Memory Recall...

Memory Recall!!

Memory in our minds doesn’t get erased at all! Just the other day I received a phone call and the moment I heard the person’s voice, my memory was able to dig the sound bite from the deeply embedded journals in my mind down, safely stored for 37 years duration and in a jiffy bring a smile on my face as I recollected and recalled the name behind this voice! It was simply amazing!

My father, graduated as a Civil Engineer – the first batch from NIE, Mysore. He started his career in the city of Mumbai, Bombay then…in a petroleum company. While I don’t recollect the name of the company, it could have been ‘Shell’ – Burmah Shell, what is now known as Bharath Petroleum Corporation Ltd. He wasn’t there for long though. Moved on to PWD in New Delhi and when Hindustan Steelworks Ltd., what is now known as SAIL (Steel Authority of India Ltd.) was formed, he opted to join them at Durgapur in 1959. Through their old boys network, a few of the batchmates remained in touch and I haven’t the faintest idea how the network worked those days!

When I got an opportunity to join Batliboi Ltd in Mumbai in April 1982, my father knew that I would struggle finding a place to live and suggested that I meet his good old friend from NIE Mysore, Mr. Govindarajan. All that my father had told me about his friend was that he worked in the Railways and I should talk to another of his batchmates, Chairman and MD of Hindustan Dorr Oliver and get the address and telephone number from him. From being an absolute introvert and a dumb nitwit of a person in my childhood to a slightly better version post the college exposure in RECT (Regional Engineering College, Tiruchirapalli), I still was petrified at the thought of calling the chairman of a multinational, introduce myself and then ask him for a favour of giving me the address of his batchmate in Indian Railways. The very thought of engaging in a conversation with an unknown person would make me nervous and when worked up, I would end up talking very rapidly or begin to stammer. I could picture myself making a fool of myself on the telephone and hence, did the next best thing. I kept postponing to call him, hoping that I would never have to struggle to get some place to live in Mumbai and there would be no need to establish a contact with Mr. Govindarajan.

That was more easier said than done. It came to a stage when I was given a very short notice to evict myself from a 1 BHK home in a Chawali in Matunga. Another dimension was now added to my woes; desperation along with nervousness. I was dead sure that I would never be able to say anything straight on the phone. I decided to meet him personally and that was a good thing, in fact. Like a chess game, I thought of all the possible combinations of my conversation with Mr. Krishna Rao…he said, I said…so on and so forth! To cut the long story short, he didn’t have the time to indulge in any small talk and having satisfied himself on my identity, he just gave me a chit of paper with Mr. Govindarajan’s address and telephone number.

Armed with this information as I came back to my temporary shelter in the Matunga Chawali, I realized that Mr Govindarajan wasn’t very far from where I lived. Indian Railways have a huge housing complex in Matunga near the Infinity Bridge. This is a foot over bridge connecting Matunga Road station in Western Railway with Matunga Station in Central Railway. It is a fairly long walk when somebody wants to cross over from Central Railway line to the Western Line and if one is in a hurry, the bridge appears to be infinitely long. Hence the name, I guess: Infinity Bridge.

My father was a stickler for discipline and I presumed all his batchmates would be no different. So, I called Mr. Govindarajan (Uncle) at his home number to introduce myself and seek a time to meet him at his home. He was extremely warm and welcomed me as though he had known me for a very long time. I guess the affection was mostly because of the regard he had for my father. It was a Sunday and he insisted that I have lunch with him and family. It was a real and welcome change from the hotel food that I was having in Mumbai in the Udupi restaurants. All the South Indian dishes are tweaked to suit the  bland taste of the local Mumbai population with faint traces of the spices from down South.

After a sumptuous, satisfying and gratifying meal, Uncle asked me if he could be of any help. Here was a chance for me to open up to him and tell him about my journey in Mumbai thus far and the urgency in locating a place to park myself in a house. I told him that I was tired of being shunted around by my Company and then this Chawali, which was a community accommodation. He thought for a while and then suggested that I visit him the following Sunday as well. He had called another person for lunch – this person was son of another of my father’s batchmate from NIE. He too was in the Indian Railways. His son was a graduate from NIE, Mysore and just 1 year my senior.

