After being
a student for five years from
1963 – 68, it was a different experience altogether as a teacher for almost one year. Five
integrated course leading
to B.Sc(Engg) degree was still going on
and during the year
programme teachers and students were more relaxed as
they could easily make up for the time, if there was any laxity during
the year.
EED Staff
room and a few visitors
Staff room facility
for teachers was minimal at that time as the
main building was only
partially completed. Only a few
of the first-floor rooms
were available for lecture classes. Department
of Electrical engineering
was located on the extreme
Western end of the completed building. Electrical Machines Lab, Measurements Lab and Electrical Workshop were
located here. In between we a had a small room for all the staff members
to sit during the working hours.
Only senior faculty like Prof N K Rajagopalan,
M A Mathew Sir and N Padmanabha
Iyer Sir had special cabins in the labs. Office of Prof.P.O.J.Lebba,
our Head of the Department
was towards the middle
of the building with a
quadrangle nearby. We had a long desk in our staff room and all of the
staff members used to sit in a
single row facing North
towards the door. When we did
not have any class, it was fun discussing on anything under the sun. Preparation for the
class was not possible.
Only academic work possible
was checking the
student practical records
or valuing some home assignments
submitted by the students.
Occasionally we had a few
visitors to our staff room. One
daily visitor was a senior staff member
of Mechanical Department who almost daily invited the
only lady staff member
in our group, for tea in
the canteen . He used
to invite another lady staff member
from Civil Engg Department also on the way to
the canteen. Occasionally this staff member
used to make sometimes
marginally vulgar jokes with
double meaning on the way. However, our lady colleague in the Electrical
department always kept a
cool dignified face and rarely laughed at these jokes except may be a light smile. In
contrast, the other lady rarely could
control her laugh and invariably
started laughing at the slightest provocation. Probably, this was encouraging
their sponsor to cut more vulgar jokes.
We, some of the junior
staff members once
in a while moving with the trio
did not know whether to laugh or not at
these occasionally ribald jokes.
Remember, at that time no lady
students had been admitted and only a
handful of lady staff members were
present in the college.
An interesting colleague who
joined with me.
In my batch of lecturers,
two more
had joined along with me, one
Venkiteswaran and Mathew. The
latter was an interesting character with a peculiar way of
naming places. Chinnakkada (
town centre in Kollam town) was always Chainakkada for him. One day, he had some
invigilation duty for the
university examinations on one morning
session. Examination started on
time and Mr.Mathew distributed the
answer papers and question papers. It so
happened he was in the
big drawing hall used
for examination purposes where maximum
number of students of electrical branch were
sitting. After about 40
minutes after the commencement of the examination , Mathew came
out of the hall running to me and
asked me to continue the
invigilation work as he had to go for some urgent work in his lodge
in the town. Since I was
free at that time, I readily accepted
his
offer and went to the examination
hall. Next day when I met him, I
asked him what was the emergency . He
said “ Mohandas, please don’t tell others. The electrical
students in the examination were
answering the questions for
the subject taught
by myself. In fact, very few
questions were on the topics I taught them. Some students
were asking him why this is so. As the number of queries from the students increased, I thought it is better to leave the hall , otherwise, I was really
scared that some of them may assault
me in the open hall itself ”. So, he had a genuine reason
for saving his skin, I understood.
Another story
was one of the senior students approaching the Chief
Editor of the magazine
Sri.Stephen Sir. He had written
story in Malayalaam. As Stephen
Sir was busy, he asked the student
to read the first
paragraph of the story. He
started reading promptly . “ It is too sad, my wife has
leprosy “ ( കഷ്ടം, എന്റെ
ഭാര്യക്ക് കുഷ്ടം ).
Stephen
Sir was not very
happy with the start and
told him “ Why should
I bother if your wife has
leprosy? Get out of this place” തന്റെ ഭാര്യക്കു കുഷ്ടം ആണെങ്കില് , ഞാന് എന്തു
ചെയ്യാന്, എവിടെയെങ്കിലും
കൊണ്ടുപോയി ചികില്സിക്കെടോ?)
As lecturer,
we had to find our own accommodation.
The college had no
provision for providing accommodation to the staff
members except for one or two
deputy wardens in the hostel.
Fortunately, for me, along with my
friend and colleague Sri K.V.Purushothaman and a final year student
T.K.Surendran Pillai, we
could take a convenient house for rent near the
hostel annex. We were allowed to get food
from the hostel mess and we entrusted a boy to bring our
food from the hostel mess. As I was staying outside the
hostel all the five years, in lodges near the college, it was the
first time I was taking the rich hostel food. Within a few months, I had put
on a lot of weight. When I went home
during the holidays, some of my relatives thought I had
put on weight after getting a comfortable job after
my stressful studies. I did not
divulge the secret to them. It was
during the first mid-summer vacation, I received a call for
interview for the post of Associate
lecturer in Regional Engineering
College Calicut, based on my
registering in the professional
and executive employment exchange at TVM.
How
I left TKMCE
to join REC Calicut
will be the in the
next episode!
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