Articles by Alumni
Fond Memories of our College Days and Reminiscence
Chandan Mitra (Class of 1972 , BA (Hons.) Economics) - And the Women Arrived
It happened without warning. Some of us had returned to Delhi a fortnight before University was to reopen that fateful summer of ’75. The Emergency had been declared on June 25 while I was still on the train from Calcutta. There was a palpable air of eerienes on the Campus; in fact over Delhi as a whole. Then the bombshell hit us. College was going co-ed. For us it was almost a world turned upside down. It was the end of history. Catastrophe. Apocalyse. Doomsday. All rolled into one.
Looking back all this seems rather hilarious. I don’t know why we feared women so. But at the time we probably felt that the female of the species would lose its mystique. It was something like the dissonance caused by visualising your girlfriend brushing her teeth. In your teens, you don’t quite want to think of your girlfriend like that. At least our generation had such hang-ups. So, we worried about dressing up at the crack of dawn. No more jumping out of bed, hurriedly draping oneself in a kurta and rushing into KRC’s 8-40 class in tousled hair and crumpled pyjamas. Women were fine after class hours. In the cafe or the coffee house or, better still, at Cellar in CP.
Maybe, us Rez types also felt a pang of jealousy thinking about the dayscholars who would get to travel with co-eds on Univ specials. So, they would have an unfair advantage. In fact, the tables would be turned because, till then we held the upper hand: Women were allowed into rooms during daylight hours with the Block Tutor’s consent and the door kept open. This concession had been wrested from a reluctant Principal Rajpal in my first year (1972-73). Barely two years later, it would get withdrawn. We had every reason to resent the entry of women.
As Secretary and Chancellor of the Union in 1974-75, I was made to feel responsible for putting up sandbags against this impending deluge. Besides, I was running for President that year and the only issue was the entry of women. In our heart of hearts we knew protest was futile. Apart from the fact that the decision was official and women were swarming the corridors for admission interviews, the Emergency quelled any prospect of widespread protest action. But my election advisers were dead sure I was on a winning ticket thanks to my stand.
Whatever happens in Stephen’s makes news. At least, it used to. Newspapers and Magazines were full of stories about the imminent fall of DU’s last respectable male bastion. That was the first time I was interviewed by a magazine as prospective Union president. JS was still the reigning magazine and imagine my thrill when the interview appeared with a photo to boot. I got some 20 letters from friends in Calcutta complimenting my first media appearance but simultaneously blasting my stance.
Finally, D-Day arrived. Some 16 girls trooped into College amid unprecedented media attention. But they received a cold reception from us boys. Cafe seemed dead. For the first few days, women sat clustered in gender-divided groups. We had to be careful with language, attire, manners. “We’re back in school,” was the distressed remark of the male majority. My electoral opponent was reviled as “chamcha” for welcoming their entry. He didn’t have much hope anyway and his goose was cooked by his stance. In the event, there was no general election as decreed by the Government. A representative council was called where I was unanimously elected.
About three weeks had passed. The girls didn’t seem too bad really. They were rather friendly, a bit in awe of the fact that they were in “The” College. Gradually, the level of our hostility dropped; they almost became one of the boys. Now, 25 years later, I can say our fears were misplaced. And, as the cliche goes, some of them, Amrita Cheema and Poonam Saxena, for instance, are among my best friends even now.
Chandan Mitra*, Publisher & Editor of The Pioneer, studied BA (Hons.) Economics and MA History at St. Stephen’s College between 1972 and 1977. He is the father of Kushan Mitra, a (well known!) IIIrd year English (Hons.) student.*
Dr Shashi Tharoor - Stephania : An Evocation
The very name “St. Stephen’s” has come to stand for two very different sets of associations. Stephanians still wax eloquent about the uniqueness of their alma mater; but to non-Stephanians, “St Stephen’s” all too often conjures up three overlapping concepts, none of which is meant to be flattering – elitism, Anglophilia and deracination. In responding to the Editor’s request to evoke what St.Stephen’s means to me, it is probably essential that I confront this stereotype head on.
