When I was in college I stayed with a group of eight at Patel Hall, in a wing called "D Top East". We were a pretty funny collection of sorts, with two from Calcutta(actually one was from the outskirts of Calcutta from some arsenic ridden area), one from Durgapur, one from Hyderabad, one from Nainital, one from Delhi and two from Jamshedpur.
We were funny not because we came from different places but because of the way we behaved. We were a detached lot in our own world each with his own eccentricities that invariably gave rise to more problems than could be solved. Each had a care a damn attitude in something he never believed in and those remained the same even after DTE days. Much of what I write may not be understood by a stranger but only a DTE member can clearly understand. This page is for those DTE days that can never be forgotten with due apology to the DTE guys...

Our wing was heavily fractured into two as far as academic performance was concerned. There were four innocent guys in our wing who knew nothing as far as studies were concerned and the rest four survived perhaps because God had made exams. So come examtime, those dumb ones (of which I was one) who were too smart to study used to hold a conference in the corridor whereas the dumber ones used to wear their butts off sitting on chairs and gaping at books(at least that's what it looked like). The intelligent four used to discuss extremely urgent matters ranging from "Why Communism was so successful" to "Why capitalists were failing", from "What to do with Kallu's poita" to "Whom to share the newspaper with", from "Why Samba's father looks like a tiffinwala" to "Why Vanish needs two rooms", from "Which girl is the most beautiful in the class" to "What to do about India's population", from "When to start a private mess" to to "What to do about Durey's room", from "How come people drink arsenic ridden water" to "What to do about that shortage of girls in college" etc. The result was that the dumber ones used to answer their exams and go off to their houses whereas the intellectual ones used to stay back for the Summer Festival. And invariably, after we failed we used to discuss how to change the education system of India. In fact, one bright spark had the good fortune to answer the same exam for two continuous semesters. Unluckily, he passed the third time...
Exams were another cause for worry because for some unknown reason we felt more and more sleepy as exams approached. In fact, my brain would refuse to work at the mention of exams. So you see, it wasn't really our fault if we failed. Some felt something was wrong with the system...

One of the most interesting events that made headlines for a long time to come was the sharing of newspaper between three gentlemen in our wing. The plan started with much fanfare and ended with one fellow getting a black eye and broken spectacles. The problem was that if one particular fellow read the newspaper, it would be found in places in a totally different shape. So invariably, the first used to commmit the mistake, the second used to argue the case but the third got thrashed up. This used to happen so regularly that another three thought it safer to buy their own copies. Myself and another monger used to read scraps from here and there - and managed to survive safely till the end...

Well, eating out together was treated solemnly initially when we went out to a restaurant wearing ties and looking like a bunch of fools. Later, we found it more and more difficult to reach a decision regarding the various tastes, venues and timings - one found hotdogs suitable while one Marwari cribbed about being a strict vegetarian. Another was a fish fanatic while one bright spark never waited for others to make up their minds. Also, there were members who stayed in the computer lab and ate and slept there itself while another couldn't forget Paneer Butter Masala and licking his hands. In the end, we followed our own eating habits and ate and abused as we liked.

All our wing members used to become very very busy whenever there was a need for social work - ILU decoration, Hall Meetings, Gymkhana work, General Body Meetings, Library work, Holi, Election campaigning you name it. We were busy trying to shift the responsibilites on someone else and would desperately convince the hall of our non availability. One fellow hadn't any convincing to do because he lived more in Calcutta and less in the wing. Two more chaps went the same way because they had shifted their tents to some computer lab(one had entered the Gymkhana only twice during those four years...). With the architect the busiest man in the world, with one fellow perenially hibernating in his room, two shamelessly arguing about the uselessness of social work, the responsibility was cribbingly shouldered by a civilian - and also got blamed for messing things up...
Poor fellow, he always got the raw deal.

Those were nights that none of us would forget. Sometimes we would loaf about the corridor pulling each others legs, sometimes screaming unprintable words at the C wing, often going out on a three hour spree to the Bombay theatre, bullying and shouting at juniors, visiting the Tech Market for some signs of greenery or sometimes just go to the library or watch T. V. Come Saturday and we were relieved with a sense of no work -- and of course chaos ensued because empty minds is...

No topic evoked more interest, enthusiasm and hysteria when compared to the Patel Hall Mess. Some said that the food grew from bad to worse, some complained about overhead lights growing dimmer day by day, some about the shortage of water, seemingly poor hospital facilites, why food cannot be specially provided to jaundice patients and some about our reverend warden. There was apparently many ingenious suggestions from our wing as regards various matters - like running a private mess(keeping in mind how social we were...) to forming a students union, from inviting our wardy to a typical dinner to forcing a strike, from ousting the director to storing water in buckets. In those days, every person saw a revolutionary in himself. Long after those matters have died down, we can't help laughing at ourselves...

I could keep going on and on. But I fail to forget those times - that broad wing where we used to play underarm cricket, the sound of a distant train chugging by in the night, the iron bed where all of us sat in the dark and talked, those sleepless summer nights when we slogged to pass the papers, the railing where we leaned and worried and talked - sometimes about our C. G. and sometimes about a paper, the cool breeze that used to sweep our wing, those job treats when we went out together....
I think that most of the DTE members will agree that the most care free times of our lives have been left behind. Those were different times...

Members of DTE
• Saurabh Das Gupta
• Ayan Nandy
• Sourabh Ghosh
• Samba Siva Rao
• Subhabrata De
• Kalyan Ashis
• Avanish Mehrotra
• Rakesh Sharma