On To a Career
The employment situation in 1971 in Calcutta and India was bad. Placement from IIT had also not been good because the overall economic scene in the country was dismal. Very few guys had got jobs while in campus except for a handful as management trainees with blue-chip Cos. like TISCO & ITC. And then again for electronics you could not hope to get a job in Calcutta since one could say there were practically no electronics industries in the city. Thus the routine started of scanning the newspapers for job ads and then applying for them. The adda continued now both in the mornings and evenings. Money was hard to come by since things were not too good at home. Thus from buying a packet of cigarettes during hostel days, one ended up buying just one or two cigarettes at a time. The adda helped in checking out if you had missed out on a job ad and then you could rush in your application for it upon being advised by your friends. It also helped in preparing for interviews like what were the normal kind of questions that were being asked. Group discussions were common for the management trainee positions advertised by the better Cos. and you needed to know the skills of participating in an effective way. Those who had been to some of these group discussions helped with tips on how to approach these discussions. But generally wherever one reached the interview stage the question of an electronics engineer’s irrelevance to them came up. The question also was put in another way saying that by coming to work here, don’t you think you would be wasting the five years you spent learning electronics? Actually it was a dead-end question, there could be no answer to that. But who could tell them that one had got disenchanted with electronics within a few years at IIT. Moreover right now a job was very important to support oneself and also the family financially. Things went on like this.
The relationship with father had not improved. He was still in difficult financial straits and now he could needle mother more about how he had said that doing engineering was wasteful and if I had started on a job after school then I would be earning a good salary by now. At least on one thing he had been proved temporarily right. Mother had no answer but she kept telling him that the situation with everyone was the same and that it required time to get a good job. Father stayed away from me though once in a while he would ask me to go directly to Cos. and tap on their doors and just not wait for jobs to appear through ads in the papers. I did try to visit a few Cos. but the response was the same – 'What can we do with an electronics engineer?'
At that time there was a person he knew who had come to Calcutta working for State Bank of India who was from his native town, Kundapur. So he would pester me to go and talk to him about getting job opportunities. This person was a bachelor and stayed at the Komala Vilas hotel near Lake Market which was not too far from our house. So one Sunday morning found me with this person seeking ‘advice’ on how to get jobs. The person was actually quite surprised that my father had sent me to him because one had to wait for opportunities he said. He agreed that the job scene was also not too good with the economy not doing well. But he concluded that an IIT engineer should not worry about jobs and to give that message to my father and also to be a little more patient. I went back home with a spring in my step. This person later married one of my maternal cousins, Shanthi Mav’s middle daughter, and was posted back in Calcutta after that. He used to be a big cricket fan and preferred to watch matches on TV rather than go to the stadium. When TV came to Calcutta in 1972 or 1973 I do not remember exactly when, I was then working for ECIL – Electronics Corporation of India Ltd., who had opened up their office in Calcutta to sell the ECTV. Though I was in their Instruments Division I was friendly with the TV Division guys and they gave me a TV to take home during the cricket Test at Calcutta. Considering that we had, I think, DC supply at home I had got the TV set up at my cousin’s place, whose husband this person was, where the supply was AC and he was very happy with that. Being able to watch the match over the weekend made his day and my maternal cousin was happy that she could watch other programs while her newly-wed husband was away n the weekdays.
The group at our adda as it dwindled in the morning reflected how many of our friends had got jobs. The evening adda congregation was also becoming less with some of our friends getting jobs outside the city. But for some of us the cycle of scanning the papers for job ads, applying for them and then waiting anxiously for an interview call continued. I was one among them who was still waiting to get a job. The morning adda would be at one of our friend’s shop on Rashbehari Avenue. He had been a schoolmate and had also got into IIT with us but after two years he had to leave for health reasons. His father at that time retiring from a big multinational Co. involved in electrical lighting had got a retail dealership for their lighting products. Thus our friend sold tubelights and bulbs at his small hole-in-the-wall shop. His father had also started a home outfit to manufacture incandescent electric bulbs mostly zero watt bulbs and he was busy with that allowing our friend to look after the shop. This was good for us because we could all get together there. Sometimes when his father turned up at the shop we would all hurriedly disperse hiding our cigarettes. Mostly only three or four of us turned up in the mornings but I happened to be a regular since I lived close by and there was really nothing much to do at home. Being out also helped one escape from mother’s incessant talk about the necessity of finding a job.
