A longhaired and bearded boy anxiously and hurriedly
runs into the department with a determination to turn a few feet on the
corridor and enter a class and in those moments not to be caught in glaring
glimpse of a man who could be standing outside his office. It is not the eighth standard class, but the
M.Tech in Applied Geology.
And his luck, Prof R S Mittal encounters him right in
that turn and that’s it….
“What is this? “ he chides like an old headmaster,
holding his hair, “have you come here to study geology and geophysics or to an
acting school? Go cut your hair and then
attend classes and come back to me with your first tutorial in this subject”
and dismisses him out of the gate.
There was very little chance anyone had or anyone
would have wanted to with this founder and builder of the department. I did not
have the privilege of being taught by him except for his couple of general
lectures but his aura was all over. His tireless efforts to bring the best of
scientists and technologists, his fetish for discipline and purpose and his
team building leading to making it one of the best in the country are legendary
and placed many of us in higher rungs of the earth science hierarchy.
Couple of occasions vividly comes to my mind to recall
on the Teachers Day. First with the tutorial, once inside the room after
running through a tutorial on crystallography, he turns his face and reflects
upon the amount of trouble parents would be going though to send children out
to his department. He smiles and the
burden of responsibility seemed to have eased with his seeing the tutorial. He
gently pats and asks to forget his angry instructions and encourages using all
the facilities in the university to become more than a good student a
successful person. Just around the time he had called for a recent pass-out who
had got a job as a Junior Technical Assistant in GSI after knowing that he
intends to join. I see him turn once again to that angry old man and takes off
“did you study and did we teach for you to become a JTA – take a fellowship and
prepare well for the UPSC and become atleast a Gazetted officer” he howls and
instructs the office to place him as a Junior Research Fellow in a project and
find him a suitable hostel and ensure that he reports on his progress
periodically.
The other was a rather strange occasion. Prof Mittal
served briefly as a VC and during that period we had a number of good cricket
players in the campus. Couple of them had also played the Ranjis. The University was invited to participate in
the Inter-University Rohinton Baria Trophy. So some of us met the Proctor and
Dean and were quietly told that it was the purview of the VC and we should meet
him. The Dean, himself a cricket fan, took us straight to Prof Mittal’s chamber
and we were actually unprepared to face him. Prof Mittal read the invitation
and heard us patiently for ten minutes. When we thought that we were lucky and
his body language indicated that he might concede, there was the twist. He said
very quietly, “I am happy that your skills have been recognised but if you
insist on playing this, I would recommend that all of you leave the Roorkee
University and I could recommend for whatever the value to the Sports Institute
at Patiala - now it is for you to decide whether you want to play games to keep
yourself healthy and become good engineers and scientists or would want to play
cricket as a profession”. So all that euphoria of playing Inter-University
matches ended. The only consolation was that he encouraged the intra-varsity
games.
