Pranab babu is no more. He was one of those very few men whom I’d the opportunity to meet, learn and remember timelessly. He was my teacher. Perhaps that suffices at least to me to figure him out completely. It was early 2009 evening, I heard the news when I was in Mumbai and was just making a usual call to my mother back at kolkata. “There’s a bad news”, Maa was hesitating. “What’s it maa?” “You remember Pranab babu, your mathematics teacher?” “Of course I do. What’s wrong maa!” I was feeling little bewildered. “He passed away yesterday.” I didn’t feel like talking. Some moments leave people mesmerized for so many reasons. Some lets out inundated emotions, some seek for solace. I searched for some silence. He left this little bit confused world a little early rather less predictably. I read somewhere “to whom world exists without any reason and who himself exists without any reason, to him God exists.” Invariably, God existed to him in an inexplicable form which was less visible to us. To him, God was mathematics and mathematics was the only “Mantra” to worship God.
I liked math but 11th std. onwards, Mathematics just started to appear in a bit different size and shape to me till incidentally I met him. An introduction with a sum, how’s that! He was not in the list of those who gets impressed prima facie. Nonetheless a quick answer on a percentage calculation made him thinking of me rather differently and voluntarily he offered me to teach math. When God started making this universe presumably it was not all that in good shape otherwise He would not have to try hard to get this world in the shape that we see today. Nevertheless His hard work isn’t well documented except the natural evolution process in disguise that took its own course of action and made things what they are today. I guess he also tried to edifice something out of possibly nothing but with an intuition of some possibility as well. And to shape up this possibility, I had to toil too much to cope up with his pace of thinking and action to be at par with his effort of bringing me up to his expectation.
What happens to one if he realizes that earth is rotating on its own axis? He once asked this question once pausing for a while over an incomplete sum. I knew the rotational speed of earth and also knew the fact. What I didn’t know was the difference between understanding & realization. I remained bemused searching for an answer which perhaps was not easy for a novice to whom mystery of real world had just started to unfold. There’s a transition when someone leaves real domain of logic and extends his thought to something metaphysical in pursuit of something which is little inexplicable as understanding doesn’t depends on facts and figures anymore but on a sense of serene realization that’s more divine in nature. “He dies”, Pranab babu told rather expressionlessly which shoot my eagerness to the top of
Pranab babu was versatile. Literature, philosophy and mathematics used to merge in a common entity when he used talk taking some short breaks in between. Mathematics, he used to went on elaborating, is like any other language that you come across everyday except that very few of us understand that to use properly to communicate with nature. Life’s beautiful because of literature which is in every sense is an elixir, life is meaningful because there’s philosophy and of course life’s workable on the canvas of nature because of mathematics!
Nice journey it was with him, but no nice thing survives eternally.
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