I have always been proud to speak of the Stephanian spirit: indeed, I spent three years (1972-75) living in and celebrating it. Stephania was both an ethos and a condition to which we aspired. Elitism was part of it, but by no means the whole. In any case Mission College’s elitism was still elitism in an Indian context, albeit one shaped, like so many Indian institutions, by a colonial legacy. There is no denying that the aim of the Cambridge Brotherhood in founding St Stephen’s in 1881 was to produce more obedient subjects to serve Her Britannic Majesty; their idea of constructive missionary activity was to bring the intellectual and social atmosphere of Camside to the dry dustplains of Delhi. Improbably enough, they succeeded, and the resultant hybrid outlasted the Raj. St Stephen’s in the early 1970s was an institution whose students sustained a Shakespeare Society and a Criterion Club, organized Union Debates on such subjects as “In the opinion of this House the opinion of this House does not matter”, staged plays and wrote poetry, ran India’s only faculty-sanctioned Practical Joke Competition (in memory of P.G. Wodehouse’s irrepressible Lord Ickenham), invented the “Winter Festival” of collegiate cultural competition which was imitated at universities across the country, invariably reached the annual inter-college cricket final (and turned up in large numbers to cheer the Stephanian cricketers on to their accustomed victory), maintained a careful distinction between the Junior Common Room and the Senior Combination Room, and allowed the world’s only non-Cantabridgian “gyps” to serve their meals and make their beds. And if the punts never came to the Jamuna, the puns flowed on the pages of Kooler Talk and the cyclostyled Spice (whose typing mistakes were deliberate, and deliberately hilarious).
This was the St Stephen’s I knew, and none of us who lived and breathed the Stephanian air saw any alien affectation in it. For one thing, St Stephen’s also embraced the Hindi movies at Kamla Nagar, the trips to Sukhiya’s dhaba and the chowchow at TibMon (as the Tibetan Monastery was called); the nocturnal Informal Discussion Group saw articulate discussion of political issues, and the Social Serice League actually went out and performed social service; and even for the “pseuds”, the height of career aspiration was the IAS, not some firang multinational. The Stephanian could hardly be deracinated and still manage to bloom. It was against Indian targets that the Stephanian set his goals, and by Indian assumptions that he sought to attain them. (Feminists, please do not object to my pronouns: I only knew St Stephen’s before its co-edification).
At the same time St Stephen’s was, astonishingly for a college in Delhi, insulated to a remarkable extent from the prejudices of middle-class Indian life. It mattered little where you wee from, which Indian language you spoke at home, what version of religious faith you espoused. When I joined College in 1972 from Calcutta, the son of a Keralite newspaper executive, I did not have to worry about fitting in: we were all minorities at St Stephen’s, and all part of one eclectic polychrome culture. Five of the preceding ten Union Presidents had been non-Delhiite non-Hindus (four Muslims and a Christian), and they had all been fairly elected against candidates from the “majority” community. But at St Stephen’s religion and region were not the distinctions that mattered: what counted was whether you were “in residence” or a “dayski” (day-scholar), a “science type” or a “DramSoc type”, a sportsman or a univ topper (or best of all, both). Caste and creed were no bar, but these other categories determined your share of the Stephanian experience.
This blurring of conventional distinctions was a crucial element of Stephania. “Sparing” with the more congenial of your comrades in residence — thought it could leave you with a near-fatal faith in coffee, conversation and crosswords as ends in themselves — was manifestly more important than attending classes. (And in any case, you learned as much from approachable faculty members like David Baker and Mohammed Amin outside the classroom as inside it.1) Being ragged outside the back gate of Miranda House, having a late coffee in your block tutor’s room, hearing outrageous (and largely apocryphal) tales about recent Stephanians who were no longer around to contradict them, seeing your name punned with in KT, were all integral parts of the Stephanian culture, and of the ways in which this culture was transmitted to each successive batch of Stephanians.
Three yeas is, of course, a small – and decreasing – proportion of my life, but my three years at St Stephen’s marked me for all the years to follow. Partly this was because I joined College a few months after my sixteenth birthday and left it a few months after my nineteenth, so that I was at St Stephen’s at an age when any experience would have had a lasting effect. But equally vital was the institution itself, its atmosphere and history,
its student body and teaching staff, its sense of itself and how that sense was communicated to each individual character in the Stephanian story. Too many Indian colleges are places for lectures, rote-learning, memorizing, regurgitation; St Stephen’s encouraged random reading, individual note-taking, personal tutorials, extra-curricular development. Elsewhere you learned to answer the questions, at College to question the answers. Some of us went further, and questioned the questions.
So yes, Editor, St Stephen’s influenced me fundamentally, gave me my basic faith in all-inclusive, multanimous, free-thinking cultures, helped shape my mind and define my sense of myself in relation to the world, and so, inevitably, influenced what I have done later in life – as a man, as a United Nations official, and as a writer. Those who use the term ‘Stephanian” (largely, I might add, with pejorative intent) to include notions of elitism, privilege, irreverence, flippant wit, and deracination from the Indian mainstream, wherever that may flow, are simply wrong. They do not know, or deliberately overlook, the secularism, the pan-Indian outlook, the well-rounded education, the electic social interests, the questioning spirit and the meritocratic culture that are equally vital ingredients of the Stephanian ethos.
