Their Last Laugh

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1992 Midday April Last Week:

I was sitting in my Office at KGP and trying to read Weinberg.

The door opened and in entered Kapeel.

One look at his pained face and I was scared what happened.

His left arm was bandaged with a sling round his neck. There were five or six blotches of red blood leaking through the cotton rolled around his arm and a couple on the left half of his face.

I asked him what happened and he replied amidst sighs of pain that he was hurrying to his last Exam at IIT on his pushbike, knocked a rickshaw, fell down and injured himself, then was carried to the BC Roy Hospital by the rickshaw chap where they quickly did a hotch-potch job since he had to hurry to the Exam Hall to beat the half an hour deadline, managed to sneak just in time, was allowed by the Hall-in-Charge who was all sympathy, the paper-setter duly visited the Hall and offered him extra time which he refused, managed to finish all his questions just in time, and was visiting me if I could drop him at his Hall on my scooter.

As I was getting up in a hurry, he gave a broad smile, pulled his arm out of his sling, removed the bandage, rolled the ink-filled blotches of cotton from his arm and face and threw them into my dustbin, said sorry for his make-up, and laughed boisterously at fooling me as well, said that his pushbike was very much in its stand and the whole gag was to celebrate his exiting IIT Exam Halls for good.

Apparently it was the done thing...

Got me completely fooled...I didn't know that such larks were on then.

When I joined KGP in 1965, every student was dressed like a gentleman (although they were anything but that), there were no T-shirts with loud messages, nor jeans, nor bathroom slippers.

Somewhere down the line I read on the back of the first page of the answer-scripts among the Instructions to the examinees as well as the invigilators a line saying that all students should be 'properly' dressed.

Kapeel was as usual dressed perfectly but for his 'ill-dressed' wounds.

Beat the system hollow...there must be many such inventive by-byes to the IIT in which they had their highs and inevitable lows during their 5-year stint.

Damn good gags!

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2004 mid-May Evening:

The door of my Office opened and a weird-looking girl entered. The features looked familiar but not the make-up.

She said: "May I come in, sir!"

The voice was a give-away.

"Why the hell are you dressed up like a nauch-girl", I asked my son.

He peeled off his bindi and other outer feminine overalls and replied that their Final Year Grand Viva was just over and the entire batch of 9 boys and 3 girls went to their Chemistry Lab where they had hidden their fancy costumes in their lockers, put them on with suitable make-ups and went round the Department asking their revered teachers of 5 long years: "May we come in, sir!"

Apparently many teachers were taken aback, but recovered, and the entire set of their teachers posed for group photographs in front of their hated labs!

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1997 April

I walked into Room Number F-232, where my students (among others) were answering my (equally hated) Question Paper, checked and signed the specimen copy, said 'hi' to the 3 invigilators and was walking back.

The Professor-in-Charge of Exams who was a close friend of mine, and the Dean were about to walk into the Exam Hall to inspect if everything was going well.

I pulled my friend aside and whispered that they don't have to worry about copying in this Hall since there were 14 invigilating heads.

He was curious how the regulation 3 invigilators for this small Hall got escalated to 14.

I replied:

"Prof X. Panchanan (5) + Prof Y. Panchanan (5) + Prof Z. Brahma (4) = 14"

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