Comment on First Class Encounter

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Today I find a curious comment on First Class Encounter 3.5 years after my posting it:

http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2008/01/first-class-encounter.html

Anonymous said...

I am an undergraduate student at IIT Kharagpur. But nowadays the student environment is completely anti-intellectual especially in science departments. I would like to know whether students were serious about studies during 70s and 80s.

June 28, 2011 12:26 AM

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I would like to respond to it at some length as best as I can. I am sure I will be repeating things ad infinitum, but as Feynman said: Redundant Truth is never a problem. Also Pratik says that every edition is different because the context is different.

Firstly the student touched on a blog very dear to me.

I joined the Faculty at IIT KGP at 21, a slip of an ignorant lad and retired in 2005, like one who loved IIT well but not wisely as they say.

The day I retired and was walking out of KGP near Netaji, Prof PS halted me and asked: "Prof Sastry, are you happy or unhappy today when you are quitting KGP after 40 years?"

As RKN famously said: There are some questions which do not bear a straight 'yes' or 'no' answer; like: "Have you stopped beating your wife?"

Still and all, I said: "Very happy", since there was no reason I should be unhappy, given that IIT KGP has given me a cornucopia of everything anyone can ask. Also because during my last five years, a host of young talent joined the Dept and all of them were very kind to me and my presence was at best superfluous, except perhaps I would have enjoyed a few more Jumbo Classes of 350 freshers. It was thrilling; but one shouldn't be greedy.

I then tried settling in Hyderabad with my only son and loving wife. I thought it would be a breeze.

But totally unexpectedly I sank into a very severe depression and took almost two years to think coherently, read and write. Every morning I used to get up dreaming of IIT KGP and getting up forlorn with tears in my eyes (adult tears are a sure sign of clinical depression...my Psychiatrist asked my son: "Does he weep?")

When I recovered enough to start writing, IIT KGP of course was (and is) the main topic.

One morning I recalled my first tutorial class at KGP and tried to put it in words with the title: First Class Encounter.

I 'submitted' it to the alumni magazine KGPian and was glad that it was published...my joy knew no bounds...because mind is a very tough thing to lose and if you get it back, it is almost akin to a rebirth.

Much later I chanced to get hold of Arjun Malhotra's id and wrote to him about it:

-----Original Message-----
From: Prabhakara Sastry [mailto:gps1943@yahoo.com]
Sent: Friday, January 30, 2009 2:41 AM
To: Arjun Malhotra
Subject: "First Class Encounters"

Attached please find a 'Thank You' Note that appeared in KGPian, October 2007, from a retired teacher.

Sir,

Thank you for being so kind to remember after all these years

Happy New Year

Arjun

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Noblesse Oblige!

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Coming to the comment on it:

Firstly, the feeling expressed that IIT students these days are not 'serious' about studies.

To put it bluntly, a vast majority of students at IIT KGP were never so 'serious' as to be hospitalized except during exams, never did their sessionals 100% on time under the hated honor system of the US, never took honest readings 100% in the labs, never prepared regularly 100% for their exams instead of doing nightouts the day before, always bunked (mentally if not physically) classes which didn't interest them, in short played truant like any typical Indian (self included).

There were two main reasons for this:

1. There was a feeling that once you made it to IIT you are the 1% cream and rest of the life is a 'served' food on a platter...all that you have to do is to quit IIT with an honors degree and without a DC against you.

This was true to a large extent since IIT was a 'brand' that sold internationally...like Dettol...you don't have to spend much effort to 'sell' yourself.

There is also an 'upside' to this...since IIT KGP was in a rural setting, for much of the time that was not spent sleeping, the run of the mill IITian was acquiring what are now called soft skills that are very very important...also the system of a thousand vivas helped face what my son calls "gang rape" without batting an eyelid.

Let me not talk about the top 1%...they were devils...and took the hindmost...

In spite of all this childishness, I have known of no KGPian failing in life and career except for reasons of health.

This was true for the 40 years I was there and there is nothing new in it.

