Fun-filled Research & Teaching: My Unfolding Voyage 49

I went to meet and pay respect to my higher secondary school teacher in economics. He congratulated me for securing a Masters degree in Economics ad then sked if I would like to take a part-time evening lecturership immediately. Since I was still thinking about a research scholarship or a full-time commercial employment, I wasn't sure. Yet, I told him I am interested because his eyes told me to agree. He asked me to meet him at the school an hour before the school begins next morning.  I met him again and he took me a gentleman's residence nearby. The elderly gentleman talked to me for a few minutes, said he probably knew my father as one of first set of residenents in South Dum Dum. Then, he told me to collect my appointment letter from the evening college nearby next day. He was the secretary of the college and had earlier offered the job to my teacher who thought he would be proud to let me take up the assignment. I began teaching micro-economics and macro-economics to undergraduate commerce students thrice a week for a compensation of Rupees one hundred and fifty (roughly about Rs15 per hour). That was great money. A packet of 10 plain Wills Navy Cut Cigarettes cost 80 paise and a multi-purpose antisepeptic moisturizer cream called Boroline cost about 65 paise.  A chicken curry dinner cost about Rs Two. Overnight I felt rich. I would soon become much richer.

Teaching was fun. Commerce students in an evening college were mostly those who worked as assistents in various firms during the day (and generally elder to me in age) or did not find a seat in the day college. The quality in general were poor, though a few were serious students. One of them still has contact with me. Teaching a gathering of 100 such students was both strenuous and fun. A half of the students di not ant the classes to be held after the roll-call attendance. A quarter of the students would be natural noise or disturbance creating elements while the class was in progress. Very few could recall what they had learnt about graphs they were taught in the high school. Understnding of logic was of the sports-fan variety or leftist political consciousness variety. most did not understand lecture delivered in English. Some were just simply naughty and aimed at upsetting the teachers. I had to learn teaching economics in Bengali along with drawing simple graphs. I had to learn binding them to logic to stop them from bringing to the class-room their storm-over-a-tea-cup ideological emotions. For the college's magazine I contributed an article on reasoing and logic for testing Truth including illustration of such axioms as ' thusand examoles do not prove a proposition, but a single counter-example can disprove a proposition' - a sentence I had picked up from my teacher at the university who later would become the Finance Minister of Wet Bengal.

Dealing with a class of 100 students, most of whom were not particularly interested in lectures or not equipped to study economics was rather tough task. I had to learn to walk up and down the aisles of the seating gallery to keep a close watch on various rows to prevent potential disturbing elements from attempting to create noise and at the same time write on the black board and explain. I had to learn throwing questions to carefully selected student at different corners to keep them attentive and busy before they could think of creating mischef. And, I had to cultivate some students - both elderly and young to be my fans(one of them, Ranjit, came again in contact with me in the next millenium). I set some ground rules: the entrance doors would be closed during the class, anyone not finding interest in my class could leave the classroom as soon as the attendance roll call was over and without noise, everyone attending the class will be vurnerable to face my questions on what I would say or write on the black board during the class and answer correctly to avoid my comments that would embarrassment for poor response. Things worked out perfectly after a few initiall class sessions. It was a great learning experience on controlling crowds, keeping audience captive and attentive, exchanging entertaining interactions and developing a friendly teacher-student relationship while ensuring that most students understand even partially what they were exposed to in a particular topic during the class (either one understood or chose not be in the class). A very fun-filled experience that I used to look forward to every evening that I went to that college.

But another fun-filled experience was awaiting me. I had applied for admission to the newly introduced research course leading to Phd of the Indian Statistical Institute. What attracted me is the program's requirement for three-semester course work in statistics, mathematics (mainly Real Analysis) and Advanced Economics topics wth qualifier exams. ad most importantly selection of the dissertation topic in the during the 19th to 24th month after which one could complete the dissertation without being in the campus and working elsewhere.  But to get into the program I had t cross the barrier of an objective type of selection test and a selection interview. I reckoned my chance to get selected as very high: the Institute would find it difficult to prefer some one else over me given my past record in course work and clearing examinations and given that not many who would apply would be as strong in mathematics and statistics. But i did not want to take the exam. without knowing what it was all about. I talked to Punuda, my cousin in the neighborhood who after his Masters in Physics had dome a Statistician's diploma course from the Institute (before getting his Phd and joining the Meterological Department of the Government of India). He explained to me that these were called aptitude and reasoning tests and generally very easy: he gave me some examples and told me not to worry.

