By Prem Das and Raj Melville
We lived in Ashdown when we first got to MIT and used to meet at the community kitchens, where most of the connections with Sangamites happened. Prem was recruited by Subbu to help out with some of the Sangam activities and when Raj moved into the same suite as Prem at Ashdown, he got inducted too.
Previewing Hindi movies the night before. Prem Das and Raj Melville
In those days, Sangam was one of the only organizations that had access to projection equipment and an auditorium for free and wound up in the business of showing Hindi movies. This was a monthly event for the nostalgic Indian community, both students at MIT and other schools as well as South Asians who lived in the area.
An essential part of Sangam initiation was to manage the process of fetching, previewing and projecting the movies and pretty soon we found ourselves involved in this. Each month a fresh set of 16 mm reels would be shipped by the film distributor via Greyhound (imagine that) and one of us had to hike down to the bus terminal, which was near Park Street as we recall, to pick up these large rolls of film. Saturday evenings typically were screening parties, especially when we moved into the 507A suite. With friends dropping in for dinner, we would run through the entire movie to ensure that the reels were in the right order, that the film was not broken or in some cases the wrong reels were sent.
Splicing those film reel breaks with scotch tape during the preview at Ashdown was hard enough, but in 26-100 with the crowd grumbling and in semi-darkness you could really feel the pressure. Projecting Hindi movies with Sangam’s ancient 16 mm projector in 26-100, the film would always poop out when we left for a minute for a smoke or to eat Nalini’s samosas. The crowd’s irritated muttering would alert us that something had happened!
Another monthly chore was putting out the Sangam newsletter. As one of the few sources of local news and advertising, we compiled a booklet of upcoming programs (like the Ravi Shankar concert), radio programs (Harish and Binita Dang of Sounds of India fame and Nalini’s WTBS broadcast) and advertisements for the local grocery store (Jinwala from India Tea & Spices). Each page was laboriously laid out by hand, text blocks cut with X-Acto knives and sprayed with a special sticky adhesive and meticulously placed. Headlines were created by rubbing each individual letter off Alphabet transfers sheets. We worked together constantly bickering about what to put where but somehow we came together as a good team. Subbu, who initiated us into this arcane process used to preach about aligning text boxes, “what the eye can’t see about the layout, instruments can’t measure.”
Looking back it was a fun way to get to meet a lot of the local community and folks beyond just our student friends. Some of those connections have still carried on.
MIT Sangam Reunion 