It’s the last week of the year on a cold winter morning. The IC & SR department at IIT Madras (IIT-M) which houses the auditorium is brimming with people. There is palpable excitement in the air, not because of students eager to get home for the holiday season. For these students, it is homecoming in a sense, as they step into the portals of the campus they left behind 50 years ago.
The hall adjacent to the auditorium is drowned in laughter, cheer and surprise. Greying men flanked by their doting spouses, children and grandchildren are chatting over cups of coffee. In one corner is a grey-suited man with a walking stick with his granddaughter on his side. Prof V Anantharaman, 87, who once taught Humanities at the institute, exchanges greetings with his students, the respect he commands well-deserved.
These students, the oldest true-blue IITians are sporting yellow tees that read, “First batch of IIT Madras — Golden Jubilee Reunion. Give us a hand with the next 50!” The dais is decorated by four plaques that have the following words etched: “To Sir, With Love”. R Natarajan, IAS, the first registrar of IIT M, Prof EG Ramachandran, Prof N Rajagopalan and Prof V Anantharaman were felicitated with them, for they among many others who were instrumental in shaping some of the brightest minds in the country.
IIT-M was inaugurated on 31 July, 1959. As a result of an Indo-German agreement signed in Bonn, West Germany, with the country promising financial, technical and academic assistance to India in establishing a technical institute of national importance, IIT-M was started.
The first batch graduated in 1964. BTech was a five-year course at that time, while the ’64 batch ran its full term, for the ’65 batch the pace of the course was accelerated because of the 1962 Sino-Indian War. There was a demand for more engineers not only from IIT-M but from other IITs too and consequently the ’65 batch finished the course in four-and-a-half years, six months ahead of time thus graduating with the ’64 batch.
These students went on to become directors, CEOs and technical heads at some of the biggest manufacturing and IT firms in the country and abroad. Most of them have retired now, some of them are still at the helm of affairs of the companies they founded or started working at, loyalty that is scarcely found in students of the post liberalisation era. Edex spoke to some of the alumni as they narrated the struggles, challenges and memories of those times.
Srinivasan Subramaniam, Chairman and Managing Director of Chennai-based IT firm SRA Systems, that offers software, services and application development in healthcare, engineering, and financial services, is one of the pioneers of information technology in the country. He worked for more than a decade with IBM when IT was still in its nascent stage and still hadn’t caught the imagination of the young, and was instrumental in several prestigious installations. After graduating in Mechanical Engineering from IIT-M, he did MS in Computer Science. He came back to IIT-M and joined the Department of Computer Science and managed their Computer Centre and IT consulting activity. He was awarded the distinguished alumnus award by IIT-M in 2002. He is also the Chairman of the India Chapter of Product Development and Management Association and is an active member of Computer Society of India. He is also on the board of studies of SRM University.
“There were only five disciplines then: Mechanical, Civil, Chemical, Metallurgy and Electrical Engineering. We used slide rules and boards for drawing; no CAD machines, no computers. We had heavy workshop content in our curriculum that required us to do filing and carpentry for some time, as a part of hard core engineering. Now it has become much lighter,” Subramaniam says.
He points out that there is a growing interest in financial institutions like international banks today, and after doing engineering, students get into finance. Students do an MBA as it pays very well. “The interest in core engineering is reducing which is a concern for everyone,” he says. “I personally made a similar choice. I had an attractive offer in IBM and moved to Computers. Later, I came back to IIT. But the common takeaway from IIT remains the ability to think analytically and the confidence to take up challenges, the reason why many IITians become entrepreneurs,” he says.
As they were the first batch, infrastructure was not fully in place. IIT used the classrooms, labs, teachers’ rooms and library of AC College of Technology for their batch of 120 while the administrative office was housed at the Central Leather Research Institute. Classes were also held at the Highway Research Centre. Though a stone’s throw away, students shuttled back and forth for their first year classes that included Humanities, Maths, Physics, Chemistry, Drawing and the much dreaded Workshop that was physically exhausting.
“There is a sea of change in the way students behave today compared to what we were in those days. For the first year-and-a-half, the campus was under construction. So we were accommodated in two hostels, in Saidapet Hostel near Teachers College and Guindy Hostel off Mount Road across the Race Course. IIT gave us bicycles to commute. From Saidapet we went to the Adyar river by cycle, and then took a ferry. We put the cycle on the ferry and used to go to AC College where the classes were held. After that we used to cycle from Velacherry to IIT’s rear gate. Even in the rainy season, come what may, you wouldn’t find absentees in the class. Where do you see such commitment from students today?” Subramaniam asks.
R Mahadevan, Group Technology Director, India Pistons, holds a Mechanical Engineering Degree and PhD from IIT-M, and an MTech from IIT-Kharagpur. He is a Fellow of the Society of Automotive Engineers and lends technical support to IPL & The Amalgamations Group besides serving on the board of IPL, IP Rings and other companies within the group.
