*************************************************************************************************************
1986: IIT KGP:
Our HoD walked into my office and said:
"Sastry Garu! Next week you have to travel to Delhi on confidential official work. You will travel by air and enjoy free hospitality. Get ready!"
"Why me? I am only an Assistant Professor. There must be many senior professors lusting to do this cushy job. I am not keen. I am in the middle of reading a most interesting book on Cosmology. I don't want to go."
"You have to go. The Chairman wants you to go. Otherwise I myself would have gone :)"
So I ran to Dr BKM, my good friend and expert in Electronics, and asked him about the latest books on the subject in the market. And he kindly gave me his two books of Malvino, reading which I was simply charmed.
On the flight to Delhi I met Prof X from a sister department, a decade senior to me. Although I was not too keen on it, he insisted we share a double room in the Nalanda Guest House.
During the course of our work I got rather intimate with Prof N from a different institute and we got talking about sundry things other than physics on the lawn of the Nalanda. He told me he considered our present Director GSS as God himself since he was the teacher, guide, advisor and benefactor of Prof N a couple of decades ago while he was a student at IIT KGP.
At the end of our job a week later, just as I was packing up to board my return flight, Prof N rushed into our room and delivered a sealed letter saying:
"Sastry! Give this letter to Prof GSS by hand...not to his Secretary...as soon as you reach KGP."
And rushed out to do his own packing.
I was bemused. And Prof X asked me why I was aghast.
I told him about Prof N's letter he wanted me to deliver personally to Prof GSS:
"I don't know Prof GSS personally. He is too big a man and might not even have seen me in the campus. Moreover I am an applicant for promotion and the interviews are coming up shortly. And Prof GSS will be there as Director to seal my fate. And I am too embarrassed to meet him now. It just is not done."
"Oh! Give that letter to me. I meet GSS every other day since I am into Administration. Don't you worry. Forget about it."
So I forgot about it.
And a month later I walked into the august Board Room to face the music from a couple of Experts and the Director himself, holding my professorship in their tight fists.
But Prof GSS gave me a broad welcoming smile saying:
"Dr Sastry! You are a man of Electrodynamics and so am I. Let us talk..."
It went on for half an hour, Prof GSS doing most of the talking and I doing most of the listening :)
A couple of months later Prof GSS retired and Prof KLC took over as our Director. One last graceful act of Prof GSS as Director was to promote me along with a hundred others (more for reasons political than academic :)
And meanwhile I got to know from newspapers that Prof N got the coveted Bhatnagar Award. And I could guess the contents of that secret letter. He must have heard the unofficial news of his prestigious award the very morning of our leaving Nalanda and wanted to convey it first thing first to his God, Prof GSS.
And as Prof GSS was preparing to leave the campus, I happened to meet him in the Tech Market and bowed to him:
"Sir! Did Prof X give you a personal letter from Prof N a couple of months back?"
"What letter? Nobody gave me any letter from Prof N!"
*******************************************************************************************************
No comments:
Post a Comment