TEA CLUB MANAGEMENT COMMITTEE

About Us

INTRODUCTION

Asutosh College has always believed in social interactions to keep its congenial and spirited environment alive. Our Tea Club that began four decades ago with the aim of providing refreshments to the teachers has now become an interactive togetherness. Amidst the academic discipline and administrative rigour, the Tea Club brings a fresh air to enliven our teachers.

The Tea Club is an open platform for teachers to come together and sit, drink tea, and share thought-provoking information. In this way the teachers enter into an explorative conversation and engage themselves in social bonding activities. In other words, the Tea Club widens the horizon of our mind by occasionally and intermittently providing an informal setting.

A closer look at the Tea Club shows that it forms an ever-expansive social gathering that in turn serves the purpose of community services. As a social hub, it brings teachers across departments and disciplines together who might otherwise never meet. The discussion at the Tea Club embraces a number of topics: history, society, culture, language, literature, anthropology, science and economics conjoin. And this generates an excellent opportunity to form collaboration across disciplines and departments, paving way to interdisciplinary activities.

The Club offers a temporary respite from the rigours of academic work, which today is also accompanied by a lot of administrative responsibilities. Besides regular offerings of tea and snacks, the Tea Club organizes events like Poila Baishakh (Bengali New Year Day), Ilish Utsav (during monsoon), Bijoya Dashami (when the college reopens after the Puja vacation) and Poush Parban (December). The most pulsating of all these events is our Annual Get Together on December 24 (the last working day before the winter recess), where all our former, including retired, teachers are invited along with the current teachers. It is a warm experience to see when our retired teachers share moments with our present teachers. Suffice it to say, the Annual Get Together is like a reunion of the Asutosh College family.

The Asutosh College Tea Club is thus a unifier of many thoughts, and ensures, what one might say, a polyphonic zone. It generates the spirit of plurality, representing the diversified ideas of an academic institution that has a social eye. The Club has a humanitarian eye as well. It launched Sparsha in 2017, an initiative to maintain year-round contact with retired teachers and look after their needs as required. Every member of staff is sent special greetings on his/her birthday, and is presented with a token gift of flowers, a pen, and a card. This initiative aims to further extend it’s activities.

During Covid'19, when offline classes are postponed, the Tea Club had extended financial help to Smt. Archana Mandal, who provided homemade food to our teachers throughout the year. Besides, the Tea Club also helps some economically weak students who cannot afford to buy books. The College Tea Club is thus a shaper of culture on campus, constantly motivating teachers to explore new horizons and to establish lifelong connections through a healthy atmosphere.

THE BEGINNING

The Asutosh College Tea Club was established on 24.12.1978 by the substantive members of the College teaching staff as a kind of informal gathering of colleagues within the formal precincts of the workspace to provide refreshment to teachers in between classes. Dr. Basanti Mukherjee (Department of Bengali) took a leading role in founding the club which has grown from strength to strength. After the retirement of Dr. Basanti Mukherjee (Department of Bengali), the Club continued expanding, from time to time, under the leadership of Dr. Anjushree Bhattacharya (Department of Bengali), Dr. Amit Kundu (Department of Physics), Dr. Pabitra Chakraborty (Department of Physics), Dr. Dipti Prakash Mitra (Department of History), Smt. Mahasweta Das Sharma (Department of History), Smt. Nilima Bhatta (Department of Mathematics), Dr. Sraboni Roy, Associate Professor in English, Dr. Chandrima Bhar, Associate Professor in Philosophy, Dr. Tapti De, Associate Professor in History, and Dr. Rina Kar Dutta, Associate Professor in Philosophy.

OBJECTIVES

  • To unify teachers among themselves.
  • To keep a healthy and spirited environment alive through informal gathering.
  • To provide occasional refreshments in order to work diligently.
  • To help teachers form an explorative conversation and engage themselves in social bonding activities.
  • To generate an excellent opportunity to form interdisciplinary collaborations across disciplines and departments.
  • To organize social events, which bring teachers closer to keep lifelong tie.
  • To work as a unifier of diversified thoughts and ensures the spirit of plurality.
  • To enrich the cultural atmosphere of this prestigious institution.

MEMBERSHIP

  • Initially, only the substantive members of teaching staff were members, whose monthly contributions were deducted (still is) from their monthly salaries.
  • Since 2006, the membership has been extended to all members of teaching staff (CWTT and PTT) other than the Guest teachers, who are, however, provided with refreshments.