* Pages 1-332 refer to the Spark Issues #1 - 8, available at https://iitk.ac.in/dora/spark/

Editors: Anuradha Jagannathan, Aseem Shukla, Chilukuri K. Mohan, Shirish Joshi

Members/Contributors: Abha Varma, Alpna Singh, Aman Kumar Singh, Deepak Gupta, Dinesh Jain, Dipika Mukherjee, Farrokh Langdana, Gauri Sharma, Girish Pant, Ishan Singh, Kunal Bhoye, Mohammad Saad, Prasanna Mulgaonkar, Priyanka Meena, Rajiv Roy, Raman Bhatia, Ravi Mishra, Sanjiva Prasad, Saumyen Guha, Shakti Chaturvedi, Sukanta Kundu, Utkarsh Gupta

Special Thanks to Professors Kalidas Sen, Sudhanshu Jamuar and T L Viswanathan, the Khandekar, Mukherjee and Sinha families, and DORA Kantesh Balani for their help with this issue.

Views and opinions expressed in The Spark are those of the Editors and Contributors and not those of the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, unless specified otherwise.

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Letters to the Editors

Please write to us directly at spark@iitk.ac.in. We love to hear back from you and will try to publish as many letters as possible.

Memories of UK

These stories beautifully bring out the essence of UK’s unique and charismatic persona. They are truly a walk down memory lane, visiting her place for lunch or dinner and cakes, playing scrabble and I also remember accompanying her on a protest march in the city. But for me the strongest memory and influence has been of her as a teacher. I was lucky to assist her in an elective and the way she wove in lessons from the little Prince into the course was fascinating. She was my role model as a teacher and I am grateful that I could learn from her.

Leena Chatterjee, PhD, Psychology, 1984
Professor, BITS School of Management
Former Professor, IIM Calcutta

Thank you very much for forwarding me a copy of "The Spark"; most interesting reading for sure!

On the subject of Dr. Usha Kumar, I particularly remember a few memories associated with her during my stay in the institute between 1967-72, and subsequently when I was working with DCM Ltd. in New Delhi. During the period 1967-72, Dr. Usha Kumar would regularly conduct self-awareness and knowledge retreats of two to three days which I recall that a couple of my friends had the privilege of attending. These were very well regarded, and the mere fact of being in the presence of Dr. Usha Kumar was quite elevating!

Subsequently in the 1980's, DCM Ltd. had engaged her professional expertise in evaluating and recommending a few senior personnel from within the organisation for top level senior positions. As Head of the Chairman's Office I had the opportunity to interact in this exercise; it was an added pleasure that Dr. Usha Kumar was conducting the evaluation.

Gopal Saxena, 1967-72

Professor Usha Kumar with Tasha, 1977
Picture: Shirish Joshi

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Thank You for the Feedback

Thank you for this issue of the Spark. It brings the memories of IITK days alive. I was there from 63 to 68 as a student of Mechanical Engineering. I read all the stories, so well written, making me live those days once again.

I am saddened to learn about Dr Vasudev's demise. I was with him in 1966 along with three more of my classmates doing a project at Sriram Compressors, Hyderabad and later at Fiberglass Pilkington in 1971. He was excellent in his field and guided us professionally. My sincere condolences to his family.

Regards
N N Goyal
BT, ME, 1963-68
Director Operations, UP Twiga Fiberglass Ltd.

And when the lights go out, the test carries on…
Students complete the final questions of an open book endsem exam using the light from cell phones

Dept of Management Sciences, December 2022
Picture: Shakti Chaturvedi (Research Scholar, IME)

Republic Day Celebrations on Campus

The 2024 Republic Day Celebrations were held in, and around the grounds of, the IITK Auditorium. The flag hoisting ceremony was followed by the National Anthem, release of the magazine 'Antas', Service Awards for the employees, Cultural Programmes by the Campus School, Opportunity School and Kendriya Vidyalaya, and a demonstration by the Taekwondo Club on some self-defence and brick breaking moves.

The event also gave us an opportunity to share with you the renovated photo gallery in the Auditorium Lobby. As part of the November 2023 Foundation Day celebrations, the IITK APPROACH Cell took the responsibility of renovating the gallery. This photo gallery was originally created with the help of alumni during the Golden Jubilee celebrations of the Institute.

