BIT-Sindri alumnus Divyanshu Raj, who's now the assistant vice-president of Citibank in New Jersey, grinned while saying her memory lane actually had a name.
"When I was a fresher in 1987, I was ordered by my seniors not to use the cemented main road from the hostel to the classroom. As we were mere freshers, we had to use the muddy Murga Road to show respect to seniors," Raj giggled on Sunday while walking on the same campus mud track that hasn't changed much since she passed out of BIT-Sindri after getting a BTech degree in metallurgical engineering 25 years ago.
Raj is among the 300 alumni members who have come for the BIT-Sindri Alumni Association (BITSAA) Global Alumni Meet for batches from 1954 till now. When the report was filed around 5pm, the alumni were "hugely enjoying" the event at their Deshpande Auditorium, which was supposed to go on till at least 8pm.
Among the prominent alumni who came for the reunion at Jharkhand's only state-run engineering college were director (technical) of NTPC, Pankaj Kumar, an IAS, and former NASA scientist Nil Dwivedi Pandit. Among the 300 old boys and girls, over 50 alumni came from North American and European countries.
Raj's batch mate in electrical engineering Supriti Singh, who flew down from Manchester, UK, where she is the chief information officer of TIP Trailer Service, said she last visited her alma mater in 2010. "It's lovely meeting people one has grown up with," Singh said.
But Raj, who is here after 25 years, said her nostalgia over the alumni meet and the silver jubilee celebrations of her batch, 1987 to 1991, was clouded by the "poor condition of the girls' hostel". "I spent four amazing years of my life in this hostel. I wish it was in better shape. The toilets in particular aren't hygienic," she said.
Agreed Singh. "Facilities for students have not improved much," she said.
Alumni members plan to contribute for BIT-Sindri in cash - the alumni fund the Gurudakshina corpus for scholarships - and in kind.
"Having interacted with students, we felt they lack communication skills to face interviews and we want to do something to change this. Our institute also needs to be advertised more so that more head-hunters come to recruit students," Singh said.
BIT-Sindri director U.K. Dey, office bearers of BITSAA, including its Dhanbad chapter secretary Chitranjan Kumar, faculty and students had a busy Sunday as the silver jubilee of the 1991 batch and the ruby jubilee of the 1976 batch was held simultaneously. Members of BIT-Sindri student society Arts Club presented cultural events.
