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...It wasn't that agricultural student but it was another a whole lot like him who decided to take up journalism, possibly on the ground that when farming went to hell he could fall back on newspaper work. He didn't realize, of course, that that would be very much like falling back full-length on a kit of carpenter's tools. Haskins didn't seem cut out for journalism, being too embarrassed to talk to anybody and unable to use a typewriter, but the editor of the college paper assigned him to the cow barns, the sheep house, the horse pavilion, and the animal husbandry department generally. This was a genuinely big “beat,” for it took up five times as much ground and got ten times as great a legislative appropriation as the College of Liberal Arts. The agricultural student knew animals, but nevertheless his stories were dull and colorlessly written. He took all afternoon on each of them, because he had to hunt for each letter on the typewriter. Once in a while he had to ask somebody to help him hunt. “C” and “L,” in particular, were hard letters for him to find. His editor finally got pretty much annoyed at the farmer-journalist because his pieces were so uninteresting. “See here, Haskins,” he snapped at him one day, “why is it we never have anything hot from you on the horse pavilion? Here we have two hundred head of horses on this campus—more than any other university in the Western Conference except Purdue—and yet you never get any real low-down on them. Now shoot over to the horse barns and dig up something lively.” Haskins shambled out and came back in about an hour; he said he had something. “Well, start it off snappily,” said the editor. “Something people will read.” Haskins set to work and in a couple of hours brought a sheet of typewritten paper to the desk; it was a two-hundred word story about some disease that had broken out among the horses. Its opening sentence was simple but arresting. It read: “Who has noticed the sores on the tops of the horses in the animal husbandry building?”....
...James Thurber: University Days
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When I was living in the Faculty Hostel at IIT KGP in the 1960s and 70s, there was a magazine called Alankar. It was the official magazine of the Technology Students Gymkhana but, unlike the official handouts by administrators, it was a truly literary effort with nice contributions from students. It was just a 4 or 6 page affair. There were no computers then, not to talk of the internet, and so students had lots of free time to devote to their Alanakar which was a thing of pride to them. Being a teacher, it was not always easy for me to get hold of a copy, but when I found one in the canteen, I used to read it cover to cover then and there and enjoy.
Those were the years of youth-revolt and flower-power in the West and lots of new music and poetry were in the air. And Alankar absorbed all of it. I was often struck by some beautiful pieces written by students, some of them budding journalists, and they used to go round the campus looking for interesting news.
I recall the time when four Engineering students walked with their microphones and a huge Grundig tape-recorder to the humble quarters of a second year physics lab assistant on the fringes of the campus and took his 'interview'. The gentleman was close to me, although twenty years my senior, since I was once the Lab-in-Charge of that lab. We used to call him 'Mittir-da!', and students used to call him 'Sir!' in the lab and refer to him behind his back as 'Colonel'.
The result of the interview was a charming piece on their Colonel...it covered the entire last page of Alankar. I wish I had kept a copy of it. It was my secret desire to have a piece like that appear in Alankar about me....after all, I was young and immature then.
It is said, "Whom gods love die young"...Mittir-da died of a sudden heart attack much before his retirement. He was lean and thin and dhoti-clad and as active in the lab as well as out of it as a beaver...he was a permanent presence as an assistant in the hoary Technology Film Society.
So much for so-called health-consciousness.
Those were the years of youth-revolt and flower-power in the West and lots of new music and poetry were in the air. And Alankar absorbed all of it. I was often struck by some beautiful pieces written by students, some of them budding journalists, and they used to go round the campus looking for interesting news.
I recall the time when four Engineering students walked with their microphones and a huge Grundig tape-recorder to the humble quarters of a second year physics lab assistant on the fringes of the campus and took his 'interview'. The gentleman was close to me, although twenty years my senior, since I was once the Lab-in-Charge of that lab. We used to call him 'Mittir-da!', and students used to call him 'Sir!' in the lab and refer to him behind his back as 'Colonel'.
The result of the interview was a charming piece on their Colonel...it covered the entire last page of Alankar. I wish I had kept a copy of it. It was my secret desire to have a piece like that appear in Alankar about me....after all, I was young and immature then.
It is said, "Whom gods love die young"...Mittir-da died of a sudden heart attack much before his retirement. He was lean and thin and dhoti-clad and as active in the lab as well as out of it as a beaver...he was a permanent presence as an assistant in the hoary Technology Film Society.
So much for so-called health-consciousness.
I retired in 2005 and promptly sank into a severe depression for two years which were a complete washout...I was away from students and physics and was trying to find myself a new hobby. And in 2007 I started my own 'journalistic career' writing a couple of short letters to the editor of Deccan Chronicle. They gave me a sense of relief...I could WRITE!
And after I settled down in Hyderabad, and settled the marriage alliance of my son (my greatest achievement), I was brooding on my four decades at KGP. And I recalled the first tutorial class I took there in July 1965. And wrote up a short piece on that adventure calling it, 'First Class Encounter', and sent it to the Editor of KGPian, a campus alumni magazine which was mostly devoted to the achievements of the KPG alumni; and fundraising.
I was unsure if a personal piece like mine would find place in such a professional journal. But I was delighted to receive this encouraging e-mail from its editor:
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Dear Prof. Sastry,
It is really a good piece. With this we will start a new feature with a name close to "Where twain met". I may have to work on the title a little more.
Please keep writing
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Well, I am sure nothing like the envisioned 'feature' "Where twain met" ever appeared in later issues of the KGPian.
But apparently some KGPians read this piece and recalled their years at KGP fondly.
Below the article the old man wrote this blurb about its author:
"Note:
Professor G. P. Shastry is a second generation IITian and his
discourses are lapped up by our visiting Alumni members, including
distinguished alumnus like the Presidents Gold Medal Winner (1st batch)
Mr Bhim Chandra Mandal, former Director of Mecon, Ranchi, during the
Annual Alumni Meets, there, when he shows us around his department."
(sic)
This amused me thoroughly. I am NOT a second generation IITian. Webster defines generation thus:
'the average length of time between the birth of parents and the birth of their children'
Let us say the Indian average is 25...although in my case it is all of 38. IIT KGP started in 1951 and since I joined it in 1965, I am very much a first gen IITian.
And I never 'discoursed' to visiting Alumni, distinguished or extinguished. Nor showed them around my department.
I could figure out the Professor Shastry mentioned in the blurb. He is the younger brother of a B. Sc (Hons) physics pass-out (in 1970). And he rose to eminence as an administrator at IIT. He is very much in service there while I retired long ago. And this wasn't the only occasion where this confusion occurred...to my advantage.
So I was left wondering how to reply to that mail. And I did some homework and discovered that the old gent was a frequent contributor to The Statesman...and his son-in-law a famous writer-critic of Eng Lit...Wow!
So I kept quiet and pocketed the undeserved compliments.
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