"In this renovation, we created contemporary oil paintings of the campus, below the historical photo backdrops. The paintings were recreated from campus photos, institute calendars, and private sketches. The artists who created these paintings belong to traditional ’painter’ families of old Kanpur city who used to create Bollywood Movie posters in the past! We invited them to our campus to create these marvellous campus paintings!” (Late Professor Sameer Khandekar)

Republic Day celebrations on Campus. Picture: Girish Pant (Information Cell, IITK)

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Views of the Auditorium Gallery with the historic pictures supplemented by artwork of the ‘painter’ families of Kanpur, the project supported by the APPROACH Cell, IITK. Pictures: Aman Kumar Singh (BT/MT, CE, 2020-25)

For more information about the APPROACH Cell, please refer to the Spark, Issue 7, August 2023, p 265-267.

Annual Flower Show at the IITK Nursery

The Annual Institute Flower Show was organized at the IITK Nursery during the third week of February 2024. Apart from the flowers on display, and the competition for awards between the Residence Hall Malis, the Women's Association of IITK organized a fete full of fun and food, puppet shows and children’s activities.

The temples inside the Nursery predate the IITK campus and have quite an interesting history. Due to some historical events, before the establishment of IITK, this area had special significance for the local residents; this led to the establishment of the Campus Nursery in the earliest days of the campus. It also became a sanctuary for peacocks, which of course, have continued to multiply on the campus ever since. More on these stories to follow in a future issue of the Spark.

Flowers on display at the IITK Nursery
Credits: Kunal Bhoye (BT, ChE, 2020-24), Ishan Singh (BT, ChE, 2020-24)

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Competing for top honours at the 2024 Flower Show. Pictures: Aman Kumar Singh (BT/MT, CE, 2020-25)

The old Nankari temples predate the establishment of the IITK campus. They have an interesting history, which we hope to cover in a subsequent issue of the Spark. Picture: Aseem Shukla, IITK Flower Show, Feb 2023.

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Tributes

Professor T R Viswanathan (1937-2023)

Professor Thayamkulangara Ramaswamy Viswanathan, one of the early Professors of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at IIT Kanpur, passed away on December 21, 2023, after a brief illness. He had served as the Head, Computer Centre, and Dean of R&D at IIT Kanpur, and taught courses in Electrical and Computer Engineering. He also supervised the thesis work of many graduate students in the area of Analog Integrated Circuit Design.

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Professor Viswanathan was much admired as an outstanding teacher and mentor who connected well with his students. Many of his students have been extremely successful in industry and in academics. In 2022, alumni from the IITK batches of the 1960s and 70s collaborated to establish the Prof. T R Viswanathan chair to honour faculty who distinguish themselves in teaching and create a positive influence in the lives of students by mentoring them.

Post IIT Kanpur, Prof. Viswanathan was a professor at University of Waterloo, Canada, University of Michigan, Dearborn and Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh. He then joined AT&T Bell laboratories in 1985 where he worked for ten years designing and manufacturing products for data and voice communication systems. Simultaneously he was Adjunct Professor at University of Pennsylvania. In 1995 he joined Texas Instruments as Director of Research.

After retiring from Texas Instruments, he was a Partner at Artiman Ventures. From 2005 he was a research professor at University of Texas (UT)-Dallas and then at UT-Austin holding the Silicon Laboratories Endowed Chair in the Electrical and Computer Engineering department. Following retirement, he had been a Research Professor Emeritus.

Over the years, he had remained in active contact with the IIT Kanpur community, connecting with students and alumni on social media, and contributing to the Spark. As recently as November 2023, he had expressed his desire to visit IITK one last time. We will miss him dearly.

UGC Summer Institute of Electronics at IITK (May 1976). Professor T Lakshmi Viswanathan is visible in the middle of the front row, and Prof T R Viswanathan is seated beside her, fifth from right

Professor V P Sinha (1938-2024)

It is with a heavy heart that we announce the sad demise of Prof. Virendra Pratap Sinha, a true pillar of wisdom and one of the earliest faculty members of IIT Kanpur and founding faculty members of the Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology (DA-IICT). He left us peacefully on Saturday, January 13, 2024, after bravely battling Parkinson’s in Mumbai.