Of Medical Emergencies & Doctors
As far as I was concerned there were two things of note that happened during this unemployment period of mine. One day when I went back home close to 1pm I found my mother almost collapsing from what she said stomach pain. I had no clue what to do but looking at mother’s condition I put her in a taxi took her to our family doctor, Dr Lily Pai. On the way to the doctor I could see that mother was in unbearable pain but she was trying to keep a brave face. When we reached Dr Pai’s home, the clinic and her home was at one and the same place, she examined mother. Seeing the pain and considering it was low down on the right side of her abdomen, she suspected appendicitis. A burst appendix would result in complications so she told me that the best thing was to consult a surgeon. She knew someone who was nearby and suggested that I take mother to him. Dr Pai’s clinic was on Rashbehari Avenue a bit further down towards Gariahat junction from my friend’s shop and the surgeon’s nursing home was about halfway to her clinic and nearby. Accordingly I took mother to the surgeon who also happened to be a South Indian, Tamilian – if I recall correctly, and Dr Pai had spoken ahead to tell him we were coming. We reached the nursing home and the surgeon examined her and said that it was a severe case of appendicitis and the earlier we operate it is better. I told him to go ahead and he said that he would schedule the operation in the afternoon at about 4.30pm and that I could come back then. In the meanwhile they would admit mother, look after her and get her ready for the operation. I had not informed father or my elder sister who was also residing in Calcutta after marriage. So I told mother about what the surgeon had said and that I would leave her now at the nursing home and come back at 4.30pm in time for the operation. I then called both father and my elder sister at their work place and told them what had happened and to come to the nursing home at the time of the operation and also bring money. The surgeon had said that the operation would cost about Rs. 1,500 and to bring Rs. 1,000 as advance at the time I was coming back. I then went home, freshened up, ate whatever mother had cooked and returned to the nursing home well in time. Because mother’s condition had worsened they had to prepone the operation so by the time I reached at 4pm, mother had already been wheeled into the operation theater. Thus I waited. Both father and my elder sister had not turned up. I could not figure out why. I continued to wait and it was getting to be about 6pm and it was darkening outside. The operation was going on. Then suddenly at about 6.15pm, I founnd the surgeon coming out in his OT dress, apron and all, with the face mask on , which he slipped aside while he was coming towards me. In his gloved hand he was carrying an elliptical container. He came to me and said, ‘Ah, you are here. There were some complications and I have had to remove your mother’s ovaries also. I hope it is OK with you. These are the ones here.’ And he pushed the container in his hand under my nose and I saw a conjoined, bloodstained berry sort of thing. It nauseated me immediately and the best thing I thought of getting out of the situation was to say – ‘Yes.’ The surgeon continued, ‘It will cost another Rs. 300. But your mother otherwise is fine and we will be moving her into a post-operative bed shortly. It will take her a couple of hours to come out of anesthesia and you may not be able to talk to her today. Just have a look after we move her to the bed and then come back at 10am in the morning, when you should be able to talk to her.’ I said, ‘Fine!’ He then went in again into the OT. After about an hour they wheeled mother out looking white as a sheet and completely unconscious.
My father and sister had come by that time. We all saw mother settled down in a ward and then made our way home. Mother became OK in a couple of weeks with the usual admonishments from the surgeon not to lift heavy weights or work too hard. But what I took away from that trip was an impression about the medical profession which lasts till this day. They are completely mercenary in aspects of money. The surgeon had no need to come out in his OT dress, face mask and gloves with the severed organs of my mother in his hand and tell me that that it had to be done and how much more it would cost. It could well have been done after the operation was over and he could have told me in the more soothing environs of his consultation room and I would have told him the same thing that I told him and that it was OK. There was no need for all this drama in front of the OT room. The point is that you had to take into account my mental condition for his dealing with me like that. I had casually gone home as I would have daily and confronted a medical emergency with my mother which led up to a surgical intervention becoming necessary and I had arrived back at the nursing home to find that since the condition of my mother had worsened the surgery had been preponed and then after more than an hour’s wait in front of the OT a white frocked and face-masked figure comes out and tells me something showing me some bloodstained organs of my mother! I was close to shock then! When mother was about to be released from the nursing home and I had gone to the surgeon after settling the bill, I told him exactly that and suggested that there could be other ways to tackle the situation. But then he explained to me that with other patients and their relatives unless they clarify these matters when they happened there is a lack of trust and sometimes unnecessary arguments are entered into. That is why for the larger lot of patients some of us have to accept behavior which may seem insensitive and inconsiderate. After that mother recovered and was back to her normal work routine in about six weeks time.
