Through a Simi’s lens

 

Through a Simi’s lens

For several decades before people started celebrating the 14^th of February as a day for expressing love, students from a small engineering institution in a little-known town of India had already been celebrating it as a day of brotherhood and belonging.

They still do that, and without the chocolates, roses, balloons, jewellery or other gifts which St Valentine’s followers must spend lavish amounts on, if they want their love to not languish as unrequited.

But what is the difference between the two?

These men, and later I am happy to add, women too, having the party of the non-Valentine kind, are the alumni of what is known as the Indian Railway Institute of Mechanical and Electrical Engineers in Jamalpur, a small nondescript town in Munger district in Bihar. For fact-lovers, Munger was the capital of Anga Pradesh and Karna, a complex character known for his munificence, ruled it during the Mahabharata times.

Belonging to the elite class of  SCRA (Special Class Railway Apprentice), these men and women joined this college to study mechanical engineering, of use perhaps only in the railways. I say elite because in the times gone by, admission into the institute was said to be tougher than getting into the civil services and even more coveted than the IITs these days. Many joined this institute after leaving IITs. There were very few seats, generally nor more than 25 in a batch per year. So at any given time there were 100 students besides the probationers in the college.

The unique feature was that they all lived in Jamalpur Gymkhana, aka Gymkhana, Well, actually not so much a hostel and more of a club where all the trainees stayed, without exception as there was no concept of a day-scholar there. Not a surprise then that the day is called Club Day. No one except the few who had spent their teenage years in these environs could be its members. These members, called Gymmies shared a close bond with one another. They were also known as SAMs (special apprentice mechanical), the girls as well as Sams’ wives as Simis and if a Sam’s next generation also went to join the institute, he would be a Samson. And I am talking of all the years since 1927 when the institute started training officers.

They ate with fork and knife yet swore in chaste Hindi, learnt to play nearly all the sports and cycled to faraway tiny towns to eat at dhabas (roadside eateries) or watch films, ragged and teased one another, fought but learnt to strike life-long friendships. Living in an atmosphere of such close proximity and familiarity in a small town, it is no wonder then that the students were very well acquainted with one another’s habits, weaknesses and strengths, the anecdotes and stories of which have trickled into history. Much to the chagrin and embarrassment of some of them, especially the wives, sometimes these stories are still recalled in public.

The teenagers joined college for the four-year undergraduate degree understanding well that the department of railways was going to be their sole employer till they retired. I wonder if that was because of the lure of a permanent government job for the rest of their lives or the romance of Raj era atmosphere or  perhaps the fat stipend they got at the age of 17 or thereabout. Some of them, almost in each batch though, did ditch later on and went on to work in the corporate world, civil services or crossed the mighty oceans succumbing to the charms stronger than that of the railways. Yet the sense of the Indian term ‘batchmate’ survived in their minds.

No, they did not get any benefits in job except that they did not have to mail their resumes to employers but got to join their working position fresh out of their training course, at a comparatively younger age.

Not only that, it seems to me that it was just a sense of belonging. You might say it comes from being an engineer from the same i.e. ‘mechanical' department. Now with railways discontinuing with diesel for running the trains, and taking up electrics more vigorously, slowly the relevance of mechanical department is getting lost and so is the uniqueness of Sams and Simis.

“Ma’am, I am Mukund ’86,” was my first introduction to this world. Young and working in the informal atmosphere of a newspaper, and yet to decide whether to marry the Samson I knew, I was oblivious to this system of introduction. To me class of ’21 would mean the class who joined the college in 2017 and is passing out in 2021, but for Jamalpurians, the batch number denotes the year they joined the college. Slowly we wives also learnt that among the numerous Sam AK Singhs you knew, you distinguished them by their batch. 

It is with nostalgia that one looks back at the time when the juniors looked up to the seniors with something bordering on awe. When you went to call on a senior you knew there would not just be good hospitality but pairs of kind ears too so you could grumble about the poor amenities in small towns and the long hours the husband was gone for work without being laughed or sniggered at. You were certain of support if there was an emergency in the family, one needed advice on professional matters or just a partner to play a vigorous game of squash. Juniors, on the other hand, have always been a pure delight to be with because they pardon your weaknesses and still give you respect. 

Now, I can read your thoughts. Yes, it is not all romance, sparkle and roses. They call it a family, in fact a nuclear one. It is in a family that brothers fight for property. In a similar fashion, there have been instances of a Sam getting in the way of another one, or a senior Sam spoiling the career of a junior, even if sometimes the junior had not deserved such treatment. It is no wonder then that at times one looks beyond this clan and relies on the other members of the larger family of officers not only from own department, but others as well.

Do not be surprised that a Simi is talking so much about this, because it is the women who coming from diverse backgrounds, and to survive and flourish in the new family, seek attachments so that they have the security of belonging.

Now coming to the Club Day which I started with, the focal batches (who had completed 50 years of joining the SCRA) and semi-focal batches (who had hit the silver jubilee mark)  mostly went all the way to Jamalpur to celebrate the day where they shamelessly enjoyed the hospitality of the Gymmies and probationers.

Otherwise even in a small town if there were two Sams, they would get together for a bite and drink, generally with wives, to celebrate the day in the memory of their alma mater.

In bigger towns, though there were seminars and discussions in the daytime, the Club Day party was a time to put all airs aside. All the Sams and Simis in attendance in their finery, the buzzword was participation. There was no hesitation in recounting in excruciating detail the mishaps suffered by seniors and batchmates in Gymkhana.

Such was the enthusiasm that some of us would rehearse for days to put up lengthy plays and other programmes. Why, one would happily agree to merely stand in the role of Lord Krishna throughout a skit because they could not come for regular rehearsals.

Before the DJs, Daler Mehndi, wild gyrations to Bollywood songs and disco lights took over, the high point of the evening used to be the act of that generally one energetic soul who with 120 mls of alcohol inside his blood stream, would climb up on to the table, flay his arms around and drum his feet in the name of dancing, even as the crowd cheered him on, shouting to alert him from accidently touching the madly spinning ceiling fan. As the night grew darker, the decades-senior couples would slowly slip away but the younger lot tortured the floor till their own limbs did not shout ‘enough’. Club Day did not mean much if you did not wake up with super-sized hangover the next morning trying to recall which *&%$ had told that story about you or muttering hamare bachche humse kya seekhenge (What will our children learn from us).   

I have been using the past tense all along, because to use the cliché, times have changed. As the administrative structure of railways transformed, so did the requirement for those working in it. In 2015, the SCRA examination was discontinued by the Railways after the UPSC communicated that ‘it was not inclined to continue conducting the examination.’

The last batch of students passed out a couple of years ago and got absorbed into the giant unsung workforce of the department so now there would never be any new Sams, Simis or Samsons (although on the know-all internet I can still see an ad for the SCRA exam in 2021).

The ones sprinkling the mechanical engineer population now are more precious than our other valuables for they are the living proofs of our nation’s history of more than three quarters of a century, who took our railways on its journey from steam horses to diesel Pushpak.

                                                                                                                      - Anupama S Mani