‘No time’ no excuse

Harjit Singh Khurana

THE  year was 1960. Kashmir got its first engineering college known as Regional Engineering College (now NIT). I was among the students of the first batch. It was a very prestigious project for the state. The military barracks at Naseem Bagh — ‘garden of morning breeze’ — between the rows of the beautiful chinar trees were renovated and converted into classrooms, hostels, mess, washrooms and quarters for the teaching faculty. Highly qualified teachers were brought in from all across the country. The college faced the beautiful Naseem Lake, the western bank of the Dal Lake. 

Morarji Desai, the then finance minister, visited the college and we were told to come dressed in college uniform to meet him. When I tried to get his autograph — a hobby which I pursued at that time — he refused on the grounds that I was not wearing khadi. I found it bizarre.

Among the faculty was a stone-faced tall man, whom we never saw smiling. He walked with long strides and would sometimes be smoking a pipe. His name was Chand Mal Jain, a retired ICS officer. He was an alumnus of St Stephen’s College and Roorkee Engineering College.

A martinet, Chand Mal was the Dean of the college. He enforced discipline and students would try to avoid him if he came their way. He was of the view that sports built character, and so, he saw to it that every student played  some sport or the other. You could miss a class, but not evening sport. Missing it meant facing Chand Mal the next day. Since most students were from vernacular schools, he took it upon himself to brush up their English and started English language classes in an engineering college!

He was an excellent bridge player and visited the Srinagar Club every day. My father who was posted in Srinagar also visited the club daily for bridge. They became friends and part of the same bridge group.

One chilly morning, Chand Mal walked into my hostel room and asked where my father was as he did not see him in the club the previous evening. I expressed my ignorance as I had not visited my house for the past 10 days. Suddenly, he asked me to put on my ulster, which was hanging in the room, and join him for a walk. 

He took me to his residence for a cup of tea. In the drawing room, I found a depository full of books. He got up, pulled out a book and told me to take it and read it. When I saw the title of the book, I became nervous. It was Plato’s The Republic. At such a young age, I was in no mood to read such a philosophical book, so I blurted out: ‘Sir, I do not have the time to read this book!’ His reaction was one of anger. ‘You are an idle man, an idle man does not have time. A busy man has all the time in the world, as he adjusts his schedule and priorities.’ He was right. To date, I have never made ‘time’ my excuse and whenever somebody else does so, I narrate this incident. Today, The Republic is prominently displayed in my study.