Uncle stopped short there and said, come next Sunday and we will try and work out something. It was nice talking to him and while he extracted every possible detail about my college days and now about Batliboi Ltd. I was also able to find some courage and ask him about his job in the Railways. He happened to be in a Special Projects Division with a very specific task that was time bound.

Briefly, it goes like this: British Steels had supplied a very large quantity of steel to Indian Railways – Bombay Division, which was used for making girders. These girders are used extensively by the Railways to construct bridges. One can imagine in a city like Mumbai with railway lines criss-crossing the entire city, how much steel girders were used during the construction phase. British Steels had sent Indian Railways a terse letter stating that one batch of the steel that was supplied, may undergo a fatigue failure. They further added that Indian Railways must take abundant precaution to identify this lot and replace such of those girders with new ones and failing to identity and replace might result in a catastrophe.

All the while I was listening to my uncle with my mouth wide open, unable to believe what he was saying and also wondering how on earth could anybody find out which girder had been made with this batch of steel from British Steels?

I was reminded of a novel my father had recommended that I read; “No Highway” by British author Nevil Shute. My father was a great fan of Nevil Shute since most of the principle character in his novels were Engineers and the stories were around their engineering skills. “No Highway” was about an eccentric scientist who had been claiming that certain parts of a plane would develop metal fatigue sooner than officially estimated, but nobody took him seriously. While flying to the site of an air crash that killed a Soviet ambassador, he discovers that his own plane had already flown twice its permitted number of hours and he used his technical knowledge to sabotage it as soon as it landed. This is just a teaser so that it will encourage you to buy this book and read!

All my thoughts, after listening to my Uncle was which bridge would fail, each time I used the vast suburban network to go about my job. My fears were totally unfounded as Indian Railways had meticulously maintained a ledger to trace each and every batch of steel that was brought inwards into stock and later where they were dispatched as raw material to be converted to finished product: namely bridge girders. While the process was laborious my Uncle and his team of Engineers were successful in replacing the entire batch that was believed to undergo fatigue failure well within the specified time limit.

The following Sunday I promptly presented myself at their house again and this is where I first met Hari (Harinarayana Venkat Rao). The year 1982…Hari was working in Bharath Petroleum in their refinery unit at Mahul and had just moved to a 1 BHK flat in Chembur, a suburban colony on the Harbor line. Lucky for us, we hit it off on the first visit itself and he offered to accommodate me in his home in Chembur. The location of this flat was great for Hari as Chembur is not very far from his Refinery Unit at Mahul, but for me it was a 40 minutes train ride from Chembur to Bombay VT (Victoria Terminus), now renamed as Mumbai Chatrapati Shivaji Terminus. From Bombay VT it was a 20 minute brisk walk to Fort area where Batliboi office was situated.

Two things that I remember distinctly…one, I used to wake up first and prepare filter coffee, but the second is more important of the two. The art of packing the upper deck with coffee powder in the drip filter was something that I learnt from Hari. For best result, he insisted that I spread two spoons of powder in the upper deck, place the plunger and then spread another two spoons of coffee powder above the plunger. While a bit skeptical at first, the excellent quality of decoction convinced me that this was the correct way and to this day, I have been using this method…thanks to Hari, or his mother perhaps for the guidance that she would have originally provided!

Not sure how long I continued in this Chembur home, but I found an alternative once again in Matunga near Mysore Association Building where I shared a two bedroom flat with three others. This was again a temporary home since I had found an alternative job in Calcutta, nearer to my fathers home in Durgapur. I left Mumbai sometime in 1983 and both Hari and I drifted apart, never to meet or talk again.

So, just the other day when I received a call from an unknown number and answered cautiously…the voice was a familiar one, none other than Harinarayana – in a fraction of a second the mind amazingly traced it out! 37 years isn’t a short while by any stretch of imagination, but here we were talking as if we had just parted yesterday!

We have a lot of catching up to do…from our bachelor days to the present post retirement days. Come to think about it…the lockdown isn’t bad at all…I seem to be catching up with many long lost friends and ex-colleagues!!

Cheers to that!!