2. After clearing the toughest entrance exam in the world at the JEE level, IITians find after their first semester that cracking IIT Exams is a breeze. But they don't realize that cracking exams is not the whole story...

Also there was this perennial complaint that the subjects and classes were not 'interesting'. Here we come to the Archie Syndrome I talked about...no one can make the subject of say X-Ray Diffraction 'fun'...but look at what Crick and Watson did with what Roentgen discovered a whale of a time back.

In any case, the ones that 'got away' find their own feet despite or because of IIT...I haven't come across any of my students who couldn't crack the US Graduate Programs except for health reasons.

As for the faculty of IITs I must admit that the difference between one and the other is 'unnis-bis'...simply because most Indians in India are not born to scientific free thinking...the scientific and industrial revolutions missed us by a wide gap of three centuries...it will take time.

Many of my students and visitors used to tell me that IIT Kanpur Phy Dept is world-class. I used to smile and reply that the number of Nobel winners in Phy at IIT Kanpur is precisely the same as IIT KGP...not one more nor less.

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I now come to the 'anti-intellectual' part of the comment.

I don't precisely understand what the young one has in mind, but I have my take on 'intellectuals'.

'Intellectuals' were always a snobbish lot...like Boston Brahmins of whom I used to tease my MIT friend Edwin a lot and he used to demur and feel much maligned and misunderstood.

Here is what wiki says about this attitude:

The nature of the Boston Brahmins is summarized in the doggerel "Boston Toast" by Harvard alumnus John Collins Bossidy.

"And this is good old Boston,

The home of the bean and the cod,

Where the Lowells talk only to Cabots,

And the Cabots talk only to God."

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You know I came from a Village School scoring about the first rank in English in the entire SSLC Board. But couldn't speak a single sentence of English till I came to KGP...there was no need.

DB also came from a Village school in Bihar...and his first experience at Calcutta was a sneer from the city-slickers when they found he hadn't heard of Somerset Maugham.

Here is what Aravind Adiga says in his ToI interview:

"In 1990 I stood first in Karnataka in the annual SSLC exams. When I came to Bangalore to collect an award from the education minister, I was humiliated by the rich boys there...all of whom I had beaten...because I had a thick accent when I spoke English and I did not know who Lionel Richie was..."

In my humble case, when I joined a posh University with the pedigree of C V Raman and S Radhakrishnan as ex-faculty members, I was simply cowed down.

In the University (unlike at IIT), the 'intellectual' rankings started from the English Dept...they looked down on everyone else as uncouth outcasts. Then the Arts subjects like Law, Economics, History...without fail the Student President who was elected was from an Arts subject...they could debate.

Among the sciences, which came next in the 'intellectual' order of precedence...indeed Prof S H Rao told me that the 'intellectual culture' of a University depended on the vivacity of its English and Physics Departments.

All of us looked down on Engineers as 'professionals' like say intellectual tailors and tinkers.

And the Engineers looked down upon Medicos as practically illiterate...the poor blokes had no time to read anything other than the Anatomy tomes that have no rhyme or reason.

And the Medicos looked down on Pharmacologists with their Materia Medica..

Coming from this culture, I was dumbfounded to note that Mechanical Engineers in 1965 with whom I chanced to mix a lot thought that science subjects were 'coolies'. Indeed there was intense resentment that a Lecturer in ME was paid the same as a Lecturer in Physics...they were practically heartbroken at this injustice and came up with the formula:

"A B Tech in ME is equal to an M Sc in Physics...an M Tech in ME is equal to a Ph D in Physics"...there were no Ph Ds in ME then...

HNB told me once that the Engineers at KGP suffer from an inferiority complex. I asked him why. He said they go to the Central Library and are aghast at the miles and miles of science books and journals stacked there.

SDM who was just a Reader at Cal Univ thought that a Professorship at IIT KGP was a demotion since he told me: "IIT is after all a glorified Engineering College".

But he served IIT under an exceedingly well-read Director with a CE Degree under his belt...Professor S R Sengupta who donated his entire collection of his books to the CL on all subjects under the sun...a thousand?...a true intellectual in every sense of the word...and a bachelor to boot...


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