Exam Mixups

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One morning around 1979, a first-year B Tech kid, Utpal Basu, entered my room and started crying. Semester Exams were just over then.

I asked him to sit down and tell me what happened. It turned out to be a one-off story in all those decades I was there at KGP. I used to take First Year Physical Optics for B Techs then in the Spring Semester. Utpal was a brilliant topper in that Class.

Utpal wrote his Optics Paper the day before. And was wondering why gps set a weird Paper having a couple of Geometrical Optics questions but none on his favorite Fresnel Diffraction...he must have attributed it to a quarrel I had with my brand new wife while setting that Paper; and he answered those questions he was familiar with.

After the Exam was over, he was comparing his Question Paper with his classmates. And discovered that their Paper had no Geometrical Optics questions but a couple on Vibration Spiral alright...gps didn't have that canonical quarrel...

It turned out that there were also First Year B Sc (Physics) students in the same Raman Auditorium answering their Optics Paper which at that time was different and taught by a different Teacher.

Utpal then ran to the Professor-in-Charge of Exams and explained the mixup and requested for a re-exam. He was asked to get out since it was all his fault that he didn't check and double-check that he got the right Question Paper. It was rather a piquant situation involving the usual blame game.

I asked Utpal to stay, and walked into the Dean's Office. Professor MNF was the Dean (UG) then, and having been a student of IIT KGP (ECE), he understood the problem in one minute, and asked me what I wanted to do about it. I told him I wanted to take a Special Exam for Utpal alone the next day in my Room...a preposterous suggestion that would have been laughed off with a rebuke if it were someone other than MNF, who simply said:

"If the Teacher wants to take an Exam and his student wants to appear in it, who am I to prevent it?"

They used to boast that IIT Kanpur was an Institute, of the Teachers, for the Teachers, and by the Teachers.

IIT KGP was no less under MNF who rose to become DD when his Teacher GSS became the Diro; and thereafter he was Vice-Chancellor of AMU (which was naturally different).

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In 1961 I was in my third year B Sc (Hons) at AU, Waltair (Vizagh), and was among the top rankers in our small Class of 12. My HoD one day sent for me and said that a Team from TIFR (or was it BARC?) was visiting to pre-select a few students from Sciences with a handsome stipend of Rs 500 per month provided a Bond was signed that the selected students would join TIFR after their M Sc. Selection was by an Interview where only the Principal would be present other than the TIFR Team.

I jumped up...Rs 500!!! And an assured RS position!!!

The day after the Interview, I timidly walked into the Principal's Chamber to ask if I got selected. He was all smiles and congratulated me saying yes and that I would be hearing from TIFR in a week or so.

I thanked him bowing my head and was jubilantly leaving when he called me back and said:

"You are Kameswar Rao, no?"

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I often fancy that there is a Guardian Angel guiding me at critical junctures of my long life.

I recall a nice story (maybe from Panchatantra) that goes like this:

An itinerant traveler was exhausted by the morning's long walk and decided to take a nap under this huge Neem Tree. And as he spread his towel and was about to doze, he looked up and wondered at the anomaly of God's Creation: This tall tree has pitiably tiny fruit while that creeper there crawling along the ground has a dozen huge pumpkins...

By the time he woke up after an hour he was covered by a couple of dozen Neem fruit from head to toe; and he realized that God was no fool after all...if tall trees had huge fruit dropping on the ground, what would happen to folks like him resting under them...

I often felt that TIFR, without the burden of UG Teaching, is like that tall Neem tree while IIT KGP is like that pumpkin creeper.

By the way, there were a couple of huge tall trees along Scholar's Avenue at KGP and a couple more outside the Tech Market. I don't know their common or botanical name. These trees, unlike that Neem Tree, do have huge brown fruit dangling from them. And on my evening walks I used to speed up lest one of those giants decides to fall on my head. But surprisingly, in all those decades, I never heard of anyone hurt by their windfall...they did have very thick and strong 'cables' attaching them to their branches firmly.

Since we didn't know the names of those huge fruit, we used to call them: Elephant Balls.

I may kindly be forgiven if I take the liberty of comparing these trees with IISc, B'lore.

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Postscript

Kameswara Rao, one year junior to me, postpaid the Bond Money and left for the US where he became a legend.


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