| A Time Capsule from the year 1995

Some places don’t just stay in your memory — they quietly settle deep inside your heart and refuse to leave. For me, that place is the ISI Bangalore campus of the mid-1990s, where time seems to pause under the gentle shade of eucalyptus trees and the distant whistle of trains still echoes like a melody from my youth.

Close your eyes for a moment and travel back with me to July 1995. Imagine a malnourished, 5′3″ boy stepping through the towering granite-pillared gate of the Indian Statistical Institute - Bangalore, heart pounding with a strange mixture of fear, wonder, and wild hope. The air carried the scent of eucalyptus, sharp edged pine leaves holding tiny water droplets caught the morning sun light and quietly broke into rainbows—like fading, colorful memories suspended in time, due to gentle July drizzle, and the faint metallic odor of the railway tracks nearby.

In that single moment, I didn’t know it yet, but I was walking into one of the most beautiful, chaotic, and unforgettable chapters of my life. I’m sure you all do!

Those two years at DRTC were beyond classrooms, exams, or degrees. They were about stolen laughter echoing in mosquito-filled hostel corridors. They were about train whistles cutting through the darkness like old friends checking if you were still awake. They were about heated debates that somehow felt more important than life itself, the soft glow of Windows 3.1 PCs and the quiet magic that happened when brilliant minds and young hearts collided under the same roof.

It was a time when friendships were forged not in fancy coffee shops, but in the simple magic of one-rupee lunches, endless cups of steaming canteen tea/coffee, ABC Labs, wild late-night Maggi experiments, and those unforgettable, laughter-filled weekly grocery runs to Jayanagar vegetable market that felt like grand adventures.

It was a time when romance bloomed quietly in the most unexpected mathematical paradoxes — two hearts finding each other against all odds, like opposite poles drawn together in sweet, illogical harmony. A time when professors transformed into living legends whose every word still sends gentle goosebumps across your skin, even decades later. And yes, even that old British-era ceiling fan roared like a fearless helicopter, determined to carry our wildest dreams and youthful hopes into the night.

Looking back now, nearly thirty years later, every silly memory still makes my heart swell with a sweet ache — the kind that brings an involuntary smile and a tiny lump in the throat at the same time. The skeletal boy who once feared he might faint from hunger in the hostel block eventually found a second home filled with larger-than-life characters: wrestling champions with hearts of gold, self-appointed hostel presidents, idly absorbing mathematical geniuses, bouncing wardens in blue lungis, and heartbreakers who left entire campuses watching them fade into memory.

This is not just a story of an academic program. This is an ode to my youth. This is a warm, slightly mischievous time capsule I buried long ago and have finally decided to open for you.

If you’ve ever been young and hungry for life… If you’ve ever stayed up all night arguing about coconut oil Vs mustard oil, if you have asked what can you do for the country Vs what’s for lunch debates, ideas that felt bigger than the universe😊and If you’ve ever laughed until your stomach hurt due to six pack fat on your belly .

Then come, walk with me once more through those eucalyptus-shaded paths.

Let me take you back to the peculiar, noisy, mosquito-ridden, train-whistling, debate-filled, laughter-soaked world of ISI Bangalore in the 1990s.

Once you step inside these pages, you may not want to leave.

Because some memories don’t fade with time — they only grow warmer, fonder, and more alive with every passing year.

Welcome to ISIBC in the mid-1990s.

ISIBC backgate — where geniuses entered, and legends quietly sneaked in

On 23rd July 1995, I stepped into the ISI Bangalore campus with my head held high - as high as 5′3″ could reach😊. My recent internship at Defense Science Lab (DESIDOC) Delhi, and the regular dal curry and dry chapati had left me so pale and malnourished that I could have slipped through the ISI gate by squeezing between the iron bars, unnoticed by security. The Giant looking gate with huge granite pillars on both sides and the green colored steel structures in between looked like it had survived at least two world wars of British era.

As I walked along the road leading to the campus, my mind was busy indexing the legendary names of Information Science I was about to encounter. Suddenly, I spotted a figure that looked like a statistical outlier- a ghostly pale, yet strangely handsome character with slightly curly hair, bearing the unmistakable metadata of a classic mathematics teacher, looked a lot like Mr.Jadhivedham from my Class 9C at Malabar Police High school.