Prof. V P Sinha graduated from Bihar Institute of Technology, Sindri with specialisation in Telecommunications in 1959. In 1962, he joined City University London (UK) for a doctoral degree, where he worked in the emerging field of digital signal processing. After completing his Ph.D. in 1967, He joined IIT Kanpur in September 1967 as Assistant Professor and retired as Professor from IIT Kanpur in 1998.

Professor and Mrs Sinha on a visit to London

Text Contributed by Professors Sudhanshu Jamuar (IIT Delhi) and Kalidas Sen (University of Hyderabad)

Professor Sameer Khandekar (1971-2023)

Our much loved Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Dr. Sameer Khandekar, tragically passed away while interacting with alumni at a reunion celebration on campus. He was 52.

Prof. Khandekar received his B.E. Degree from Government Engineering College Jabalpur in 1993 and went on to work in the L&T Shipping group from 1994-1996, and at Barber Ship Management, Malaysia from 1996 - 1998. He completed his M. Tech from IIT Kanpur in 2000 and his PhD from the University of Stuttgart, Germany in 2004. He was with the Department of Mechanical Engineering at IIT Kanpur from September 2004 until his untimely demise on 22 December 2023. He was also an invited professor at KAIST, University of Chiang Mai, Federal University of Santa Florianopolis, Brazil, and DAAD research fellow Germany.

Prof. Sameer Khandekar and Mrs. Pradnya Khandekar (on the far right) at an APPROACH Cell event

Contributed by the Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, IITK

Professor Amitabha Mukerjee (1957-2024)

Prof. Amitabha Mukerjee, a former Professor of IITK’s Departments of Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science, passed away on 24 January 2024. He was a gifted individual with diverse talents and interests, which went well beyond research and academics. He was a poet, an avid nature lover, and a biker, known all over India for his cycling treks through the Himachal Mountains, South India, Uttarakhand, Northeast India, and even through the European Alps. He was a pioneer in organizing bike rides with IITK students, faculty and staff; these rides would take them all around Kanpur, from Bithoor to Nawabganj.

He was an avid bird watcher and had a wonderful collection of bird photographs from the campus, including many migrant birds which have now become a rarity. His interests in music were remarkably diverse, ranging from Indian classical to Bollywood, to pop and Latin hits. He was a master at word play; this became the basis of much of his poetry. Those who knew him remember him as an exceptionally wonderful person, very friendly to all -- you were always welcome to his home.

Prof. Mukherjee had received his B.Tech. from IIT Kharagpur, and then earned his MS and PhD from the University of Rochester. His research interests included artificial intelligence, spatial reasoning, video analytics, robotics, and virtual reality. He had served as a faculty member in the Mechanical Engineering and the Computer Science and Engineering departments at IIT Kanpur.

Sadly, he met with an accident on 24 January 2016, while cycling with an IITK student group. After being struck by a bus, he fell into a coma and remained in a semi-conscious state for eight years. His family members, including his parents, brothers, sister, his niece and sister-in-law, as well as some of his close IITK friends, maintained hope that he would regain full consciousness. That sadly, did not happen, and he passed away in January 2024. We pray that he be with God, in rest and in peace, in full consciousness and bliss.

Contributed by the Dept of Computer Science and Engineering, IITK

My Brother, Moni

Dipika Mukherjee

My father’s diplomatic career took our family around the world. Amit (I call him Moni), was born in Bangkok, Dada in Baghdad, and the youngest, Babs, was born in Jakarta. I am the only India-born, but when I was six months old, we moved to Geneva, Switzerland.

Among the siblings, Amit spent the most time in India. He spent most of his school-life in Narendrapur Ramkrishna Mission, a school run by the strict monastic order established by Swami Vivekananda. Vivekananda’s teachings reverberated around the world and I often walk past the part of Michigan Avenue in Chicago named Vivekananda Way; the opening lines of Vivekananda’s speech at the World Parliament of Religions, on 9/11 of 1893, are inscribed in metal at the Art Institute in Chicago.

