From Teenage To Manhood

From Teenage To Manhood
Asit Narayan Sengupta (B.Arch. 1951-’56)

The Title photo: 
Sitting in the front row, from left to right Prof. Kalyan Banerjee, Gobindo Roy, Unknown, Prof. G.K. Paknikar, Prof. Abani Kumar De, Prof. Salil Banerjee, Prof. Prabhat Das, & Prof. Debajyoti Aich Bhowmick. 

B.E. College (now I.I.E.S.T.) has been and will always remain an emotional experience, as I spent virtually five years there, barring the vacations. I feel that it is here that I and possibly others, have transformed from timid teenagers to confident men. Alas, during my five years there were no women students in the entire college. The only girl student, Ila-di, Ila Majumdar, graduated in 1951, the year I took admission to B.E. College. But then no girl students during our time.

Today, we will focus on our teachers, while telling our own story. I start with the first and unforgettable interview for admission. There I was sitting at the end of a very long table like a sacrificial goat. At the far end was the Principal, Prof. S.R Sengupta, staring at me through his piercing glasses. On either side of the table were, I assumed, the heads of departments. Myself hailing from Arambagh, where there was no electricity in those days, I was fascinated by Calcutta’s playful neon signs and wanted to become an Electrical Engineer. Prof. Sengupta asked me a series of questions related to electricity. Even I knew that I gave wrong answers to all. An exasperated Prof. Sengupta asked me if I had a hobby. “Drawing”. He literally took out a slate and a pencil and asked if I could draw in exactly two minutes a portrait of one of the H.O.D.s (later I learnt that he was Prof. G.K. Paknikar of Architecture). That was a cake-walk for me. I gave back the slate as Prof. Sengupta watched his watch. He then flashed a big smile and asked me if I would like to join Architecture. I thought he meant Agriculture. Well, to make the long story short, I was in, and in Architecture. And on hindsight, I could not have chosen a better profession.

Prof. S.R. Sengupta then left B.E. College to become the first Director of the first Indian Institute of Technology in India, Kharagpur. After finishing my B.Arch. in 1956 I joined I.I.T. as a lecturer. One day when I met him and told him that I was a junior faculty, he told me that anybody teaching at I.I.T. was a Professor. I grew taller that day.

Now, back to my beloved B.E. College. Professor Atul Chandra Roy, with a face as if sculpted by Michael Angelo, became the new Principal. His nickname to all of us was “Kalomanik”, meaning a black-jewel. I had little to do with him, except that his very beautiful young daughter was the apple of all the eyes.

In addition to Professor G.K. Paknikar, H.O.D., a man of a dynamic personality, we had other professors: Abani Kumar De, K.A. Kirtikar, Sib Chand Mukherjee and Gobinda De. I remember all of them fondly and respectfully, as they taught us various subjects with so much dedication. Professor Abani Kumar De visited me in New York City and stayed with me for a few days in the sixties, underlining his affection for his students. We used to tease our professors at every opportunity but they reciprocated in kind. Lastly, I even vividly remember the two assistants to the H.O.D.—Nanda and Brojen. They were two very kind people and always ready to help us. I can as if hear Professor Paknikar’s loud call “arey, yar, Nanda” even today.

We also had a Visiting Professor, who would join from time to time to evaluate our design projects. He was Mr. Habibur Rahman, who did his graduation in Mechanical Engineering, and later on did his Master’s in Architecture. So far as I recollect, he designed the B.E. College Main Building, Wolfenden Hall and Pandya Hall. Something that caught our youthful attention was also the fact that his wife, Indrani Rahman was chosen as the-then Miss India.

A very special thing happened during our early years at B.E. College. There commenced between India and U.S.A. a novel program of co-operation called the “Technical Co-operation Mission” (T.C.M). As a result, we had a number of Professors from U.S.A. On deputation came Professor Joseph Allen Stein, a practicing Architect from from Argentina; Professor Thomas L. Hansen, H.O.D. of Architecture at the University of Colorado, and a practicing Architect named Richard C. Marshall came first. So we learnt to speak American English pretty fast.