He was walking out toward the railway gate- the very gate I had just entered, creating a brief intersection in our paths. He wore a light brown shirt and faded blue pants, so wrinkled and spotted they appeared to have been bought from wrinkle free shop; it seemed they’d survived a decade without a single linear transformation from an iron box - a record that, I later discovered, remains unbroken even today. Because for legends, every minute not wasted on ironing was another minute saved for higher pursuits — “counting higher numbers”, and, on rare auspicious days, perhaps even taking a customary bath 😊

His right hand was casually clasped behind his back, held by the left, as he moved with the calm confidence of a man who had already solved the campus’s spatial coordinates (Google coordinates of our time). Only later, after a proper bibliographic verification, did I realize that this mysterious character was none other than our legendary SPK.

Up until that moment, I had no clue that DRTC was a part of ISIBC. My brain (assuming I had one) was buzzing with dreams of bumping into the likes of SR Ranganathan (SRR), MAG, etc., or at least catching a glimpse of someone who looked like they might have lifted Prolegomena to Library Classification.

Teachers' Quarters

The administrative block was my first stop, where I patiently waited for a few hours, trying to convince myself that standing was a better use of time than fainting from hunger or awkwardness, until a clean-shaven, middle-aged man appeared. His cranium possessed a reflectivity coefficient equivalent to a freshly polished coconut. He led me to the office to meet "Kalyana" Raman, our office coordinator. However, due to a shortage of hostel rooms, I was allocated the Teachers’ Quarters adjacent to the Bangalore-Mysore Railway Track.

I was one of the most "privileged" few who enjoyed a constant symphony of unrelenting sound of the trains passing by. But it was nothing compared to the British era ceiling fan, determined to simulate a helicopter taking off in my room. Since the famous Bhattacharya Falls (as we called it) was close by - the open drainage with a massive and punching, sweet aroma of H₂S   — it turned out to be a mosquito heaven.

These tiny vampires did not stroll in; they marched into the apartment like a full-blown army battalion, complete with tiny wings and battle plans. And to this day, I wondered whether it was the fan’s noise or its mighty breeze that made the mosquitoes surrender and flee or the Ghazals I had sung in the bathroom.

Many of the windows had no mosquito nets, and the few that did have generously oversized holes, exclusively designed to welcome mosquitoes with red carpet service. These tiny-winged roommates thrived in our company, buzzing around like devotees of human blood.

I often wondered if they struggled to keep their blood sucking tool (proboscis) intact and unbroken when trying to extract blood from my body, as I resembled a skeleton more than a meal, until the MTech SQC project folks moved downstairs. Suddenly, mosquitoes had new victims to harass, while I got to enjoy my skeletal immunity in peace. Ajit & Mishra were absolute heroes, diligently ensuring the mosquitoes didn’t miss a single GF (Ground Floor) resident. Mosquitoes seemed to prefer their company so much so that my floor, where CKM and I stayed, remained almost annoyingly mosquito-free, a true horror story for them.

And so began my campus adventure—a heady mix of skeletal endurance, delicate mosquito diplomacy, train-induced PTSD, and the faint hope of crossing paths with legends. What it turned out to be, however, is something you’ll find in the pages that follow.

Academic life

Stepping into the classroom for the first time felt like a living entry into a prestigious beacon of academic excellence. On the door, a simple sentence greeted us: “Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.” At the time, it seemed like a casual quip, a leftover from some wise-aleck batch before us. But as the days unfolded, it revealed itself as a quiet prophecy. Inside those walls, the debates began almost immediately. Even now, three decades later, that debate echoes in my mind like a mystical chant that only ISIBC could inspire.

The teaching was extraordinarily vivid, absorbing, unforgettable. Every lecture was a journey, every discussion an enigma, and every practical exercise a doorway into a world of knowledge so meticulous and layered that it made the mundane seem magical. The computer lab, with its MS-DOS, Windows 3.1 & windows 5 PCs, became our daily playground after class. Late nights spent deciphering commands, debugging code, or simply preparing for the next seminar were part of the rhythm of life.

  

    The Lone Lamp post that knew the pulse of the campus.

