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I joined duties as an Associate Lecturer at IIT KGP on 1st May 1965 at the beginning of their 2-month long summer vacation. And thought it rather a clever thing to do...just do nothing and relax.
As it turned out, it was hardly that...I had to face what I feel now the bitterest Orientation Period for me.
Within a week of my joining and settling down in my hostel room, I was summoned one morning by our HoD, HNB, and asked to go to Room # C-221 and I would be told what to do.
I went there and found a large throng of my colleagues, all awaiting the arrival of some big gun as it seemed to me.
Within a few minutes a bespectacled graying senior professor arrived with the office attendant following him carrying a huge Pandora's Box with a Godrej Navtal lock of the biggest size dangling from it. By and by the attendant unlocked and opened the box and arranged its contents on a big table while the senior professor started rummaging through a lot of typed sheets in stacks.
And there were murmurs and smiles of expectation, short of longing, among the crowd of teachers as if they were waiting for the party to begin. The attendant finished his job and dragged the screeching coffin aside.
The precious contents of the trunk were an ugly sight....they were bundles of answer scripts stacked one beside the other. And the typed sheets spread out by the professor were Question Papers stapled to what I got to know were Model Answers.
Our clerk, Ghoshal-da, arrived soon enough with a Register in which names of all the teachers present were written...mine being the last of the Abu Ben Adham. Ghoshal-da quickly doled out the answer script bundles to the teachers present, asking each of us to sign against our names.
The professor handed each of us the sheets of QPs & MAs. And asked us to go home and mark our scripts and bring them back as early as possible so that he could deal us our next bundle. I got to know that they were the answer scripts of aspiring teens who had appeared in the recently concluded JEE (I didn't know then what JEE stood for).
As I opened the QPs at home I thought I would be able to crack their problems on my own before viewing the MAs. I tried for a couple of hours and failed to get anything resembling a convincing answer to any of the problems.
I lost half my heart and opened the MAs. And I was no wiser...the Model Answers were too brief and inscrutable and showed only the intermediate steps that carried part marks. I lost all my heart which was never there in the indecent job of marking answer scripts of unknown students trying to answer convoluted questions set by unknown involuted paper-setters.
I thought I would return the bundle with a hands-up gesture but was too scared that I would lose my job...I was on the mandatory 1-year probation.
It took me all of 2 days to get an idea of what was written on the MAs and try and start opening the ugly bundle grinning at me.
Meanwhile I got a call from the office attendant carrying the terse message that I should hurry up...my colleagues apparently were already into their fourth bundles and I was holding up the queue. And I got to know from him why everyone was so eager to beg for more of this nuisance...it carried heavy pocket money per script marked.
Money, as KK says, is always welcome...provided it comes free, like my pension now.
So I got down to my job with the eagerness of a chef cutting raw onions:
Each script took me an hour to unscramble, and after 2 more days I was through and was about to submit the bundle and cut and run...job or no job.
While packing the bundle up I had this feeling of guilt at the back of my mind that a script in the bundle that I hurried through had the worst handwriting ever and the answers there were scribbled haphazardly and their working shown in margins in the most illegible Gandhian way:
And since I was in a hurry I had to strictly follow the Model Answers and give him marks accordingly. The chap got 44 out of 100. But somehow I was uneasy and pulled out that particular script once again and decided to spend some more time on it.
And I found that his 'workings' were all by lanes and bylanes unlike the highway of the MAs. And he got very few final answers correct.
It took me a couple of hours to tease out his way of doing things and award my own part-marking.
The chap got 88% after the whole thing was done.
That was when I swore I would never take up this task again...probation or no probation.
When I returned my bundle after 4 good days to Ghoshal-da and asked him to excuse me from any more of this sinful task, he smiled and joked:
"Sastryjee! You will never get rich in your life!"
...a prediction that turned out to be more than true, happily for me.
And there was this side-story:
One of the answer scripts was as blank as my pass book and I was glad to touch it...it felt like a brand new Rs 1000 currency note fresh from the press...money for nothing.
There was more to it...
On the first inside blank page, there was a new Rs 100 note pinned to its side...no message or a pleading letter...just the currency note that was supposed to speak for itself more eloquently than Portia's pleading for mercy:
And I wanted to pocket that good-looking currency note but was too scared...Rs 100 was too much...it was not like Rs 10, the going rate that was offered to me by the rustic parents of Muthukur. As they say:
"Every man has his price"
So I decided to award the full mark of 0% to the poor chap, and submit the currency note to the senior professor in Room # C-221.
He laughed and placed the proffered note in his drawer...I mean the drawer of his table.
And I was too scared to ask for a signed receipt...
As the proverb goes:
"What the eye doesn't see, the heart doesn't grieve over"
...or does it?
