Down The Memory Lane: My first walk through South Campus

 This day, 33 years ago — 3rd June 1993, at 9 a.m. — I walked into South Campus for the first time, through the front gate. It did not look quite as splendid then as it does now.

I had taken an auto from NII. Getting one was itself an achievement, because nobody seemed particularly keen to come this way. The auto took its own sweet time, stopping at what felt like every possible red light in Delhi, before finally turning into Benito Juarez Marg. There was not much splendour, nor much hustle and bustle. I got down at the gate and asked for directions to the Department of Genetics. A guard in khaki pointed me towards the Arts Faculty Building.

The campus looked rather deserted, perhaps because it was the summer holidays. I crossed S P Jain Centre and walked up to the Arts Faculty Building, climbed three floors, and reached the right-hand corner where the department was then housed behind a series of blue-coloured doors. There was nothing fancy about it. Everything was closed, and not a soul was in sight. I peeped through the glass panels on the doors to see what lay inside. The Head’s room, shared by two faculty members — Dr. Sheela Srivastava and Dr. Tara Devi — had a pair of desks, a couple of chairs, and probably an almirah. I waited there, file in hand, ready to join the department.

Since it was the vacation period, everyone took their time. I roamed around the building, which at that time was almost a free zone for numerous pigeons. The department then had three rooms in a row. Two of them housed the four faculty members (which included Drs. B K Thelma and M V Rajam), while the third was a tiny air-conditioned room that held Prof. Thelma’s sequencing apparatus and a microscope. Around the corner, there were two comparatively large laboratories shared by both M.Sc. and Ph.D. students. The department also had a small bathroom converted into a “tissue culture room”, where plants, fungus, and later the Drosophila I brought in, all grew happily together. It was perhaps our first truly interdisciplinary facility.

There were no classrooms assigned to the department. These were shared between the departments of both Arts and Sciences. All you needed was to carry chalk and duster with you. Rooms 115 and 117 in the ground floor existed, and were used for seminars and talks.

Opposite our row were the rooms of the Microbiology Department, though their labs were on the first floor. Biochemistry, housed on the ground floor, was the poshest department at that time, with enclosed air-conditioned spaces, proper laboratories, and, if I remember correctly, even a cold room. No pigeons flying around. They also had a proper office. Their toilets were clean, and a lot of their facilities were officially out of bounds — which, of course, we crossed over into with suitable sweet talk. Biophysics was housed in a large hall on the second floor.

After taking a round, my heart sank a little. After my stays at BHU and IISc, this felt like a different world. But a job in Delhi University was coveted, and I thought to myself, Que sera, sera — whatever will be, will be.

Dr. Tara Devi came in around 11 a.m., welcomed me, forwarded my joining letter, and sent me off to the administration to submit it. I walked towards the admin block. As I came out through the back door, I saw a solitary shed — the famous Murthy’s canteen, run by the senior Murthy — which served good South Indian food. There was no fancy cafeteria. You sat on the pavement and shared your idli and sambar with the squirrels. The dogs, very responsibly, cleaned up the plates later. Plates and cups would remain strewn all over the place during the day, to be collected only at the end. It was informal, chaotic, and somehow full of life. There was also a canteen staff — I forget his name — who made daily rounds to our rooms selling tea, and would also get us lunch if we ordered in time. In those days, that was an efficient food delivery system, minus the app and the ratings.

The road was lined with big trees, though I do not remember the beautiful lawns that one sees today. The Electronics building was already there and seemed more organised. So was Geetanjali Hostel. The mustard field next to the hostel was then more of a rocky jungle, and I think a minuscule animal house existed somewhere in that wilderness.

As I crossed the single-storey Engineering building, I saw what is today the Bachhawat Block — then an incomplete structure that seemed almost abandoned. I was told that the legendary figures Prof. B. K. Bachhawat of Biochemistry and Prof. U. N. Singh of Biophysics had their offices there — a single large room shared by them. It also housed a centre with the facility of the dinosauric email system. 

PMB also seemed like an abandoned building. Its department was in North Campus, with a few rooms in one of the eight faculty houses near the main playing field. One such building also housed the Centre for Environmental Sciences.

The library, from the outside, looked much as it does today, minus the IIC. It had a rich collection of books, which was very handy for my classes, though it was dusty and in summer one had to sweat it out while searching for wisdom.

The place where the Biotech Centre and the Director’s office stand today was then a huge forested stretch, through which ran a small rivulet or a large drain (as your eyes behold) connected to a water body on the left-hand side of the main gate. I cannot remember whether the Director’s office was being built at that time. This area then housed the wildlife of the campus — numerous peacocks, jackals, and snakes. South Campus, housed biodiversity before infrastructure caught up.

Walking down, I reached the admin office — the present-day exam branch, bank, and post office complex. The administration was spread over two floors, housing everything in a rather unorganised manner, but the people were helpful. They quickly completed the formalities and then shooed me off to North Campus, which is another tale in itself.

If you turned right and went past the underpass, the remaining part was untouched land, overgrown with shrubs and trees, with some sheds that housed a few labourers. There was no admin block, no UGC building, and no hostels. I was told that according to the master plan, that end was supposed to have a swimming pool. Like many master plans, it clearly had imagination.

The Director’s office was housed on the first floor of the Arts Faculty Building, in what is today a recording studio. Prof. G. K. Das, the then Director, was mainly in North Campus, but we could meet him when he was here. His office offered a hot cup of tea along with buttered toast. I pestered him for space. I was told that I was entitled to a table, a chair, and a filing cabinet. I never knew then that a filing cabinet was such an essential component of being a teacher — though, looking at the amount of files I would generate over the years, perhaps someone had seen the future.

There was no seed money at that time, and I did not even get the three basic components. No hard feelings, of course. After some persistence, I was allotted a room in one of the eight double-storey faculty houses. One look at it, and it felt ghosted. I gave up. Dr. Tara Devi was very sweet and offered me a place across her, on the desk she had, and I took it up.

The main road outside the campus was serviced mostly by buses. No current-day “Satya” existed then. This road became unsafe after sunset. Autos refused to come from Dhaula Kuan unless you paid them extra. You could also reach DK through the back lane by crossing the set of eight double-storey buildings and a series of incomplete houses overgrown with trees and shrubs. There was a block for the staff at the end near the high water tank. Walking through the back lane was also not a safe proposition.

When I started staying in Janakpuri, we used to get down near the petrol pump at Dhaula Kuan — the present-day DK Metro Station — walk through the park behind the campus, come to a broken part of the wall, climb up three stones, and jumped across. That was the route taken by most regulars who got down from their buses at DK. It was our unofficial entry gate — not approved by administration, but certainly approved by generations of tired commuters.

Though I was unsure the day I moved in, the campus started to perk up very soon. Standing there that morning, amid blue doors, pigeons, idli-sambar, squirrels, dogs, peacocks, jackals, broken walls, unfinished buildings, and the promise of a swimming pool that never quite arrived, I could hardly have imagined that this campus would become such a large part of my life.