Yet life at ISIBC stretched far beyond academics. The walk from the hostel to the academic block, tea sessions near the canteen, and the occasional mischief around the lamp post added flavor to our days. Friendships flourished in the quiet eucalyptus-shaded corners of the campus, laughter & romance echoed in the hostel corridors, and legends of professors, wardens, and classmates quietly became part of the folklore. That lamp post was our gathering ground, our silent milestone. Beneath its dim glow, conversations found their voice, dreams were spoken into existence, and ideas rose like unseen flags in the evening air. It was there that our own Shatabdi, Jyothi Express and Chittaranjan locomotives would set off.

Looking back, those ISIBC years were a perfect blend of rigor and camaraderie, discipline and discovery. The academic challenges trained the mind, the debates sharpened reasoning, and the little campus adventures filled the heart. Even now, when I think of those days—the chalk dust, the glowing PCs, the bold proclamations on the classroom door, and the endless curiosity that seemed to infect everyone—I can still feel that unique, electrifying energy that only the ISIBC of the 1990s could craft.

Our First lecture had a terrific start; There was no attendance taken! it was on Planning & Management by Prof SS. That sets the expectations for the coming academic experience to come – never had I imagined that a subject so boring could be made unforgettable like the way it was discussed in the class. Honestly, it gave me goosebumps! 

We debated on many topics of academic interest, some of those are still echoing in my brain (assuming I’d one) even today, like some mystical chant only ISIBC could inspire. Incredible teaching style: so absorbing, so vivid, that I remember it as if it happened yesterday, even though my memory usually fades after lunch. That’s how my incredible journey of academic life began. 

As we shuffled into the next class, in walked Professor MA Gopinath—a very fair, Western-looking gentleman, the living legend in India at that time and perhaps many years to come. Always smiling, effortlessly pleasant, he launched into knowledge organization/classification like a full-blown onslaught. He was a walking encyclopedia, a living legend of classification, and we were just lucky passengers on his high-speed tour of genius. He moved across the classroom like a Ferrari on full throttle, strolling from corner to corner, introducing concepts with such effortless simplicity that even the most complex ideas seemed obvious.

Every movement, every word was a masterclass in brilliance—truly a living legend of Library Classification, and we were lucky spectators to his genius – Though he left for UCLA after the first semester, it felt like we lost a spark that had just begun to light up our days at DRTC.

Then walked in Professor ARD— brilliance first, belly leading the way😊. A genius, whose brilliance could rival any computer science expert at that time. He casually flicked the last bit of his cigarette into the corner dustbin and splashed himself on the table like it was a throne—one leg on the table, the other hanging. He kept rubbing his face with his hands, as if sleep were a stranger, and rumor had it, he’d spent the entire night hacking away in the DRTC Pentium Room (as we called it) before walking into class. Completely informal, utterly unbothered, and yet brilliant beyond imagination, he turned Artificial Intelligence into a spectacle. Watching him was like seeing chaos and genius perform a perfectly synchronized dance—we were all just along for the ride.

Dr. ARD often stayed in the hostel with us, and our post-dinner walks became a cherished ritual. Under the soft glow of the campus lights, we wandered through ideas, sometimes diving into philosophy, sometimes skimming the edges of academic letting conversations drift effortlessly between the profound and the playful. Those walks weren’t just about passing time; they were moments when friendships deepened, minds expanded, and the world beyond ISIBC felt just a little closer.

In the middle of a conversation, he would affectionately say, “You beggar, what are you doing here?” and then, almost immediately, “Let’s go to the classroom” and just like that, learning would continue—late into the night, on quiet weekends, whenever inspiration chose to arrive. Time had no authority over him; schedules meant little when ideas were alive.

For him, ISIBC was not just an institution, it was home, it was family, it was life itself. Every corridor seemed to know him; every classroom and every student seemed to wait for his presence.

One memory that still makes my heart flutter after all these years is the day Professor ARD stepped in to guide us for the National Essay Contest on “Paperless Society - a myth or reality,” held in Bangalore. I think it was on weekend, he called us for the lecture — that was all. Yet in that single hour, his words wrapped around my young mind like magic. I hung on to every sentence, every idea, every passionate detail. Something deep inside me awakened. A few weeks later, against all odds, I stood holding the first prize.

But the most unforgettable moment came on Kannada Rajyotsava day. There I was, a nervous twenty-something, walking up on stage at the grand Karnataka Vidhan Soudha to receive the award from a renowned Kannada actor. The entire hall echoed with applause, and goosebumps ran through me as cameras flashed. In that shining moment, my heart overflowed with gratitude.

