I was not impressed with what MIT looked like when I arrived in September 1970. It was (is) located in the city of Cambridge, not in the outskirts, like IIT Bombay. The campus looked crowded with buildings, not with open fields and a large lake, as was the case with my previous college. One saving grace was river Charles, which provided some scenery.
I was assigned a host family, comprised of Mr. and Mrs. Reedy and their four children. I stayed with them a night before coming to MIT. Mr. Reedy was able to get me registered and signed up for a dorm room in the old Ashdown House, which provided on-campus graduate housing.
My decision to stay in a dorm in stead of an apartment, like most graduate students, was based on a firm conviction that I was in US to get an American and international experience. Staying with other Indians in an apartment just would not cut it. I was assigned a French roommate, Michel Froidevaux, who was doing his Master’s in Aeronautical engineering.
My first days at MIT were interesting. Almost on the very first day, as I was walking in the corridor of Mechanical Engineering Department, I had a chance encounter with an impressive looking professor, Professor Henry (Hank) Paynter. He took a great deal of interest in me and we talked for more than an hour. At the end of it, he asked me if I wanted to do my Master’s thesis with him. He was trying to get someone describe hydrodynamic analogies of gain-phase plots (a topic in system dynamics and control) and I agreed. It was a very on-the spot decision. I always trust my intuition in such matters.
Back in the dormitory, Michael turned out to be a decent man who I got along fine with. There were a bunch of Indian and Pakistani students who I got to know very quickly. I also made friends with Turkish students. There was much in common.
Among my good friends were Prakash Dahanukar, who was doing his bachelors, and Sashi Dharwadkar. As fate would have it, they both died a few years later…Prakash in an air crash near Bombay, and Sashi, in a gas leak accident in London. Others were Chander Nautial, Nagbhusan Senapati, Manmohan Subudhi, Manas Chakravorty, Vivekanand Mukhopadhyay, and a year later, Kaplesh Kumar. A Pakistani guy Iqbal Rashid, and his older brother, Haroon, also became my good friends. A Lebanese guy, Ara Demirjian also used to hang out with us. Besides Kaplesh, I have lost touch with all of them.
Thus began my life at MIT. I lived in Ashdown for two years, then in Tang Hall (then called Westgate II) for one year, before returning to Ashdown for the last few months of my life at MIT.
I was actively involved with Sangam, and one of the assignments I preformed was to be the projectionist for movies we showed in an auditorium at MIT. Making sure that the spools were replaced in the projector in correct sequence before the audience started whistling was the key challenge that came with the job.
I finished my doctoral thesis in December 1973, defended it a few days before Christmas, and joined a firm in Waltham, Foster-Miller as a research engineer. It is hard to believe that almost 45 years have gone by as we get together for the Hangama.
MIT Sangam Reunion 