Moored to BEC for Yearbook

'Is your child interested in Architecture?' Queried a curious onlooker in his early twenties just as my mum was stepping out of a crowd of hopeful guardians that had flocked to check the recently published ranks of their children in the all-decisive nightmarish Joint Entrace Examination, aka, JEE. Universities at Jadavpur and Shibpur were holy grail for many for their locational advantage and quite a few were ready to trade their preferred department of study in a different town for Architecture at these colleges. My mum consented and the onlooker assisted her to procure a form for a qualifying test that would be conducted a couple of weeks down the line. But Architecture domain was largely alien to her and she didn't hesitate to ask what the test was about, how to prepare for it, and who could guide. The unfamiliar onlooker, now her guiding angel, apparently had answer to all her questions. 'Hi I'm Kaustav (name changed), a second-year student here. We've done this last year. Trust me, a few of my classmates have arranged coaching sessions for aspiring joiners. We can't guarantee admission, but we can vouch to offer the best training!' My mum hardly had any choice and I was glad she quickly decided to enrol me to those informal classes at Kaustav's home. This anecdote was pretty much the same for all of us who identify ourselves as BEC Archi!

Not just an additional test, Archi course was special in a couple of other ways. Course duration was five years, a year more than rest of the cohort; it included 6-month internship unlike a month long in other departments; three major educational tours were part of our curriculum; conventions like NASA/ ZONASA brought together budding architects from across India to our campus and the fervour of those events were no less than the college event REBECCA; last but not the least - we had open airy studios with large drawing tables, quite unlike typical classrooms. But to start with, the paraphernalia we required to commence the course certainly set us apart. Equipped with T-square, large set squares, drawing boards, special rotring pens, and other Archi stationery, we walked through the remarkable Centenary Gate into the campus. 

An alma matar holds a special place in the heart of each alumnus or alumna. Our campus was garbed in green with its heart ticking in the Clock Tower. Precincts like Lords and Oval, the quaint low-rise buildings, Colonial style architecture, shimmering Bidisha, convenient residential facility beckoned us to join this institute. So there we were, with the vim of youth to explore and experience a new phase of life. The little xerox corner we frequented for all the right and wrong reasons, the famous Bokultola, the I Hall, our college canteen, the stationery store, Netaji's statue, green lawns abutting winding spinal avenues, and the college building with roomy studios are as inseparable from memories as the eateries that lined the road outside the gate. Don't we still salivate at the thought of Basanta Cabin's chowmein, Panditji's daal kochuri with tea, sweet shop's fulkopir singarha, hostel canteen's bread toast omelette? And what can draw any parallel to a bit of revelling after a night show at Lipi?

Above all these, however, were our hostels, aka Halls that we associated much with. Our first few days of September 1994 went into buying and organising things we needed to set up a comfortable living there. Our bare iron beds soon got padded up with locally bought mattresses - complete with pillows and indispensable mosquito nets; bare white walls got plastered with flashy posters of our heartthrobs - mostly celebs of silver screen; iron cupboards got filled with everyday essentials.  During the day, between the classes we were curiously and quietly judging each other, sifting personalities, and calculating who to befriend or who to steer clear of. The only thing that bound us together was the eagerness to know each other - a bunch of fledglings, of almost equal aptitude, who've found the freedom in their wings to scale the sky.

It was a crucial juncture of our lives - learning the boons and banes of living independently, learning to add new strings to our bows, learning life! Thus we plodded along together from design studios to Applied Mechanics classes, pranced from Masonry to workshops, padded past library and labs. And alongside this chock-a-block schedule unfurled our potentials, personalities, and predilections.  Our camaraderie with our classmates evolved - through those years these bonds fragmented with some and strengthened elsewhere, our priorities got defined and redefined, and our paths wove in and out. We got close, drifted apart, and re-connected - with the exception of one, who escaped the weals and woes of life quite early to reside peacefully beyond any mortal reach. Student-professor relationships were forged. Our revered professors - Aditya sir, Arup Sir, Keya mam, Swati mam, Jayeeta mam, Manju mam, Prof CLC, Prof Shibulal Halder, Prof Joydeb, and many others patiently held our hands while we toddled through our initial years. Given the nature of our studios and the subject, we bonded with our seniors and juniors at equal ease. It started every year like the opening anecdote much before we were assured a seat in our classroom and studio floors. That helped us, to some extent, in coping up with stanger-anxiety in a new world, and later the ghorha-jockey bond opened the doors of many possibilities. 

Those precious formative years were a rich swirl of fun, action, and creation - sprinkled with unadulterated joy of having fuchka with a friend after dinner and scampering back to hostel moments before the grilled doors clattered to close for the day; splashed with high-octane razzmatazz of annual events; peppered with apprehensions of end-sem assessments; spiced up with fragile calf love; dotted with tours; laced up with design submissions and diorama presentations.  In retrospection, we fondly appreciate how we managed without Microsoft Office to present our transparent slides on projector, procured information by ferreting around the silent shelves of cavernous library, light traced by precariously balancing a glass sheet on columns of stacked book with a table lamp underneath. Without YouTube at disposal, pronouncing then-unheard-of words like "Massachussetts" was fiendish without the help of none other than the omniscient professors. 

The educational tours in three consecutive years fortified our bonds further. Our first trip revealed the world of majestic South Indian temples with Gopurams and Prakarams in their grandeur, the steadfast Vivekananda Rocks holding the fort from pounding waters of the ocean, the meditative Matri Mandir in Auroville, magnificent churches and gardens of Mysore, and a serene lake enfolded in hills at Ooty. The second trip, anchored by our year, brought to us a completely different fabric of forts and deserts of Western India; the chill of December did little to dampen our verve of exploring the goosebump inducing historic sites. A final trip to the heart of India left us awestruck at the painstaking details with which the temples were carved at Khajuraho, caves were painted and sculpted at Ajanta, and stupas were built at Sanchi. Dhuandhar Falls, and a boat cruise though the meandering sacred Narmada wounding and carving her way through marble rocks indelibly etched in our young minds the awe-inspiring natural scape of Jabalpur. 

All these years thus sculpted out the people we were when we stepped out of the yellow-red Centenary Gate for good on a scorching day in May of 1999. We were fortunate to have each other then, and even more fortunate to have regrouped to reminisce about those past times together - an unexpected gift of unforeseen technological advancement.

Dona, Sydney, for 25th Reunion of Batch 1998 Yearbook