All of it — the win, the pride, the unforgettable evening — happened because of Professor ARD. One lecture from him had quietly turned into a life-changing turning point. Even today, whenever I think of those days at ISI, his guidance shines like a golden thread in my memory. I long to sit in his class once more, to feel that same spark, and to thank the teacher who believed in me.

IKR was our statistics professor—pristine, immaculately dressed, and clearly a man who ran a tight ship on both wardrobe and physique. But his quirks were legendary. His favorite pastime in class seemed to be twisting one end of the chalk into the other with his hands, just enough to look like it might tumble at any moment. His eyes were always a deep reddish hue, giving the impression that he’d enjoyed a morning tipple, though, it was just natural IKR magic. Watching him was like witnessing a rare blend of discipline, eccentricity, and a touch of the mystical—his expression so inscrutable that I could never tell whether he was pleased or displeased.

Friends, Philosophers, and Other Prank Characters of the ISI Campus

The campus population was largely dominated by Bengalis (West Bengal). If you threw a stone in the campus, the probability that it would hit on a Bengali was about 80%, give or take a standard deviation. Statistically speaking, it was almost a Bengali republic with a few diplomatic missions from the rest of India. But the diversity was fascinating. We had people from Andhra, Maharashtra, Delhi, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, Kerala, and various corners of the country. Each came with their own culture, ideology, food preferences, and occasionally strange hobbies that made the campus a living social experiment.

 The Wresting Champion

Then there was SYA, a postdoctoral researcher from Andhra Pradesh and the undisputed wrestling champion of the campus. She had the physique that could make professional wrestlers reconsider their career choices. The first time we saw her walking across the campus, silence fell upon the corridor like a power outage. Her arms had the kind of definition that made us wonder whether she spent her mornings solving calculus problems with dumbbells or lifting granite blocks for breakfast, and her vocal cords seemed forged in the roar of a lioness. Naturally, we maintained a safe academic distance. I did not dare to initiate any casual or otherwise conversation with her.  I feared that even a polite “Good morning” might accidentally trigger a wrestling demonstration.

But appearances are deceptive. Beneath that intimidating exterior was one of the most loyal, friendly, and kind-hearted people in the campus. She often spent time chatting with GKS, and the rest of us slowly realized that she was far more approachable than we had imagined. Still, the subconscious fear remained until I met her as a professor in KSA.

Self-Appointed Hostel President

USA from TN was a different phenomenon altogether. She walked across the hostel corridors with the dignity and authority of someone who appeared to be the President of the Republic of Hostel Affairs. Her posture was impeccable - head high, shoulders straight, steps precise & measured in terms of millimeters. Even the campus mosquitoes seemed hesitant to approach her without permission. She was the epitome of discipline!

But USA had one weakness - vegetarian food and nauseating feeling for non-veg. Unfortunately for her, the campus contained a strong Bengali population. And Bengalis have a cultural relationship with fish and meat that borders on spiritual devotion and the Mallus join hands with them. Kind of wild combination you can never imagine! For her, weekends were especially traumatic.

While the Bengalis happily cooked fish curry in the hostel kitchen, the aroma would travel through the corridor like a biological weapon. USA would walk past the kitchen looking like someone had a laxative and forced to sit in the mess hall.

Yet the debates she engaged in with the Bengali comrades were legendary. Discussions on dialectical materialism, Marxism, and the political direction of CPI(M) would erupt suddenly in the common room, where I learnt to flew TT Ball onto the TV box without any major dissonance!

The Hidden Variable

Then came the most fascinating romantic story of the campus. RR, another post-doctoral student, had the personality of a cheerful teenager. Energetic, expressive, and always buzzing with enthusiasm, huge smiling face. She was in crush with RK. Now this seems to have puzzled the entire campus population.

RR had a 200-pound cheerful presence, while RK appeared to weigh 100 pounds including his backpack. When they walked together, it looked like a mathematical paradox: mass distribution defying logic. In other words, it was like a miniature lunar eclipse; the bigger presence nearly swallowed the smaller in its orbit. That was the moment when I fully understood the timeless proverb: Love is truly blind and “opposite poles attract each other”.

Their romance revolved around the hostel canteen, that humble teapot became the sacred center of their relationship. Many evenings we would find them making Maggi and tea together, whispering, arguing, laughing, and occasionally debating Fourier and harmonic analysis & its practical application.