As my parents’ first offspring and the most precocious, it must have been hard for them to send him so far away from the family, at the age of 11, to such a strict boarding school in India. Amit had shown early signs of genius and an irrepressible curiosity; before his first birthday, when an action movie was being screened in Bangkok, he had jumped up and said fire! fire! in Thai at an age when most children were struggling to say Mama.

Then, at ten years of age in Geneva, he almost killed himself.

In an effort to read a car number plate, Amit had leaned over the balustrade of our apartment in Geneva and tumbled two storeys down. My mother had stepped out to the shops below to get something; when the ambulance arrived in minutes, there was no parent at home. Dada raced down the stairs and was fighting off the paramedics, shouting in his five-year-old language of Bengali and French to leave his brother alone.

When my parents saw Amit in the hospital in Geneva, there was no brain damage, only broken bones and teeth. He was completely unrecognizable.

Traumatized by this experience and my mother’s ill-health, my parents had to send Amit to boarding school – and choose a school that was both intellectually rigorous as well as well-disciplined -- before he turned eleven. Yet, Moni emerged from this first serious accident with a razor-sharp intellect that is the first thing anyone mentions in his memory. He also burned with an energy to live life to the fullest.

After Moni’s accident in 2016, we did everything we could, first buoyed by the IITK family which held us in a warm and tight embrace through the days at Regency hospital and beyond. The university volunteers were at the hospital 24/7, with Amit’s close friends and colleagues monitoring everything. Their crisis management skills are exemplary: they logged in updates manually, and there was already a Google drive that became a repository of Amit’s medical data when we arrived.

There was an outpouring of messages and anecdotes from around the world at his passing. We knew Amit was much beloved, but it has been overwhelming to see the legacy he leaves behind. Beyond the love we all hold in our hearts, we are grateful to each one of you for walking with us on a very difficult path for the past eight years, and in the depths of the darkness, being our light. May his memory always be a blessing.

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Celebrating at a family luncheon, Delhi, 2014.

Professor Amitabha is on the front left. Dipika is on the far right corner of the table.

About Dr. Dipika Mukherjee:

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Murakh-ji's Survey on how to Remove Bees from Campus

Amitabha Mukerjee, IITK EYES, 1990s

Living Life to the Fullest…

(L) Floating on a coracle on the Kaveri River at Hogenakkal, during the Tour of Tamilnadu 2013. (R) After riding through the Gata Loops during a cycle ride from Manali to Leh in 2012. These pictures have been shared by Saumyen Guha (Professor, CE, IITK) who accompanied Prof. Mukherjee on many of his trips and is present in these pictures

And loved by the Campus Community…

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One Day on a Sunday:

French Toast and the Panki Thermal Power Plant (c. 1975)

Farrokh Langdana (BT, CE, 1974-79)

So I had just finished a plate of French toast here in New Jersey, thanks to my wife, Mary, and my mind wandered to IITK where the French toast was different---salty, and not sweet. Kaddu (Pumpkin) ketchup is the condiment, not maple syrup. Lots of little onion bits are happily embedded in the French toast batter. Our Umesh Mishra is at the table asking for more “French Toast”, but in IITK language . There are massive pitchers of tea….weak tea, but unending, and still very drinkable.

Someone points out that Bantwal’s (Shankar Baliga) Dad is GM at the Panki power plant. It’s a Sunday. Nothing to do besides mugga (study). So off we go---walking—to the Panki Power plant. It is maybe a 2 hour walk. And lovely. Through fields, past ponds, alongside a canal, then across more fields. It smells fresh and clear. We have no caps, no water bottles, no back-packs, no shades—only Hemant Shah has polarized shades which he will lose at Bithoor, but that saga is for another day. No GPS, no cell phones, no sun screen, no small juices, all of us are in the same breakfast clothes, wearing chappals, and alas, no I-phones hence no photo documentary of the great expedition.