The other incident which occurred in passing was my first real infatuation. As I have mentioned we would get together at my friend’s shop on Rashbehari Avenue in the morning. I need also to mention here that our gang had expanded at the adda with some of the local guys from that area. This had happened in an indirect kind of way.
At our hostel in IIT, the RP Hall there were a number of Bengali students who had passed out of BGHS (Ballygunge Govt. High School) which was located quite close to our school, St. Lawrence. The BGHS were considered very good at studies and the Top 10 positions in the Higher Secondary Exam of the West Bengal Board were always hogged by BGHS or boys from the Hindu school. The Hindu School was in north Calcutta. We had become friends with these BGHS boys at the hostel. And we would find occasionally their school friends coming down for our IIT functions notably our Spring Festival. There were actually two such boys with whom some of us struck a chord and became close friends. Both these guys were studying in Presidency College. One of them also stayed near our friend’s shop on Rashbehari Avenue and he became a regular at our adda. With him he brought other friends who were local to that area and most of them were either studying to be doctors or were at Jadavpur University doing their engineering. Thus the group at our adda expanded.
The other BGHS guy used to rarely come for our Calcutta adda because he had been placed directly from the college with DCM in their Management Trainee program. At that time the Management Trainee programs of two Cos. were considered to be the pride of place. The first was ITC and the second was DCM. I was later to meet this friend of mine at Delhi in 1970 during my summer vacation training with Ahuja. He used to stay with some friends, all from the DCM Management Trainee program, in a portion of a house in Safdarjung Enclave. They had a party one Saturday night with liquor and playing cards to which their other friends from DCM had come. Among them was Shiv Nadar, later to start HCL, who was then Product Manager for Lord Jim shirts, which DCM had just then launched. Shiv Nadar was senior by a year to my friend and had already been moved around a couple of departments and had just been given charge of Lord Jim shirts, which also turned out to be a failure. Thus one could say that I had drunk at a private party and had played teen-patti through the night with the future Chairman Emeritus of HCL Ltd. At that time Shiv Nadar was a self-effacing, soft spoken Tamilian and conservative the way he played teen-patti but I was later to know that he preferred playing Bridge.
Thus back at Calcutta and at our adda as said the group had expanded. There were no jobs in sight yet for me. Four months had passed since we had left IIT. Almost everyone had got a job and I was one of the last. Things were also getting difficult at home with father always hammering away at every opportunity that there was really no benefit in doing all these high-fangled degrees. There were three interviews lined up in about a month. The first was at Blue Star, the air-conditioning Co., but in their Testing Divn. which was mainly mechanical engineering testing machines. I got through the written test and at the interview ran into the usual barricade of why should an electronics engineer come for a job that was essentially the domain of a mechanical engineer. I lost out there because I could not obviously tell them that my father was pestering me and that I was ready to do any kind of job. For all these three interviews another of my friends also from IIT but who had done the Special B Tech from our same batch kept me company. Special B Tech was the 3 year course that you did after B Sc (Hons.) to get the same degree of B Tech that we got after 5 years. Coming out after the Blue Star interview where my friend also had got rejected because of being an Electronics Engineer, we were talking about our disappointment at not getting a decent job even now.
The last two interviews had to get us employed, we hoped. My friend had lesser of a problem than me because his family was quite well off and he was the only son of one of the eminent cardiac surgeons in Calcutta then. To my friend also I could not clearly explain my problem. But we parted with us jokingly saying that we were meeting only for the interviews and informally agreeing that for the next interviews only one of us should go since then at least one of us would get the job. The next interview was with NELCO. My summer training with them did not help and I did not get the job, but my friend got the job. They also verbally told him that he had got selected. With that I told him that he should not come for the last interview which was with ECIL for the position of Asst. Sales Engineer at their Calcutta office. My friend was true to his word and did not come for the interview.
My interview with ECIL went off like a dream with their General Manager, an elderly man who had come from the Hyderabad head office, conducting it along with the manager of the local office. The interview went off well more because they were nice and not because I showed off any extra brilliance. They told me that they would let me know, which was the usual response. I went back home that day a bit dispirited but hoping against hope that I should get the job. During the interview they had told me that I could call the local manager in about a week to find out if I had been selected. There were no other interviews on the horizon for me after that. The week passed as usual with our adda routine. In the meanwhile at the adda I had got involved in something that I did not understand fully and did not really have the guts to pursue given my financial insecurity. This was related to the infatuation about a girl as I had mentioned earlier. In a ‘what-could-have-been’ scenario I daydreamed about the future while in the infatuation.
