35.Back to Delhi for Viva and ‘mercy’ from colleague

Even though I submitted my PhD thesis in July 1981, my viva voce or PhD defence was delayed by more than an year. As usual, the reason was the delay in getting the evaluation reports from the examiners. My senior guide Prof.A.K.Mahalanabis had  left  I.I.T.Delhi  for an assignment in USA after making sure that the only remaining student of his, Sri.Goshai Das Ray, also  submitted  his thesis. In his absence, my junior guide, Dr.S.Prasad  was taking care of  the follow up after submission of the thesis. When I requested him to see why the oral examination is getting delayed, he told me that the report from the foreign examiner has  been received but the Indian examiner has not sent his report. It seems the examiner was a senior professor from I.I.T.Kanpur and  my guide  was  hesitant  to request him to send the report. I.I.T.Delhi  convocations are normally held in December and the chance of my getting my degree in 1981  convocation   had gone. Ultimately the reports were received in April 1982 and as both reports were favourable, date for defence was fixed.( Later when  I was  the Dean Academic   in N.I.T. Calicut, I  was face to face  with the nature of many the PhD examiners. Most of the examiners from outside the country, once they accept the work, will send the report within the stipulated time of three months. However, most of our Indian examiners will accept the examination work gladly, but will take indefinitely long time to send the report. In fact, once I had to go to the extent of reluctantly cancelling the examinership of a big man from Kerala government service who did not send the report even after 10 months and repeated reminders through email and phone. As the student  was badly  in need of her degree certificate to get a job  to support her family, the eavaluarion work was entrusted with another examiner and the girl got her degree within another three months.)

Anyway, as the date for my thesis defence was fixed early, I could reserve my tickets from Kozhikode to Delhi by the usual Jayanti Janata and was preparing for my oral examination. Then, all on a sudden, two senior colleagues from our department were asked to appear for an interview for an assignment abroad. As the information was received by  a telegram and due to  the  short notice, they could not get  reservation  for the train and as the travel  was more than 2 ½ days, it was not easy to travel without reservation. One of the seniors got into my compartment on the support of my reserved ticket and the other decided to try his luck in the general compartment, deciding to face whatever that comes on the way.  I was  expecting my senior to approach the train conductor and arrange for his reservation somehow, but  as soon as   the train started moving, my senior  got into my reserved upper berth and started sleeping spreading the  bed on it. I managed to sit along with others with their kind permission. My senior was kind enough to hand over his unreserved ticket with me and when the ticket examiner came up, I told him about his case. As   no vacant berth was available, he said ‘nothing doing, get out’, but on my persistent request he permitted us to be together. He said, “you can manage somehow till Vijayawada  where  new ticket examiner will be taking over. It is your luck whether he allows you to be here or not.” I was relieved that the first night in the train will be through without trouble. Once the conductor has gone, my colleague came down from the berth, had his dinner and went back to the berth to continue his sleep ignoring me who was supposed to defend my PhD thesis the next day after reaching Delhi. He was not even kind enough to ask me whether I want to take rest or not. I collected a few old newspapers from my fellow passengers, spread it on the floor and tried to catch a few winks before reaching Vijayawada in the early morning.

As the train crossed Tamil Nadu, slowly temperature was slowly falling down and sleeping unprotected on the floor was becoming increasingly difficult. We reached Vijayawada in the early morning as the matter was already informed to my senior, he could manage to convince the new train conductor in his mother tongue (my senior could speak in both Tamil and Telugu fluently). After the dialogue, my senior told me, “there is no problem, you can also stay in this compartment”.  The story was now like that of the old passenger  in the desert who gave a little place for the camel in his tent, from where ultimately the camel pushed out the poor old man out. On the second day also, I tried to sleep on the train floor in the biting cold in vain.

The train was scheduled to reach Delhi at 2PM, but it reached only at 5PM. My senior was planning to go to Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) where one of his friends is a member of faculty, but as we reached the  Shivalik hostel in IITD, the day was  slowly giving way to  night, he  said it is too late and as he does not have his phone  number, he will stay with me for the night, attend the interview and go to JNU after the interview. I had reserved a room for me in the hostel. We took our dinner in the hostel and proceeded to my room. Our hostel rooms have just a single tape-wound cot and as before he spread my bed on the cot and started sleeping. Once again, I managed to collect some card boards, spread it on the floor and tried to sleep. I thought at least I can sleep on the third night. But as I was about to dive into my sleep, there was a special sound like that of Boeing jet slowly approaching the Palam ( Indira Gandhi) airport for  landing. I opened my eyes and found that the sound was coming from the cot in my room. The sound reached a crescendo and then dropped down slowly. I thought it is over, and started to sleep again. But by the time sleep entered my eyes, the sound was coming again disturbing my sleep. This cycling continued till morning. In the  moving train, no one  noticed  this sound because of the rhythmic sound of the moving train.  My dear colleague had a beautiful sleep but never knew that poor me was spending my third night sleepless due to his  cyclic snoring. Remember the saying: “Those  who snore in sleep are  blessed , because  they are  not  aware of what they are  doing” to others  like me.  

Next day morning, my senior got up early, had a nice hot water bath and after a  comfortable  breakfast  in our mess, proceeded in full suite to the venue  of  the interview. The next I saw him was at REC  Calicut when I returned  after  my viva. He stayed with his friend in JNU for two days and made sure about his foreign job before returning to Calicut. He never bothered to ask me how was my defence as he was too busy otherwise.

 At least now, I could concentrate on my oral examination scheduled for the next day.  Met my supervisor   Dr Prasad  and discussed  the queries  from the examiners which was  not difficult to answer. However, it was interesting to note a seemingly contradictory comment on the work reported in a particular chapter of my thesis. In fact, at the time of writing my thesis, my senior guide was not very keen to include this in the thesis as it was not fully tuned with the central theme of the thesis. He said, even without this, I had done enough to secure a PhD. The theory developed in this chapter was not bad but its usefulness for real data processing was limited. Our illustrative results were on simulated data. The foreign examiner exactly pointed out this as he knew the usefulness of our work is in processing real data collected from seismic surveys. On the other hand, the Indian examiner was all praise on this work as the theoretical development was very sound and wished that other chapters could contain results like that. The professor from University of Purdue was an eminent researcher in real data processing   who knew the usefulness of our major contribution. On the other hand, the Indian examiner was a pure academician who was happy with the theoretical development. Such problems do occur for researchers who work in application of theory to practical situations as there can be divergent views on the same work. Anyway, I could complete my defence without much trouble.

Net result was I submitted my thesis in July 1981, got my degree in Jan 1983 as the convocation  scheduled to be held in Dec 1982 was  rescheduled  to Jan 1983 due some indisposition of the chief  guest fixed  for the occasion. On paper, it appeared that it took two years for  my PhD  evaluation, for  none  of my fault. Fortunately, by God’s grace, I could get my degree in time before the next selection for a higher post in our department.