We had a trend of interrogating the newcomers in the name of ragging those days in the Physics Department of Gurucharan College, Silchar. I was also ragged, I found it super interesting, you will know why if I give an example question:
Question : Is it possible that two lines can intersect each other ?
My answer: yes
Question: Where ?
My answer: at infinity.
If ragging is like this then who won't enjoy ? Moreover, our department was completely different from any other departments in our college, in many respects, the building is outside the main campus of the college. Teachers were strongly involved in research, especially, Surajit Sir, Atri mam & TKD Sir. It was hard to differentiate, who is junior and who is senior among all the students as all the three year students used to have "adda" together.... After my ragging was over from that very day I got the ticket of the regular adda with my seniors.
Next year... admissions were over, classes have just started, we invited the newcomers to attend a meeting that we are going to hold in our favorite "third year room" (the room attached with the lab, at the end of our department building). Let me tell you here one secret, I had a selfish intention behind this ragging job, I was actually searching for two people who are seriously devoted to Physics, with whom I can hang out discussing concepts of Physics and nurture new ideas and can carry out amateur research and mainly I wanted to learn from them because I was only interested and curious but I didn't have enough knowledge. I was in the second year, I needed two juniors because none of my seniors were willing to chose Physics as their lives, fortunately I knew Subhasish Chakraborty well, he was already my friend and I had so many glimpse of brilliance in him, he had taken admission this year so I was sure, two we already were the last one I needed. Before the meeting, Subhasish had secretly informed me, " There is a boy in our batch who is seriously devoted to Physics, he has very firm concepts and mainly he has a very innovative and unconventional mindset." I was confident about my friend Subhasish and so I was very happy that my search will find an end after all. Usually the interrogation class started, one after one we had called, some were unwilling to answer us as they believed we didn't belong to any authority and some were really impressive. Then Subhasish whispered in my ear, "Pritam Bhattacharjee" and pointed me to a very nice and handsome boy... sitting calm and quit, I went to Pritam and asked him a few things... he was trying to explain but he could not do it clearly but we got him... and also got that this boy is definitely the one we are searching for.
After all the classes were over I went to Pritam and told him, "This evening please come to my house, Subhasish will accompany you. That day I and Subhasish explained him our plans and surprisingly Pritam liked it very much. We had weekly three days meet but in a few days it became a daily job and gradually we lost the track of time and space... any day any time any where... Physics... Physics and Physics... One day we named our group "SAP", stands for Subhasish, Atanu & pritam... but also Strings' Academy of Physics... We bought a black-board and placed it in my room of my Vivekananda Road rental house, one of us would go to the board and explain the others what he had personally understood about any difficult concept. By that time everyone started to notice us together and the "SAP" was already famous... I think if one visits the classrooms of Physics department, G C College, he/she will find "Psi Alpha Pi" that is "SAP" in Greek letters on the walls... soon we three became best friends...
Other than Physics we had one thing common in us "photography", unfortunately none of us had any camera ! But we were dreaming to have one... one day Pritam said, "I had a faint but nonzero chance of getting one digicam... if I can request my family seriously... may be they can buy me one... as I have got a sign of that today...", obviously we started to force him and so he started to force his parents.... ultimately he had succeeded and along with him we had a party... Here I should also mention about Sandipan, because Sandipan, my childhood friend was also a lover of photography... and he was already introduced to "SAP"... so we four had only one ordinary (extra ordinary in those days) "canon powershot" camera, with that we started our journey of Photography... Pritam's unique thing was that he used to capture small things those days... "insects", "tiny plants", "mushrooms" and things like that and he never edited anything... My bad habit was that every year I had to change my rental house starting from my Higher Secondary days... so I shifted to Atalbasti, a muslim family or better to say, "Chachi Ammas" house... Chachi Amma liked all of us very much... she loved Pritam and Subhasish as everyday they used to visit my place and stay for the whole day... It was the time of flood in Silchar and the flood was only a few meters away from my house... naturally Pritam with his camera and we comreds... those pictures were the best of all.... "Subhasis's Specs", "The House Sunk In The Blue Water", "The Buffaloes" all taken those days... we then joined Sandipan in his "NIT Silchar" and explored the flooded NIT with Pritam's libero bike and subhasish's old scooter... we criticized and hated newborn cheap culture... we hated the way globalization was taking away the economic security of a common man... taking away our "homes" !
Let me now come back to SAP, I was in the third year of B.Sc, Pritam and Subhasish in the second year, I was staying at my Vivekananda Road house, so we were holding our SAP meet there. We three were fascinated by Einstein's Relativity but were uncomfortable with the ideas of Quantum Mechanics (everyone is !), but our dissatisfaction was so intense that we started to think of constructing a different theory which would explain the results of Quantum Mechanics. We had taken the phenomenon of "Electron Diffraction Pattern" when electrons pass through gold foil. We were trying to explain the diffraction pattern by using classical Physics. Within a few days we had found an idea which could do the job, we thought the phenomenon as "Deflection" instead of "Diffraction" that is the pattern formed by the electrons passing through the gold foil is actually due to the periodic electric field due to the positive ion cores of the Gold atoms, we started from the scratch... worked on it all the day all the night... we used to bunk classes and those days we had completely forgotten that we had a college ! One whole month worked on it and finally reached at a satisfactory point, we named our paper "Electron Deflection Pattern", luckily at that time Prof. Sudhakar panda of Harishchandra Research Institute (HRI), Allahabad, was visiting Silchar as he was the supervisor of our Atri Madam. We submitted our paper to him, he thoroughly read it and made the complement,"you three are the amateur Physicists." Then he explained us where we were wrong, and explained in detail Dirac's "Superposition Principle" of Quantum Mechanics, I and Subhasish were convinced but Pritam was not, he kept on working on it and so we had to join him as we were the "SAP"... we found situations like "Neutrons Under Gravity" and so we three were then convinced by the power of Quantum Mechanics. There were many examples of new ideas that we worked on together, but the thing that impressed me a lot was Pritam's old diary, the school days diary... full of rough sketches... equations and diagrams... full of innovative ideas... brilliant ideas... His main power was his intuition, the most important tool to become a "Theoretical Physicist", many time he could intuitively tell the goal and so it would become easier for us to do hard work on it in the right direction and achieve the result.
Now we know that our plan will never succeed, Pritam betrayed us ! He was not allowed to become what he was supposed to be... what was his life... his dream... his reality... to devote his life to Physics... he was not allowed to do Physics anymore... his dreams were cut short by some animals who will never realize what "Quantum Mechanics" is... they don't have enough grey matter inside their skull to realize what they have done... what Pritam was ! But what should we do ? Where is SAP ? Everything is over... what remains is Pritam's memories which will haunt us throughout our lives... its a bliss that we were together at the same time it will remain as a never ending curse that Pritam will is not and will not be with us working on Physics !
I wish if I could believe in God, Heaven and Hell, Reincarnation... soul... I could still dream that his soul is with us... but like Pritam we two are also hardcore atheists and so we are helpless we are cursed !