Of Mini-buses In Calcutta & The Passing Away Of A Close Friend
It was during these days that a very unfortunate thing happened. One of our classmates in school who had done his graduation from St. Xavier’s College and who was freelancing in business was snatched away by fate. Amitava Ganguly was the youngest in his family having lost his parents early. Even in school we knew that he did not have parents. He used to live very close to the school and was brought up by his brothers. He was a lean and fair fellow and built like a whip. That made him a very good fast bowler and he used to play for our school cricket team. He was also a jovial fellow to boot, every ready with that quick smile of his. We were happy to have caught up with him again after school. Whenever his work would allow him, he would turn up at our adda. His arrival automatically made the adda boisterous with his antics and his tendency to play the fool with everybody. He would come either in the mornings or in the evenings. That fateful day he had come in the morning. We had sat together, chatted. And then around 12.30pm we broke up and headed home. Amitava had to go somewhere that day and he stood on the tram stop at Deshapriya Park on the southern side. The trams then at this place used to ply on a central verge which was about six inches or so higher than the surface of the adjoining road. On either side of the central verge you had the up and down lanes for traffic. Just behind the tram stop was the bus stop on the pavement.
At that time to supplement the rickety bus service the Calcutta transport authorities had introduced mini-buses on many routes around the city. Essentially these were supposed to be point to point services and to provide for only seating passengers. But as is usual the mini-buses arrangement degenerated from the initial plan and they started taking in standing passengers. These were low height buses and anyone above 5ft. 6ins. would have to stand with his neck bent ensuring a crick in his neck by the time he reached the destination. The other thing was that the mini-buses started picking passengers at points midway on their route as long as there was space in the bus. Since the mini-buses were run by licenced private operators the revenue aspect was critical for them and thus the mini-bus ended up like the private bus service. The mini-buses were a menace in traffic since the drivers would drive rashly and many an accident had occurred. Particularly during times that were nearing office hours or peak office hours the mini-buses were like killers on the roads moving at will through traffic, competing with each other to get ahead and stopping suddenly, sometimes in the middle of the road with the ultimate objective of catching the maximum number of passengers to optimize their revenues. Things have not changed much in Calcutta even to this day with regard to mini-bus operations.
Thus that day Amitava was waiting on the tram stop when a mini-bus while passing another mini-bus that was standing at the Deshapriya Park bus-stop, mounted the verge and ran over Amitava. We were told that Amitava was looking in the other direction and completely unaware of the approaching mini-bus. The mini-bus went over the lower part of his body and he was killed instantly. The killer mini-bus did not stop and tried to escape from the accident scene but was caught by the police about a kilometer ahead. Amitava did not know what hit him. The autopsy indicated that after impact the rear wheels of the mini-bus went over the small of Amitava’s back, smashing his stomach and rupturing the spleen. I had reached home that day when I suddenly found my friend from the electrical shop coming in completely flustered and almost in a state of shock. I had left earlier and by the time my friend was closing shop closer to 1pm this accident had happened. We went immediately to Amitava’s house. He was lying on a bed with white sheets covering him with only the face exposed and with white rajnigandha flowers around the bed. His face was calm in repose almost ethereal as if he was in a deep sleep. It was a deep sleep from which our friend would never rise again. Thus we lost a great guy from among us cut off in the prime of life to rest in peace in the after-life which transition I doubt he would have foreseen in the short life that he lived in this world.
The One-sided Infatuation
The infatuation mentioned earlier happened with my spotting a girl going regularly past my friend's shop where we would meet for adda in the morning. She would go past the shop just after noon. She would be wearing at most times a cotton sari with a very broad band fr the border with a cloth bag draped on her left shoulder. Slim of build, fair, tall and with a slouching gait almost close to a limp, her oval face started attracting one almost irresistibly. After seeing her close to a couple of weeks, I found that she was teaching at a school just down the road. The school was a junior school and was housed in the ground floor of a two-storied house which belonged to one of our friends from ur adda who was also staying there on the first floor. At that time the school had only the morning session which would get over at noon and after that the girl on her way home would pass my friend's shop. More enquiries were conducted by me and we found out that she stayed somewhere near Gariahat. She could be the sister of one of our seniors at IIT from Azad Hall. She was known to one of our close friends from IIT whom my other friend’s suggested that I should approach so that I could get an introduction. Finally nothing of the kind happened and the whole matter ended when I got a job with Electronics Corporation of India Ltd. (ECIL) and had to leave for Hyderabad for training. The thing fell through because at that time I was without a job and the circumstances at home were not conducive enough for me to pursue a relationship. Moreover uppermost in my mind was that she was a Bengali while I was a Konkani and apart from being a fling the relationship, if at all it was to happen, would not move too far. So that was the end of it with my going off to Hyderabad temporarily.