...Posted by Ishani
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I joined duties as an Associate Lecturer at IIT KGP on 1st May 1965 at the beginning of their 2-month long summer vacation. And thought it rather a clever thing to do...just do nothing and relax.
As it turned out, it was hardly that...I had to face what I feel now the bitterest Orientation Period for me.
Within a week of my joining and settling down in my hostel room, I was summoned one morning by our HoD, HNB, and asked to go to Room # C-221 and I would be told what to do.
I went there and found a large throng of my colleagues, all awaiting the arrival of some big gun as it seemed to me.
Within a few minutes a bespectacled graying senior professor arrived with the office attendant following him carrying a huge Pandora's Box with a Godrej Navtal lock of the biggest size dangling from it. By and by the attendant unlocked and opened the box and arranged its contents on a big table while the senior professor started rummaging through a lot of typed sheets in stacks.
And there were murmurs and smiles of expectation, short of longing, among the crowd of teachers as if they were waiting for the party to begin. The attendant finished his job and dragged the screeching coffin aside.
The precious contents of the trunk were an ugly sight....they were bundles of answer scripts stacked one beside the other. And the typed sheets spread out by the professor were Question Papers stapled to what I got to know were Model Answers.
Our clerk, Ghoshal-da, arrived soon enough with a Register in which names of all the teachers present were written...mine being the last of the Abu Ben Adham. Ghoshal-da quickly doled out the answer script bundles to the teachers present, asking each of us to sign against our names.
The professor handed each of us the sheets of QPs & MAs. And asked us to go home and mark our scripts and bring them back as early as possible so that he could deal us our next bundle. I got to know that they were the answer scripts of aspiring teens who had appeared in the recently concluded JEE (I didn't know then what JEE stood for).
As I opened the QPs at home I thought I would be able to crack their problems on my own before viewing the MAs. I tried for a couple of hours and failed to get anything resembling a convincing answer to any of the problems.
I lost half my heart and opened the MAs. And I was no wiser...the Model Answers were too brief and inscrutable and showed only the intermediate steps that carried part marks. I lost all my heart which was never there in the indecent job of marking answer scripts of unknown students trying to answer convoluted questions set by unknown involuted paper-setters.
I thought I would return the bundle with a hands-up gesture but was too scared that I would lose my job...I was on the mandatory 1-year probation.
It took me all of 2 days to get an idea of what was written on the MAs and try and start opening the ugly bundle grinning at me.
Meanwhile I got a call from the office attendant carrying the terse message that I should hurry up...my colleagues apparently were already into their fourth bundles and I was holding up the queue. And I got to know from him why everyone was so eager to beg for more of this nuisance...it carried heavy pocket money per script marked.
Money, as KK says, is always welcome...provided it comes free, like my pension now.
So I got down to my job with the eagerness of a chef cutting raw onions:
Each script took me an hour to unscramble, and after 2 more days I was through and was about to submit the bundle and cut and run...job or no job.
While packing the bundle up I had this feeling of guilt at the back of my mind that a script in the bundle that I hurried through had the worst handwriting ever and the answers there were scribbled haphazardly and their working shown in margins in the most illegible Gandhian way:
And since I was in a hurry I had to strictly follow the Model Answers and give him marks accordingly. The chap got 44 out of 100. But somehow I was uneasy and pulled out that particular script once again and decided to spend some more time on it.
And I found that his 'workings' were all by lanes and bylanes unlike the highway of the MAs. And he got very few final answers correct.
It took me a couple of hours to tease out his way of doing things and award my own part-marking.
The chap got 88% after the whole thing was done.
That was when I swore I would never take up this task again...probation or no probation.
When I returned my bundle after 4 good days to Ghoshal-da and asked him to excuse me from any more of this sinful task, he smiled and joked:
"Sastryjee! You will never get rich in your life!"
...a prediction that turned out to be more than true, happily for me.
And there was this side-story:
One of the answer scripts was as blank as my pass book and I was glad to touch it...it felt like a brand new Rs 1000 currency note fresh from the press...money for nothing.
There was more to it...
On the first inside blank page, there was a new Rs 100 note pinned to its side...no message or a pleading letter...just the currency note that was supposed to speak for itself more eloquently than Portia's pleading for mercy:
The quality of mercy is not strain'd,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
And I wanted to pocket that good-looking currency note but was too scared...Rs 100 was too much...it was not like Rs 10, the going rate that was offered to me by the rustic parents of Muthukur. As they say:
"Every man has his price"
So I decided to award the full mark of 0% to the poor chap, and submit the currency note to the senior professor in Room # C-221.
He laughed and placed the proffered note in his drawer...I mean the drawer of his table.
And I was too scared to ask for a signed receipt...
As the proverb goes:
"What the eye doesn't see, the heart doesn't grieve over"
...or does it?
...Posted by Ishani
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