Old is Gold

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In the Beginning there was the Old Building, biblically speaking.

Well, it was not called the Old Building till the New Building came up. It was known as the (infamous) Hijli Detention Camp (euphemism for Hijli Jail lovingly hosting Freedom Fighters).

The New Building was not called New Building: it came to be known as the Main Building. But the Old Building continued to be called Old Building; not Subsidiary or, worse, Supplementary Building.

In the Beginning, IIT was not called the Indian Institute of Technology; it was called: Eastern Higher Technical Institute, simply because the Founding Committee chaired by N R Sarkar, with S S Bhatnagar, J C Ghosh and Dharam Vir (not our IAS student, but an ICS; I have to find out if he is a relevant granpa) as Members recommended 4 such Higher Technical Institutes; Eastern, Western, Southern and Northern; much like Adi Shankaracharya's Puri, Dwaraka, Shringeri and Joshimatt pitas.

Old Building is a great name: as SPK writes: "Although you dislike gold but the world accepts it as a standard of quality or excellence. They say `Old is Gold', `It is pure gold' etc".

The Grand Old Building had a 20-ft tall and 2-ft wide Compound Wall around it, with watch towers on its 4 corners manned by our own sepoys aiming our own rifles at our own unarmed Freedom Fighters trying to escape: they did manage to shoot and kill two of them (and perhaps got rich rewards and promotions, if not Gallantry Awards by their proud British Employers...udara nimittham bahukrita vesham says our own Adi Shankara). The unarmed shahids are: Santosh Kumar Mitra and Tarakeswar Sengupta. There is a fine memorial for them and a simple annual celebration on Martyr's Day.

The Old Building has a tall central tower. This is home for a hundred parrots with green feathers and red eyes. At the crack of dawn the flock splits up and visit the ten thousand trees of the Campus, a Paradise for Botanists, Zoologists, Ornithologists and Herpetologists. The parrots feast on seasonal fruit and return to their Home in the Old Building Dome. They are a feast for the senses.

In the Beginning, all classes were held in the Old Building which also housed the Administration Offices. As the Main Building, and by and by a couple of dozen independent grand buildings for each major Engineering Department came up, the Old Building got slowly vacated. And then there there was this sudden expansion (SDM called it the Free Expansion of an Ideal Gas into Vacuum) of the Physics & Chemistry Departments in the 1960s when their Integrated (and disintegrated) M Sc programs started (disintegrated refers to the initial facility of taking the B Sc Hons Degree and running away after 3 years, like Dharam Vir and Subba). Some Physics and Chemistry Lectures and Labs were then temporarily held in the ground floor of the Old Building (I lectured there in the early 70s, and SDM and I took 3rd Year Lab classes too).

As more and more buildings came up, the ground floor of the Old Building fell into disuse and was converted into the Nehru Museum of Science and Technology by our learned Director Professor K L Chopra. It was a fitting tribute to the soaring aspirations of Nehru. Gandhijee didn't have the vision and temperament for Modern Science and Technology of Nehru; but he had the sixth sense to appoint Nehru as his successor and the First PM of Independent India (it is a wild guessing game to work out what would have been the color and texture of India now if some X, Y or Z other than Nehru was our first PM).

Gifts of the Magi: Railways donated an antique Steam Engine on rails and the Air Force gifted a Hunter Fighter Aircraft. And many many artifacts. At one time there used to be bimonthly Exhibitions and Modeling Contests for IIT and School Children of the Campus (for the record my son won a third prize for a working Electronics gadget). And I had to write-up a long Essay (Differential Diagnosis between Laser Light and Sun-like-light) for Professor G S Sanyal, ex-Director and then Managing Director of the budding STEP which was housed in the First Floor of the Old Building. Professor STA, then Chairman, Nehru Museum, happened to visit my humble office in C-236 and had a peek at it. He at once confiscated and hijacked a copy and started an NMST Series of Publications. It was christened "Lasers...the Light Wave of the Future" by Professor KLC and was ambitiously called: 'NMST-001'. When I retired 15 years later and wanted to buy a copy of my own booklet, I was told that all 1000 copies of the first printing were sold out: a mixed feeling. And then they wanted me to bring out a Second Edition; but who will blog daily if I start bringing out Serial Editions of my many Physics Books {;-}? (Just this morning Vinit rang up and was asking me to 'publish' my Jumbo Lecture Notes, the last copy of which went to Anirban a fortnight ago).

The trick is to know when to quit gracefully.

By the time Sayan and Company joined our Department, GSS's STEP got its own magnificent building and his erstwhile Office in the Second Floor was converted into CTS. I used to occasionally visit CTS, mainly to offload a few of the large number of Physics & Astronomy books I gathered during my tenure there (frankly I was scared of the residents of CTS....they are such a learned, serious and sincere lot, too busy for my brand of woolgathering).

Well, that is all about my love-life with the Old Building and its resident parrots, a very cheerful lot. I hope they continue undisturbed there in all their vibrant green feathers and red eyes.

Bye bye Hijli Detention Camp!

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Disclaimer: This is not an Official Document with verifiable facts and figures; just a lighthearted personal piece claiming no veracity.

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