In November 1999, nearly a quarter-century after I graduated, I returned to St Stephen’s to address the Informal Discussion Group. I had heard rumblings from some old-timers about the decline in the College’s intellectual standards; it was said that the atmosphere of College had changed, allegedly as a result of the switch to co-education, with its new emphasis on academic results pure and simple – at the expense of, rather than as an accompaniment to, creative and non-exam related endeavours. I arrived fearing that I would find not just a generation gap, but a collegiate culture that I would be unable to recognize. Instead I found a hundred students spilling out of the staff room, perched on window sills, squatting on the floor, a healthy proportion of them women; and I received questions both probing and stimulating, well-informed and well-articulated, yet posed with a decorous politeness that was largely absent in my own raucously irreverent (and all-male) era. It is clearly not time to write the obituary of Stephania. If anything, in St Stephen’s second century, the ethos has flowered to a point us old-timers may not ourselves have managed to attain.
*Shashi Tharoor studied History in College in the early 70s. He has been working with the United Nations for the last 22 years and is the author of the critically acclaimed ‘The Great Indian Novel’, ‘Show Business’ and ‘The Five Dollar Smile’.*
Anurag Mathur - Leg Spinners
It has been exactly 25 years since I graduated and I suppose that’s as good a time as any to look back. Much wine has flowed under the bridge since then, but memories come thick and fast. In retrospect, the overwhelming sentiment is of an institution that cocooned you in a protective amniotic sac to let you develop as you and circumstances dictated. This was both good and bad. On the plus side, it led to the nurturing of a creative spirit that finds expression to this day. It may not have been possible in a less cloistered environment. On the minus side, it left me considerably unprepared for the rigours of what has been a periodically harsh life. The world is not like St. Stephen’s. It can be brutal, cunning, back stabbing. Nothing in college had prepared me for this. But I have survived through qualities that college did foster. Intelligence, a little learning, a respect for talent, a willingness to let others live the life they choose. But I must confess that very little of this survival kit for life ….. which is what a college education is….. came from the class room. I learned from the other students in college. It was a hot bed of activity in every way except, alas, in the most literal sense. (Of which more later). But people were always involved in something or the other. They were writing poetry, or for what used to be the Junior Statesman magazine, or acting in plays, or doing programmes for Yuva Vani, or discovering new authors to read. It was like a stream in ferment. I took a few dips, much fewer than I should have. Though I have had some striking professional successes. This has not been duplicated in my personal life, particularly with regard to women, which remains strikingly unsuccessful. I’ve been divorced once and I sometimes feel that college could have done something to help me deal with the other sex, particularly since I came from an all male boarding school. St. Stephen’s too was all male then. Since I was too intimidated to hang around Miranda, I passed out more or less innocent of that other vital sex. I called them “leg spinners” in a novel, to the great anger of several reviewers, but its true. I still can’t “read” women. I can’t tell which way they’re going to turn. But then I know very few men who can, and perhaps I shouldn’t blame college for that shortcoming. Still, that aside, St. Stephen’s was quite an experience. More than an education, it was almost an upbringing.
*Anurag Mathur studied at College in the early 70s and is now a columnist with a number of leading dailies and the author of ‘The Inscrutable Americans’ and ‘Are all women leg-spinners, asked the Stephanian?’*
Sagarika Ghose - Being There
When I joined St. Stephen’s, I was convinced that the place was simply a well-packaged myth. That the mince cutlets, the facilities and rich inner life was just the inventions of an efficient propaganda machine at work. But, the charms of St Stephen’s are insidious and creep up on you when you least expect it. A winter afternoon in Rudra court or a summer morning in the cafe are just cliches. Much more important than the scenery and the sandstone is just the simple fact of just being there. The delicious sense of achievement that oozes out of the walls,the comfort of the trees, the soft grass are fantastic because they are evidence of the wondrous fact that I actually made it to this college. I think that’s the one security blanket that has carried me through my years there. And the sense of well being that we all had, rose from the simple fact of having actually got in. So enjoy the time that you have in college, because the same sense of achievement over three years is hard to replicate later in life.
The teachers were great too. In my time, they were young and trendy. One of them jogged to college, another lived in a ‘commune’ and once asked us why on earth any one of us ever wanted to get married. Most of all they taught you to think, to dig deep for deeper layers of honesty if you really want to achieve something worth the name.
