Kuchlachati College

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Wood work is going on in full swing in our Nile Valley Apartment these days. That means it is full of wood and saw dust.

My son drives me there regularly for 'inspection'. As usual I am a shirker and I pull out the plastic chair and doze in the spacious and breezy verandah while my son pretends to inspect and instruct the know-all carpenters...they are the only species that refuse to obey the rule: "He who pays the Piper calls the tune"...you pay and they call...

This morning while I was dozing, my son woke me up and introduced a youth who bought another apartment in our floor and works in their Thomson-Reuters outfit...birds of the same feather.

I lazily nodded and was falling back into my reverie, when my son said: "He is a Bengali." That made me sit up and smile.

He then said: "He is from KGP". That made me stand up and shake hands.

He then said: "He is a student of Kuchlachati College". That made me embrace him like a brother.

I asked my Bong friend: "Do you know Professor G. S. Sanyal?"

He started to almost cry and replied: "He passed away last month...oohoom...oohoom..."

I said I am aware of it.

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That took me back 25 good years.

The Left Front had by then established itself as the perennial ruler of WB, despite the tantrums of Didi.

And the first thing they did was to abolish English from the Govt Schools...the land of R C Majumdar whose piece: "Why should we learn English?" was my favorite in my School Final and which I had by heart.

This didn't effect the Calcutta folks who sent their kids to Convent Schools. But, rural Bengalis of an entire generation lost out in the job race that was just then picking up in Bangalore and Hyderabad IT Sectors, courtesy Narayana Murthy and Chandrababu Naidu.

Unkind people said that this abolition of English and disabling the Bengali youth from "knowledge-careers" was intentional...they needed Party Workers.

Anyway, IIT KGP was like a Crystal Palace in a desert, out of bounds for the rural youth born and brought up around it.

Then Professor G S Sanyal became the Director of IIT KGP and decided that what was needed for the Kharagpur and Midnapore youth was a semi-professional College which would train the local youth in courses like Commerce, Accountancy, Computers and IT, so that they can earn a decent living in a growing economy.

And once GSS sets about a task, he would leave no stone unturned. As a Director, he used his position for the good but unconventional purpose of raising donations at the rate of Rs 1000 (a whopping amount) from Faculty. Followed by his well-wishers he used to go round the Campus in the evenings and knock and enter the Qrs of unsuspecting Faculty and squeeze donations for a good cause.

He skipped my Qrs for the simple reason that I was an applicant for the upcoming Professor Interviews and so there is a conflict of interest...I heaved a sigh of relief because I would have to borrow the thousand rupees from himself.

But he didn't leave me ultimately...

Soon after that, he gave me what everyone except my wife thought was a thoroughly undeserved promotion...wives are funny...they look down upon you at home but look up on you in public...they offend you at home but defend you outside...

A few years later, when he was the MD, STEP at KGP, he called me up and gave me a bundle of 200 pages to go through and come up with a 5-page Prospectus for the upcoming Kuchlachati College.

That was ok, because SDM taught me how to write Abstracts of Papers for PRS.

By and by the College came up, with the help of IIT infrastructure (paid) and was trying to find its feet when I retired.

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So, when I embraced our Banga-Babu Lead-Software Engineer in Thomson-Reuters, I felt that he was the Dream Child of GSS.

Apparently he was from a village in the Midnapore District and did his BCA at GSS's Kuchlachati College, worked in an IT Firm in Noida for five years and shifted to the Dream City of Hyderabad, got married, bought an apartment in Nile Valley and became my neighbor...

Long Live GSS!


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