Down the Memory Lane 2: The Genetics Floor Began to Breathe (as I remember it)

 When I joined the University in June 1993, the building that we now know as the Bimal K. Bachhawat Block was still an unfinished promise. We called it the Life Sciences Block. Three-fourths complete perhaps, if one wanted to be generous. The walls stood, and if my memory serves me right, the windows had already been fitted. But inside, the building was still waiting to become what it was meant to be.

It was less a building and more a promise waiting for people to believe in it.

Only a small part of the ground floor had come alive. At the far left end was a large room that served as the office of Prof. Bimal Bachhawat and Prof. U.N. Singh. In many ways, that room was one of the power centres of  life sciences. It was usually filled with the thick smoke of pipes — those were still the days when smoking inside official buildings was not frowned upon, let alone banned. Important people came and went, discussions flowed, and decisions were perhaps made over tea, smoke, and food. My daughter, who spent most of her after-school time in the lab, would give that room a much simpler description: it was the room of the samosa-and-jalebi dadas (Bengali for grandfather).

Next to that room was a small air-conditioned space called the Distributed Informatics Centre. It was supported by DBT and was our small window for connectivity. This was where rudimentary emails came in. This was where one went to access sequences and other information from databases. Today, when everything is downloaded in seconds, it is difficult to explain that there was a time when the internet was not in your pocket, or even on your desk. It lived in a room, and you went there with a purpose. In those days, the internet did not come to you; you went to the internet, almost with folded hands.

The same area also housed the fax machine, perhaps the only one around. One paid to send a fax. Later, a photocopying facility also came up there. These were not conveniences then; they were infrastructure.

The rest of the building was mostly silence, dust, and the possibility of coming alive someday. The first floor had been allotted to Microbiology, and the top floor to Genetics. Sometime after June 1993, two small rooms were being readied on the Genetics floor. Dr. Tara Devi, the then Head, told me that this was where we would begin the new department, but things turned around soon.

Next to this building stood another incomplete structure, the Plant Molecular Biology building. The two buildings were not connected then. Between them was a raised platform, and beneath it lay the basement. The basement had become a storehouse for furniture — mainly the working tables for the three departments, which had arrived before the rooms that would receive them were ready. Everything was waiting for everything else — the furniture for the rooms, the rooms for the people, and the people for the science to begin.

That was the physical landscape of the Department of Genetics when I arrived.

Things took a turn for the better when Prof. Deepak Pental joined the department sometime after the Durga Puja vacation — we did not call it a mid-semester break then — perhaps around September or October 1993. He had come from TERI, the then Tata Energy Research Institute, as the first Professor of the Department of Genetics. Almost immediately, he was made Head. He came with a clear programme in mind: to work on Indian oilseed mustard, to improve its productivity and quality, and to build something that could eventually move beyond papers and into farmers’ fields.

My own entry into that story was unplanned, and not entirely without sulking. By then I had already lost my first little “office space” to Deepak — a room at the end of the corridor in the Arts Faculty Building that was not much of a room, but had become mine in my head. That’s a story for another day.

But before there could be mustard, transgenics, or farmers’ fields, there had to be a laboratory.

When we began to examine the top floor properly, it became clear that finishing touches would not be enough. The rooms existed, but the building was not ready for science. Plug points were there, but many of the points for equipment were at floor level. We soon discovered that the wiring was aluminium, not copper. For the equipment and air conditioning we were planning to install, that would simply not do. The space did not need a little repair or finishing; it needed rebuilding. 

And so began the making of the Department of Genetics as a working scientific space. Proper wiring, power points, false ceilings, benches, furniture, equipment rooms, offices, and laboratories — everything had to be imagined, planned, argued over, purchased, carried, fitted, and fixed. It was an uphill task, but everyone pitched in.

The University allowed project overhead money to be used for building the space. Additional support came through a grant from MAHYCO, a seed company, to Deepak. What mattered most was the spirit in which the space was built. The idea was not to create a private island for one person or group, but to build laboratories where all faculty members could work. I remember raising this point with Deepak once, having seen scientists elsewhere first secure their own spaces. His reply stayed with me. If everyone had proper space to work, he said, everyone would remain busy with their own work and unnecessary friction would reduce. It was an early lesson in institution-building.