Prof. Stein was also keen on knowing India, and he often referred to our street environment as full of “caws and gondas”. We also received all up-to-date American books and journals on Architecture. I fondly remember Professor and Mrs. Marshall, bringing plentiful food and drinks to help nourish us, as we were working all night to complete our final-year thesis drawings in the great studio on the second floor of the Main Building. I reciprocated in kind when years later I was supervising my own 5th -year thesis class in Canada
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Our studio was a huge open space spanning the entire width of the Main Building and had two rows of columns running through the middle. There used to be sixty drawing boards on 6’x3’ long tables, with twelve for each of the five years. That was early ‘50s and computers had not arrived yet to our college and we had to draw on large sheets of skin-like handmade paper manually, using T-squares and other drawing equipment with “Chinese ink” from bottles, and pencils. In studios, we used to spend lots of day and night hours. If we would be tired, we would find an empty drawing table in a corner and sleep bare-bodied, with the fan running above at full speed. Our Professors used to supervise us mostly during day hours. This process naturally brought all the students close to each other irrespective of age, like brothers. And we had no sisters in our time. Things would have to be quite different if we had.

We used to have an annual tour of one of the five regions of India. This exposure did help us professionally as we matured in later years. But even though we had one or two Professors, touring with us like guardians, there was hardly if any Architectural guidance. It was only fun and adventure into new lands. We were, being young mischievous boys, used to innocently inquire about the reasons for the erotic sculptures on Khajuraho Temple

This photo was one of our annual tours, however unable to recollect the timeline and place. With me standing in the extreme left in a dark jacket are Prof. Abani Kumar De and his wife standing right behind me and Prof. Sib Chand Mukherjee, second right from Prof. De.

Today’s students will be surprised to learn that during our first year we stayed in fourteen-bed barracks in the southwestern part of the Campus. Those “barracks” are presently in shambles. There were two rows of barracks on either side of a central road. If I remember it right, Professor Kalyan Banerjee was the supervisor. As I moved to Downing Hall, then a hostel, Professor Kamada Babu was in-charge. During the third year I stayed at Heaton Hall, now the Hospital, I believe and during the fourth and fifth years, I stayed in a single room at Wolfenden Hall, supervised by Professor Dr. S.S. Baral

Partly as a result of our exposure to all that was American, we tended to assume that we need not learn the lessons from several millenniums of Indian Architecture. Nor did we learn how to respond to India’s own socio-economic and environmental needs.

Our Professors were mostly invisible, unless there was any trouble and there was hardly any of it. Why? Because by now we all became mature and responsible “men” and sort of future officers.

Yet, we did a lot of teasing to our room-mates, like turning one’s mosquito-net upside down and making it look normal. One must try it to enjoy the hilarious situation when the victim would try to lie down and kick the mosquito-net to make it fall. At Wolfenden, a victim on the ground floor must have had nightmares when a cow was quietly pushed into his room and the door was locked from outside.

After I had just graduated, in 1956, came Professor Eduardo M. Sacriste from Tucuman, Argentina. A wonderful, affable man with an ever-present smile, he helped me to come to U.S.A. under the T.C.M. program, to teach at North Carolina. State University in Raleigh, in 1958.

I wish to bring this story to an end by mentioning that I myself was honoured in Kolkata on a Teachers’ Day during the time when Dr. Arun Kumar Sil was the Principal. At that time, I was teaching at Anna University in Chennai and also practicing. After the ceremony was over, I asked him, why while the old Roorkee Engineering College, Pune Engineering College and Guindy Engineering College (renamed as Anna University) became universities, the fourth one, namely B.E. College, still was not a University. I returned to Chennai. I approached the Registrar of Anna University, received the voluminous application material, sent it to Dr. Sil. Very soon B.E. College rose to the rank of BESU (Bengal Engineering & Science University). The rest is history.