But like all legends, their romance was not without drama. Our weekly trips to Jayanagar for groceries were legendary. Since the ISI campus was practically located in a peaceful jungle far away from civilization, near the Bhattacharya Falls, we had to make these weekly expeditions to buy essentials.

During these trips, RR&RK would often spar over the tiniest things. One would walk ahead dramatically while the other followed with equal determination. Frequently, one of them would storm off in protest and would fail to return on the same bus. Yet by the time we returned to campus, the teapot diplomacy would restore peace. Later, I learnt that they got married, lived happily ever after!

 The Algebraic Allies

The legendary BB and SB were mathematics professors of extraordinary brilliance. Their mathematical expertise was unquestionable. Their lifestyle, however, was a subject of great curiosity among students. They had no children, except an adopted one, which led to many humorous student theories. One popular hypothesis was that they were too busy solving complex mathematical problems to allocate time for practical family expansion experiments. Students jokingly concluded that they were deeply involved in researching the theory, but the experiments had not yet reached the implementation phase. To my surprise, Professor BB was a chain smoker, and cigarettes appeared to be an essential catalyst for mathematical thinking. Any serious discussion about equations would begin with the ritual lighting of a cigarette. Without smoke, apparently, theorems refused to cooperate. It’s hardly an exaggeration—at least, that’s how the legend goes—that Kunal would dash out in his underwear to fetch his customary beedi, just so the lecture on operator theory could finally begin.

Meanwhile, Professor SB possessed the calm expression of someone who had long ago accepted that life consisted primarily of equations, research papers, and occasional student confusion. Together they wandered around the campus after class hours like two brilliant philosophers silently solving invisible equations in their heads – a sight that nobody can forget.

Gravity Works 

Now comes our floundering PhD scholar, the only man in the campus who scientifically proved that gravity is still functioning in Bangalore. Unlike Newton, he had to climb the campus coconut tree to rediscover Newton’s invention. One fine day, he decided to climb a coconut tree in front of the Hostel, to pluck a tender coconut. It was barely five feet height. Yet our scholar managed to perform a dramatic scientific experiment. He climbed, slipped, fell and he broke his ankle. The entire campus was in shock. How does one break an ankle falling from a five-foot tree? But the campus maidens could not help but flock around him. Meanwhile, he daydreamed of Gopis in Vrindavan, secretly enjoying the attention of his very own “campus Gopis.” Weeks passed while he stayed bedridden, savoring the status quo, and even after he finally recovered, he walked around with a slightly dramatic limp, as if to remind everyone of his heroic ordeal. To this day, I am not entirely convinced whether the ankle was repaired by a qualified orthopedic surgeon or by a well-meaning local expert.

During this episode I’m reminded of our friend comrade UP, who could climb 10 coconut trees of 15–20 ft in Calicut University campus before breakfast. Krishna, unfortunately, had forgotten to take lessons from UP.

Then there was this PhD scholar (did his PhD in lie Groups), not sure if this was a lie or groups of it.  In either case he deserves a permanent chapter in the culinary history of ISI Bangalore.

Well, near the campus there existed a small street food shop (Kairali?) that served what we believed were divinely engineered Idlys—soft, fluffy, steaming white clouds accompanied by dangerously addictive coconut chutney.

    Kairali, where idly served in wholesale to support Maths PhD Scholars

It was his regular breakfast destination; he frequented this quite often. One fine morning, our scholar decided to conduct what can only be described as a large-scale Harmonic analysis of Lie Group study in Idli consumption. We accompanied him casually, as we often do, unaware that we were about to witness a historic event. The first plate arrived. Eight Idlys. Gone. Second plate arrived. Gone. Third plate arrived. At this point we assumed the experiment was nearing its conclusion. But no, he had merely completed the warm-up phase. Plate after plate continued to arrive. The shop owner began observing the situation with increasing curiosity, then mild concern, and eventually admiration. We sat there in stunned silence as he consumed Idlis with mathematical precision and statistical ‘lie group’ consistency. By the time the 36th Idli disappeared into the system, the entire establishment had become emotionally invested in the experiment. Proprietor appeared in amusement; his other customers may have to go empty stomached :) he gasped!