I still think about college sometimes. Think about how I and all my contemporaries have trod the straight and narrow, got married, had our kids and got on with our jobs. That’s life, I guess. But there was a time on Allnutt Lawns when we killed ourselves because of the blind empty world, swore we would change it, think original thoughts and build new institutions. College gives you that freedom, that confidence and that dream. And it’s a dream that you always carry around and sneakily believe that you might just realise some day, because, after all you did go to St Stephen’s.*Sagarika Ghose is columnist with Hindustan Times, and had also written a novel entitled ‘The Gin Drinkers’.*
Aman Nath - A change of mission
St. Stephen's College was founded in 1881, in that wondrous century of transition - the nineteenth century - which was less definitive than the 11th century in India or the 16th century of the Renaissance in Europe. It was a century made hybrid by explorationconfrontation and compromise. Its curiosities were shaped from the fabulous, nebulous effervescence of two different times. Times in motion but warped together into an awkward frieze which was odd - even heavy - on its foundations of the past. But this was unlikely to dovetail into the strictures of modernism shaping on the horizon. It was an open license, a laissez-faire of tastes and cultures, a melange reussi, a carte blanche with a watermark of the past if we look back upon it with a century's hindsight. This 19th century was topped in many cases with the crazy might of imperialism in its full expressive glory or the sheer decadence of monarchy that had lived beyond its tenure and utility. The educational principles of the Nineteenth Century were to shape a new whimsy with its own knowledge of the past and ignorance of the future which would run into India's freedom and a feudo-monarchical, mock-socialist democracy when the 20th century progressed.
In retrospect, who knows if the whole passion and effort to restore Neemrana Fort - Palace- and the several others rubbish heaps and ruins we callously label as our 'heritage'- was not born out of this desire to re-awaken our old strengths? If being born in a post-partition family from Lahore meant recycling all the waste to one's advantage, school had taught a creative ingenuity beyond text books. College derailed us from the usual tracks, taught us that the road we walked could perhaps be the one we made for ourselves.
Five impressionable years is along time of forming. The flashbacks are many. Largely, a guilt of spending more time in the cafe than in the library; of sliding somewhere between India's backward-forward transition. Or was it the intangible strength of our mission college that its nebulousness was preparing us for the unspelled global challenges? The college may well have been set up with a different purpose and long-term agenda. But the times when it was founded had perhaps worked to our advantage.
Who knows of the original mission of the missionaries? In pointing to the skies and helping us Decipher their god among our clouds, they could hardly have imagined how perceptive they would help make the future generations. Far beyond flags, national anthems, boundaries and gods fashioned from our limited understandings would arise the writing force of cyberspace.
A college set in this foundation of time - where its own mission had changed from capital 'M' to multiple m's - could hardly prepare its students for a sedate and static future. It certainly prepared us to shape a mercurial millennium.
Aman Nath was a student of History at College in the early 70s. He is the author of 'The Painted walls of Shekhavati', 'Jaipur' and is currently working on a book on Shiva. He is responsible for the restoration of the Neemrana Fort Palace among other monuments.
Pawan Kumar - Memories
I was an impressionable 16 in the first year of college. There was the heady freedom of being out of school.
College believed in a certain lifestyle, not without content, but not always too closely connected with the world outside. There was a sense of achievement of having ‘arrived’, by the sheer act of joining the college. There was the search for an ideology that would give a larger meaning and purpose to our young lives. There was also the unsullied tug of idealism. The naxalite movement was then raging in Calcutta. Many of us were swayed by the seduction of radical politics.
There were other hobbies one sought to pursue. Those were the days when the film Guddi was much the rage. I sought to start a Jaya Bhaduri Fan Club whose only activity was to meditate before her portrait in the Reading Room. It did have more than one sitting.
Pavan Kumar Verma was a student of History at College in the early 70’s. He is now a Diplomat and the author of the highly acclaimed ‘The Great Indian Middle Class’
Amitav Ghosh - The Lessons of Rudra Court
The year I joined College, in 1973, the word among us freshers was that the most terrifying ragger in College lived in Rudra Court, in L9. Terrifying because he wasn't the usual kind of bullying, bellowing senior.
--
No, he was to them as the panther is to the elephant, the scimitar to the war club, the rapier to the broadsword. He was bearded, they said, and soft-spoken, so stealthy that you never sensed his presence until he had you square in his sights. No one could actually remember being ragged by him, but everyone knew someone who knew someone.....
In those days, ragging was a serious business: there were nights when we slept in drainpipes around Pandara Park rather than go back to College to face our seniors. It was an atmosphere in which legends battened and grew.
As it happened I succeeded eluding the legend of L9 for a couple of weeks. And then my luck ran out. I was 'nabbed while attempting to abscond' as the Indian Express used to say."What are your interests fachchey?" growled the legend of L9.I decided to take a chance: once, while slinking past his door, I had heard a record playing inside."I like classical music sir," I stuttered."You do, do you?" he said. "Follow me."
