Stalwart Ways

It’s very difficult to find one person,roughly over the last decade,who has not come out of the first English department lecture at the Presidency College without feeling a little iffy. For most certainly the first lecture is an exercise in self-intimidation. As you are famliarised with the history of the college,the names associated with it,it is difficult not to belittle yourself. So,when you walk into a commemoration of one of the department’s stalwarts,you come with similar fears. But they are all put to rest in course of a delightful evening spent recollecting stories and anecdotes about of the most prodigious teachers that college had ever had. This year marks the birth centenary of Professor Taraknath Sen who had been associated with the English department at the Presidency College for 32 years between 1934 and 1969. The ICCR organised an evening to reminisce about him,his relationship with students,and his contribution to the study of English literature in Kolkata.

The evening took off with Professor Sukanta Chaudhuri of Jadavpur University delivering a lecture on ‘tragedy’ – a subject that was Sen’s favourite. Post Chaudhuri’s lecture,Ashok Mukherjee,who studied in the college in the ’50s,brought the house down with hilarious recollections about Sen’s quirks. Though he started off with how profound Sen’s involvement with his subject was,he quickly graduated to recollecting how warm and subtly humorous a person Sen was. “He used to say,‘marking is not an exercise in charity’. And once,to ensure that Jadavpur University students then got a few first classes,Sen was asked to mark their scripts. The grades were everything between 0 and 45,” laughed Mukherjee. And when Sen was sent to teach in the Islamia college (a much improved Maulana Azad College now),a friend happened to ask him about his ‘prospect’ in the college. “To which he replied,‘the best prospect here,is the prospect out of it’,much to the amusement of the friend,” says Mukherjee.