Our scholar had successfully achieved something that no statistical model could have ever predicted, I mean even the most sophisticated harmonic analysis could have ever predicted the lie groups would function like this. Until we discovered that it was his usual morning breakfast routine!

He was not merely an Idli enthusiast. His daily schedule itself was a remarkable algorithm. Every morning at 5:00 AM sharp, while the rest of us were still negotiating with our blankets about the meaning of life, our scholar would march off to discover Harmonic (mostly simple, but sometimes complex) analysis in DRTC computer room. Nobody fully understood what type of Harmonic he was playing into, and on what surfaces😊. Some suspected advanced semi-simple mathematical meditation techniques.

Close to dawn, our scholar could often be seen engaged in what appeared to be high-level intellectual discussions. Whether they were discussing mathematics, information science, or the non-linear equations remains one of the unsolved problems in SMU-DRTC collaboration projects. Naturally, the campus mallu population observed these developments with great ‘academic’ interest. 

Curiously, despite his legendary achievements in the field of Idli consumption, our scholar was not particularly enthusiastic about lunch. Most weekdays he seemed to survive entirely on mathematical equations, morning Idlis, and possibly some mysterious internal energy source known only to PhD scholars. Lunch, when it happened at all, was usually a rare weekend phenomenon. And when he decided to participate in this ritual, he would arrive with great ceremony carrying his prized possession — a small container of pure ghee.

Unfortunately, the hostel was also home to a group of highly trained Mallus, who possess a unique biological sensor capable of detecting the presence of ghee within a radius of hostel vicinity. The moment he opened the container; the signal would travel invisibly through the air. Within minutes, a few innocent-looking Mallus would casually appear around the dining table. And before he could fully process the situation, the ghee container would begin circulating around the table like a public resource under democratic distribution. After a few such episodes, he slowly began to understand the ecosystem he was living in. Our scholar made a strategic decision to stop bringing the ghee bottle.

Another of his hobbies was his remarkable expertise in UNIX—and an uncanny ability to unleash the “biological human anatomy search & retrieval algorithms” behind the terminals by quietly examining internet access logs. His detective work could trace activities, misadventures, and even those who watched “art films” across the network with an efficiency that made it feel as though we were living under the watchful eyes of the CIA. In fact, many of us suspected that if the CIA had known about him, they might have quietly recruited him to manage their servers. 😊

It was only much later that we realized that his PhD topic itself was about applying Harmonic Analysis on “Lie Groups” - who knows if it was a mere lie or groups of it.

The Bouncing Function

Dr. M- the legendary hostel warden, almost always appeared in his signature blue lungi during the weekends. His very presence in the corridors was like a live comedy show! It was said that he operated on the “Bouncing Function”, he could never stay on the baseline for long before reflecting upward with renewed energy. And if you timed his vertical displacement just right, you could see him take off from the ground, reaching a global maximum that defied hostel gravity. His smile…was like someone had bottled sunlight, shaken it violently, and poured it over. We held immense respect for Dr. M and the complex geometry of his legendary lungi-tucking techniques.

Beyond the laughter he unintentionally sparked, there was a quiet steadiness in him that every student deeply felt. He cared in ways that were simple, direct, and profoundly human—always present when it mattered, always watching over the hostel like a guardian disguised in humor.

We held immense respect for Dr. M and the complex geometry of his legendary lungi-tucking techniques. Truly, a warden who kept our spirits—and his own altitude—positively skewed.

 

 Ohm’s Law rediscovered

Our hostel electrician—universally known as “Mr. Ohm’s Law”—was the most persistent teacher on campus, though he never belonged to the physics department. A short, bald, wiry man with a permanently serious face and a faded tool bag, he had the weary authority of someone who had watched generations of “future scientists” creatively sabotage hostel wiring in ways even electricity had never imagined. But he had only one teaching method: every complaint became a lecture on Ohm’s Law. A dead fan, flickering tube light, or a fuse blown during a heroic maggi-experiment - each triggered the same ritual. He would arrive, fix the fault in thirty seconds, and then patiently explain how current flows, why damp walls increase resistance, and how we had personally violated the dignity of V = IR. Soon, entire hostel corridors learned to avoid eye contact with him—because one careless glance could easily turn into a ten-minute refresher course on electricity.