I was led inexorably into L9; an ancient gramophone was turned on, a record was picked carefully out of a sleeve and placed on the turntable. "Okay miserable fachchey", he said. "Tell me what this is."
With the first bars I breathed a sigh of relief. "Emperor Concerto sir", I said. "Beethoven".
He paused and then, without giving anything away, he took the record off the turntable and replaced it with another.
I knew this one too; Pastorale, 3rd movement. Another followed; I got it wrong. But I guessed right again with the fourth.
The legend stuck out his hand, "I'm Rukun Advani", he said. "Let's go to Maurice Nagar and have a cup of tea."
Chaiwallas lined the Maurice Nagar bus stop at that time. Some even provided benches. Rukun and I sat talking for hours, while the buses roared past. After that our walks to Maurice Nagar become a night time ritual; something to look forward to through the day. They continued for years (Rukun stayed on in Rudra North for his MA).
As I remember them, the two staples of our conversations were literature and music. My memory is possibly inaccurate in this regard. No matter: in my mind Maurice Nagar will always figure as my own, private Montparnasse.
This friendship, launched so fortuitously in Rudra North, was renewed over and over again in the next few years: in Cambridge, London, Europe, Delhi. Twenty-three years later, Rukun remains one of my closest and most valued friends.
In my second year I lived through this in reverse time, as it were. I was now in L9, having inherited it from Rukun, who'd moved upstairs. One afternoon, walking back to my room, I found a fresher standing on the Rudra Court steps looking, as freshers so often do, like a space alien waiting to be beamed up to his craft.
"Fachchey", I yelled, "What are you doing standing there like that?"
"I'm looking for the Shakespeare Society sir", he said.
"You mean Shake Soc."
"Yes sir", he said, "Shake Soc sir."
"Follow me fachchey", I said. I led him to L9 and made him read out passages from *King Lear*.
"What's your name fachchey?"
"Mukul Kesavan sir", he said.
We became fast friends and have remained so ever since. Mukul was a day scholar so he couldn't come to Maurice Nagar often. But he did when
he could.
Where is this leading?
Did these friendships have anything to do with my writing? I don't see how it could be otherwise. Rukun was my first critic; it was because of him that the first piece I ever published saw the light of day. It was he who launched me on what I think of as my Literary Career by finding me a job at the Indian Express. But I couldn't have taken the job if Mukul and his family hadn't given me a room to live in.
As far as I am concerned those conversation at Maurice Nagar have never ceased, on or off the page. I find it hugely reassuring that we are all writers now. It is an inescapable fact that all around the world, literary movements have always been sustained by such friendships, by these lifelong conversations, by the kinds of instinctive, almost atavistic loyalty and gratitude that I feel towards Rukun and Mukul (and so many other University friends who, although they have not yet written books of their own, will, I am sure, go on to do so). Literary movements, whether in Calcutta or Vienna, Paris or Rangoon, have always sprung out of these moments, when certain people happen to cross each others' paths at certain times. There is no explaining why these moments happen when they do; nor should one try. For my part I am just glad that I was present at one.
But does this mean that there is such a thing as a 'St Stephen's School of Writing?' I don't know. Sometimes I feel we sustained our conversation against (rather than because of) the then prevailing ethos of the College. In any event, I don't feel that it's my business to answer this question.
Once on the lawns of Rudra Court I got into an argument with a Philo Soc Type. He won, of course; he won by quoting Wittgenstein, as Philo Soc
Types do.
"Whereof we do not know", he said, "thereof we should not speak."
It was the most important lesson I ever learnt on Rudra Court.
*Amitav Ghosh studied History in St. Stephen's (1973-76), and went on to take a D.Phil. in Social Anthropology from Oxford. He is the highly acclaimed author of The Circle of Reason, The Shadow Lines, In an Antique Land and The Calcutta Chromosome. His latest publication, 'Countdown', a critique of the Indian nuclear tests was published in 1998.*
Dr Anubha Sharma (Class of 2004 , Chemistry)
Starting in 2001, I have a lot of fond memories from St. Stephen’s. From the morning assemblies to the enriching faculty, from Freshmen lunch to Harmony, from the lush green meadows to the iconic cafeteria, from being a student here to beginning my career as a teacher here, all the memories are etched deep inside my heart. The college, my friends and my overall journey made me who I am. As they say we jive, we mystify, Stephania, a time of our lives.
Dr. Mohan Gopinath (Class of 1966 (BA) & 1968 (MA), English)
The following is an extract from the Introduction to a book I have written titled 'And the Twain Shall Meet: Shakespeare in Kerala'.
