LOOKING
BACK
Dr. M.B. Sai Dutta, affectionately
known as ‘Sai-D’ among his students, is a professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering and
is also the Dean of Alumni Affairs
and International Relations. Dr.
Dutta is known for his engaging
style of teaching and his ready wit.
He is also a long-time exponent of
Carnatic Music.
24
The Shoreline
THE DAYS OF YORE
I
t was on a warm summer afternoon in
September, 1976 that I reached Mangalore with my father to take admission
in the then Karnataka Regional Engineering
College, Surathkal. Fifteen days earlier, I had
received a telegram from KREC stating that
I was being offered a seat in B.Tech Chemical Engineering, asking if I would like to accept it. Having decided to do engineering, I
had sent a reply telegram stating that I would
join, and here I was in Mangalore. My father
had visited Mangalore earlier in 1950-51 in
his official capacity as an engineer looking
after the minor ports in Madras Province,
which included Malpe and Gangolli fishing
harbours. As the train approached Mangalore, my father enquired with the TTE
about hotel ‘Udupi Krishna Bhavan’ that
had existed in 1950. The TTE said it still
existed, and so we went and checked into
the hotel, which was adjacent to ‘Mohini
Vilas’. The next day, I took admission and
was ushered into my ‘bathroom attached’
room (Room No: 49) in the first block.
The initiation/introduction (an euphemism for you-know-what) program was at
its final stages as I was among the last to
get admitted in that academic year. So I
did not have to endure that for long. We
were told about the horrors of first year
and were warned about Engineering Drawing, which we had in both the semesters.
We had only two attempts to clear a subject and in case we failed, we had to take a
drop (lose one year) and try to clear it in the
next two attempts. Failing to do so would
entail rejoining first year as a fresh student
again. The success rate in first attempt was
about 50%. Our seniors insisted that we join
them in a ‘strike’ so that we could get one
more chance to clear a back log. So, instead
of two chances, one got three chances to
By Prof. M. B. Sai Dutta
clear a paper. We did not realise then that in
our second year we would go on ‘strike’ for
such onerous reasons like ‘junior engineers
in government are not paid well’. Worse was
to come yet. One of our batchmates met
with an accident near Panambur and died.
The bus belonged to Anil Roadways (Route
No:2). W e went on a ‘Rasta Roko’, stopping
traffic on NH-17. The police came and tried
to reason with us. In the meanwhile, an Anil
Roadways bus came close and on seeing the
commotion, the bus workers abandoned
it and ran away. Someone took the steering wheel and some pushed the bus until
it came to a halt near the second and third
block junction. To cut a long story short,
the bus was burnt, the college was closed
and we were thrown out of the hostels for
fifteen days. One can see the relics of the
past even today: the two bus stops inside
the campus at which the Anil Roadways bus
used to stop - one in front of Amul Parlour
(now a favourite haunt for accessing WiFi)
and the other behind Director’s Bungalow.
We were given two days to vacate the hostels
and those two days were the most difficult
ones we spent. We were in constant fear of
getting attacked by the people who had lost
their bus. Nights were spent on the hostel
terrace with all three doors of the hostel
closed and electrified, boiling water kept
ready in the mess in huge vessels, chilli powder stored in each wing and piles of stones
stacked up in the terrace to ward off any
attack. Our escapades in the second year put
us back so much that we had to sacrifice our
vacations thereafter for the next three years
to complete the degree in five years.
On the academic front, things were
no different. There was commotion in the
hostel on the night prior to the ‘Process
Calculation’ exam. My roommate woke me