Remembering Prof Rizwan Qaiser
I choose to imagine my last possible conversation with Prof Rizwan Qaiser and perhaps I would continue to imagine many more like these (you will find it in the end of this article). His sweet presence and sharp wit would always be there as long as I am alive. He was a rare combination of fun with brains — to analyse a situation cleverly — a strong decision maker, a good listener and a wonderful charmer to hold conversations with. He had the unique art to know life, spread happiness and cheer us up in the most tense of situations. I wonder if his mother or any of his parents was like this! Unabated by situation and its grimness, he delivered Hope. He was earthly like a villager, would watch and play with human behaviour. I could think of a rare combination of village politics of summoning someone along with social activism to stop what is wrong. He was fearless to challenge and call a spade a spade.
As a senior colleague, he taught us as we walked with him, without even subtlest of undermining us or through any direct intellectual attack. For our meetings, when I was not on time, he chided me with such affection that I learnt value of time and punctuality. In our last meeting, we wished to meet for lunch. After not getting my message on time, he said he would have his lunch at home and told us that he would join us for bite at the community centre. Since last year, our favourite was newly opened Haldirams, Community Centre, New Friends Colony. Dr Ahmad Sohaib, Prof Rizwan and I were trio, who would hold many debates, go out for treats and discuss wide range of topics.
As a mentor he lent ear to all my experiments and even experimental ways of thinking! I always wanted to convince him for community lifestyle and Gandhian education of learning by work. He had eventually started taking interest and shared examples of certain weavers he had visited and bought stuff to support them. We wanted to pursue it. I wanted him to imagine this as way of life. But perhaps hardened with journey from Munger to JNU to Jamia, like my father (who must be older than him around ten years), he never supported it fully for the sheer ability to understand it completely was challenged by his real struggles of India and Indians which showed insipidity of my lofty ideas.
He encouraged me to dance and perform like many of my senior colleagues. His presence in my first recital at Triveni was not less than a surprise, a man of his stature walked in like nobody, sat through, praised me and even analysed how I should sincerely pursue it with focus. He warned me for digressions while he enjoyed my confusions of young dancer and an academic. He never preached but only wisely told me what life is. He was never threatened by my ideas or laughed at my stupidity. He was even happier to introduce me to his students, as I introduced mine to him. He was caring and told my students to learn well and support me. He knew that students’ support worked as catalyst for teachers. As in our case, we take stand for them and often take other ideological stands. Our stands might not be with the majority.
He believed in growing through conflicts. And perhaps I, like his students was a curious mind just a bit more diverse, at times lost but ready to ponder when he asked some questions or shared some new thought. He once asked that how??/why do I manage such diverse range of topics from philosophy, education, social issues and dance. I attempted to explain my interest that Sri Aurobindo’s mental development has helped me. But in real it was just a complement to his own trysts with destiny from small town in Bihar to capital of India and then travelling world over. It is not easy to let several viewpoints co-exist within and communicate it to the world effortlessly. He mastered that craft! He would break into his Bihari, often cite interesting historical material for new insights in India and India’s secular humane nature, which was far more complicated than just confluence or what is addressed as gunga-jamuni tehzeeb.
He was quick and sincere to improve his thoughts conceptually. One of the first occasions when our intellectual exchange began, was in Refresher Course organised by the then Academic Staff College now HRDC at JMI in 2014. He was speaking on secularism. I still quote that lecture of how academics, army and other institutions have played a role in secularism of India. This was before we had this polarization in the country. This gave me a cue to develop both conceptual and social platforms of ideas and their journey. We also reviewed it with the recent situation of Kashmir that perhaps there has to be different plan for Kashmir to establish peace. We discussed how painful incidents in a society might take generations to address them.
We also had similar conversations in car when we travelled together to eating outlets, along with other faculty members to IIC for lectures. I remember how he shared his theory of addressing minority issue in South Asia in 1980s; he was supposed to give me that paper. We wished to develop it further in the context of the current crisis of NRC-CAA.
He read social issues with such empathy that at times I wondered if Devi’s force has nearly blessed him. He often talked of massacres in India and otherwise. While I just get to know he lost his father to this hatred. I think he narrated me this incident but love in him overpowered the sheer brutality of the incident and he firmly vouched for equality and unity in India.
