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Towards the end of 1966 a crisis was brewing in my life; and it exploded in the beginning of 1967.
It was like this:
When I joined IIT KGP in the middle of 1965 as a junior faculty (bachelor), I was asked to stay and eat in Gokhale Hall (meant for Teacher Trainees) since there was a shortage of Institute Quarters. I was happy there. The room was single although the bathroom was shared with half a dozen teacher trainees, at the end of our wing. The food was a mixture of North and the South, with no restrictions.
But within six months I was chased away to a Bachelor's Flat...apparently many were lying vacant and the IIT didn't want to lose its 10% rent. The flat was good enough with marble floors and the Warden of Gokhale Hall permitted me to eat in his Mess as a non-lodger-guest-boarder.
Within six months again I was shunted to a vast Quarters (with a garden to boot) which I didn't want. But apparently many C-Type Quarters fell vacant.
And there was a change of Wardens in the Gokhale Hall and the new Warden forbade 'outsiders' from eating in his newly acquired empire.
And there was no eatery in that forsaken desert.
So I had to myself cook and eat my meals alone...a punishment for a bachelor. Moreover it was consuming time that I wished to devote for reading a whole lot of good books on Physics which were residing untouched in our vast Central Library....for the first time in my life I wanted to learn physics (in order to teach it somehow).
So my cooking dwindled from 3- to 2- to 1-course fast.
And soon I abandoned it altogether as a supreme bore.
And tried to live on raw bread. Without butter. There was this Polson's Butter (Amul was unknown). And it tasted terrible. So was the American Peanut Butter. I tried Cornflakes but found the packet teeming with insects. I also tried living off bottles of Cherries. Didn't like them.
And I was fasting (without any valid 'Cause').
Then a miracle happened...
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News came out that our posh Guest House (meant for Western visitors), the Visweswarayya Niwas, was taking in Indian Boarders (under her strained circumstances). It was like this:
Soon after our country attained its Independence, our PM Nehru (for my sake) wanted a clone of MIT in his New India. Dr BC Roy (Nehru's personal physician and CM of West Bengal) promised him as much free land as he needed. And the UN, flush with US funds then (unlike now), had its posh wing called the UNESCO (United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization) which was looking to spend its vast unspent wealth on improving the Educational and Scientific endeavors of Underdeveloped Countries (as we were known then...now we are 'Developing Countries' still).
So UNESCO donated us American War Surpluses...drums of DDT, and many lathes and milling machines and drilling machines, on each of which was stamped the pleasant seal of 'Holding Hands'.
...Also American Visiting Professors (without stamps on their faces).
These American Professors needed a Western-Styled Guest House (that was why V. Niwas came up).
But, by a decade, IIT KGP stood on its own feet and American Professors lost their bravado (KGP was not Boston...no way).
So there were plenty of costly vacancies in V. Niwas which needed to be filled in order to justify the existence of its beautiful building and its Manager, Rajan, and its bearers, Laxman and Narayan, and its cooks, Nayak and Paresh...all permanent government servants like myself.
And its Chairman (our Deputy Director) 'Daddy' Mitra (himself Half-a-Westerner) was forced to take us faculty members in, provided the exuberant Western Culture of its Dining Hall was maintained unsullied (for the occasional unsuspecting Western Guest).
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...And I met Mr Rajan who welcomed me with a warm embrace (he needed his present job...otherwise he would perhaps be shunted as Caretaker of Sewage Pumping).
He gave me a Room which was SPLENDID...with a lovely cot, table, chair, sitting sofa, and an Attached Bathroom with a Shower and a Western Commode!
I just loved it (expensive though).
And I walked into the gorgeous Dining Hall of the Guest House. It was filled with vast tables, milk-white table cloths spread over them, Chinaware dining plates, side-plates, crockery and cutlery, spoons, knives and forks, glass bowls of butter and jam, porcelain pots of tea and juglets of milk...the Works.
And on my first breakfast visit for a cup of coffee, I saw genteel folks gulping with spoons cornflakes (again!) dipped in milk. And a gooey thing which Laxman told me was 'porridge' (I learned from Webster that it was usually made of oatmeal).
I then remembered this Samuel Johnson's entry into his first lexicon of English (he was a Scot-hater):
Oats: Grain eaten by horses in England and men in Scotland
And at night I saw a 'dessert' that was usually a bread-pudding or jelly pudding or custard pudding or fruit salad (with banana on the top, grinning again!)
Alas! That Western Extravagance couldn't last...floodgates opened for more and more youthful faculty; and this is what happened within a year:
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More and more vivacious junior faculty and senior 'abhadraloks' (like me) followed my footsteps. American Guest Professors stopped visiting IIT KGP, the four young visiting Russian guys were more uncivilized and loud and rumbustious and poorer than me, our dining hall ceased to be sepulchral, Laxman and other bearers shed their starched liveries and started appearing in their lungis, the Western Style cooks entered our sacred dining hall in their soiled and oiled gamchas (loin cloths) smoking their beedis, colloquial Hindi and Bengali became the dominant lingoes displacing the solemn English, a skeleton menu was forced on the boarders cutting the mess bill by half to around a manageable Rs 120; Rajan, the Manager, learned to smile broadly and laugh heartily and shout at his bearers instead of simpering, contract bridge was played in the lawn and Scrabble in the dining hall, a separate tiny and starched dining room was built for the few Phoren Visitors who, Rajan thought, didn't like to mix with us hoi polloi (but they did), and the mess became a home away from home to all of us rowdies.
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To be continued
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