Going down the Memory Lane

Author’s note: This item was first published in the Rising Stars (The teen tabloid of The Daily Star

A leading English daily newspaper of Bangladesh

that’s published every Thursday.) Back on 3rd February, 2000. The previous title was “Goodbye, Class VIII.” Some of the people mentioned here have become parents now. I did not edit this much, intentionally. This is part of my attempt to preserve my first published items. After all, old is Gold!


Tick…tick…tick! Time tickles away so fast. It is almost the end of 1999. At the beginning of this year, I had entered into the biggest classroom of the Aga Khan School. Class VIII-I.


According to the law, a student from VI-II was supposed to move to VII-II, and after one year, he or she climbs up the stairs to reach VIII-II. This year the sections were shuffled. (That’s what the other students said). Thus, instead of going to VIII-II, I moved up to VIII-I.


Now let me say something about my favorite, wonderful teachers. Whom should I start with? All the teachers had something special in his or her attitude. Our class teacher, Ms. Ruby, taught us Chemistry. “Verify” and “clarify” were her favorite words. All the time she used to say:


“Students, I need to verify something.”
Or,
“Students, do I need to clarify anything?”


My most favorite male teacher was Mr. Kamel Haque. He taught us English Language Workshop. In his class we learnt acting and methods to improve our reading and writing skills. I liked the way he used to act while giving a class lecture. Besides being a great actor, he was someone with an admirable personality, and lovely recitation skills.


Amongst the females, Mrs. Taposhi Haque, our Bangla teacher, held a special place in my heart. She had a lot of Bangla words stored in her memory cells. Whenever she wanted to scold any of the students, she would just use some of those words and the whole class would burst out laughing. If I even try to write those words in English now, the funniest part would be blown away.


Other than the ones I had already talked about, there was Mr. Mustafizur Rahman, our art teacher. He wore a golden-framed glass, which sometimes dropped on his nose. Then he looked really funny. There were plenty of disturbing elements in our class, who loved to bother him. He also enjoyed punishing them. Whenever students giggled at him, he would just send them out of the class. Moreover, he liked to grab the student by the collar and punch him; his favorite targets were our heads.


Another good and amusing teacher was Mr. Sultan Mahmood Bhuiyan, our Geography teacher. He taught us to make bar graphs and pie charts. He liked colorful drawings. Two of his favorite dialogues were:

“You are lying. You are liar.”
And
“My language is some, some, weak.”


He was an excellent dialogue maker. We used his dialogues in the play scripts we wrote for our English Language Workshop class.


Mrs. Zaman, our Math teacher, was also very sweet. She would explain a problem ten times if we faced problems with it. Her favorite lines were:

“What do you think you are doing?”
And
“I don’t like it really.”


Last but not the least, comes Mr. Imtiaz, our Physics teacher. He told us stories about his friends, school and college etc. He called us “Sir.”


Now let me talk a little about the busy bees of our class, my peers. There were many naughty boys and girls in VIII-I. Two of those naughty boys were Fahmi and Adnan. Both were very good actors. Despite being punished often, both were very good jokers, and were my good friends as well.


Sumaira, Rozina and Naushad were the Hindi speakers of VIII-I. They talked in three languages (Hindi, English and Bangla). Sometimes they spoke in HEB, a heterogeneous mixture of all three languages.
Some of the stylish girls of our class were Faria, Donna and Pragna. They looked gorgeous in any type of outfit, even in a Sari. Faria wore Shalwar-Kameez most of the time. The other two also wore jeans and T-shirts.


Sumaya and Nusrat were my best friends. In my opinion, they were the prettiest girls of our class. Nusrat had a sweet face. Sumaya was a dark, silky haired girl. She was one of our best artists. I called her “Sum”, and sometimes I also called her “Chewing gum” as she loved to chew gum in class.
Sabeer, Sakib and Sohab were the most brilliant boys of our class. They were polite. Sohab was a guitarist. He participated in all sorts of quizzes and concerts organized by our school authority. Sabeer was our prefect. Sakib was our uncle. Many of us, including myself, called him Sakib Mama

Bangla for maternal uncle.

Asfara, Sangeeta, Munira and Priya always worked in a group. They sat in the same row of chairs and shared their tiffin.
Mark was a talented cartoonist. Many of the students sometimes called him Murgi

Bangla of hen or chicken

, although he never had any similarities with a hen.


Tajik was a big, fat boy. He often had food fights with Sakib Mama. He offered his tiffin to Mama, but the later never accepted the offer. Tajik also had a sneezing problem. He sneezed at least hundred times a day. Some of the students called his disease “Tajikitis.”


I wanted to write about all my friends and teachers but my tale will keep running if I even try. Well, all’s well, that ends well. My class VIII life had a happy ending. Entering class nine seems like the start of a new life to me, with the beginning of my O-levels within a year. I hope I can start my new life happily.