The view from FB looking towards the Panki Power Plant in 1968. This view remained largely unchanged till 1976 when the original SAC and GH were added. There were no walls or fences on the campus, till the academic area wall was built in 1977. Picture: The Frontier Batch (1963-68) Collection

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Aerial Views of the Panki Power Plant, 1977

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It is a multi-wing expedition with Bantwal leading the procession--after all, his Dad runs Panki. In addition to A-top, there is C-top here, Jake (Priyadarshan Jakatdar) and Ajax (Ajay Mookerjee), Ringy (Rajiv Roy), Tanku (Abhay Shankar). It is an awesome multi-wing procession in white, straggling across the Indo-Gangetic plain. We simply walk out from E-bottom and head for the massive chimney on the horizon. Farmers stop to stare at us. Farm animals move away. Kids interrupt their planting and stand up and gawk. A whole flock of large white birds suddenly lifts off from an adjacent field….it is magical.

And see, since there are so many of us, there is a reassurance that since nobody is in the library mugging (studying), the relative grade distributions will not be affected. This subconscious logic drives our very existence in IITK. If janta is not mugging, then it is OK to be fatrus for a while. Hence the large GBM’s, the L7 movies with the whole class there, the mass bunks…..see, it is all tied to relative grades.
So off we go... We finally cross a canal and there we are at Panki, after about two hours.
The visit was uneventful—they would not let us in the plant; security issues. Poor crestfallen Bantwal.

But nobody cared. It was a great Sunday walk after French Toast. I remember looking back at IITK from Panki, across the green fields and canals. The IIT buildings looked diminutive; they were barely visible. While on campus, I was constantly awed by the faculty building, by L7, the gliders, the IBM 7044, the TV Center, Christopher Flores, and the fact that we were all “big shots”. But now, from just two miles away, the whole campus looked insignificant—swallowed up by the big outside world. Perhaps this was a harbinger of what was to happen to us all. Barely three years from the date of this expedition, we were all “swallowed up” by the big outside world. It happened very fast. One day, three years later, we simply stepped off E-Bottom H1 and walked away.

About the author:

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Days of Madness Past

Sanjiva Prasad (BT, CSE, 1980-85)

This is a first-hand narrative of the events on the IITK campus following the assassination of Mrs. Gandhi in October 1984. This story may be a bit disturbing to some. At the same time, the courage and leadership shown by the students in those difficult times evokes a sense of pride that we continue to cherish today

Sanjiva Prasad got his BT in Computer Science from IITK in 1985, and is currently a Professor at IIT Delhi. His father, HY Sharada Prasad (wikipedia) was a close advisor to Mrs. Gandhi; he was present at 1 Akbar Road on the morning of her assassination, adding an element of personal involvement to this narrative.

To our knowledge, no pictures exist of these incidents. The images have been recreated, based on detailed recollections of alumni, by Sukanta Kundu (BT, AE, 1980-85). During his years at IITK, Sukanta had been actively involved in the Photography and Fine Arts Clubs, serving as the Fine Arts Coordinator in the Cultural Council, and the Graphics and Photography Editor for the Spark, 1982-85.

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Days of Madness Past

We had just finished a class upstairs in the Computer Centre, possibly a course involving Hoare Logic, and come down the steps, when one of the young professors asked me if I had heard the news: that Indira Gandhi had been shot. I could be mistaken if I recall noticing a crooked smile on his face, almost a smirk of augury, as if to say that she had it coming, for he certainly had been a vocal critic of her policies. But that may just be one of those tricks that memory plays.

The news took a while to sink in, and I don’t remember where we went next, but recall hearing that she had been shot by her Sikh bodyguards, and that according to a BBC broadcast, Gopalaswami Parthasarathi (GP Mama to us)(wikipedia) had also been shot. I looked for Rishi (Rishikesha T Krishnan, GP Mama’s great-nephew), and we went to the Director’s office to try phoning Delhi for a confirmation of the news and to find out what was happening there.Telecommunications were poor in those days, and after a couple of hours of fruitless attempts to reach GP Mama’s house, or my father’s office, we walked to Prof. Sampath’s residence to see if we had better luck on that phone line.

