The last many years she was a rolling punctuation in the university-scape of Presidency. A wizened comma in a white sari and an orthopaedic belt strapped to her back. There were many who had no idea who she was or what she was doing there. And yet, last December, when news got around that at 82 she had left for the bigger campus in the skies, gone full stop, it stung the idea of campus normal they were also clinging to. It was another reminder that nothing ever was going to be exactly as it used to.
Nandini Raha taught practical classes for MSc physics students of Presidency University. “She had joined as a part-time teacher in 2000, after retiring from Bethune College. And the last 10 years, after the part-time position was dissolved, she offered her services voluntarily and free of cost,” says her niece Sampa Das. According to Das, notwithstanding osteoporosis and fading eyesight, Raha had journeyed to Presidency from her house in north Calcutta every day until lockdown. “Bhutun mashi had a faithful rickshaw-puller who would ferry her every day.” Madhulika Ghosh, who is an alumnus of Brahmo Balika Shikshalaya, same as Raha and lab instructor at Sivanath Sastri College, remembers how Raha would refuse to take anyone’s hand while crossing the street.
Ghosh shares other details about Nandinidi, as she was known across generations. How she loved her doodh-cha, how she would burst into song at picnics, that she played the sitar. Shantanu Dutta, who had joined Presidency as a part-time teacher the same year as Raha, remembers how after years of tutoring undergraduate students, she excitedly familiarised herself with the experiments in the MSc syllabus, practised them, spent hours in the laboratory and was full of questions for those who knew them better. Adds Dutta, “Wherever, whenever, there was a physics seminar or lecture she would be present.”
Das says, “I can tell you her weight hovered around 30 kilos. How resolute she was. The spartan life she led — a single bed, a room stacked with books from floor to ceiling. How she once told me that she would like the books to accompany her to the crematorium when her time was up… I can tell you such things, but it is her students who can really claim to know her.”
A young Nandini Raha Image Courtesy: Sampa Das
Among all the stories recounted about Raha at the online memorial service organised one January evening, there is one about her and the Halley’s Comet. Raha had taught physics to undergraduates at Bethune College for 30 years beginning 1963. That day, the video meet was teeming with former students across generations and colleagues. Reminiscings tied in with more reminiscings, short ones, detailed ones, specific ones...
One former student recalled a shortcut with the spectrometer she had taught. “The lab instruments spoke to her,” said a former colleague. Someone else shared a memory of her lecture on the kinetic theory of gases and how she illustrated the “degree of freedom” by having a student swing her arms. And yet another remembered looking through the telescope on spring evenings as Raha animatedly pointed out Jupiter’s moons, Saturn’s rings, the moon’s craters.
Some said they felt reassured by her simplicity. Some said they felt comforted by her encouragement. “Not a single picnic or outing with her was apparently complete without her singing Amra shobai raja at the start and at the end,” remembered someone else. “She egged student and teacher alike to participate in sports,” was another memory. Another student shared, “Didi would say, ‘When I cannot sleep, I go over the entire table in my head’.”
A chemistry professor said Raha would call her up with doubts in the subject. A former student from Bangalore said during lockdown Raha would call and want to know how online classes are conducted. It seems Raha carried a notebook wherein she assiduously collated details of her students. Former student Suparna Basak said, “She wove us all together like a garland.”
When it came up for discussion, a possibility of publishing a list of student achievers in the Bethune commemorative magazine, Bahe Nirantara, Raha resisted the idea. “What makes someone an achiever and someone not,” she asked.
Everyone who knew Raha knows that she did not die of old age or any ailment — she died of a broken heart when separated from her beloved lab and students by the virus-induced lockdown.
Back to the Halley’s Comet story. In 1986, in preparation of the sighting of the short-period comet, the physics teacher had borrowed a star chart from one of her students. Thereafter, elaborate arrangements were made for the sighting. Event over, the overwhelmed and grateful teacher presented a poem to the student who had lent her the chart. The student, Mahua Ghosh, recited from memory some of the lines by her late teacher. “Halley jaabe onek doore/Halley ashbe abar ghoore... Halley will sail a long long way. But Halley will return one day.”
One comes by a Halley’s comet every 75 years... and a Nandini Raha?
