Excerpts.
Bala Kishen
New Yewar greetings to my 1974 ITS comrades. Given below are excerpts from the forthcoming book "SIZZLING SUMMERS" by Nilambur Balan,
(a quasi fictional, semi autobiographical, self deprecating cruise through telecom waters by an ordinary ITS retired officer)
Soon to be published by Voice Books Publications.
Every one of you figure in the book at least once somewhere
"Next day we were told that each
one of us should talk on any subject (meant naturally on telecom or any related
technology) for half an hour on the stage presumably to know 1.how deep one can
go on a subject 2.test the oratory skills & 3. to reveal your personality
more & remove prejudices holding up in you as a future public servant. I
thought the first one may be a bit irrelevant at this stage & the remaining
two would be crucial to making a class one officer of a very important public
utility department. Programme was to cover one probationer a day apart from
classes on regular technical subjects. Mr.Anjanadri one of the senior most probationers in age (
for two years the upper age limit for writing UPSC exam was raised to 32 years
for OC & 35 years for reserved candidates. Hence some probationers were already
in wrong side of 30 by the time they came for training. He was one among them.)
volunteered for the first slot as there were no takers for initial slots. He spoke about 4-wire MLODs, a new innovative
relay plate which gives zero loss on multiple STD links on 4-wire basis. Since
nobody volunteered for the next day, I opted with a title “How to talk without
a subject” Here I should mention that my ambition in life was to become a
lecturer in Malayalam (my mother tongue) or English to speak to a large audience
standing on a stage reading poetry, saying stories, citing anecdotes etc. But
my parents thought that it is not a money earning profession apart from lack of
societal recognition compared to a doctor or engineer. So by quirk of destiny I
became an engineer even though leave alone me, my wife & two daughters
never recognized my engineering talents. So I made a chit in the night on the
points to talk & kept it in my coat pocket. Next day when I got on to the
stage many looked at me with hidden mild contempt & many with a bit of
curiosity. I lavishly spoke on some contemporary subjects, some trash, some
stale jokes & of course some quotes from some of the classics to exhibit my
pseudo intellectualism as an off-engineering man. In between when I lost the
flow I searched for the chit in the coat pocket which made the audience plunge
into laughter because of the validity of a chit on no subject! This made me
more or less a comic hero which made my presence felt in otherwise lousy group.
This episode had serious consequences as events unfolded. Next day
Mr.Muraleekrishna from A.P. taking an anti-cue spoke on “How not to speak with
a subject” followed by Mr.K.K.Mallik on “Astrological Fundamentals”. The
administration quickly swung into action and put an end to the programme citing
some reason. Both Mr.Anjanadri & Mr.Muraleekrishna passed away early much
before retirement. Ther was lot of free time during this period."
"Being
probationer there was no big responsibility or accountability. Even the so
called examinations were light & an eyewash. One of the main entertainments
was to play rummy. The main participants were D.Swaminathan an iyer from Madras, P.R.Ananthan an iyengar from Madras,
G.Gopalan a gounder from a place called Namackal near Erode, BAGS (abbreviation
for Bommidipandi Anantha Gouthama Seetharama) Sarma from Hyderabad,
Ravanan a thamilian from Madras whose wife
belonged to Sri Lanka.
The Iyengar will take a clean white paper, draw columns & rows with a scale
very neatly & prepare a spread sheet,write the + & - points against each player after each
deal, add them to arrive the point status (one paise per point) to instantly
know who is leading & who is lagging. The number of deals in a game is
pre-determined. There was no real money transaction, but the biggest loser has
to provide SKC (sweet, karam & coffee) to all others. It was strange &
surprising that every time the SKC supplier was the Iyengar who took pains to
calculate & compute points at the end of every game."
Yours Balki
kpkumar1974
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kpkumar1974
Dandapani Swaminathan
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