By Dr Rehan Siddiqui
I came here in 1962, and at that time I was just 22 years old and much thinner than I am today, I weighed just 110 pounds. I was interviewed by Professor E J Sinclair who was the principal, and a very well known teacher and administrator. He asked me, “Rehan, will you be able to control the class? You know, you’re so thin.” I replied, “Yes sir, I can do it.”
The day before my first class, I went to see the lecture room and it had these blackboards where you wrote on the lower part and then pushed it up. I tried to push it upward and I couldn’t, so I knew this was something that would be a problem. I remember I was up the whole night preparing. I was going to give my first lecture, and there were about 60 strong students, including some East African students, very smart, who were at FC at the time. When I started teaching, I filled the lower part, and then I started erasing it. Somebody at the back said, “Sir, you can pull it up.” I knew that I could not, so I said, “Wait a minute, you can copy whatever you want to, and then later on I will start writing the next part.” Professor Zia-ul-Islam, who is now Head of the Biology Department in the Intermediate side, was in my first class.
Anyway, it was a good experience, and I enjoyed teaching from 1962 to 1966. This was the first period of my life at FC College.
