REMEMBERING OUR SIKHSAGURUS – the Glowing ’50s

REMEMBERING OUR SIKHSAGURUS – the Glowing ’50s
Amitabha Ghoshal, 1957 Civil Engineering

We, the 1953 entrants to B E College, have often been reminiscing of our eventful college days and the discussions would end with the thought on how lucky we had been to have our engineering education by paying ₹160 per year — the youngsters please don’t laugh derisively- that was the princely amount we paid- and with large number of scholarships many did not have to pay any!!

Some of us recall all the time that we owe a large debt to the society that funded our studies and try to repay by putting back to the society in our individual ways, despite our social commitments and advanced age.

Seldom had we collectively deliberated in our ADDA, what and how much, we owe to our teachers who had braved muted catcalls, cowardly taunts from students hiding behind the safe protection of hostel Windows, –and much more at times. The life of a teacher, and his family members, in a residential campus was much different from the respected ”Mastermoshai’ in the then society. Being born in an educationist family I had always learnt that while a teacher was never wealthy, he earned a special adoration in those days even from the illiterate vegetable vendor, who would hide his best produce for the Mastermoshai who would come with a lean purse.

In the sprawling campus of B E College, with seven permanent hostel buildings and the sprawling Barracks (legacy from the second world war time temporary sheds, built for defence emergency, and used by fresh entry students those days, – 12 in each shed having corrugated sheet roof), teachers would have accommodation in the single story shed structures at one end of the campus, except for the senior professors who were accommodated in the grandiose colonial buildings on river front.
Of course, there were the brave ones who were in charge of a hostel and used to get accommodation in a two-story building with separate entrance, a reward for the additional challenging duty of managing and administering a hostel with more than hundred students. With about thousand students romping around the campus, our teachers and their family members managed to time their movements to keep clear of us as far as possible- a situation we hardly realised, or were bothered about, in our student days.

When Sahityika came forward with the request for an article on teachers of our times, to be included in their September issue, as a tribute to the teaching community, I did realise that with the limited facilities in their command, how much they had achieved in converting the students, raw and fresh from I Sc course, with no knowledge of the ways of the engineering profession, into seasoned professionals who had during their professional life been lauded often for deep insight and profound knowledge !! The professors, junior tutors and the technical staff, who made up the ” teachers “, succeeded in tempering the ‘steel’ that lay hidden in every student.

I offer my silent ‘ Gurudakshina’ to all our SIKHSAGURUS on behalf of my batch mates, who are always defined as the 1953 Entrants.

Recalling the student life of our college and the teachers, the first image that jumps out is that of the Interview Board, a much-dreaded entity embossed in mind of the seniors we had contacted before admission, through distant relatives or friends. Reaching out to a BEC graduate in person was a big deal those days- with only about 150 pass out in a year and then spread out across the country widely – they were in high demand and a rarity! The interview came immediately after clearing the tension filled and embarrassing medical test hurdle organised under Dr. Sahana!

The Board was headed by a grave looking and awe-inspiring Principal Prof. S. R Sengupta, with an unlit pipe in his lips, flanked by Professors A.C. Roy with his piercing glowing eyes and a stern looking Prof. G.P. Chatterjee with an aloof look. There were others, with more benign look, who became friendly later during college stay, but the impression was created by the Central group, who claimed riveted attention.

One favourite question, I had been tutored, was ” Why have you chosen Civil Engineering (in my case)”. I had on my way to college, riding on Bus 55, just heard from some eagerly vocal candidate students that it is Civil Engineers who built the Howrah Bridge. I promptly responded that I want to design a bridge like Howrah Bridge, and the formidable trio gave the hint of a squeezed smile and my spirits restored! Next suggestion was an embarrassing advice that with my 5′ 2″ height and fair complexion I should agree to play female roles in college drama- those were all male student days! I giggled out of the quip, but that moment knew that a soft heart for students lie in that exterior rough look, and many times we had found that reflected during our stay in college.

Admission formalities over, and after the fresh hurdle of Freshers Welcome, preceded by a mild (by recent standards) bout of ragging by a team led by a heavy built senior, Aluwalhia, posing as the Inspector General for student discipline, we settled down to our studies.

The first two years in the college, our classes were common for all the departments, and we were more involved in subjects away from our chosen course. Awareness grew that these were preliminaries, but the going was strewn with mine-fields, as failure in any subject was equally critical, leading to supplementary examination or losing a year in class with “repeat”, and in the extreme case the dreaded “CNR”- Can Not Repeat, means being thrown out of campus. A failure in Sociology & Legal Matters was as serious as a failure in Applied Mechanics, the base knowledge for Civil Engineering. We had to treat all subjects and their teachers with the same respect, and that made us a coherent and reasonably balanced human being. Unfortunately, this knowledge was lacking in our student days, and we were often tempted to skip ‘ unimportant’ subjects- and that, I now realise, led to huge dropouts and failures!

The teachers of the first two years whom I vividly recall, are headed by Prof Asok Sanyal, the most dreaded teacher of Drawing for two years, and famous for breaking costly Staedtler pencils on drawing sheet for observation of mistakes or negligence and doing that with his large and rotund presence supported on the board, that would creak with his weight!

Looking back, I realise, he really had driven into us the statement on the first drawing sheet “DRAWING IS THE ENGINEERS LANGUAGE”. When we encounter the recent pass outs, we realise our gain.