Dosa - Sambar Supremo

Our hostel dosa-sambar supremo, was a man with a magnificent military moustache that he slowly massaged while talking, as if every conversation required strategic approval. Though he looked intimidating at first sight, he was fiercely loyal to the students. By evening he transformed into an entrepreneur, running a tiny tea-and-coffee stall outside the campus.  His dosa-making skills were legendary; with the speed of a seasoned kitchen crew, he would sweep the hot tawa clean using a coconut-leaf-midrib broom and fire off the next dosa. The napkin resting on his shoulder had a personality of its own, often carrying an aroma suspiciously like a goat fur—but it doubled as his universal hand-wiper. Hygiene mysteries aside, his Upma, Dosa and Uthappam became legendary discoveries for our Bengali friends, who treated them like newly discovered South Indian equations.

 

      ISIBC signature item

A Non-Euclidean Investigation

It was one of those ordinary Monday mornings - when, precisely at T = Teatime, a mysterious notice appeared in the campus canteen notice board, disrupting the campus’s statistical equilibrium. It read: “Congratulations to the Admin for discovering where parallel lines meet!”. This "mathematical breakthrough" was a highly targeted logic check aimed at Rao, the HOD of Admin. Rao had recently proposed a plan with zero logic and infinite absurdity: a project to convert a hostel toilet into a kitchen. Mathematically speaking, the probability of that being a good idea was p=0, yet he pursued it with a linear determination that defied all common sense.

The admin office’s fury was exponential. B.K. Pal, the HOD of ISIBC, immediately launched an investigation, summoning half the hostel to find the "mischievous genius" responsible for the notice, but his detective efforts suffered from a massive sampling error. Despite Pal's best efforts to find a confession in the data set, the culprit remained an unobserved variable. No one suspected a "quiet" DRTC student—the ultimate stealth outlier. The truth remained safely encrypted within the Mallu Circle, protected by a high-level security protocol for decades. Only now, after the statute of limitations has long since expired, can I finally reveal the data: the notice was mine. It turns out that parallel lines do meet—usually at the intersection of a ridiculous administrative policy and a DRTC student having access to a printer.

The Phantom Trekker

Finally, there was SPK, the trekking maniac in our campus. He had a strange habit of wandering into the bushes, forests, and grassy fields around the campus. Not sure he was alone or with his romantic counter parts. Though many of us had the impression that he’s immune to worldly feelings and his hormones are naturally kept low, except that his addiction to western ‘art films’ made us think otherwise! Quite a difficult personality to discern!

Dr. D was one of SPK’s trekking companions, who often appeared in the common room with dripping wet hair and a loosely draped nightgown. She carried a coastal aura that transformed the mundane space into a miniature beach. Dr. X, a recently joined post doc student was one of her favorites, well built with iron clad voice and American accent - everything about him made Dr. D fall for him. Their narratives intertwined and lived somewhere in the fuzzy region between the intersection and the union of Heisenberg's equations — never quite overlapping perfectly, never fully combined, just happily uncertain. But suddenly, the wave function collapsed: everything appeared normal, they got married... and divorced in a fraction of a second. The entire relationship unfolded (and collapsed) in no time.

We often heard friendly fire from the second floor of the campus, where Dr. D was desperately trying to solve for X. No matter how hard she tried, X remained stubbornly indeterminate — it just wouldn’t settle to a fixed value. In the end, they decided to part ways.

During this period, Dr. D’s sister visited the campus for a 48-hour window, causing a total system failure in the hostel’s male population. The frequency of pedestrian traffic past her location didn't just increase; it spiked into a bell curve so sharp it threatened to break the axis.

The Mallu Contingent, usually known for their high-bandwidth conversational skills, suffered a complete packet loss. Upon making eye contact, their communication protocols timed out, leaving them gasping for air like fish experiencing a sudden environment change—effectively rendering them non-responsive nodes in the network.

Even the legendary SPK—generally believed to be immune to all earthly distractions—was heard murmuring in quiet disbelief that such extraordinary beauty could exist outside art films.  We have no data on her current geospatial coordinates, but the residual effect remains strong. Even now, decades later, many eyes are still scanning the horizon, searching for that one unrepeatable data point that once walked through our campus – waiting for the Titanic moment, where Rose allowed Jack to capture her true coordinates, to reappear!

