Random Memories by Prem Das

Random memories, in no particular order:

• Shooting pool with Ramesh Patil and others in Ashdown basement. Also foosball, we had a 507 roommate from San Antonio, a foosball ace with wrists of steel!
• Thick-cut roast brisket sandwich at Elsies in Harvard Square: a whole meal for <2 bucks.
• Living on one pair of jeans, waiting lungi-clad in Tang Hall laundry for the washer and dryer. After many washes, Anil Sachdev sitting across me at Campus House of Pizza saw the obvious hole in the obvious wear spot and said, “man, time for a new pair of jeans.”
• The first thing my wife-to-be Nisha noticed when she saw me in the basement of Building 18 was my high-water jeans, shrunk from too many washes.

• My advisor (a heavy smoker) advising me before my thesis committee meeting, “if they ask you a tough question, pause to light up so you can think.” That was a different age!
• Almost flunking out of MIT from not doing any research (spending too much time with friends), and asking at Harvard, only to have Prof. Guido Guidotti tell me, “if MIT doesn’t want you, what makes you think Harvard will have you?”
• Nalini’s fabulous dinners and get-togethers at her place.
• Eating a whole pizza at Campus House of Pizza, or two big macs at the dreary Central Sq McDs. Can’t imagine now how I did.
• The disco atop said pizza place.
• Sailing tech dinghies while gels were running in the lab; never capsized one unlike some others you will read about here.
• Years later (late eighties), I went to the Sailing Pavilion with a friend to ask if I could take out a dinghy. To my amazement they produced my card, scrutinized it, and said, “hey, you never passed your swim test!” I still got the boat as always.
• Kasturi’s production of “Evam Indrajit” with Raji and Vijay Chandru in lead roles.
• Learning Shuddh Hindi from Baldev Singh, Sangam President, now all forgotten.
• Dinner at the Agarwals; Candy always used to tell me, “I knew you were coming so I cooked for two.” RIP, dearest friend!
• The long walk to Tang Hall on cold winter nights at 4AM after a failed experiment, wind knifing through inadequate layers of clothing.
• Lohit’s disco parties, a spectator sport for me.
• Nanaji Saka unfailingly emerging from the door of Random Hall every time we walked by, defying all laws of probability.
• Watching cars in the snow try make the turn from Mass Ave to Amherst Alley, doing every angle but 90%.
• Making pita bread for the first time under Patil’s tutelage; they emerged 10 min later in fine Frisbee shape but inedible (as Raj mentions in his stories). These days they sell them as Simply Naked chips which are great for dipping; never realized I had a novel product on my hands!
• Going to my thesis defense leaving behind dress shoes; Nisha had to make a mad dash to the apartment to get them.
• Several hours after my thesis defense, my advisor and I talked, me making very little sense. In apology I said I was inebriated and she said, “no Prem, you’re stoned.”
• My first roommate, a Californian in Course 12 given to Hawaii shirts and a Mazda with a rotary engine that he was inordinately proud of, with whom I learned to cook things like tuna casserole, meat loaf and spaghetti/meatballs out of Joy of Cooking.
• Impromptu singing sessions featuring Raji and a couple of non-MIT friends whose names I can’t remember now; they even tried some qawwalis as I recall.
• Krishamurthy making dosais in the Tang apartment shared with Deepak Kapur.
• Ramesh Patil’s 8-track tape player, playing Janis Ian.
• Rakesh who put up with a virtual roommate in me.
• My janitor Murphy (RIP, gentle soul) who took care of me on the night watch with tea and vodka and cigarettes and company. I gave him Stoli for Christmas, a major luxury; he always gave me cashews from the nut factory where his wife worked.
• Murph would tell stories of the Winter Hill gang and their knee-breakers, long before I knew anything about Whitey Bulger. He never mentioned Whitey by name and always talked in hushed tones about the gang.
• Drinking Bacardi 161 proof rum with coke, best bang for the buck.
• Bal’s green Pontiac, a very cool automobile.
• Lohit’s very long blue 2-door coupe with a tan top, that took us to Montreal and back for the Olympics hockey final (see Raj’s notes).
• The many parties in 507 Ashdown, memorialized in pictures on this site.
• Larger scale cooking in the common kitchen on the 5^th The carpeted corridors smelt of spices for days.
• Firoze’s enormous Building 8 basement domain inhabited by no one but he.
• Someone who shall remain unnamed wanting to see what would happen if they threw a lit match into my hair. Luckily for me they never tried.
• Subbu’s apartment at 184 Harvard St.
• Getting stopped by the MIT cops for riding my bicycle in the basement at 3AM. They were a real friendly lot though, often stopped by on their night rounds to shoot the breeze with Murph and me.
• The crazy Bexley crew that made a giant web in their courtyard, calling it the skylab catching device.
• My pot-smoking labmates with retentive kumbhakas that yogis would be proud of, exhaling vigorously into the fume hood to remove the telltale odor.
• Anu’s laugh, silvery, tinkling and always surprising.
• Vivek Ranadive, a real sweet undergraduate whose cousin was a friend from Bombay. Now he is a zillionaire and owns the Sacramento kings.
• Nikhil Desai, another undergraduate who now lives in DC. Nikhil always had the most complicated stories that took forever to tell.
• Subodh’s characteristic “nahin, yaaar.”
• My crazy Iranian roommate in 7C Tang, who lived in the tiny bedroom with his mother and sister, don’t know how. They cooked up a storm during Ramadan at 4AM when I returned from the lab, and I couldn’t fall asleep, hence the 161 proof.
• Visiting Lohit at the Student Center library late at night where all kinds of ragged folks could be found in various states of inebriation and somnolence on the couches.