The First Job
The job at ECIL was for an Asst. Sales & Service Engineer for the Eastern region based out of Calcutta at a princely salary of Rs. 605 per month. Beggars cannot be choosers and I had no alternative but to accept the job. There was to be a training for 6 weeks at the HQ Hyderabad after I joined at the Calcutta office. So one fine day in January 1972, I hopped onto the East Coast Express to go to Hyderabad, actually Secunderabad. I had never been to Hyderabad earlier and was not aware that Secunderabad was its twin city. The latter was its principal rail station where all the main trains would arrive and depart from, though to go to Hyderabad you could use the Nampalli station, which was smaller. People preferred to use the Secunderabad station and that is where I got down after being about 34 hours in the train from Calcutta.
As luck would have it my mother's younger brother who used to work for National Bank for Agricultural Reform & Development (NABARD) was posted there then and I went to their place to stay. This was the same maternal uncle for whose marriage we had gone to Mangalore from Calcutta when we were small and he was the one who had met us at Salem station leaving me wondering whether he would reach in time for the wedding. He had finally arrived for the wedding and now he was based at Hyderabad with two school-going sons in the age group of 8-10 years. Not only that, at that time he had his father and mother staying him, that is my maternal grandfather and grandmother. So I was joining the family so to speak. They had a largish accommodation on the first floor of a house in a locality called Basheerbagh. About three rooms if I recall correctly. My uncle's wife was not the complaining sort particularly if the person coming in was me since I was once again her favourite nephew from our side of the family. Otherwise it would have been difficult staying with him since with 6 persons already in the house I was going to be the 7th. I also got along well with the boys and we would playcricket sometimes in the alley in front of their house.
Our community and family was such that we always seemed to have one or the other person somewhere where we wanted. Not that it was required but one of my uncle's classmates from school was the General Manager of the Controls Division at ECIL then. My uncle was ever the enthusiastic one and he took me across to his classmate and introducing me as joining ECIL. This was on the first day before I had to report for duty. After a courtesy call and the assurance that I could come to him if I wanted anything we came away. Uncle left for his office and I went across to the Personnel Dept. for the joining formalities.
ECIL was a Govt. of India enterprise under the Dept. of Atomic Energy (DAE). The Electronics Division of Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) was spun off as a separate Co. to commercialise the product development done there and further invest in the import substitution of electronics components, equipment and systems that the country required. Thus the product profile was very extensive leading to the Co. being set up as Divisions to cater to each product area. Like we have mentioned Controls Division in which my uncle's classmate was GM, was responsible for developing the controls for our nuclear reactors and power plants. Though the Division did bid for contracts for the control packages of thermal power plants which were coming up across India in a big way, they were not competitive in price.
I was to join the Nuclear & Allied Instruments Division (NID) which used to manufacture a range of nuclear instruments ranging from radiation survey monitors, nuclear counting systems, industrial equipment like nuclear level gauges and ultrasonic flaw detectors, test & measuring instruments like oscilloscopes and then on to nuclear medical systems like thyroid scanners. Most of these systems initially were electronic valve based systems which the Electronics Division of BARC had supplied to various R&D labs across the country mostly in the government sector. Once ECIL was formed they were given the task of maintaining these valve based systems and progressively phase them out, replacing the equipment with systems using semiconductor based technology that ECIL had developed. Out of the expertise available in-house over time reduces like Storage Oscilloscopes and a range of Medical equipment was brought out like ECG machines including portable ones, Electroencephalographs (EEG), Electromyographs and Patient Monitoring Systems.
The other Divisions in the Co. were where the famous ECTV was being made, the Computers, the Microwave, the Servo Control, the Semiconductor, the Components and the Antennas Division. Being directly linked to the government through the parent Dept. Of Atomic Energy of BARC and now the Dept. of Science & Technology, ECIL got the contracts for import substitution and those of national importance. Like when the government much later wanted the Electronic Voting Machines to be made they went to Bharat Electronics Ltd. (BEL) and ECIL.