He was a complete gentleman who complemented unabashedly sometimes on my dress to cheer me up, yet maintained the distance with respect. He put our picture clicked by Sohaib on Facebook but later modestly apologised that he should not have done without asking me. I was fine if he did because he did not tag me. And the picture along with note was a means to communicate that India is thinking about its issues of poor, marginalised, and their situation.
He knew when to tease as he chuckled like a child on getting some better share of food but mindful to serve us well. It was his belief in to ‘be’ that he laughed open heartedly with us and even made us eat rolls at Hygiene canteen in the main campus of JMI, with carefreeness of college students and made Sohaib and me comfortable as well. This would also apply to his tea preparation in his room at the Department of History and Culture . Like a Japanese master he prepared the tea and offered us. The drinking of tea with gupshup over life, academics and politics was very India though; there was no pretense. It was often joined by his other colleagues. It was a complete adda which he moderated with proper turn taking and not to miss the idea! That is how he could guide me, he never gave decisions and judged things but threw light on it or shared thought with his spark of wisdom.
Here I present my imagined conversation on current second wave of Covid and the Bengal elections.
H-Hello sir how do you see this second wave Covid situation in country?
R-It is bad Harpreet! What second wave? Let me tell you, it is such apathy to just leave all of us to die. No planning, insisting on vaccine. Sab game hai! The government has not worked a bit on the situation. And if they have they should at least tell us that why are we unable to understand it all. They never cared for it. You and I may still have a chance to live. But the masses? Uneducated and poor people, where will they go? What would be happening to them? Nothing! Total failure. Ufffff! ( pain was evident)
H-And we were also caught naïve with so many deaths around. We were watching Sarkar digressing from point but we were never united to ask about it.
R-I agree Harpreet. You always raise point about community. And I try to understand its relevance in present situation where we all have been fighting for several issues. Are not we all exhausted?!
H-Sir how do you see Bengal’s elections? Do you think the current medical situation has impacted the vote swing?
R-Well, Yes and No (there was spark in his eyes but knitted brows indicated something). Yes, because it is out in front of the country about where do we stand. No. because credit also goes to lots of people who worked to get the right kind of government. Many Bengalis did not fall in the trap of Jai Sri Ram. Our farmers are sitting there. I must say your (Sikh) community has worked hard.
H-Sir I also see my community and their effort for kisaan andolan as getting chance to rebuild our deserved image post-1984 and movies like Udtaa Punjab. But sir can the conversations go beyond religions in this country? I mean can we talk of larger goals.
R-There is less chance Harpreet, the leadership might do more damage as you may see but that is also sure it has come out in open. But lot of loss is there, we have lost minds who thought or could have thought more. Also Indians love dhaniya patti more than the real sabzi. So we fall in trap of projected image of the country, the dhaniya patti, rather the real goals of hospitals, education, housing which India needs. Even if they have moved to modern bazaar, they love discounts. So they might still cost a little more cost to our society. (his wit to add metaphors of Indian mentality was unmatchable, I wish I remember more)
H- So sir I often feel India is gone, my country is gone Sir how must we build the hope?
R- I feel that. But we must not leave hope. Even if everything is gone as long as we are alive, we will work. You see Harpreet it is difficult. But anyhow we are together. You are there, Sohaib is there, Nishat hai…aur students hain…tum log sab dekhoge iss sab se nikalte huye. The world does not end with one person, either good or bad. Let me put a point and you may take it as a historian’s word. Many civilizations have vanished before this but life rebuilds. Even Modern India has seen many ups and down but we are together, only we must be alert.
(he was bit less vehement this time, I do not know if he has lost hope or only he was trying to give me yet another lesson.)
And therefore it goes on for me! If Life goes on, so does his wit, wisdom and quest! What I have decided to call ‘Qaiser Quest’ from now onwards. In my spiritual quest, his physical disappearance which pained me a lot, is complemented by his wisdom and vibrant presence. In front of me he stands with smile on face, dancing eyes, raised brows which becomes calm and silent, and he tells me the principle of the Buddha from his place, that how in nothingness is hope, whenever we think we know everything and yet do not find an answer, we must remember:
You are nothing Harpreet, you know nothing!
I am nothing, I know nothing.
To be continued with existences…..
