"Sir, how many girls were there in your batch?" an MTech student of maths and computing from IIT(ISM), Yash Reddy, also a member of the students blog www.ismdiaries.com, decided to ask an old alumnus a question on the mind of every male engineering student.
Alumnus M.N. Jha, a retired mining official from Delhi, from the class of 1967, was sporting. "Very, very few. If any window of the girls' hostel was left open by chance, and any one of us boys got a glimpse of a girl, he was considered lucky," Jha said with a twinkle in his eye.
Basant 2017, the IIT(ISM) annual alumni event on Sunday, which also celebrated the golden jubilee of the 1967 batch, rebooted the spirit of spring in the former students, no matter what their age.
Of the around 300 alumni who came for the event, about 50 were from the 1967 batch. Getting into campus mode, the alumni were seen playing badminton on the Diamond Hostel lawns, catching up on their tennis at the sports complex, sharing golgappas from the makeshift eateries at the lower grounds.
Dipak Sarkar of the 1967, who flew all the way from Los Angeles, where he lives, to Dhanbad with wife Chitra, said it felt he'd stepped into a time machine. "My wife and I visited my room 105 at Diamond Hostel, known as old hostel during our time. I'm coming back after 50 years," Sarkar said. "Huge changes," he said, referring to the IIT tag and the new infrastructure on campus.
Chitra, an MBA from the University of Texas, who retired from her job back in the States recently, quipped she'd heard so many stories from her husband about his college in their long married life that she felt a rush of homecoming too.
"Feels fabulous. I'm hearing first-hand all the jokes and gags Dipak used to tell me, I'm meeting his buddies," she said.
Dipak's batchmate Atul Kumar, now based in Texas in the US and is a member of the North America Chapter of the ISM Alumni Association (ISMAA), said they also discussed increasing their funding to their alma mater. "We fund eight scholarships, two each for four core branches mining, petroleum, applied geology and applied geophysics, but we are planning to expand our initiative in other branches too," he said.
Ten alumni were also honoured by the alumni association. The CMD of Oil India Utpal Bora and director (technical ) National Mineral Development Corporation, N.K. Nanda, received the Awards of Excellence. Director-general of the Directorate of Mines Safety Rahul Guha; CMD of Northern Coalfields Tapas Kumar Nag; executive director and IRS head in Ahmedabad at ONGC Siddhartha Sur; Jharkhand state government secretary of the departments of industries, mines and geology and IT Sunil Kumar Barnwal; and South Asia regional head of Schlumberger Asia Services Sujit Kumar received the Distinguished Alumnus Award. Basant Samman was conferred on the CMD of ONGC Dinesh Kumar Saraf, former HoD of mechanical engineering and mining machinery of IIT(ISM) D.K. Mitra and V.S. Rangarajan (posthunously) for his outstanding contribution to sports.
