful planning for the all-round development of us students, combined with wonderful standards of teaching. The concept of elocution classes, aimed to develop our public speaking and spoken-English abilities, was a pleasing shock for me and my classmates coming from similar publicly-funded vernacular-medium schools. Out of all our fine teachers, I still vividly recall that (Indira) Bhuyan madam in Assamese, (Haren) Pathak sir in Mathematics, (Banti) Bhuyan madam in English, (Nilima) Bhattacharyya madam in Social Studies were definitely masters in their fields and expert communicators of knowledge as well. Tridib Bhattacharyya sir, besides being an expert teacher, was also a reputed drama personality (it was a shock to hear of his untimely demise several years back, while still serving at another reputed school). I still recall I Bhuyan madam painstakingly correcting our long Assamese essays, and giving advices such as to avoid writing 'ketaman' instead of 'keitaman' (in Assamese) as the former is not a part of formal written Assamese (a lesson I still remember to put in use). [I also remember that IB madam spoke of us as 'eo' or 'eolok' in our schooldays, in celebration of our growing human dignity (in contrast, I couldn't yet refrain from talking about even my college students as 'ee', 'tai' or 'ihat', depriving them of their due dignity) - such was the environment we encountered at FHS!] While teaching about area of a polygon defined by a formula 'half h p', as part of our mathematics course, H Pathak sir (sir later joined a Government Department) even gave us a way to memorize it as 'it is half of me (i.e., HP)!'.

Thus, most of our batch-mates got perfect concepts and understanding in our subjects ranging from Mathematics to Sanskrit Language (retaining and remembering the knowledge at least till exams obviously depended on our own efforts, over which the teachers could have very little control), because of which most of our classmates passed the school final exam in first division. So, it pains me when I definitively hear that nowadays several of our renowned schools (not FHS) rely and emphasize on students parroting prepared answers instead of taking the path of painstaking transfer of understanding and conception of the human wisdom to the students. I really wonder how, and whereto, answer-memorizing robots with very high marks (to qualify in most competitions) but without a proper understanding of the centuries-wide human wisdom will lead our society! May be, this is one reason why we now see people masterminding crimes against humanity (e.g., blasts) are awarded (by a sizable section of robot-like leaders/ intellectuals/ journalists of our society) via accords/ glorification instead of being sent for trial in courts!

And, did we get education in human values at FHS? Yes, definitely. For education in the human values are mostly transferred from the elder generation by examples and by being role-models themselves, and by the day-to-day enforcement of discipline and good habits, then by explicit teaching of moral philosophy as a subject. So, even though our class syllabi had no such subject (I, nevertheless, strongly support inclusion of that in high-school syllabi), our value education (it is a term frequently mentioned in current educational discourse, though our country's education system hasn't yet been prepared to tackle that properly) at FHS didn't get hampered. From the teachers and the school administration we clearly learnt that we need to be sincere, diligent and dedicated in performance of our job (be that studies at school/college, or job-requirements as employees in later life), maintain discipline of the institutions (we could hardly talk while classes were going on, a trait which I sadly can't perfectly enforce at my own classrooms now), and concern to the human beings (students/ employees/ society) involved (because for them only all institutions and social processes are run). I remember once our whole section getting rebuked by a teacher for indulging in some inappropriate talks; I remember immediately recognizing how right he was in his point! If practiced beyond certain limits, such talks, even if no one else is pained by overhearing it, can surely proceed towards drying one's heart of the caring softness to others, that we all inherit while born as a homo sapiens child. 

At FHS, we also learnt to be caring to the ocean of disadvantaged humanity surrounding our privileged-minority existence. When in the first part of 1983, communal clashes engulfed many parts of our state, the schools in Assam were closed for several months and many thriving rural neighbourhoods were instantly turned into ashes, the teachers, staff and students at FHS under the active participation of the teachers prepared tens of kilograms of pickles (I still remember the teachers moving the giant ladles), packaged them hygienically into dry bottles, got them sold via some marketing organization, bought various relief materials with that earned money, and then went to some rural neighbourhoods along the Kamrup-Darrang border to distribute relief where families uprooted by communal clashes were living in camps. I still wonder at the ingenuity of the group of teachers, who must had devised the idea of all of us working round the day for several days to produce loads of pickles and to thereby provide relief materials, instead of easy appeals to our parents' robust incomes! Was it meant to make us more involved with the sufferings of the uprooted people? Was it meant to give us some hands-on experience about how poor people earn their livelihood?

I should proceed to the end of this piece with some light memories. In our Assamese-medium section, we were just somewhat more than a dozen in number, so it was a small close-knit group. One funny aspect of such a number was that when our section went to play football, even I had to go along and sometimes even had to play the game, even though I am probably one of the worst football-players humanity has ever produced. Even within such a small group, there were two of us with the same name and the same surname. So we called one with a prefix of the name (say, X) of a type of fish (God knows why) attached to his name, and the other attached with the prefix Non-X. I wonder whether any of us would be able to call either of this established gentlemen now as X or Non-X!

Before leaving, I wish a continuing glorious journey for my alma mater and satisfying success in lives to its present student community.