A Teacher's Day Memory

A longtime friend asked me today about the peculiar Inglish usage of the phrase to pass out in the sense of to graduate (rather than the more common Western sense of to become unconscious). Specifically, he asked whether the phrase had been in common use during our student days in India some three decades ago.  The short answer to his question is that it most certainly was in common use. But the query brought back a treasured memory from my undergraduate days that seems particularly appropriate to share on this day that is celebrated as Teacher's Day in India.

Professor T. Ghatak (another Inglish usage, this use of the initial rather than the complete first name) of the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur had been our English teacher in our first year (which we had spent mostly reading A Passage to India by E. M. Forster, as I recall).  He was a formal gentleman of the old school: tall, fair, and imposing, yet very approachable.  I had maintained a relationship with him after our formal teacher-student relationship had ended, aided partly by the fact that his son Subhendu was my classmate.

This particular usage had always bothered me, so one day I finally asked Prof. Ghatak about it.  He told me that he was familiar with it only in the sense of 'to graduate'.  I was a little surprised but let it go.

A few days later, I received a handwritten letter from him (an inland letter card, more expensive than a postcard but also more private: I did say he was a formal gentleman), in which he said that he had followed up on my question and had verified the other usage that I had talked about.  He went on to thank me for teaching him something about the English language.

This being well before the time of cellphone cameras and scanners, I unfortunately do not have a copy of this letter.  I wish that I had been more diligent in preserving this testament to Prof. Ghatak's openmindedness and humility, which to me is on par with Buonarroti's immortal utterance "Ancora imparo".

A linguistic side note

The verb graduate comes from the Latin gradus ('degree, step').  The related verb matriculate ('be enrolled at a college or university') comes from the Latin matricula, a diminutive of matrix.