Fire and Ice

By KC Vijaya Kumar (batch 1997-98)

Let me be honest upfront. I never had a great equation with Mr Sanyal. We were the first batch to learn from him at ACJ and understandably there were misgivings. He was a man who spoke his mind, never held his punches back and it did not help that his irritation over the use of wrong English got aggravated on reading the dailies and obviously his mood in the mornings could be quite taxing.
But there was no faulting his commitment to helping us improve our writing as well as editing skills. If many of us in that batch manage that odd tightly-written copy, it is thanks to him. But while studying under him, he was the feisty `old-man' with strong biases and prejudices when compared to the serene Mr Ramakrishna and the ever-smiling CK Meena. It didn't help that he was perhaps teaching for the first time and we were a bunch of strong-willed individuals. It was a strange equation - we loved his linguistic repertoire, his skill to enhance the readability of our copies but at the same time our personal equations with him sucked. But credit to him, we could walk into his cabin anytime and say what we didn't like about his approach and he would listen, argue and then give up with a resigned air. And while he would improve our way with words, he did lacerate a few with his acid-tongue. But he never held any grudges. I do fondly recall him mentioning my interest in sports journalism to a visiting faculty! He was never politically correct and in this age of too much sugar, he was indeed a relief though I guess we all realised it a bit late. Sir, thanks for the memories. Never got a chance to tell you earlier, we have had our fights with you but we always respected you. You were one of the finest teachers I have had in my life. Wish I told you that earlier.