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Linking Young Minds Together
 Volume 3 | Issue 12 | March 27, 2011 |


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Star Chat

The Impish Child

Radio Jockey Apu
Talks to
Elita Karim

Courtesy : Apurbo

Back in school, I was always up to something or the other. My father passed away when I was in Class 7, which was why, it was up to my mother, a government service holder, to take care of me all by herself. Now when I think back to those days, I can imagine what a nightmare I must have been!

I went to BCSIR or the Science Laboratory School till Class 8. My high school years were divided between Kakoli in Dhanmondi and New Model, where, in the latter, I also acquired my degree.

As a child, I was always into music, drama, designing and drawing cartoons. In fact, I had acted in several television fictions on BTV as a child. To date, I have been a musician in the underground scene and have also designed several album covers. Today, I am Radio Jockey and a TV actor.

I have some fond memories from BCSIR. I remember that in our class, we used to have a voting system, through which one of us would be voted the captain or the class monitor. He would stay the class leader for the whole year, unless he was caught involved with any kind of corruption! Surprisingly enough I was a captain as well. Maybe it was because of all the crazy things that I used to do!

We used to have a school diary where we had to note down our homework for the day. My school diary, was instead, filled with cartoons and caricatures of my teachers, which I used to draw in class to avoid boredom. A teacher of ours was massive and the way she walked and talked would remind me of a gorilla. As soon as the idea struck me, I drew a cartoon of the madam -- a unique cross between the madam and the gorilla -- and I even named her 'Gorilla Madam.' Back then, we were all big fans of the cartoon Thundercats. Another teacher of mine reminded me of Mumm-ra. Hence, I drew a caricature of him as well, and called him 'Babb-rail', a fusion between his name (not mentioning any names!) and the Thurdercats character. One fine day, my mother asked me for my diary so that she could check on my homework. I was busy watching television and informed her nonchalantly that our school never gave us any homework. The next day, my mother went to talk to my teachers and found out that I was lying. We were given homework everyday! After this incident not only was I punished by my mother that night after school, my class teacher got the shock of his life when he went through my school diary. Obviously, I had drawn a caricature of him as well, mixing his human self with, what I believe, was a bird, though I don't remember. He immediately took the school diary to the staff room and shared the diary with everyone, including 'Gorilla Madam' and 'Babb-rail.' That day, I was punished by every teacher that came into class.

That was just one incident out of so many. School days were indeed some of the best days of one's lives. The other day, something came over me and I actually took detour through the Science Laboratory quarters where my old school is still situated. So many things have changed -- a building now sits in the area where there was a tin-shed house where we spent hours playing during recess, classrooms now have air conditioners, the old security guard, who I was so used to seeing, was not there anymore. Even though everything was new around me, I could not help re-living my memories with my old friends and teachers on campus.

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