Lead Kindly Light!

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Lead Kindly Light!

1983: IIT KGP:

Prof CLR had joined IIT KGP as a research scholar in 1960, five years before I did as an Associate Lecturer.

He told me that (as a typical theoretical physicist) he used to take long lonely evening walks around our campus (Einstein rode his pushbike around his Princeton campus).

CLR's walks used to often lead him to our Hijli School Maze of lanes and bylanes. Whenever he got lost, he used to turn round and locate our Main Building Tower which towered around its surroundings like a Colossus for miles together.

At evenfall the light on its top used to be switched on. Trees were young then and Prof CLR had an unhindered view of that kindly light. So he used to nose in on it till he returned safe to his BC Roy Hall home just in front of the Main Gate.

Four months after I joined and was dumped in a room on the Gokhale Hall top floor, we had this Indo-Pak war, and a threat of bombing was looming on the Kalakunda Air Base 5 miles away (it duly got bombed somewhat ineffectively by our neighbor's PAF in an early morning raid).

So, as soon as war broke out, there was this rigorously enforced black-out. And the light on the Tower was switched off since it could act as a light-house-beacon for the bewitched pilots of PAF.

Personally I felt it was a wrong move...not knowing where they were, our forlorn enemy pilots could have bombed my room on our top floor by mistake instead of going ahead, which they surely would have, had that guiding light been switched on.

Anyway that light was kept switched off for years then on.

And within a couple of decades, trees grew up like giants themselves, many multi-story buildings came up, and a whole new sub-campus got raised in what was charmingly called the Dandakaranya where I lived in Qrs C1-97 for a couple of decades with my wife and son.

And the Tower became useless as a homing beacon.

One wintry night around 8.30 Vaikuntho, the resident "boy" in the A-type Qrs of my friend and senior, Prof BCB, landed up at our Dandakaranya Qrs.

With the message asking for my medico-wife to please visit their Qrs urgently. Apparently the aged mother of Prof BCB was having convulsions.

I asked Vaikuntho to fetch a rickshaw, my wife got into it with our toddler son, and I followed it on my ancient pushbike. The lane that led to the A-type Qrs was parallel to the road to our Tech Market (and then in a bylane).

Reaching there, my wife examined her patient and wrote a prescription for an injection to be given at once.

I offered to go to our lone Srimaa pharmacy in the Tech Market.

And I rode like the Devil and surprisingly got caught up in the infamous Hijli School Maze. And turning left (instead of right) I ended up by the Shiv-Kali temple on the Perimeter Road.

Taken aback, I reversed and rode all the way to the DVC area from where I knew the way back to the Tech Market.

I bought the injection vial and sped towards Prof BCB's hidden Qrs.

Only to arrive at the Shiv-Kali temple. Back again to the DVC and Tech Market; and back again to the Shiv-Kali temple...

And by now you know the "recycling regimen".

Finally I came back to my own Qrs, and instead of getting lost in the maze, I followed the original route of Vaikuntho's blessed rickshaw.

Prof BCB happily declared that his mother's convulsions ceased with fomentation:

"Oh! Thank you Shastri! ! Dr Rukmini says there is no need for the injection shot now. I will drop her at your Qrs in my Ambassador. Please return the injection vial to the Srimaa Pharmacy"

...Oh! No! Not again!

:)

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