Much of that initial period was spent not in laboratories, but in markets. Bhagirath Place became familiar territory. Switches, lights, cables, fittings, and a hundred small things that no one notices once a lab starts functioning had to be bought. Purchases were made through site quotations. There was enough trust and flexibility to get things done quickly, but also properly. Looking back, we were lucky those were pre-GEM days, before every small purchase was trapped inside the rituals of digital systems and tons of note sheets. Many of the things installed then still stand and work, even after thirty years. Science, we discovered, was not born only in journals and seminars; some of it was bought by the metre in Bhagirath Place.

Khan Sahab was always there, ready to help with all things electrical. Raisji joined in with the same quiet reliability. We owe a lot to Khan Sahab and Raisji for making our lives easier, though “easier” is perhaps too small a word for what they did. They were not simply electrical engineers or electricians who came when called. They knew the moods of the building — which line could take a load, which switch would fail, which room would trip in summer, and where a hidden wire might save a day’s experiment. They were there in the middle of the night and in the fierce summer noon, ensuring that equipments kept running, because a lost connection could mean the loss of samples, cultures, or weeks of work.

The initial woodwork in the department was not done by Nandkishoreji; he joined later. But once he became part of the system, he became our first person to call for almost any non-electrical infrastructure problem. He started as a carpenter, but over time became much more than that. A shelf, a rack, a table, a door, a partition, a platform for an instrument, whitewashing, plastering, even plumbing.

In official records, buildings are made by architects, engineers, grants, and committees. In real life, campuses are also shaped by people like Khan Sahab, Raisji, and Nandkishoreji, whose names rarely appear on foundation stones but whose hands remain in every functioning room. The best thing about them was that they took pride in what they did. Because of that pride, our spaces did not remain empty rooms; they became workable, usable, lived-in laboratories.

Biochemistry and Microbiology followed soon, perhaps also learning from the mistakes we had already made. PMB took some time; they had three floors to rebuild.

As the spaces on the Genetics floor took shape, equipment began to arrive. Each consignment made the dream feel a little more real. Customs clearance, however, was a headache of its own. There was only one passbook for customs clearance, and that too for the entire University. Bullet Cargo was our main contact for customs clearance, and there were times when we had to go to the customs office at the airport ourselves.

Slowly, the building began to breathe. Iron furniture, slightly rusted from its wait in the basement, came out and was sent back to the original suppliers for repainting. If I remember correctly, the supplier’s bill was never cleared. Wires disappeared into walls. Benches were fixed. Equipment found its place. We got a small generator — power supply was highly erratic in those days — which powered a few essential points in every lab on the floor.

Dr. Rajam was the first to move into the Genetics floor. This was followed by the rest of us — Drs. Sheela Srivastava, B.K. Thelma, Deepak, and me. Deepak and I had decided to work together, with me making a big blind leap from Drosophila to mustard.

Apart from our laboratories and so-called office spaces, we got a radioactive room and a dark room going. The landing (current student’s corner) housed the washing area, autoclave, and distillation units. Even the corridor was air-conditioned and converted into a working space. Space was scarce, so every corner had to earn its keep.

The rocky terrain next to Geetanjali — probably once imagined as the site for a Director’s bungalow — was converted into a field for growing mustard. Rocks had to be blasted and soil brought in from outside to make the place usable.

The labs were not silos. One could move in and out, use what was available, and help or be helped as needed. There was no separate CIF in those days; in a quiet, practical way, the department itself became the shared facility.

The final pieces were imported chemicals, glassware, plasticware, and molecular biology reagents ordered in bulk. NEB became one of our main sources for RDT chemicals and enzymes. Some vials from the original stock still sit in our -20°C freezer, and amazingly, they still work.

Chemicals arrived. Students gathered. Papers were collected from libraries across Delhi in those pre-download days, read, filed, discussed, and argued over. Plans made while sitting in the winter sun outside the canteen began to move indoors.

We did the first experiment in the Life Sciences Block on 3rd July 1995. Students who, for more than a year, had not initiated experiments just took over, even spending nights in the department. It became home for many of them, despite there being no Zomatos or Swiggies to nourish them. Prof. Thelma was always there, even at night, to perk the students up, and she made the best coffee. The smell of fresh paint, coffee, and, of course, the smell of success in starting the department still lingers in my memory.

And yet, the move was not complete. Our M.Sc. students and much of our teaching life remained behind in the Arts Faculty Building for a few more years, until the middle portion was built. The research labs had moved, but a part of the department’s heart still stayed back with the M.Sc. students.

That is how the department began (in its current location) — not as a finished building handed over to us, but as something we built into life. Brick by brick, wire by wire, bench by bench, hand by hand, experiment by experiment, an unfinished structure slowly became a home for science.