My MIT days (contd)

 Practical Training at Calcutta

As mentioned earlier, to obtain the DMIT certificate, one should have gone through 6 months practical training in industries ;  this is over & above clearing all examination papers over 6 semesters. So every student gets engaged to undergo these training during the semester holidays and take credit. But there was a basic fallacy : Instrumentation as a profession was a jack of all trades; it had both advantages as well as disadvantages. Hence these students can be sent to any industry in India for their training. The institute used to help students in fixing their training engagements.

In those days Calcutta had several industries & MIT management had strong contacts with them. Under that scheme the institute used to take names of the students and draw lots for allocation. My name came for one M/S Atlas Power Press company, Ripon street, Chowringhee, Calcutta. The funniest thing is that the company has got nothing to do with any instrumentation!But what to do? So I travelled to Calcutta for that  6 weeks factory practical training in May '67. The company was involved in finishing  / assembling metal blocks to make power press of 2 to 5 tons load.  During that time I stayed with my cousin sister ( Ms Kamala) family in Howrah. For going to the factory, I used to avail the streamer boat service Howrah to Dalhousie and then take L9 double decker transport to Chowringhee. Here it is important to mention that was the worst industrial unrest period in West Bengal and Calcutta was the main victim. When the bus used to ply in the morning around 9am, the union leaders used to block the running bus and ask all the passengers to alight from the bus in the middle of the road. Thereafter they used to light fire to burn the bus into flames. This was almost the daily routine I faced. That was when Sh Ajoy Mukherjee was the chief minister of W.Bengal and he could not do anything to control this mob fury. They all belonged to the CPI-M union. That was the usual routine day in & day out; My sister & brother-in-law used to get worried whether a person who has gone to work in the morning shall return safe or not. Somehow I completed my time schedule and returned to Madras safely. I can sum up here- during my practical training at Calcutta, I did not learn anything technical but completely got exposed to the labour union rough behaviour. Thus ,that was my second bitter exposure to Calcutta ( the first being in 1956 when I visited there with my uncle ).