Then there was our Survey teacher Prof. Bhattacharyya (nick named universally for generations as Bhotu) who will be showing us the Azimuth circle with his large torch, in winter nights during Survey camp. He had very little personal contacts with students and perhaps other colleagues of his as well. Students were scared of making false entries in survey readings as they were sure it would not escape his trained eyes!

Others who come to mind are Prof. Phanindra Nath Mukherjee who used to teach us Engineering Law and Sociology (was also Superintendent of Slater Hall) and made his teachings easy enough for unwilling students to pass out based on class lectures. There were very learned teachers like Prof. Mukherjee of Geology and Prof. Dhar of Economics, all doyens in their own field but hardly appreciated by engineering students, who knew these subjects are not going to earn their living! But they slogged sportingly and used to take their classes seriously, hoping that they will be able to upgrade our knowledge.

The first two years we had the benefit of being taught by seasoned teachers like Professors P.N. Chatterjee and Bimalendu Sen (both Applied Mechanics), Sankar Sen (Electrical), N.C. Neogy (Engineering Chemistry), Chiranjeeb Sarkar (Chiranjeebda even in College and still a loving senior, alive and alert), Kamada Babu (Physics) who all had continued in college for long periods after we left and about whom many other contributors will surely deliberate on.

A special mention about Kamada Babu, who left this world few years back at the age of 100++, – whenever we had our batch get together on completion of fifty years / sixty years, and even beyond, he would join us for for lunch along with other invited living teachers, and invariably cheer us and our spouses up by a strong call of ” B E Colleger naame HOOO !!”

We initiated the practice of inviting old teachers to our batch get togethers as an opportunity for showing our respect and gratitude, and we are happy to find that this practice has since caught up. The bond with our teachers spilled into our professional life too, with some of them giving consultancy for solving difficult problems – like Amitabha Ghosh Dastidar gave us innovative solution in Geotechnical Engineering with Sand Wick, a new invention for building multi-storied buildings on the soft soil at Salt Lake in early days (1968).

Before I conclude, let me mention the few teachers, whom most of our juniors never met, as they left the college to undertake bigger responsibilities! Professor S.R Sengupta, the then Principal (remembered by Sengupta Hall), had to take over the responsibility of making IIT Kharagpur what it is today, from the Founder Director Dr Gyan Ghosh, FRS. An astute administrator, he quickly made IIT K the premier technical institution of the country and role model of future IIT s. What was B E College’s loss was becoming the gain of IIT K. Prof. G.P. Chatterjee, went over to take charge of the National Metallurgical Laboratory at Jamshedpur, that made India an important member of the International Metallurgy domain.

After we reached our 3rd year and started belonging to ‘the department’, we were exposed to a galaxy of foreign educated, highly experienced professional teachers like Prof. S.K Mukherjee (known as Lords), Asim Mukherjee, Kalyan Banerjee and BEC alumni Khaunish Roy.

I must talk in detail about the HOD of Civil Engineering, Prof Khaunish Roy, who had joined BE College, with lien from PWD, and made all of us proud to become a Ciivil Engineer. He had been part of the PWD team that designed and built the famous Coronation Bridge in North Bengal, a standing example of high-quality engineering construction, even after seventy years of use. Prof Roy (Khaunisda is what we called him after graduation, as he was an Alumni) was a very unassuming person, given to Paan chewing habit (and therefore despised by his anglicised colleagues), but an excellent innovative engineer. He gave us as final year project, the design and detailing of a large span Balanced Cantilever concrete bridge and saw to it that we really do the design seriously and make the detail drawings, including that of the concrete articulation joint, which I am sure many post-graduates would not be able to handle easily. He was friendly with every student, going to their drawing board even at night (those were Raat Phuto Kara days!) and saw to it that they really understand what they are doing.

1957 photo – Farewell to Prof. K.C. Roy, Head of the Civil Engineering Department,
and a Renowned Civil Engineer (popular as our Khaunis-da).

Let me conclude with a personal anecdote- We had the centenary celebration during our fourth (and final year) in college December- January 1956-57 and as a student member of the high-profile B.E. College Centenary Committee, got immersed in the preparatory meetings and then implementation of the colourful week-long celebrations- first time that our Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru came to college with Dr. B.C. Roy, CD Deshmukh and many others. In the meetings the main task of us student members were to consume the pastries and cakes that used to be served, and largely untouched by the Chief Engineers and Managing Directors, but during actual execution an untimely rain and consequent flooding made our task a difficult one and we had to spend long hours till midnight to make the exhibition successful!

Exhausted but exhilarated, at the end of the event that saw presence of Bade Ghulam Ali and Ali Akbar Khan participating in evening soirees, and all the while encouraged by our teachers to make the event a success (and that included Prof Roy), the day I returned to department project room, I met Prof Roy on the way. I was expecting another pat on the shoulder for the successful event but had a rude shock!! “Ki Ghoshal mosai, barite Babake bole elen je e bachar ta collegeai thakben, centenary kore”. My happy dreams were over and again had to start ‘Raat Phuto Korar’ exercise to make it to the final exams.
I have never lived out of that SHOCK TREATMENT!!!

One epilogue: – Our professors were role model enough to encourage many of our batch mates to join the educational line…
Dr. Arun Deb and Amitabha Dasgupta in BE College.
Dr. Bholanath Ghosh and Amal Sinha in Jadavpur University.
Dr. Amiya Basu and Pulin Bhattacharyya at IIT Delhi,
Dr. Sankha Bannerji at University of Missouri
And for brief periods Sudhangshu Chakraborty and Amar Bannerjee at BE College as Lecturer.