Lest We Forget
Professor Noman
M J Jahangir
It was sometime in the year 1963. My father and I were passing on foot by the Jagannath Collage. We ran into a handsome gentleman who seemed to be quite intimate with my father. That the gentleman was an advocate by profession could be seen from the dress he had on. They exchanged words regarding each other's welfare while I stood nearby them. He looked at me and said "Your son? Which school does he go to?" My father said in reply "He has just passed his school final, should now go to a collage." He looked at me and asked "Which collage would be your best choice, Baba?" In reply I said "I have applied for admission to Dhaka Collage." He happily said "Very good, very good" and to my father the gentleman said "In Dhaka Collage there is someone very close to us, Professor Noman, son of Advocate Abdul Lateef Shaheb. Such a nice man, indeed." My father agreed and expressed similar sentiments. The gentleman turned to me and said "You will certainly come to know of him, if you are admitted to Dhaka Collage." After exchange of wishes we parted and were on our way. My father later mentioned to me that the gentleman was Advocate Dewan Abul Abbas, hon'ble member of the Legislative Assembly and a widely respected man in Comilla Nabinagar area. I had not seen Noman Sir till then. But had since the urge to see and come to know that 'nice man'. Soon afterwards, having enrolled as a student of Dhaka Collage I had the fortune of seeing and attending classes of Noman Sir, of knowing and discovering the 'nice man' that Professor Noman was. In his manners, gait and speech style -- a man of exquisite finesse, inevitably charming, a man always on best of terms with himself. We had only two classes a week with him. And with great eagerness we used to look forward to the two classes every week. Whosoever had the fortune of becoming a student of Professor Noman they must have had an abiding imprint of his welcome influence on them. Therein certainly is the glory of a teacher's life and profession, a trait that is supposed to reward the teacher and the taught alike. From then on, 'I had enjoyed my fortune of remaining close and near to him. The more I observed him. The more I felt that he had come by some more treasure of life that made him a 'nice man' of dignity with respect for others. When I remember him, host of events and moments and incidents crowd in my memory. At the start of those dreadful days of 1971 while our whole family was fleeing Dhaka for the ancestral village, on the way I thought of finding out if Noman Sir had succeeded in coming out of Dhaka and if he too had fled to his village. On the same motor launch I found out from a fellow-traveler that Noman Sir with his family members had gone to his village by this same way a day or two earlier and that he had also taken with him to his village Professor Rehman Sobhan. A few days after, to know of the welfare of Noman Sir I had gone to his village home. When I reached there I found him sitting on a stool, a book in hand in a corner of the yard of their home. He was extremely happy to see me. I said, "Sir, I have come only to know if you are safe and well." He said, "how could one be safe and well under such circumstances? Anyway, nice to see you, it is good you came." Someone brought a stool for me to sit on. After a while, a man of the village, a bit senior in age, came to see Noman Sir. By and by Noman Sir heartily engaged himself in an affectionate conversation with the man, at ease and spontaneously in the local dialect of his village. The conversation itself seemed so courteous and pleasant that I watched and listened amazed, and wondered -- is it the same person who used to lecture to us on Shakespearean sonnets in modulated Oxbridgian accent. And the same man is so much at one, so undiscernibly, with a villager who perhaps had never been to school ever. After 25 years since then, in 1996 on September 6, laying him on his final resting place, standing by the grave, a man (someone of the family) raised his hands in prayer and prayed by saying -- "Hey Allah, You have seen he did his every duty to us all his life -- he spared no pains to see us grow up as good humans -- we pray for the salvation of his soul. Hey Allah grant our prayers. We trust in your grace." That was Noman Sir, a legend, an educated, cultured and cultivated, dignified and dutiful man, in his elements a teacher, 'a nice man'. M J Jahangir is Principal (on LRP), National Hotel and Tourism Training Institute, Bangladesh Parjatan Corporation.
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