Basant - Spring of Life

traced this logo I designed

The final year of college is like Basant –  A sense of well being, benevolence to friends and juniors, a spring in every step as one is gonna get out of college, hopes on the first salary and plans on what to do with it.

Diamond Jubilee

The final year students were like kings in the campus with lot of privileges and suddenly the lot turned more mature and benevolent. Ragging was no longer much of interest and had shifted to making it subdued. Most of us knew what the eventual grades are going to be and academics took a back seat. For those setting their sights on going abroad or management studies the preparations for tests took some time but did not drown any. Out last year at ISM also turned out to be the Diamond Jubilee year (1926 to 1986) and it attracted a whole set of events which made the year action packed – Diamond Jubilee celebrations, hosting Inter university tennis, the East Zone Youth Festival again a inter university cultural festival. Prof Marwah the director’s term was also ending and there was a certain peaking of activities linked to that too.

Great festival - designed this logo too!

The biggest of these was the East Zone Youth Festival. Organising this event with many universities coming in, their stay arrangements, logistics, scheduling competitions, managing judges, food & catering, special performances was fun and taxing. Unlike large universities here we were just 300 odd students all 4 years put together. People like Suhel Seth landed up for the event with leading univs like Jadavpur, Shantiniketan etc. participating. The culturals and competition was of high quality. Quiz, Debating, JAM, music and Drama attracting the most crowds. The largely male dominated campus got spotted with a lot of girl participants and the festivals also evinced interest in the who’s who of Dhanbad and their families. It was a truly festive event . It spawned a number of romances and few blossomed into lifelong relationships.

Team with trophy 

In sports our batch did well and the main competition was with the 3^rd years' and we won a good part of the events. We had some of our industrial tours travelling to many mining townships, visiting the mines and getting familiar with the ISM alma matter and picking their thoughts on what is good and bad – a great bit of career counseling inputs came this way. Some of my friends were keen on management while I was with a few who prepared for Masters in US. The diamond jubilee gave an opportunity to interact with some of the faculty visiting from univs abroad. Applications for GRE and Toefl had to be made well in advance as everything had to happen by post. One had to go to Ranchi or Calcutta for these tests.

Then came placements and for Mining it always turned out to be mass placements where typically anybody with a decent grade and is sure to pass got a offer from companies. Tata Steel and a few private players were selective and with a plethora of jobs some companies would not even find people interested especially if their pay scale were lower or locations remote. But for some strange reason our fellow Petroleum Engineering guys had a tough time because of a change at ONGC about their recruitment policies which sought to do away with special privileges due to the ISM candidates as this was a specialized course.

New mess farewell

The year before had started the trend of IIMs/XL and that continued with few going from our batch into management. I had got admissions and schols from Penn State Univ and Univ of Southern Illinois and had to decide what next. A lot of decisions but we had time. Some were very clear, many were clearly headed to Coal India the largest employer and some were undecided.

Then the fairwell parties, a string of them at the Mess, Hostels, from the institute. Saturnalia and Basant reunion in the spring both brought back  some of the colleges who came for the East zone festival. The last semester was devoid of any organizational load for the final year students. This made events like tournaments and cultural and other festivals like holi, basant, puja etc. very enjoyable and memorable.

the entire New mess members in 1986 

Numerous impromptu dinners in Skylark hotel or other restaurants or midnight trips to Ganesh ki Chai  dukaan at station were the order of the day. I think even the faculty were easy on attendance, classes etc.  

And then come April we all had to pack our bags for good, not knowing when we will all ever meet again together - strangely we did not even have any group photo of the batch taken except with the mess we were attached to. But it was four years that passed at rapid speed for each of us with varied experiences and lasting memories...