We weren’t able to connect to GP Mama’s trusted aide Ayyaswamy, but were able to speak with my mother, who told us that GP Mama was safe, and that he hadn’t been at the Prime Minister’s house after all. But that Shouri (my father, HY Sharada Prasad) had been present there, waiting with Peter Ustinov at 1 Akbar Road (a bungalow adjacent to the PM’s official residence that served as her office at home) when he had heard the shots. So the much vaunted BBC had not been correct about the details, though they were perhaps the first to (correctly) announce the assassination of the Prime Minister. “I’ve been trying to contact you,” she said, “But the phone has been ringing non-stop. Journalists wanting to speak to Shouri …” My mother informed us that my father had come home very briefly in the official car, since the official Ambassador car that was used to rush Indira Gandhi to AIIMS had reversed into our personal car crushing in the doors on one side. Shouri had quickly told my mother the grim news and that he feared that the situation might turn ugly. (Both of them had witnessed communal riots in Bombay soon after Independence).

The news of the Prime Minister’s death was eventually announced by AIR well after noon, though without many details.Our classes were cancelled for the day, with an air of uncertainty regarding when they would resume.

Rishi and I walked back from the Director’s house to our hostel along the main arterial road of IIT Kanpur, past the old SAC. It was only a week or so earlier that we had walked this same stretch late at night when the campus was being dolled up for the Convocation and President Giani Zail Singh was to be the chief guest. Several new signs had come up along the road, pointing to various landmarks on campus: the Air Strip, the Library, the Academic Area, the Health Centre and the Swimming Pool. Possessed by a mischievous urge, we had twisted the signposts that were still setting in the freshly poured concrete bases, leaving them pointing in all the wrong directions. Somehow those moments of innocent pranks seemed so distant on this fateful day.

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Very soon the country erupted (we were to hear about this as rumours trickled in). A large group of us was present at the main gate of IIT Kanpur, at the railway crossing, when trucks full of local goons descended on the campus, demanding entry. The guards at the gate refused to let the trucks in.

They were headed by an elderly Nepali sentry with a creased visage, who stoutly maintained that he had no orders (aadesh) to let them in. The leader of that mob mockingly announced to his band that the whole country was up in rage, and here was this little man waiting for orders. Eventually the mob barged in, but without the trucks, since the guards (to their credit) would not let the boom up.

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(In retrospect, the guard in his own small way showed quite some courage, though then we were greatly distressed that he had let the mob in anyway, and had not spoken more forcefully). The mob consisted of young men, lumpen elements most of whom were between 16 and 30 years old. Most of them were dressed in white pyjamas and kurtas or shirts, many of them with gamchhas; some carried lathis. They dispersed quickly within the campus, no doubt to intimidate the Sikh families and to make off with what material they could.

Later in the evening, back in our Wing in Hall I, we heard from our friends what they had seen happening in different parts of the campus. The door of the Gurudwara had been broken in and burnt, and the building vandalised. Our wing-mate, Abhoy Ojha described the scene that had taken place in front of a professor’s house — not fully dressed, this academic had pulled out a sword to defend his home and family. Someone in the mob had raised a “maaro saale ko" cry, inciting the rest to put him in his place. But fortunately the leader of the gang had decided they should move on. When one of the band insisted that they should teach the old man a lesson, the gang-leader had pulled out a katta (a country made pistol) and very quietly told the fellow off. The gang moved on, presumably to vandalise the Gurudwara.

Fortunately no lives were lost on campus. This was partly because of mob greed, and due to the extraordinary solidarity shown by the campus community. IIT Kanpur’s campus is quite porous and abuts two villages, Kalyanpur and Nankari, both of which have a fair number of unemployed lumpen youth. When Tiwari, one of the local store-keepers in the Shopping Centre from whom we bought cigarettes, paan, cold drinks and ice cream, was seen roaming around the campus with the mob, some of us remonstrated with him, asking him what he was doing and whether he had lost his senses. He quickly sensed that he would incur the wrath of the student body and with alacrity told the band that there was little loot to be had on campus and that they would be better off going to Gumti Number 5.

The Student Council on its part had decided that all Sikh families on campus were to be protected by moving them into the student hostels for their safety. A meeting was on at the SAC, where the details were being worked out. No one could quite agree on which hostels were to accommodate the families. Hall V and IV and III and II were too close to the fences and not secure. Neither was the Girls’ Hostel. So it was to be Hall I, and there was a fresh round of quibbling about the outer wings not being safe enough.

