A brief visit to IISc
On the Christmas Day just past, with my two children in tow, my brother Venu and I spent a short time inside the IISc campus walking around.
I was expecting to see several changes and a big facelift in preparation for the centenary celebrations. But I was more than a little disappointed. I couldn't help thinking that the campus had deteriorated terribly over the last 20-30 years. There was nothing to indicate that they had just celebrated the centenary. Couldn't they have at least power-washed the outside walls of buildings, and given a new coat of paint inside?
The main building is still the best-maintained and most majestic building on campus, at least as far as I could see in my short walk. (Click on any picture below to see a bigger version.)
Many of you may already be aware of it, but I was most shocked by the disappearance of almost the entire men's old hostel. (I didn't want to say "old men's hostel.") Part of the F block still stands, like a remnant of a building at Ground Zero, but my old abodes (H and C blocks) are history. There are probably nicer and newer hostels elsewhere now, but still I just couldn't get over the loss.
Near the F hostel I noticed a few bicycles leaned against trees gathering dust and rust; seemed like they had been left there for years. A morbid thought came to me: what if their owners perished when they demolished the hostels, and nobody bothered to check the rooms beforehand to see if students were still inside! But seriously, couldn't they at least remove these bicycles?
The EE building was locked for the holiday. Just looking at the inside of the building brought my memories rushing back. I could see with my mind's eye Mr.Seshachalam at the office window, agile and efficient and always ready to help. I don't know if the ECE building was this open and airy, but I liked the look of the entrance hall. And the staircase looked royal to me. And the skylight above the staircase, is there one, was it there before, I don't recall now.
I wanted to show my children how old the building was and looked at the commemorative plaque on the corner stone. So the building was opened by the then President Dr.Rajendra Prasad back in 1951. But the plaque itself was a mess, with odd punctuation after "Indian Institute of Science" and "Bangalore", and the mangling of the word "opened!" They had originally misspelt it as "opeed" and instead of just throwing it away and making a new one, they tried to fix it and made a mess. For an instituition of higher learning it is sad to see such a shoddy piece still on display.
We stopped by the School of Automation to say Hello to Prof.Narahari. There was a nice guard at the entrance who told us that Prof.Narahari was out of town but I could meet Prof.Veni Madhavan in his office right then. Prof. Madhavan had just arrived in my last year at IISc and I hadn't taken any course with him. So I politely declined. We still climbed up the stairs and made a round of the halls before exiting.
Finally we walked across the overbridge to Gymkhana. My brother had been a frequent visitor to our hostel and he used to join us to watch movies there. We were curious to see how it had changed. The main hall itself was locked, but we walked up the stairs to see what once used to be the music room. We had spent many an evening there listening to other people's choices while waiting patiently for our own to be played. It has now morphed into carrom room! I understand that in these days of iPod and all, we don't need a music room. But don't the IISc students deserve better games than the sissy carrom, something more physical to get them off their brainy butts and do something? Looking inside at the scattered furniture and missing pieces on the boards, I couldn't even tell if the room was still in use.
It's quite possible that I had totally forgotten how the campus looked like when we were students; my aging mind may now be playing tricks on me and merrily manufacturing memories.
