I still don’t have the courage to buy Teachers’ Day cards.
It was 11th of August 2018. I was sitting in a tea shop and drinking a cup of black tea with a friend. We were waiting for the bus to go to the city. My friend, he does not talk much in the mornings. He is either lost in thoughts or browsing through social media. I was drowsy from the medicines that I took the previous night and was staring blankly at the rows of rubber trees opposite to the tea shop. My phone beeped with a message notification.
“Our KP passed away.”
I read it, closed the app, and turned off the phone. I began staring blankly at the trees again.
“Not KP, no,” I told myself in disbelief. Last time I went to visit KP, he was alright, and it was just two weeks ago that I spoke to him over the phone. I checked the message again, hoping that it was a moment of horrific hallucination. But it was not.
My heart was racing, and I was sweating. I touched my friend’s hand and he looked at me.
“What is the matter, why are you pale?”
“Sir is no more.”
My head was reeling, and I felt that my body was growing heavy. I could not get words out of my mouth. My mind was muffled with thoughts, but nothing was quite clear. I had flashes of him taking classes, holding discussions in his cabin, talking about life and science.
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Porsezian or KP as we fondly called him was my professor at Pondicherry University. I met him first after a class by him on Mathematical Physics. As I entered his cabin to clarify a doubt, he asked me if I wanted the answer or a discussion. A discussion, I said and that was the beginning of an incredible mentorship.
One day, during my second year, he called me and asked what I wanted to do after masters.
“Ph.D. Theoretical nonlinear optics.”
“Good. So you don’t like experiments.”
That evening, he gave me a paper on the nature of nonlinear optics in negative index materials. I did not understand a word, but he asked me to reproduce the results from that paper. For the next ten months, I would sit in his cabin after class hours and discuss the paper. Never have I gotten an answer from him. He would drop clues and make me struggle to come up with an answer. Not just that, for every result out there, he would ask me to design an experiment and I hated that. But it was not long before my aversion for experiments numbed. I grew fond of designing experiments.
On the day I graduated, he told me that a real physicist is someone who appreciates equations and experiments alike. They are just two different ways on our quest to understand nature. Little did I know on the day he gave me the research article that I would end up being a Ph.D. student in experimental nonlinear optics.
That was just one of the several ways by which I was influenced by him. I was in touch with him even after my graduation. He knew my ups and downs.
It was not just Physics that I discussed with him. He talked to me about life and pointed out the biggest fear that I had been holding in me for years. Ever since I was a kid, my sole aim in life was to prove the world that I could achieve, and I am worthy. I had not paid attention to my health or my wishes. I did not trust people. I built a wall around me and guarded it day and night. I was revengeful. But it all changed with him.
I never told him that for the first time, I saw, a father figure in someone. Deep inside all my thoughts about my future and dreams, he was there.
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My friend asked if we should return to the hostel, I was not sure. What would I do there? The Nonlinear Optics textbook that he used to borrow from me was right on the table. I just wanted to cry but I was numb. I called my mom who by then had already got the news. I could not even cry to her. I just felt empty. That’s what the death of someone you look up to feels like. His role in my life came to a sudden stop that I had no way of responding to. I still have not responded to it. I am still numb. I am still recovering. Is there a way to fill this void? I do not know.