St. Stephen’s College, my interactions with the faculty and the students there, and my stint at The International Centre for Kathakali defined my life when I was in my late teens and early twenties. It was a good life with its ups and downs. I made good friends in those days and I am happy that many of those friendships have survived to this day. Many of the great professors who taught us in the college and the university are no more; I particularly remember Colonel Stephen Pierson, Mohammad Amin Sahib, and Dr. Sarup Singh who later became the Governor of Gujarat. Colonel Stephen Pierson (of the British Indian army) who taught English was my resident tutor at Stephen’s in Allnutt North. After graduating, Chinnam and I used to meet him when he came to Kolkata where I was posted. His command of the English language was phenomenal. He was also gifted in his ability to write light verse – one of his poems, if I remember correctly, started with ‘In frigid or in baraf (icy) air, as I walked along the thoroughfare’. He was also noted for his unique contribution of saying grace before dinner in the dining hall. One of his favourites was: “For this delicious gift of food/ We lift our hearts in gratitude/ Lunch was awful but I’ve a hunch/ That dinner will be worse than lunch.”
The College also indirectly and through a process of osmosis taught the students to see themselves as Stephanians and not as Christians, Bengalis, Sikhs, Muslims, Hindus, and so on. This is something many of us realised after we had left the college and we would often refer to this in our alumni meetings. I am also reminded of a story relating to Professor Sushil Kumar Rudra who worked at St Stephen's College from 1886 until his retirement in 1923 where he variously taught English, Economics and Logic. He was also the first Indian Principal of the college. During his tenure as the Principal, four students came to him and told him that they felt uncomfortable as they had to sit in the dining hall with a few students who were from another caste. They asked if the latter group could be moved. The Principal looked at them and said, “Gentlemen, there are four exits in this college. I would like you to take the one nearest to you and leave the college immediately as you are not wanted here.”
Professor Mohammad Amin was another revered teacher for us. After retirement, he was living near the college and a first-year student went to interview him for an article for the college magazine. One of the questions the student asked the Professor was, “What does being a Stephanian mean to you?” The reply was in Hindi which when translated reads, "Young man, how can I tell you what it is like to be drunk when you have not tasted alcohol yet?”
Dr. Brijraj Singh and I are in regular touch and his classes were memorable because of his erudition and humour. I am still learning from him and he has taught me a lot in terms of tightening the language of the books I have written. Our friendship starts from the days I joined as a member of the faculty in Stephen's.
Sangay Dorjee (Class of 1987, History)
One fine day in July 1984, I was waiting outside the principal’s office. My first experience of an interview, I answered questions with complete innocence and candidness having had no briefing or preparation at all for the interview.
A gentleman with grey hair and beard asked me, “Are you related to the two Sangays?” I replied ‘No’ since I wasn’t aware of the two seniors who went by the same name as me.
“What subject do you plan to study?” I answered, ‘Economics honours.’ To my disappointment, he said, “You do not qualify for Econ honours since you do not have maths!“ He then added, “You will have to go to the college across the road to study another subject.” I insisted that I could take another subject if I am given the opportunity to stay at Stephen’s. A brief conversation helped me secure a seat in the History honours class.
“What games do you play?” A difficult question since I wasn’t a game or a sports person at all! But, to save my seat, I answered confidently, ‘I play almost all games, for example, volleyball, basketball, football, etc.’ Fortunately, since most of the students from the Northeast proved to be good sportsmen, the interviewer trusted my answer. Late William Rajpal, who I came to know was the principal after the interview, remarked, “Young man, I look forward to seeing you in the college soccer team.” I was elated but worried by the remark.
I chanced upon the principal after a month or so one afternoon while he was walking his big dog. Sadly, that happened to be my last encounter with him since he passed away shortly afterward. It is unfortunate that he never watched me play on the college soccer team.
A year each of Ancient India, Medieval India and Modern India was not easy. The studious few in the class literally ran to the library after almost every day to take away the few copies of the reference books. It was only long after the assignments had been turned in that one would get to see the books back on the library shelves! So, I learnt to be happy with passing grades.
To honour my late principal, I took some interest in a few sports with the motto ‘Participation is more important than winning.’ An individual trophy in inter class rifle shooting and a place on the college volleyball team saved me in the end!
All in all, I am grateful that my late principal let in a ‘third’ Sangay Dorjee in 1987, someone who turned out to be faithful and dedicated to the service of his King, Country and people. I feel truly fortunate to be an alumnus of St. Stephen’s. My heartfelt gratitude to the late William Rajpal and all my teachers.
Thanks to Facebook, I am connected to some of my classmates and college mates today. I am glad to know they are doing well in life.
N.K. Singh (Economics Hons.)
