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After my miserable 7-year stint at my university in Vizagh I reached a heaven called IIT KGP as a physics teacher in 1965 .
At that time IIT KGP was entirely male-dominated. There were very few lady students and no lady teacher except one or two in the Humanities. And they were treated as flowers in a desert...very deferentially with tender gloves.
There was no lady teacher in our physics department for all of 30 odd years after I joined there. So there were no issues of discrimination or misbehavior at workplace. Slowly but surely the number of lady research scholars at IIT KGP grew, mostly in the science departments. The relation between research scholar and guide, at least in India, is skewed and fraught...the guide has all the powers and the scholar the entire future at risk. So, it could have been a lovely situation for exploitation. But, apart from a few unconfirmed rumors, there were no complaints and committees. And IIT KGP was a nice place for young lady scholars to find matching husbands...and some did happily, for good.
One day, a few years before I retired, I was sitting in our IV year Lab of which I was appointed Guide and Adviser...a unique position created just for my sake by our HoD. And as I was gossiping with my co-teachers most of who were research scholars, a young lady walked in and took her seat across the table. And on discreet inquiries I was told that she joined that very day as a teacher in our department and was asked to go to the IV year lab. I was happy...at last the glass ceiling got shattered.
And I came to know that her research was entirely in theoretical physics. So I narrated to her how I myself, with a Theoretical Ph D under my belt, rose to the greying eminence of Guide and Adviser of a hardcore Electronics & Optics Lab. My trick was to sit with the students at their work bench and learn from them. It always worked since I was too shy to expose my ignorance to my colleagues but not to my students who were very proud of teaching their lab teacher. So I advised her to do the same...go round the lab and sit with the students and observe. Apparently she didn't quite like the idea but since she was new she did spend those three hours flitting from bench to bench.
After the class was over, I visited as usual, the coffee shop sandwiched between two arms of the IIT trident, took my coffee cup and was walking to my usual seat which was a jagged stone, when Prof RSS hailed me to come and join their company. He and three or four other colleagues were sitting in a circle on broken red plastic trademark chairs...our Director was not happy with his teachers sitting, sipping, and gossiping, and had issued orders that there should be no chairs in the vicinity of the Nescafe Stall...but you know...
And Prof RSS offered me an extra chair on which I sat down and started breaking the ice-halo that sort of always encircled my head. And I started talking happily about the first ever lady teacher in our department and how I advised her to learn tricks of the lab trade from our students.
All of a sudden one of the younger colleagues in the company announced harshly to his audience:
"Beware! I am her local guardian. She was my student in her M Sc class a decade ago. We come from the same place. If I hear any complaint of misbehavior from her I will break the legs of the offender...taang toot dunga!"
And then he finished his coffee in a hurry and left in a huff. And the party dissolved, while I and Prof RSS were exchanging smiles.
I am proud to say that I left IIT KGP somewhat honorably...with all my four limbs intact.
It is a different matter that the lady found another lab from the next week in her time table...
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At that time IIT KGP was entirely male-dominated. There were very few lady students and no lady teacher except one or two in the Humanities. And they were treated as flowers in a desert...very deferentially with tender gloves.
There was no lady teacher in our physics department for all of 30 odd years after I joined there. So there were no issues of discrimination or misbehavior at workplace. Slowly but surely the number of lady research scholars at IIT KGP grew, mostly in the science departments. The relation between research scholar and guide, at least in India, is skewed and fraught...the guide has all the powers and the scholar the entire future at risk. So, it could have been a lovely situation for exploitation. But, apart from a few unconfirmed rumors, there were no complaints and committees. And IIT KGP was a nice place for young lady scholars to find matching husbands...and some did happily, for good.
One day, a few years before I retired, I was sitting in our IV year Lab of which I was appointed Guide and Adviser...a unique position created just for my sake by our HoD. And as I was gossiping with my co-teachers most of who were research scholars, a young lady walked in and took her seat across the table. And on discreet inquiries I was told that she joined that very day as a teacher in our department and was asked to go to the IV year lab. I was happy...at last the glass ceiling got shattered.
And I came to know that her research was entirely in theoretical physics. So I narrated to her how I myself, with a Theoretical Ph D under my belt, rose to the greying eminence of Guide and Adviser of a hardcore Electronics & Optics Lab. My trick was to sit with the students at their work bench and learn from them. It always worked since I was too shy to expose my ignorance to my colleagues but not to my students who were very proud of teaching their lab teacher. So I advised her to do the same...go round the lab and sit with the students and observe. Apparently she didn't quite like the idea but since she was new she did spend those three hours flitting from bench to bench.
After the class was over, I visited as usual, the coffee shop sandwiched between two arms of the IIT trident, took my coffee cup and was walking to my usual seat which was a jagged stone, when Prof RSS hailed me to come and join their company. He and three or four other colleagues were sitting in a circle on broken red plastic trademark chairs...our Director was not happy with his teachers sitting, sipping, and gossiping, and had issued orders that there should be no chairs in the vicinity of the Nescafe Stall...but you know...
And Prof RSS offered me an extra chair on which I sat down and started breaking the ice-halo that sort of always encircled my head. And I started talking happily about the first ever lady teacher in our department and how I advised her to learn tricks of the lab trade from our students.
All of a sudden one of the younger colleagues in the company announced harshly to his audience:
"Beware! I am her local guardian. She was my student in her M Sc class a decade ago. We come from the same place. If I hear any complaint of misbehavior from her I will break the legs of the offender...taang toot dunga!"
And then he finished his coffee in a hurry and left in a huff. And the party dissolved, while I and Prof RSS were exchanging smiles.
I am proud to say that I left IIT KGP somewhat honorably...with all my four limbs intact.
It is a different matter that the lady found another lab from the next week in her time table...
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