Finally, unable to take this dithering anymore, Rishi — in his characteristic monotone voice that can disguise resolve and strong emotion — announced that we in C wing (top and middle) would accommodate the families in our rooms. Munnu (Abhijit Sahay) and others from C mid and C top of Hall I quickly endorsed this statement. A few others also volunteered their rooms. And so it came to pass that we went in Institute vehicles and brought the Sikh families and lodged them in our rooms. The family of Prof. GS Kainth, a diminutive professor in Mechanical Engineering, who had three young daughters, moved into my room and the one next door. Other families were accommodated in the adjacent rooms. We moved our rugs and blankets into the balconies, packing a few clothes and essentials into small bags, and slept in the corridors.

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Most families stayed in C-Top and C-Middle. They moved into rooms that were in the middle of the wing, the thinking was that they should not be in places which were close to the periphery. In most cases, since more than one person was being accommodated in a single room, the cot was brought out, and mattresses spread directly on the floor of the room to accommodate them. To give the families some privacy, the students did not sleep directly in front of their rooms, and moved their cots towards the end of the corridors. The ‘What Me Worry’ cartoon sketches visible at the end of the Hallway, were originally done in F-Top/H1 by Raman Bhatia. Image sketched by Sukanta Kundu (1980-85)

For the next few days there were no classes. The campus took on an air of part agitation, part picnic, fuelled by an inchoate sense of activism. Students patrolled the streets, armed with hockey sticks to protect the campus from any incursions by goondas. Most shops were closed, though a few grocers and vendors briefly opened their shops or stalls to sell some food and other essentials. One group of students had prudently stocked up on large quantities of Maggi instant noodles and eggs. In the nippy early November nights, one could see groups of students carrying and unrolling bundled blankets and razais on the pavements and corridors that they thought needed their protective presence. As it turned out there were no further incidents on campus, though news filtered in from the city of a movie hall being burnt and several shops in the larger markets having been looted by mobs. Businesses owned by Sikhs were targeted by mobs, with the active collusion of local residents (who like our Tiwari would maintain a tactful arms-length distance from the actual looting).

Tiwari though would face the consequences of roaming with the looters. Some nights later some batch-mates raided his stall, breaking into the freezers in which ice cream bricks were stored, and ate their way through his entire inventory. As they recounted it they even enacted the Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron bit of aadhaa khao, aadhaa phenko (hat saalaa, Vanilla ka brick millaa). Ojha was furious and didn’t speak to many of them for days. Tiwari perhaps had a good idea who the vandals were, but resigned himself to the loss since these were the very patrons who provided him his maximum custom.

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By the 2nd of November, if not earlier, the army had deployed a few trucks (“not truck sir, three-tonner”) to patrol the campus and stationed a platoon in our hostels. When one of our inquisitive friends had peeked under the canvas of one of the trucks he was immediately confronted by the barrel of a rifle. The troops in Hall I included a Sikh jawan, and it was heartening to note how his fellow soldiers had such a protective attitude towards him, instinctively being by his side wherever he went. They stayed on for at least a couple of weeks, leaving only when it was clear that there would be no fresh outbreak of “riots” in Kanpur. Towards the end of their stay in the hostel, a student observed that the roti-eating appetites of two of them exceeded that of even the “legendary” Sherpal Singh.

An army truck on the Main Drive near Hall 1. There were no protective walls around the buildings in those days, though barbed-wire fences had been added following some incidents in the Summer of 1980. Residents from this period might also recognize the Essoman, who inhabited the top- and middle-floor balconies of Hall 1’s A- and B- wings from 1975 through 1986. Sketch: Sukanta Kundu (1980-85)

In the midst of all this chaos in Kanpur city, Alok Mathur’s father, who was on a trip to Kanpur and wanted to meet his son, managed to find his way to the campus. A positive and resourceful man, generous with his compassion and willing to undergo the hardships of roughing it out, he gave us just that right amount of adult advice on how to view the situation. Meanwhile we heard wild rumours talking of trains laden with corpses coming in from Punjab and also reports of the carnage of Sikhs in Delhi. Mr. Mathur also was a welcome presence for the professors, who could share their thoughts, feeling and worries with him. There were life’s lessons also learnt from the Sikh families staying in our rooms. Prof. Kainth was a particularly gentle person. He spoke more in anguish than in anger about what had transpired; I do not know if he was old enough to have experienced the horrors of the far greater pogroms at the time of the Partition, but his sorrow at what was happening in the country was palpable.

