My Life in Gulbarga Part II

SB College was about three to four kilometres from the Jain Hostel. People did not normally take any motorised transport those days for such distances. Anyway, I did not attend many classes during my B.Sc. I had initially taken admission for a B.Sc in Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics, driven by a love for organic Chemistry that Cyriac Master had instilled. I was still brimming with Organic Chemistry. But that year, SB College started a B.Sc with Physics, Mathematics and Electronics. My parents and grandmother felt that it was a good combination for an upcoming young man of my great intelligence. That they overestimated both the value of Electronics and my intelligence is a different matter altogether. I therefore paid a “donation” (called by several other names these days, a donation is simply a bribe) and I got into B.Sc Electronics. It was a subject that I neither understood nor cared for, but was stuck with it for long. That was a singularly unimaginative choice on my part, but that was just the first. I chose many wrong things over the years.

We had the venerable B.K.Chalageri and Y.K.Hakkaldaddi teaching us physics along with people like L.A.Udachan, B.S.Maakal, Ishwarappa and others. Maths was something I hated with the core of my heart and I refused to attend math classes, so I do not remember the manes of any lecturer now, though I remembered some till a few years back. Deshpande I think one was. Electronics was again taught (it was not actually taught, but minced up and offered) by again people like Narasappa, Maakal, Udachan etc. English was taught by one Divakaran, a Malayalee. All in all B.Sc was not at all a happy experience. The classmates were also varied. There was one Dhruve Kishorechandra Shah from Mumbai, the son of an LIC officer, who appeared very cute and fair and lovely, there was Ramarao of the Singamshetty fame, there were other people from all over the Hyderabad Karnatak area (Bidar, Bellary, Raichur and Gulbarga districts).

I mostly walked to the college from the hostel when I felt like going, which was very seldom, and the hostel was also not a happy place. There happened to be two lobbies, Kannadigas and Marathis. I developed an abiding friendship with some people like Pradeep Oak, Sanjay Biyani and others. I remember being offered sugar from a steel container by one Damodar Dattatreya Lele one day when Sheikh Abdullah died. There was also a nominal ragging when I was asked to sing etc. Everything was rather watered down, the hostel, the college etc. that there is very less that I remember of those days now.

I also did not perform very well in B.Sc and somehow emerged with a First Class though it was just 68% overall.