Fading Memories of My DCE Days.…
by
S. Gopal
Roll Number M 55/65
Passed out in the year 1970..

Note:

I started writing `Fading Memories of My DCE Days' for my own reason of trying to re-live those days (Bhule Bisre Din). Now that some young `old students' of DCE have started a networking site for DCEites, I am sending the article to the site moderator with a request to post it in the site and help me share my thoughts with other DCEites.

I expect my class mates to correct me where I have been economical with the truth. Believe me, some of my classmates used to have extraordinary memory, retention, and recall; some of them I am sure, will be able, even today, to reproduce P L Ballaney's Thermodynamics word-for-word cover to cover - both text and numericals. How do you think some of them got such high marks and ranks?

I joined Delhi College of Engineering (DCE) in the year 1965. At that time the college was situated at Kashmere Gate. People still used to refer to DCE by its old name `Delhi Polytechnic'.

I could get in to DCE because I had scored very good marks in my higher secondary exams.  Those exams were conducted then (as they are now) by Central Board of Secondary Education. There was no Entrance Test; admissions to DCE were purely based on the marks obtained in the higher secondary exams.

I had got admission to Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) as well; I got textile Engineering in IIT Delhi and some branch (I think it was civil engineering) in IIT Madras. I was advised (the thought of defying advice did not occur to me at that age) by my elders that textile engineering had no good prospects and IIT Madras was too far for a Delhiwalla. (Though I am `madrasi' by birth, in the sense that I was born into a Tamil speaking family, I was born in a place known as Atul Grove in Lutyen's New Delhi. My parents had moved in to Delhi from Madras as early as 1945.)

Here in DCE I got the `prestigious' mechanical engineering branch. Naturally, I was very proud of myself and my achievement. After all not every Tom, Dick and Harry or Amar, Akbar, and Antony can be so successful!

Yes, I also underwent some ragging in the college hostel. I was made to do some uncivilized things by the seniors (mostly from the electrical engineering branch). I do not wish to narrate the details in a forum like this which will be visited by decent people.

Almost all the classmates were from middle class, lower middle class, and poor backgrounds. There were some who had lost their fathers early in life and were brought up by mothers with great difficulty. Many were from government schools. You could count affluent students in your finger tips. Rich meritorious students went to IITs, others with merit landed up in DCE.  

The fees in DCE was affordable and the government also offered good scholarships under two categories – merit and merit-cum-means. A good number of students wouldn't have been able to take up engineering but for the scholarships.

I don't remember the fees amount (Hey, classmates, please give me the figure) but it was pittance compared to the fees today's engineering students have to pay (even after factoring for inflation).

We were dressed ordinarily, with ill-fitting trousers and shirts. Some wore even soiled dresses. Compare it with today's nattily dressed students with branded jeans and Nike shoes!

Quite a few lived `jamna paar' in the so-called refugee colonies (no offence meant to those folks; this is only to highlight their tenacity in times of adversity; almost all of them are doing very well in life today)

Vacancy in the hostels was limited; reserved mostly for outside-Delhi students. Most of us were day-scholars commuting to college in Delhi Transport Undertaking (DTU) buses, DTC was DTU then.

We used to get student bus passes for which we had to go to Scindhia House in Connaught Place (we used to call it Connaught Place; the `sophisticated' ones studying in Delhi University campus would use the term `CP') or to Sarojini Nagar DTU Bus depot (in Delhi lingo `Deepo'. Some other Delhi lingo: `Medkal' for AIIMS, `Laypat Nagar' for Lajpat Nagar..)

Delhi University then had only one campus; near Civil Lines. The students studying there would look at us as `padaaku' students who knew nothing other than studies. They were not entirely untrue!. They used to have a lot of time at hand to indulge in seeing `pictures' in theaters, eating in canteens, window shopping at CP and Janpath, sipping coffee in coffee house, and eating ice creams at Nirulas.

We had to do with some smaller pleasures of `occasionally' seeing a movie at Ritz or Minerva, near the college. We neither had much money at hand nor the `guts' to bunk classes `often' . We shuddered at the thought of `shortage of attendance report' going to our parents. I remember seeing a film `Milan' in Ritz, featuring Sunil Dutt and Mala Sinha. 

…to be continued…