But I thought I should another person whom I had developed acquaintance with about a year and half-go. He was a neighbour of one of the magic medical doctors I have had attention from. This doctor was my maternal uncle's sister in-law's son who remained bachelor throughout and was senior to me in age by at least 10 years. He used to visit us when my maternal uncle and aunt stayed with us at our residence for about four/ five months.  Around 75 at that time, my uncle had taken considerable interest in my health and food habits. Given my thin body and probably reluctance to do physical work, he suspected that I might have some terrble disease which was yet to surface. He requested this doctor, Jhanti-da, to have a thourough examination of my body and treat me. Jhantui-da told me to come to his residence near Girish Park on the Central or Chittarnjan Avenue one morning and he took me to the Medical Research Centre and Hospital in Chetla where he worked. It took several hours to go throup various examinations at the hospital. After a few days, he called me again to his residence. He gave me the reports and said there was no problem suggested by them. I cam back home and showed all reports and papers to my uncle. He was disappointed and sad that the examinations could not identify the terrible disease he suspected me to have been sufferring from. Jhinti-da on his next visit convinced my uncle that there was indeed no cause of worry and he prescribed me a tablet (called Penta-something) to be taken daily for three weeks and a squeezed lemon jouice drink in the morning daily again for three weeks. It worked miracle: I had no further attack of cough, cold and acute voice-eroding sore throat pain that I used to suffer from once every 45 days and had to take a penicillin shot from my family doctor to recover from each such attack. I became a fan of Jhanti-da. It was he who introduced me to Dipankar-da, his neighbour and another fan. Dipankar at that time had already obtained his Masters degree in Economics from the my University and after doing some special course in Statistics was a Research Scholar at the Indian Statistical Institute. We had met at Jhinti-da's place a couple of times.

So, I telephoned Dipankar-da, an inetersting person who demonstrated to me many things including the use of "C' inplace of "K" and use of "OO" instead of "U" in the surname. He told me to meet me at the Institute when I would come there to submit my application form for admission to the Research Course. When  I met him he gave me a bok on Apptitude Tests that he borrowed from the Institute Library and advisde me to practice. I did not find the book very interesting and thought that these test were boring except for school students. Nevertheless, I practised for a few days and went for the exam. I did not think that I did good at the exam. ticking away boxes. But I got the letter from the Institute for the selection interview.  I suspected the Institute was preparing to select me: they may not have got better research candiates. I went for the interview even more casually. It went for 15 to 20 minutes. I think the interviewrs were seeking justifications for their selecting me and I was the most reluctant. But they might have found to of my responses somehat interesting. A professor (whom I found a great, insightful teacher later on when I attended his classes) asked me as to why Arithmatic Mean was used so much in Statistics despite its limitations to which my reply was that this was because the concept was easy to understand fom childhood, easy to compute from collected data and highly amenable to mathematical operations in the statistics text book chapters following the chapter on central tendency from correlation and regression to probability and inference. He probably did not get the answer he ha expected but seemed to enjoy getting my answer. Another interviwere, one of my former teachers at the undergradte economics college, was interested in my interest in data collection from proper sources. When I said I did not know the current trends in India's industrial production growth rate, he asked me to guess. I guessed a range too broad 5%-8%. He smiled and asked me if I had gone to the Library, how quickly I could find out more precise estimate of the industrial production growth rate? I said look for the Chapter on Industry or latest five year plan in the latest edition of the textbook on Indian economics authored by another of my professors at the University. He did not get the answer he wished and desereved, but probably enjoyed my reluctnce to think hard. I got selected: they must have found me a bet worth taking.

The research course was rather light. Examinations went off fine except that I had very little interest in using the Facit machines (those days PCs were not there and electronic calculators had not yet become cheap enough) for hours to work out the practical statistical computation sums Professor Adikary wanted us to do. More time was spent on intellectual debates with reseacher friends at the Institute, reading books and journl in the Library on a random basis and based on them writing out small notes that could help identify potential research topics for my dissertation, ad consuting my Professor guide on the subject.

 Bulk of the time however went for idle gossiping and brain storming tat were pure fu.