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There were awkward moments too. Once I, together with some others (Ojha and Awasthi I think), accompanied a Sikh lady to her house for her to get clothes and other necessities for a few more days. When her neighbours knocked on her door and entered, she started screaming and almost had a hysterical fit. The poor neighbours, who had innocently come out of genuine concern, were alarmed by her reaction. Later we heard the rumour that she had "celebrated the death of Indira Gandhi by lighting candles and distributing sweets”, a common refrain that one would hear of others who had been attacked elsewhere. What truth lay in there we will never know.

Those were days when a certain madness infected our nation, revealing the baser instincts that lurk beneath the surface of our supposedly human exteriors. And yet there were moments of great generosity and kindness, of bravery and compassion that are revealed in common people. When you realise the courageous moral fibre of those whom you might not have regarded highly earlier, and your most fun-loving friends reveal flaws in their character or irrational hatred, it makes you shake your head and wonder.

About the author:

The Technical Arts. In the five-year Programme, these included TA-101 Engineering Graphics (image above), 102 Intro to Design (Carpentry), 203 Mfg Processes (Machine Shop), 204 Mfg Processes (Smelting), and 306 Computer Programming. Later, in the 4-year program, the Carpentry class was eliminated and the Mfg Processes classes combined into one. Picture: Shirish Joshi, Jan 1979

We assembled two wooden flaps for the door, on a box-top representing a wooden floor. Inside the box a set of uneven springs controlled the degree to which the floor could be depressed by someone “walking” on the top. It looked all right even though the doors often refused to remain in position. But alas, a flaw in the construction resulted in very little torque actually getting transferred to the door hinges, and all the squeezing in the world only made the doors swing open a little crack. For the big day of presentation of the projects in L7, we exhausted ourselves, pushing down on that wooden box top, but those doors simply ignored us. We then humbly watched other groups which came with their fancy cigarette dispensing machines and such, sweeping away the public.

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The next semester, it was in metal working that we thought we might have our chance. Our project was a bread slicing machine. Sobered by the previous carpentry experience, we did not attempt to draw any fancy machines. In fact, quite the opposite, when the technician suggested we incorporate a rusty old serrated disk he had lying around (from a bicycle?), we jumped at this short-cut. All we would need to do was to sharpen the blade a little and add a handle! Which we did. The disk was mounted on a platform, and then we tried to slice some paper. Sadly, that blade was still too blunt to manage it -- but no problem, we would choose something a lot softer for our demonstration. To complete the ensemble, we attached four metal rods as legs. The technician, a kind man, looked at this contraption and said it reminded him of a peacock. We asked why was that. He told us that a peacock dances proudly, showing off his fabulous tail – until he notices his ridiculous legs. Then he slinks off, embarrassed. And sure enough at the end of the day, we again didn’t get a very good grade from the project -- most likely the professor too knew more about peacocks than we did.

(L): TA-203, the Machine Shop. Visible here is Mr. Vishwakarma, Machine Shop Technician. He was a really good machinist, and most helpful, always ready to spend long hours in the workshop to help us take those projects to completion. Picture: Shirish Joshi (R): TA-204, A smelting/casting workshop assignment in progress. Picture: The Way We Were, 1979, shared by Dinesh Jain (1974-79)

After these experiences and another one involving the final year project in electronics, which failed miserably, I was finally ready to graduate. My feeling was, IITK training had equipped me for higher studies in a theoretical subject. And that’s what I set out to do, at graduate school in Yale. However, there too, they believed that all physicists should have some experimental training. Thus it was, that I was alone in a laboratory facing a pumped dye laser connected with a car battery to provide 20kV pulses. What happened to the car battery and the laser and the subsequent shutting down of the top floor of the Sloane physics building for a month is a story best kept for another time.

Today’s workshops are superbly equipped with buttons that one can push, to have an object printed in 3D. But making things from scratch that actually work gives a special feeling. Or does it? Others may have worked wonders in the workshop. Maybe they could write back and tell us about it!