FR. RAJ

As a student I admired quite a few professors for their teaching. One of them is Fr. Raj. He is known for the command over the language, the authority on the subject and the power packed presentation. At the same time, sitting in his class gives the taste of concentration camp. Every one sits straight, listens attentively and even breaths carefully.

But outside the class, he is entirely a different person; jokes, serves and goes out of his way to make you feel comfortable. I have not seen another person who is as generous as him. Selflessly serves others.

He had many terror tactics; at the end of the class, he would ask one of us to summarize what he has learned in that class and evaluate it strictly. At the end of the first class, one girl had to do this creative exercise, she summarized in two sentences; “Basically this class highlighted the importance of communication and one can indeed learn it, provided paid attention”. Fr. Raj stared at her, I thought like Lord Shiva, he is going to open his third eye and burn her alive. But all he said was, “Good, you have scored .025 out of 20”. Thereafter, during his class each one was learning to do two mental activities - listening and memorizing - at the same time.

He gave us a group assignment, we, five poor mortals, chose some exotic topic to impress him, little we knew that nothing on earth and heaven can surprise him. Every group had to meet him in person and answer his questions. As a strategic preparation we enquired other groups who have completed sessions with the father, since they were all in the state of perpetual shock, they were moving around like zombies and we gained nothing from their experience. It is only after the session I realized that he asks questions for which there are no answers. You can only give wrong answers, and that leaves the room (not only room, but entire cricket ground) for him decimate us into pieces. One student made the observation, “I have heard about gang rape, today experienced it. But it was not five against one, it was one against five, it is a unique and specialized gang rape.”

At the end of the first term, we wanted to get tips from the second year students to handle the forthcoming subjects. One second year guy said, “If Fr.Raj’s course is over means the PMIR program is over, here after guys, it is only party time”.

No wonder every one experienced absolute liberation sense of great achievement at the end of the 20^th session of Fr.Raj.