Karad Diaries-5

Even though my number on the merit list of Sir J. J. College of Architecture was 4, and there were 80 seats, I could not get admission due to a certain rule of Mumbai University regarding groups of subjects, and I was not eligible as the seventh subject I had opted for was Arithmetic and not any of the languages. My father fought about this rule in the University which relented after a month and I was admitted, along-with one other student, Sharad Mahajan from Pune, who was actually number 1 on the merit list but had the same problem. Both of us joined the college in July.

I still remember the day I finally went with my father to Mumbai to stay at my uncle’s place. When we reached CST (VT at the Time) station in Mumbai in late evening, it was raining heavily and no taxi driver was willing to take us. Ultimately father told me take out the raincoat, and we both walked in the rain with our luggage to the uncle’s place, from CST to Yellow Gate Police Station at Indira Docks (Alexandra Docks at the time). Mumbai was much less crowded those days and rain actually cleaned the road, where the storm water drains worked, and the journey via P. D’mello road was something I would remember all the time.

My uncle was a police sub-inspector at the time and had quarters above the Yellow-gate Police Station. It was the only residential premises in the area, all the other buildings were  warehouses, and would have some activity only during the day. I don’t remember any shop or any other kind of building in the area, besides our own building. The ground floor of housed the police station, and the two upper floors had quarters for the sub-inspectors. A service building in the same premises had servant’s quarters, built along with the Police Station in the British era. Both the buildings were in stone with typical british detailing. Once, after coming back from the movie ‘Dracula’, I noticed that the doors opening on the terrace were similar to the doors in the Dracula’s palace, and couldn’t sleep as the frightening scenes from the movie were still fresh in my mind.

The first day of college turned out to be quite disappointing, considering all the effort that we had put in to get admitted. I was told to join a studio in which everyone was drawing parallel lines on a large white sheet of paper, and having drawn first the horizontal lines, we were asked to draw vertical cross lines to form neat square pattern. Though I had all the requisite materials, bought the day before, I remember thinking that it was a frivolous and unworthy task and kept thinking that I have made a mistake in joining architecture. Added to this, the first person I met was Wong Tat, who could not understand any other language than English and my communication skills did not include English at the time, leaving me to talk by gestures alone, which must have puzzled him no end.

I would have left the course the very day, if I had not discovered later in the day that there were also many Maharashtrian students in our class. In fact we had a Marathi Mandal, which carried out cultural events and took out a Marathi bulletin, which featured articles and poems. I became an eager member of the group and contributed poems on a regular basis, so much so that my nickname was ‘Kavi” the poet, though I think it was more in jest, as I now realise I was no great poet, though I fancied myself one, and bore the title proudly.