Even though I had a comfortable ride into the Calicut Regional Engineering College academic community, I had a few problems to face in the beginning. The place was totally unfamiliar, the people around equally unknown, new colleagues and new set of students hailing from different parts of India. From the beginning, admission to RECs were divided equally between the state and from outside. In fact, REC or even NIT is a small cross section of the country with representatives from most of the states and union territories.
The
first problem was of course that of accommodation. Even though the college had adequate
accommodation for students in five hostels, named A, B, C, D, E members of faculty were not having sufficient number of residential quarters at
that time. Getting a house or a room for rent outside the campus was out of question
as there were very few buildings available. Even if available, one with
adequate toilet and sanitary facilities were almost non-existent. So, junior
members of faculty from outside Calicut had to stay in one of the hostels. Fortunately,
almost all of the juniors except those coming from their homes daily were in a
way forced to be resident wardens in the hostels. For some of us in need of
accommodation, this was a blessing as we could stay in the hostel rent free and
take food from the hostel mess by paying usual charges like the students. Among
the five hostels, in 1969, only four were completed. D hostel was just a mess hall as the building was not
completed. I was posted as resident warden of D mess and was allowed to stay in
the nearby E hostel, in a corner room on the first floor near the D hostel end.
As no room with attached bath was available, the only problem was to share the
common bath room and toilet facilities with the students. As E hostel inmates
were the senior most among the students and I
used to get up early in the morning, it was not difficult to share these
facilities as I was just one or two years elder to most of them. As resident warden
of D Mess, I had no duty to monitor the students except checking the accounts
of the mess bill prepared by the steward at the end of every month.
Another problem was the lack of staff room in the
department. At that time, there were only two buildings other than
the laboratories, one, the main
building MB which had the administrative offices and the departments of Mathematics,
Physics, Chemistry and Humanities and the other, departmental building DB which
housed all the three engineering departments of Civil, Electrical and Mechanical.
The Civil engineering department was
located in the middle of DB and the other two at the two extreme ends. In all
these departments, adequate rooms were not available for teaching staff to sit
and naturally the juniors were those who could not find a place to sit. Most of
us had only laboratory classes except me who was given a theory subject on
request and given in view of my one-year prior teaching experience. Therefore,
it was difficult for us junior faculty to find a place to sit whenever we did not
have a laboratory class.
Fortunately,
the first lecture hall on the ground floor of DB near the Electrical engineering
department was being used as the Staff Club as there was no separate building
for the staff club. Some magazines like TIME, Newsweek and a few newspapers
were available for reading there. Some of us used to sit there whenever we did
not have any laboratory class. Occasionally a few of us started playing chess
in the staff club. Two will play and others may be watching the name.
One
of those days, our Head of the Department Prof.P.K.Charlu called some of us and asked why we people were playing chess and other games during the
working time. In fact, the truth was this - one day, the Head of the Civil Department
came to the staff club when two of his
staff members were playing chess and some of us were watching them play.
He promptly reported the matter to our Head telling that junior faculty from
EED were playing chess in the staff club during working hours. We told the
truth to our HoD and being the first time, he only warned us and did not take proceed to take
any disciplinary action. We came to know later that this professor was known to
be a little weird in his dealings. Once when students did not come to his class
during mass abstention in protest
against some college council decision, he lectured in the empty
class room without a single student and next day when the students came to his class,
he listed out the topics he discussed in the earlier class. On another
occasion, he invited some of his colleagues for a ride in his own car to the city
and next day gave a bill for the cost of petrol for the ride on the previous
day equally shared among the passengers.
Some people were telling that he is a bit abnormal in his behaviour
occasionally. (I hope his soul will forgive me as he is no longer alive)
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