The Catwalk

We had a Mallu, visiting scholar from the Madras University Maths Dept.—a man who seemed to treat life like a relaxed equation with very loose boundary conditions. His daily walks to the hostel washroom were a small event in themselves, almost always draped in that old Kerala thorthu mundu—a faded stretch of rough cotton with such generous “surface area” that it would often unearth his prized possessions, deviating from their expected trajectory and making frequent guest appearances, as if even gravity couldn’t fully control it.

The thorthu mundu looked so dry that it resembled a sunbaked ray-fish left too long on the shore—stiff, sharp at the edges, with rough corners sticking out in different directions. It had become coarse from years of loyal use. It was even rumored that its edges were sharp enough for Rangaswamy to use it to cut vegetables, yet our guest scholar seemed to find warmth and comfort in its friction.

In a place where men and women moved freely through the same corridors, our Scholar would casually tie it on and walk toward the bathroom like a catwalk scene from an FTV show, as if the world owed him that indifference 😊. The mundu, of course, rarely cooperated. It hung loosely, shifted without warning, and created those brief, awkward moments of hide-and-seek that left onlookers startled, as his prized possessions would sneak out in between. Yet our guest carried it all with disarming ease, as if embarrassment simply did not exist in his world.

Lieutenant Heartbreaker

The sheer volume of her admirers followed a power-law distribution: a few were obsessed, but the "long tail" of people hoping for a smile stretched across the entire campus. Her effect on the student body was statistically impossible to ignore.

For this peculiar SQC Technical Officer, her presence introduced a third variable they couldn’t solve for. He spent his lunch breaks calculating the optimal angle of approach to her cafeteria table, only to have their data corrupted by her sheer charisma. On the other hand, the DRTC Comrades, acting as the human equivalent of a firewall, blocked every incoming "Hello" request with elite-level gatekeeping. They were the outliers in every data set - the noise that prevented the SQC boys from finding a clear signal.

This playful chase went on and off like a campus soap opera, until she joined the Indian Army as an officer, leaving behind a trail of broken hearts—like a squirrel who just lost his prized nuts. As she marched off in uniform, the local "Heartbreak Index" reached an all-time high.

The Place That Never Left Me

And so, my dear friends, as the distant whistle of the Bangalore-Mysore train fades once more into the velvet night, I gently close this time capsule from 1995. But closing it doesn’t mean sealing it away.

These pages are not meant to gather dust on a forgotten shelf. They are an open invitation — warm, slightly mischievous, and forever young — to step back into those eucalyptus-scented paths whenever the weight of the present feels too heavy, or the years feel too long.

Come back whenever you need to remember what it felt like to be deliciously, hopelessly young. Come back when you miss the mosquito armies that marched with military precision, the British-era ceiling fan that roared like it was personally responsible for lifting our dreams, the one-rupee lunches that tasted better than any five-star feast, and the late-night Maggi experiments that somehow solved the mysteries of the universe between bursts of laughter.

Come back to the lamp post where ideas bigger than galaxies were born under dim yellow light, to the canteen tea that warmed more than just our hands, to the heated debates that felt like they could reshape the world, and to the quiet, illogical romances that bloomed like wildflowers in the most unexpected mathematical paradoxes.

Because some places don’t just live in memory — they settle deep inside your soul and refuse to leave. They become part of who you are. They whisper to you on quiet nights, reminding you that once upon a time, you were part of something beautifully chaotic, fiercely alive, and utterly irreplaceable.

If you’ve ever been young and hungry — not just for food, but for life itself… If you’ve ever stayed awake till dawn arguing about coconut oil versus mustard oil, or whether parallel lines could ever meet in a ridiculous admin notice… If you’ve ever laughed until your stomach hurt in a place that felt like it belonged only to your little gang.

Then this time capsule was always meant for you.

Tonight, when the world outside grows still and the lights dim, let the gentle whistle of a faraway train find you. Let it carry you back to the mosquito-filled corridors, the glowing MS-DOS screens, the legendary professors who became family, and the friendships that time could never dilute.

Close your eyes.

Breathe in the scent of eucalyptus mixed with rain and railway tracks.

Smile at the sweet ache in your chest.

And stay awake a little longer with me… just a little longer.

Because in this warm, laughter-soaked world of DRTC, ISI Bangalore, 1995 — we are all still twenty-something, hearts pounding with fear, wonder, and wild hope.

We never really left.

And you, my friend… you are always welcome to come home.