By Nandu Kulkarni, B.Tech. EE H3
The IIT Bombay B.Tech. course curriculum in the first year in our time (1969-70) had hands-on practice in the carpentry, forging and fitting workshops in the Mechanical Engineering department. As far as I can remember this used to be once a week, for students of all five branches, including Electrical and Chemical Engineering. I don’t know if these practice labs are still part of the curriculum, but the noble intention of the institute was no doubt, to give students a (literally) hands-on exposure to the basics of engineering. The “jobs” practised in these workshops mostly consisted of working on a piece of metal or wood and converting it into a specific shape using tools.
The instructors that ran these workshops were mostly practitioners from the respective trade, and some spoke only broken English. The one that I remember most vividly was the instructor in the forging shop. He was a dark, tough looking hardy young man, and I don’t think any of us knew his name. The exercise used to be to convert a solid piece of raw metal (called a bar stock for some reason) into a cube or some such shape which the instructor would demonstrate at the beginning of the class. Students would work in pairs, one student using tongs had to soften the bar stock in the furnace, and the other using a hammer would desperately try to beat the unfortunate piece of metal into the required shape. At the end of a couple of hours the bar stock would be mangled out of shape, and we would take it to the instructor and show it to him, with a look of helplessness. He would say “तुम दोनो गधा है” (you are both donkeys). He would then take the piece of metal, grab his hammer and pair of tongs, and expertly beat it into the required shape in half a minute, and hand it to one of us with a look of pitiful disdain in his voice, telling us “ये लो. ठंडा करके समिट करो”. We would then dip the finished piece in water and submit it, relieved that the ordeal was over.
All through the remaining years on the campus, we used to use “ठंडा करके समिट कर दिया” whenever we submitted anything, whether it was a report or term paper or even our B.Tech. Project thesis.
IIT Bombay 1974 Reunion 