“The active German collaboration made it interesting for us to study at IIT. We had to know how to tackle ‘German English’ apart from the subject itself. It was fun to unravel the mystery of German English before unravelling the mystery of Mechanical Engineering,” Mahadevan quips.
“They were hard taskmasters. The professors we had believed in wearing us out. We all developed blisters in our hands I remember. Now the students don’t have such workshops at all,” he continues.
The students of ’64-’65 batch, he says, as opposed to students of other educational institutions in Tamil Nadu in the 1960s, had an opportunity to interact with students from all parts of the country. “We interacted with all parts of India everyday so to speak. A certain appreciation of the multicultural aspect of India came in. Of course, now also it is like that but in those days, there were only four IITs and for us to be thrown into this mixed culture, was a big plus,” he says.
IITs when compared to other educational institutions are built on vast lands with a lot of natural resources, he points out. “When we were there, it was a forest with monkeys, snakes, mongooses and deer, and a few students for company. We were only 120, they were in thousands. We were a small population compared to the population of the flora and fauna. It was a wonderful way of living with nature,” he recalls. He emphasises that this is the kind of environment that nurtures academic pursuit. “You don’t have a lot of diversions. For us to see a movie, we have to cycle for four km, which is enough of a disincentive to discourage us to watch a movie,” he says.
Since IIT-M did not have a concept of day scholars back then, one simply learnt how to live together. “We managed with the pluses and minuses. These are things that develop your character,” he says. As they had to make do with limited resources it stood them in good stead later. “We worked in borrowed laboratories for some time. We took it sportively. It gave us a perspective of life’s larger problems,” he says.
The luckiest aspect about this batch, they say self-admittedly, was that they didn’t have to write JEE to get through. They had all heard about a certain new institution being set up by the Government with a tuition fee of over `400 through newspapers or from their teachers at pre-degree college. Despite the fact that the college was in the first year they decided to go for the gamble, something that would become priceless in the future. “This scramble of 10 lakh people writing and 10 people getting in was not there. It was simply based on your merit and an interview, but a gruelling one at that, with 10 professors hounding you with questions,” he says.
Mahadevan vividly remembers German Prof Koch, who taught Physics, from the interview. “He asked me in the interview, where I belonged. When I replied Kumbakonam he asked me what it was famous for. I replied ‘intellectuals’ and he burst out laughing.”
The students would not miss visiting the campus open air theatre at 7:30 every evening for a much needed break from academics. In 1964, the then Nawab of Pataudi, batsman and former Indian Cricket Team captain Mansoor Ali Khan graced IIT-M’s first Sports Meet. The then President of India Dr Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan graced the batch’s convocation.
Prof Ajit Kolar and Kumaran Sathasivam have compiled an elaborate book titled Campus Chimes which traces the history of IIT and its evolution thereafter.
At the reunion address, Prof Anantharaman said, “It’s a pleasure to address you. I am standing with a walking stick but when you were my students I had a hockey stick. You were 16-year-olds when I taught you; today you’ve come with your wives and grandkids. I remember the campus newspaper Campus Times. Your German language teacher Prof Klien was made the publisher instead of me. If I were there, you wouldn’t have gotten away with the things you wrote, like ‘IIT is a place with first rate students, second rate equipment and third rate faculty!” Anyway, we took it in good humour too.”
He points out that while there were English classics being screened at the Open Air Theatre initially, “you did get your Katti Pathang and Awara later on”, he said while his ‘boys’ had mischievous smiles on their faces.
The then representative of the ’64 batch Sudheer Chandra said, pointing out students from the ’65 batch, “You guys must’ve been ragged by us!” To which a ’65 batch student replied, “We ragged you!” He said, “Okay, we were humble then! I am jealous of the current batches. Fifteen per cent of the students are girls, that means one in seven guys have a chance of getting a girlfriend! Back then we had only Annapoorni from MSc Physics and Vijayalakshmi from MSc Maths. They were like an oasis in a desert.” The entire crowd cheered him for this important statistical breakdown.
Every alumnus was sure to mention the registrar, R Natarajan. His unmistakable affable nature perhaps stuck with them throughout their stay at IIT. The audience welcomed Natarajan, with thunderous applause, a gesture that was reserved solely for him at the reunion. “My darlings of ’64 and ’65 batch, I am 86 years old today. Out of my entire career as a civil servant, the six-and-a-half years with IIT-M was the crown of my career,” he said.
“Among so many other things as a registrar, I remember Prof Verner Houg of Applied Mechanics who was a chronic complainer. He always rambled about how things are delayed by the Government here. I had waited for the right opportunity without saying a word. One fine day he came to me with some demands for the department and I refused to oblige him. You see, Dr Houg’s contract extension with IIT hadn’t come yet, it had been delayed by the German embassy! He of course later agreed, all Governments delay things, even Germany!” he reminisced.
With the Golden Reunion of IIT-M being a success with over 50 students attending it, it concluded with a hope for a diamond jubilee reunion after 20 years. suraksha@newindianexpress.com