Yasmeen Murshed has now passed into a sphere where the temporal world will not touch her. The end, when it came to her on the last day of July, left hundreds, indeed thousands, of people wallowing in sadness. The sadness had to do with remembrance of the vitality, the sheer energy she exuded as the founder-principal of Scholastica, an educational institution she built brick by brick and turned into one of the more reputed English-medium schools in Bangladesh. That source of vitality has now fallen silent.
Mrs Murshed’s passing opens a number of windows for me into the past, into a time when it was my privilege to interact with her at Scholastica. As a Masters student at Dhaka University, when I went to see her at the old Scholastica building on Road 22 Dhanmondi (opposite the Abahani sports ground) in January 1980 about a teaching job for myself, she was effusive in her welcome and readily appointed me a teacher of English literature and language. That was the beginning of what would turn out to be four years of a learning experience for me, for even teachers learn as the days go by.
In the classroom, teaching those children, trying to engage them in studies through means I thought were essential elicited Mrs Murshed’s support. I used humour and wit to have all those little boys and girls want to know more about language and literature. There were the class periods where in the final few minutes I went for quiz sessions on general knowledge with my students. Enthusiasm marked their responses.
After I joined Scholastica, I ventured the idea to the principal that we needed to form a debating club to prepare the students in elocution and for debating competitions with other schools. She was absolutely supportive of the idea and within days had a lectern made for our debate exercises to get underway. It was a time when all my colleagues at Scholastica put in their contributions to popularising not just debates but also sports and other extra-curricular activities.
We were all young, all feeling the power of idealism in our hearts. Into those little boys and little girls we taught we sought to transfer that idealism, to convince them that education in the classroom and beyond was a surefire way to a proper understanding of life. Our students are today all grown men and women inhabiting various parts of the world. They will certainly recall, as they hear of Yasmeen Murshed’s farewell to this world, the inspirational leadership she personified at Scholastica, leadership which touched the lives of all her teachers and her students.
At the end of my first month of teaching at Scholastica, Mrs Murshed surprised me hugely by announcing at a staff meeting that being impressed with my work, she had decided to give me a full month’s bonus. You can imagine the thrill which coursed through me. My happiness went up in leaps and bounds when my colleagues, all of whom had by then turned veterans at Scholastica, enthusiastically congratulated me.
Mrs Murshed’s generosity of spirit is what I have never forgotten. Somehow she felt she could ask me to undertake responsibilities and I would be happy to oblige her. A few days after martial law was imposed on the country in March 1982, an order arrived from the military that all English medium schools had to provide the office of the area martial law authorities with copies of all textbooks taught to students.
Mrs Murshed decided that I should be the person to go to Shere Banglanagar with the books and see the military authorities. It was a young officer, perhaps a captain, who met me. When I handed him the full set of the textbooks for him to take a look at, he looked up at me, thought for a few seconds before telling me it was all fine and I could return to Scholastica with the textbooks. When I reported back to Mrs Murshed, she was properly indignant at such a waste of time caused by such an unwise move on the part of the authorities.
Yasmeen Murshed’s death takes me back to all the beautiful times my colleagues and I felt Scholastica was home for us. Sir Shawkat, Sir Abdul Hye, Mahbuba Apa, Nurjahan Apa, Sabah Apa, Sirajul Islam, Kabiruddin Chandan, Sarwar, Dora Ali, Shabnam Huda, Dora Kaffey, Kazi Dishu, Zakia Badrudduja, Gabriel D’Costa, Mahfuza and Wahidul Haq and many others constituted a powerful and happy team of individuals under Mrs Murshed’s guidance. She would not let formality come into her dealings with us.
She was never the overbearing school principal in whose presence we needed to be stiff and inordinately deferential. Hers was a personality which had us break free of our inhibitions, if we had any, and spend the hours in school in what was truly a celebration of life. Shawkat Sir, the expert in maths, often broke into the Mukesh number “saranga teri yaad mein” and we listened in rapt attention. Kazi Dishu, the younger maths teacher, was ebullient in his comments on what he saw around him. Chandan was loved by the students, for he taught biology in the way a poet would. Gabriel was forever cracking jokes, making us roll over with laughter.
I stayed at Scholastica, where I would also meet the young woman I would marry one day, from 1980 to 1984. I would move on, but I yet remember the heartache that departure caused me. Years later, when Mrs Murshed opened Etcetera, the bookshop in Banani, I went to its launch. She was thrilled to see me, announcing to everyone at the outlet, “Badrul is here.” Some more years went by before I could meet her again.
It was at a reception organized for a visiting cricket team in Dhaka. I was busy conversing with others in the second row when I heard her call out my name. And there was Mrs Murshed in the front row, turning back and looking at me. I quickly went up to her. The experience was touching as she held my hand in hers and then did the beautiful thing of patting me on both cheeks. It was a moment I have never forgotten, never will.
With Yasmeen Murshed gone, a door to the past closes for me, indeed for everyone who knew her. At Scholastica, she was the light in our lives and we sparkled in the brilliance breaking out from her. She now belongs among the stars. And we are left poorer by her passing.
Syed Badrul Ahsan is a political analyst and commentator on South Asian history.
