Sunil Hattangdi was a keen photographer and an aeromodeller. He used to fly his model airplanes on the Gymkhana ground.
He used to handle his Pentax K1000 very creatively. One of his photographs had made it to the cover of a British photographic magazine. He followed his BTech (Aero) with MTech (Mech-Prod), and then joined Telco. He did a lot of work on aerostatic bearings. Later, he joined L&T Switchgear.
He was an uncompromising person when it came to his work.
One of the things that he developed in L&T was a floating base for moving and positioning heavy drilling jigs. This worked somewhat like a hovercraft, floating on a film of air.
He also was instrumental in the commissioning of machining centres. Another thing that he introduced was press fitting of petrol pump parts through cryogenic cooling using liquid nitrogen.
An interesting thing happened during an early part of his career.
One day, he went to the Production Manager, Mr Sharma, who was his boss, and told him that he would like to leave the office early that day. Naturally, Sharmaji asked him the reason. Hattangdi said that he wanted to go for marriage. Sharmaji said it was okay to leave early to attend a close friend’s marriage. Hattangdi floored him, saying, “It’s not a friend’s marriage, Sir. It’s my marriage!”
That evening, he married Shanta. He had two children, Ashish and Anuradha. A few years ago, Hattangdi passed away in an accident.
Written by Rajendra Shirvaikar
IIT Bombay 1974 Reunion 