Quite honestly, St. Stephen’s College was not my first choice. I was keen to seek alternatives outside Patna College, but was a bit disappointed that notwithstanding the keen interest of Dr. Zakir Hussain, then Governor of Bihar, and my own debating interests, I could not go to Queen’s College, Oxford. I applied for admission to St. Stephen’s, which was viewed with some awe as among the most prestigious colleges in North India.
The then principal, D. Rajaram, known for his lack of humour, had interviewed me before granting me admission. I was found fit by him both in terms of the academic record and what he called the ‘right values’ for a young man. I enrolled in History, but subsequently shifted to Economics Honours. But what made St. Stephen’s special, and memorable, of course, were the people.
The faculty members, for example, were diverse both in style and personality. For instance, Mohammed Amin had an elocution style of reciting historical events, which kept interest alive; while K.C. Nag, head of the Economics Department, displayed an old world charm – his son, Putul Nag, who replaced him, did not have the same indelible traits of the Senior Nag as we called him. N.C. Ray taught the curriculum in a library style with amazing precision and limited words, which had long term advantages. Balbir Singh had his own characteristic style of teaching, often adjusting his turban more than was quite needed. He had a wide variety of interests from Indian Classical music to an alacrity of ordering mince cutlets and toast with marmite at the college café, which was my first encounter with the tradition of marmite on toast, a tradition I kept for long. In his company, I also used to attend important music concerts in Delhi. D.C. Ghosh had a distinctly nasal style of speaking, but enabled students exhausted or otherwise, to move into half slumber. It is impossible to not miss them, everyday.
The students of St. Stephen’s were elitist in their attitude to other colleges, referring to them as ‘the Other Place’. Something they were infamous for. St. Stephen’s was regarded as a ‘factory’ for grooming officers for both the Indian Administrative Service and the Indian Foreign Service. Each year, when the names of the first fifteen on the merit order were read out over the All India Radio, we would count the number belonging to the college.
The time spent with Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Mani Shankar Aiyar and his brother Swaminathan Aiyar is unforgettable. Strangely, Swaminathan came to pursue science, while Mani came to pursue economics. In the irony of circumstances, Mani rarely writes on economics although Swaminathan invariably does.
Jayashankar Krishnamurty (Kitchu, as he was called) and his elder brother, Jayashankar Shivakumar, were two of my closest friends. For some curious reason, I was referred to as ‘Prof’ by many of my friends including Kitchu. There are some instances which have made an indelible imprint on my mind. Every time I used to win a prize in debate, it was expected that I would treat some of my friends at the then Khaibar Restaurant in Kashmere Gate or very occasionally at Moti Mahal. In one hilarious incident, the motion was ‘This house is of the opinion that China has fallen’. Kitchu being the gang leader orchestrated a sequence in which, after I had spoken for two minutes, he dropped a saucer which broke to pieces. People wondered what happened. I broke the silence as I said, ‘There is no doubt that China has fallen”. The house burst into laughter. I was awarded the cash prize and those who plotted with me were rewarded by the characteristic sumptuous meal.
The college was also the playground of many budding romances, and something that can’t be ignored while reflecting. Since female students were not admitted in the college campus then, the Coffee House, a midway between Miranda House and St. Stephen’s was the obvious meeting place. Many interesting romances flowered, prominent of which were Salman Haidar with Kusum Bahl, and Vinod Dikshit with then Sheila Kapoor.
But Stephen’s is remembered with fondness also for the opportunities it allowed one to have. Having won several prestigious prizes for debating, I was selected to visit Japan during an international youth exchange programme for a public speaking competition. At that time, I could barely imagine that, much later, I would serve in Tokyo as the minister (economic and commerce).
Sagar Wadhwa (Class of 2014, Economics)
I can think of the night before the exam in residence, which invariably comes to mind when thinking of college. I can still picture it.
You could sense it's exam time. There is a briskness in everyone's pace. Students are not eating their dinner lavishly, most are heading straight back to their rooms or library from the mess. We too finish relatively quickly and head outside. Anoothi says she has a lot of material left to study and is the first to leave. Dial (Aishwarya Dayal) also leaves soon. Anshuman and Akshita are discussing some high level things. Chandan and I look at each other, both feel a sense of comfort from the look of cluelessness on each other's face. Suchu (Sucharita) has stayed till late today and meets Anshuman outside IRC to clarify some doubts. We chat briefly with Akshita and Sucharita, wishing them luck and then, Chandan and I head towards our respective rooms in Allnutt North, with clear intentions to meet later in the night.
It's Development Economics tomorrow. As always, I have left a lot for the last minute and it's crisis time. Some intense study follows. I have my pre scheduled call with KC (Kalyani) and we go over some doubts. KC has a superpower of asking excellent questions. Her questions make me realise how much I still need to revise in topics I have already revised. In a crisis, it helps to see that you are not alone. So, Utkarsh, Sambodhi, and I gather in Chandan's room. Since it is third year, we have figured out that Sambodhi complains a lot but has covered more than us and a lot more than what he says.
