Star Chat

Back to the Old School Days

Schumonn Patwary talks to Sameeha Suraiya

The two broken down cars at the back of my schoolyard captured my childhood imagination. They held a magical appeal and I would go down there time and again, tagging my friends along, imagining we were some place else. And of course, there was the water tank that we would climb in and have a good time. It is the time spent at school that I miss the most. I would consider my years at Dhanmondi Government Boys to be the best ones in my life; the friendships made then are still kept. I went scouting from Class 3 onwards. I could be found at any event or activity the school organised. Never the teacher's pet and always looking for a seat towards the back of the classroom instead, I still miss my schoolteachers and all the good (and bad) times I have had with them.

After graduating from school, I fell headlong into music. Friends around me were taking up different instruments and learning to make music together. And so began my first step as a musician. School was out, and I decided to pick up the bass guitar, and I don't think I enjoyed doing anything more than playing music. My band, Digonto was formed and soon we were invited to play in concerts. Money was simply an added attraction; we were otherwise, unfazed by its sudden presence in our lives. We were only too happy to blow it all up the next day having bottles of coca cola and chips. I have always tried to enjoy and have fun with whatever I was involved in, it is always easier to achieve success when you take pleasure in what you do and I stick to this belief till today.

I would say that it was a miracle that I got through my Higher Secondary Exams (HSC) without flunking. I loved my college years at the Dhaka College but towards the end, I had immersed myself into the world of journalism, something that I still actively pursue. I took absolute delight in running around, scrambling through the streets for news and writing feature articles. It gave me a sense of power and freedom, an adrenaline rush that fit my age perfectLY, and that is how classrooms took a backseat.

I remember getting caught playing cards, once, on campus with two other friends. The teacher asked for their roll numbers and finding them to be top-notch students instructed both of them to call their parents to school. I however, had a roll number of 108, and the teacher decided not to even bother about me!

I count it as a blessing that all my friends were better students than I ever was and so, help was always just a shout away. Cramming for exams was a regular occurrence. Having started to prepare for my HSC exams from only a few nights before the exam, I decided to study for exactly the number of questions that were to be in the exam paper, refusing to listen to my friends' pleadings. It was my sheer luck that the questions that showed up were exactly the ones that I had prepared myself for. When I received my results in the first division, my friends were the ones who celebrated my success more than I did.

Having always been a student of Commerce, I predictably took up Management as my major in university. It is strangely funny that my days at JU are blurred and pale in comparison to my days spent in school. In university, I was more busy with activities I enjoyed doing - writing, playing music and occasionally, upon requests from friends, taking up short roles in TV fictions and ad films. I do not exactly consider myself a successful TV personality, but I enjoy whatever I get myself into, as fully as I can. Looking back at my student years, I can honestly say, that I would trade anything to go back to my school years and go back to lounging around with my friends again.