KGP Summers ...

There were two attitudes towards the summer training program at IIT KGP. Some students would try to wrangle an internship in their hometown or nearby but some of us loved the opportunity to get away as far as possible.

In 1980, ISRO had been in the news for having launched SLV, India's first Satellite Launch Vehicle and my father had met a person from ISRO. So I decided to explore an internship there. After pestering our Training and Placement Division, I finally managed to get an internship at ISRO, Trivandrum, even though this was not mandatory at the end of third year. I also managed to convince Rana Bhattacharya to join me on this adventure.

 There were quite a few challenges with this assignment. First, there was no direct train to Trivandrum, we had to change at Madras. Finding a place to stay was no less difficult but finally we managed to get lodging at the YMCA and eventually we managed to find our way to ISRO. But this chapter is not about the difficulties that we faced at Trivandrum. Neither is it about the exhilaration of visiting Kovalam Beach -- even though we did not find any nude women there -- nor about going down all the way to Kanya Kumari and trying, like Vivekananda did, to actually swim to the Rock on which stood a beautiful temple.

This is about rockets because that is what ISRO is famous for, and believe me, in this it lived up to my expectations.

ISRO consists of multiple divisions and we were allotted to work in the Fibre Reinforced Plastics division of  the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre. Here we saw and learnt how plastic threads were woven to build rocket engines. We also built a small prototype that my mother later converted into a table lamp! But one evening, a Wednesday evening, to be precise, we saw what looked like an innocent and typical Kali Pujo rocket in the sky. Next day, we checked with our mentor and were told that at 7:30 PM every Wednesday, ISRO would launch an imported Russian M-100 two-stage, sounding rocket, from TERLS - Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station. This was a part of an international collaborative study of the upper atmosphere. However, what piqued our interest was that it was permissible for interns like us to go and actually see the launch. 

So next Wednesday, Rana and I went to TERLS and after showing them our internship badges, we were allowed to board a bus that were taking the engineers and technicians to the actual launch pad, that was situated close to the sea. When we got off the bus, we were rather disappointed because the actual pad was quite far away from where we, visitors, were told to sit. It was getting dark and we could barely see anything. So we decided to do something really daring. Unobtrusively, we broke away from the assembled people and decided to follow a hedge, that while shielding us from detection, led us closer to the launch pad. Finally we reached a point where the ground was paved with cement and there were no more trees or any other vegetation till the pad itself. Going any further would expose us to detection or -- as we agreed, we might get hit by the blast. So that is where Rana and I sat down, under a tree and seemingly covered by the hedge around us, waiting for the launch. We were possibly about 50 or 60 metres from the pad.

By then, the countdown had already started and we could hear it over the Public Address system. Since we were quite a few minutes away from 7:30 they were announcing the time at 5 minute intervals. Then as the launch time drew closer, the announcements were made every minute and then we were in the final countdown, counting seconds ... "Ten, Nine, Eight, Seven, Six, Five, Four, Three, Two, One, Zero ..." and then all hell broke loose!

Last Wednesday, we had seen the rocket from the city which would have been at least ten kilometres away and it had seemed as innocent as a Kali Pujo rocket. But now when this beast belched fire from a distance of 50 metres it was F R I G T E N I N G to say the very least. We were hit by an enormous blast of sound and light and saw the flames rushing towards us. Gone with the wind was our original logic that since the trees were unscathed, the flames would never reach that far and sheer panic overtook us. The two of us just got up and ran for our lives, not wondering if anyone on foot could outrun the flames that were chasing us. I also remember telling Rana that the first stage would drop off soon and it might fall on our heads, again not realising that by then the rocket would be over the sea and whatever falls would land on water. But when  you are running for your life, you cannot think through all this. You just run! And we did. Not sure how long we ran, but finally when we ran out of breath and sat down on the grass, the whole place was once again as dark and quiet as a grave yard!

But of course we had no time to ponder about all this because we remembered that we to catch the bus back to town!

That was the first and only time I had seen a rocket launch live! I am sure that the launch of bigger rockets like PSLV and GSLV from Sriharikota are more spectacular but given the tight security protocols under which such tasks are accomplished today, I doubt if two IIT students like us would ever be allowed to get as close to the launch pad as we did. 

Next year I managed to get a paid -- and hence very prestigious -- internship at TELCO ( now Tata Motors) at their Pune ( Pimpri) plant and this time I was accompanied by Sudhir Bapat and PVK Prasad. Once again there was a lot of extra-curricular excitement regarding our place of stay and nocturnal adventures from there but the Omerta Code prevents me talking about it in public. But after we were done with the internship, I decided to carry on to Margao, Goa where my Azad Hall wingmate R 'Korak' Sivakumar and his classmate Chandru were also doing their internship, most probably in the Sesa Goa mines.

Well Goa is always nice because the pheni is cheap and the beaches are full of semi nude foreigners and we had a good time. But this time there was the added excitement of Kapil Dev's team in the Cricket Prudential World Cup. Since the hostel where Korak and Chandru were staying, and where we too had piled on, did not have a TV set our only source of information was the newspaper next day. Thus we had learnt that India had been on the verge of being eliminated by Zimbabwe at Tunbridge Wells and then Kapil Dev scored that magic 175 runs to take us through. We tooled around Goa for a week and then suddenly we realised that India was in the Finals and would be playing the number one favourites, West Indies.

Betting companies were not giving India much of a chance but since India had beaten the West Indies once during the league stage we were still hopeful. However we realised that we did not have access to either a radio or a TV set. That meant that we would have to wait till next morning for the result. I do not know who among us, got the information but somehow we learnt that the restaurant at Hotel Zuari that was located close to our hostel did have a TV and they would be tuning in to the coverage that would be broadcast live from Lords, London. 

Zuari was an expensive hotel and well beyond our limited financial means. Nevertheless, we decided to go in and order one plate of vegetable chowmein each and eat it S L O W L Y till the match got over. Hopefully the waiters would not throw us out.  India started of quite badly and were bowled out for a meagre 183 which is when most people in the restaurant decided to leave. But we did stay on and ordered an ice-cream bar each. The story about the match -- and of India's famous victory --  is of course well known to every Indian but what mattered to us was that we stayed put with just one plate of chowmein and an ice-cream each for the entire duration of the match. So evident was both our determination to watch and our destitution to pay for the meal that eventually the waiters -- who too were eagerly watching the match -- allowed us to just stay and watch, without asking us for any more orders.

Finally, when India won, one of the patrons in the restaurant ordered a round of beer for all those who had loyally stayed on and cheered the Boys in Blue to that historic win.

Many of us from that era remember where we were when India lifted the Prudential Cup at Lords in 1983. Well I was in Hotel Zuari in Goa.