Chandan is on a call with Yash, explaining to him the one model of sharecropping that he has learned thoroughly. It's 10 o'clock and we realise that there's no way we can cover everything. Now comes the most important part of the night: strategizing to decide what we can leave. So we collectively read through the syllabus and make educated guesses, occasionally pausing to remind ourselves to not end up in such a situation next semester. Then we all go to Anshuman's room to confirm our educated guesses of what to leave, plus to ask him to explain material that he thinks could be important for the exam.
Anshuman's pre-exam nights were quite different from the rest of us. No last minute panic, no need to stay up late, no plans to leave out some chapters. We arrive to see that he has already brushed, and is getting ready for bedtime. He is, as always, happy to help and starts going over his notes to explain a model to us. After saying Good Night and thanking Anshuman, we head back to Chandan's room around 11:30 pm. Everyone studies quietly for 30 minutes and that's pretty much the maximum we could get in one go in our joint study sessions.
Chandan throws out the question to the universe, "Bhai log bhookh laga hai kya?" Rest of us look at each other and are in absolute agreement. "Haan yaar lag toh rahi hai". Chandan solidifies his argument: "Yaar late tak padhai karna hai aaj, thoda kha lete hain." Valid point. So we naturally order two aloo parathas for each along with a Mountain Dew from Midnight Paratha. "Bhaiya chutney yaad se dijiyega, last time missing tha", Chandan ends the call. While waiting for the parathas, one could study, but one could also listen to an old Kumar Sanu song on YouTube. "Bhai ye gaana nahi suna kya tu, katal hai ek dum katal", and Chandan's laptop plays, "Mera chaand mujhe". We indeed wanted that "ye raat tham tham ke guzre".
We all walk to Andrew's gate to get our order. Chandan confirms that chutney is there. Parathas always seem to taste extra good before the exam somehow. We finish eating and now as per plan, go back to studying because "der tak padhai karni hai". 15 minutes go by pretty well. Plan is working and it was good that we ate. But then, parathas have their effect and we all start yawning. Sambodhi and Utkarsh leave to "take a nap" in their rooms. We wish one another the best for the exam.
Chandan and I are determined. We study for another 15 minutes. Chandan has another great plan. "Bhai lag raha hai jyada kha liya, abhi thoda so jaate hain, 5 baje uth kar padhai karte hain". So tempting and hard to deny. I come back to my room, set an alarm for 5, and off to bed. The alarm rings but is turned off as a reflex action. With no back up alarm, it's not before 7:30 that I see the sun or my book. "Don't want to end up in this situation next semester", I tell myself and run to make it to the exam on time.
Premjeet Titus (Class of 1984, BA Pass)
Memories of the lovely time in College Residence
Feel the vacuum left by Hemant Gagan Singh, who is not with us anymore, and remember him with fondness while writing this.
I cannot forget the night trips I made with my brother Diljeet and friends to Machaan and the movie and the coffee shop at Knags. And of course nothing beats the scrambled eggs with tamatar at the cafe! The joy of coming first as a team at the winterfest greased pole competition, and managing a team position in the tug-o-war remain core memories. Another instance I remember is being called to the Principal’s office in my first year, as the Principal saw a foreign liquor bottle in my room (the empty bottle had been bought from Sunday Bazaar to store water from the college cooler, but instead of quenching my thirst, it caused my throat to run dry at the Princi's office!)
I remember the pals: Jacob Rose, Basant Kurre, Asif Mohd Ali, Murli Dhar Madhur, Athikho, John, Vinay, Vinu, Lobsang and Ghai among many others and also that I got beat up while representing the college in the DU Boxing Meet! College colours were awarded to me maybe due to the red bloodshot eyes, received by the pounding, not to mention I fought well! (That's what they all say!) I remember and regret the rumble I participated in. As the Hindu College guys had broken some of our chairs, we retaliated, got into their college at night and messed up their college pretty badly, and did not follow the teachings of the Bible to forgive. (We did ask God for forgiveness later)
All the good times in the College Chapel, studying the LTh. Taftee Course at Rev Valson Thampu's residence in the campus. the singing practice during winters, and the Philosophical Discussions with Dr Shankaracharya our Philosophy Lecturer, English with Ms Bina Barnabas. Playing Ben Hur with Strangway on the Iron Rubbish Cart, I was the horse and Strang was Ben hur, and then we swapped! All of these moments made college a delightful time, and an unforgettable one, to say the least.
I think I must stop now.
With Love to all Stephanians,
Premjeet Titus