The facilities of ECIL were located in the suburbs of Hyderabad at a place called Cherlapalli. The place was better known as Moula Ali. The area was completely rocky strewn with large slabs of granite rocks of different shapes and sizes. There were other industries in the area and also a unit of the Nuclear Fuels Complex (NFC) of the DAE quite close to ECIL. There is a certain romance, a certain charm with your first job. Just like your first romance. My uncle and I had gone by his office car the first day t meet his classmate in the Controls Division. From the house at Basheerbagh we crossed the Tank Bund with the huge Husainsagar Lake on one side and cutting through Secunderabad went past the airport compound wall through some slum areas until we came to a more open road and reached Tarnaka. This was major junction of sorts and on the right at a short distance was the Centre for Cellular & Molecular Biology (CCMB) and further down would begin the campus of the Osmania University. On the left of the Tarnaka junction at a little distance was Bharat Forge, one of the country's largest forging Cos. after which the road would pass through some housing colonies and through Moula Ali reach the ECIL campus. We did not take that road but went straight where after a little while you would get the campus of Regional Research Labs (RRL). But we turned left before that and took a relatively deserted road, at that time, with few houses here and there and with the rocky outcrops starting. On the right of this road after a while the signboards of some industries could be seen and then it became rocky, barren and desolate for a couple of kilometers until the NFC unit came in sight with its main gate coming up. After that was a junction with a few buildings looking more like godowns and with some car repair shops and then up ahead on the left was the NFC Complex gate set off a bit from the road with a pillbox for security on one side. We passedand then the road turning left gave the first glimpse of the ECIL Corporate HQ on the right perched on a hilly rocky outcrop, a shimmering vision in white and glass. There was a road that led off to the right up the hill and onto the portico of the Corporate HQ. We avoided that and went further ahead passing on the left what looked like the State bus terminal and then took a right turn to reach the main gate of the ECIL manufacturing facilities. My uncle told the security whom we wanted to meet and after checking with uncle's classmate they issued us a gate pass. The main gate was a flat single storied building with a central access area that was divided by stainless steel barriers into 6 sections. One of them was for access of guests and we showed our gate pass and were allowed inside. Past the entrance you reached a central road on both sides of which were the manufacturing divisions, 2 storied structures of steel and glass. We returned right on the pavement of the central road and the first division was the Nuclear & Allied Instruments Division (NID), the Division which I would join. Then across a perpendicular road leading off from the central road was the Controls Division. The entrance to the Division was from the central road and it was adjoining NID. Passing through security at the entrance we were asked to go up to the first floor for my uncle's classmates cabin. It was the corner office on the first floor with a beautiful view of the ECIL campus and looking up to the white and glass corporate HQ on the hill. Very aspirational! I watched the meeting of 2 good friends and after a while I was introduced. He welcomed me to ECIL and asked me to get in touch with him whenever I wanted. That was a fine gesture but I never really needed to go to him during my stay at ECIL, though I met him after my initial 4 week training saying I was off to Calcutta to join work.
The other Divisions were on both sides of the central road with Antenna Systems opposite the Controls Division and next to it Components and behind it TV, set again on a perpendicular leading off from the central road. Next to the Components Division set off after a little space in between was the Main Canteen. This was where the lunch was served in staggered timings for all the Divisions. As you entered the factory from the main gate where uncle and I had cleared securityon the leftwas the Computer Division and opposite that slightly offset on a road leading off perpendicularly was the Microwave Division. The ECIL facility was a study in symmetry with the steel and glass 2-storied buildings set on both sides of the central road except for the main entrance and security offices single storied with the canteen on the opposite side of the main entrance also being single storied. There was enough space left inside the campus for new buildings to come up in the event of future expansion. Like when the Electronic Voting Machines (EVM) manufacture was given to ECIL in 1988 a separate Division was formed for it and it was housed in an extension of the by now defunct TV Division. At the end of the central road on the right past the Controls Division was a gate which provided access to the HQ Building and also to the outside road. I had rarely seen this gate open to vehicular traffic but people would pass regularly through the side of this gate on their way to the HQ Building and back to the Divisions.
The HQ Building as said earlier was concrete painted white and glass sitting on top of a small rise from the level of the approach road giving it the look of a vanilla icecream topping to a collection of misshapen granite grey rocks. It housed the offices of the CMD, the Director (Finance), Group GM, the Marketing Manager, the Personnel & Administration departments along with the Finance Dept. A new recruit was expected to report to the Personnel Dept. and after filling up some forms go across to his functional department, which in my case was Marketing. I had walked through the side gate and then across the open ground between the manufacturing facility and the Corporate HQ. My uncle had gone back after our meeting with his classmate at Controls Division had ended.
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