It was proplbably our 3rd year of Engineering when we had Economics as a paper. I don’t remember the exact name of the paper but we had to study basics of economics for that. In private engineering colleges students tend to stay at home or choose to do every stupidest shit but not attending the lectures. The primary reason was that either the professors didn’t have a good grasp of the subject or they lectures were not helpful enough (A knowledgeable professor may or may not be good at explaining things he/she knows.) or people could manage to get the notes from those who attended the classes.
There could be thousands more reasons why the students were reluctant to attend the classes but I’ll leave that for another story. My friends had the reputation of attending all the classes till the last day before exam. Eventually I had to do the same sometimes for peer pressure and sometimes for mom’s silent treatment pressure. Because then my health condition was so bad, I left the hostel and mom came to live with me in a place nearby my college. Yes, it was that much serious. So staying at home skipping the classes was never an option for me. I never went to watch a movie skipping my classes because 1. All those 2-3 people I was friend with used to attend the classes. 2. It seemed to be stupid to go alone for a movie and ask notes to my friends even when I myself could attend the class.
In the class of 60 students merely 8-10 people used to attend the economics class. Mr. SKR was the professor assigned for us. He had nearly 20 years of experience in industry and was a guest professor in our college at that time. SKR used to pick up a topic and give random examples from real life. Sometimes he used to dictate some notes he prepared. He was occasionally funny. But none of them is the reason why I still remember him.
We 8 people attended his lecture from the beginning till the end of the semester. Among us there were 2-3 girls including me. As the number of students were so less SKR used to interact with the students, pick name of students present to give an example. I never saw him to interact with any of the girls. Sometimes, I used to feel that probably we were invisible to him.
One day I was sitting next to a boy on the third bench and SKR told us to move to another bench. I thought that at least at that time he would address me but he called us “Ghosh(the boy’s name) and company “. I didn’t like the way it was. I was never a student who would ask a lot of questions or argue with a professor or has a hunger for attention. I attended the class, listened to the lecture and took notes if useful and that’s it. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t feel the passive ignorance of SKR.
It was probably the second last class on which he called me all of a sudden. “Hey you! Did you understand what I’m saying? You don’t ask any question. (Nobody ever did in his class). Did you attend this class before?” There was a tone of disgust and reluctance in that. Finally I realized that all this time, I had been invisibly attending his class. I didn’t deserve it. After that day, I lost the little respect I had for him.
My final thought on this is, people will not respect you just because you’re senior to them in age or experience or knowledge but you have a disrespectful attitude towards others.
