KTWV Volume 13 Issue 8: Joy unlimited

There are many forms of joy. Family, friends, acquaintances, achievements, all create different sensations of joy.

When I received an email today to approve a comment which had been posted on our Kooler Talk blog, it was another feeling of joy, one which I had been waiting to experirnce for many years.

When I shifted from the web site version of Kooler Talk (Web Version) to a blog, I was looking for a suitable picture for the masthead of the blog.

Father and son, Princi Anil and son, Amit, sent me an ariel photograph of the college. They also gave me permission to use it as the masthead of this blog. Unfortunately, neither of them gave me the name of the photographer.

The joy I experienced when the photographer identified himself in the Comments was quite different to the joy I have experienced in other situations. A joy of relief so I could acknowledge him on the masthead, the joy of knowing how and when the photograph had been taken, and the joy of knowing hiw unique this photograph was, all added up to a great feeling of satisfaction. To top it all, it has been taken by a Stephanian!

"Dear Sir,

Great. True many of these photos were given to Dr Anil by me through Dr Tara Chand. These were one of the first of many pictures which I captured while I was in Air Force and had an opportunity to see the college from air. Another air effort was made much later to have video, as well as stills, to make a blowup and then present to college on its 125th foundation day celebration.

Well, I joined SSC in 1975 and went for M.Sc (Phy) after graduation. I was not in Res and was not part of either the volleyball team of Arvind or cricket team of Kirti.

New science block, Dr TC, Dr Swami, Dr Mathur, Dr Bhatia, Dr Garg and so on were my guides and engagement. Then I joined IAF to serve for 28 yrs and took voluntary release in 2008.

For some time I was Head (HR) with one corporate before I went to a Mgmt Institute as HOD (Mgmt). Now I am on the visiting faculty with few other MBA institutes apart from providing Counsultancy for Org Growth to companies

Looking forward for synergy with you.

Regards
Dr Gp. Capt ATUL JAIN
SSC (Phy) - 1976-81
e-mail - azadione (at) dataone.in
M-091-9013779006

He had given this photograph as one of many to the college through Dr. Tarachand..

Thank you Atul, a physics postgraduate from our college for capturing this and sharing it with the alumni through me.

And I acknowledge your contribution and hope you will share some more of your photographic talents about our alma mater with the readers of the blog, which is greatly obligated to you..

KTWV02-Issue 3: History of College

Hi Web Surfing Stephanians,

I received this letter last week:

From: vepaa (email address supplied)
Organization: Huron University USA in London
Date: Wed, 23 Oct 1996 13:45:34 +0
Subject: History of SSC

Dear Stephanian,

I wish to inform you that a compilation of College history entitled "Glimpses of St Stephen's College, Delhi" is now available on the St Stephen's page on the web or at the following address:

http://ase.tufts.edu/chemistry/kumar/ssc/html/sschis.html.

If you any remarks/observations, please email them to the undersigned at: email at site and pass on the info. to other Stephanians.

Regards,

ARVIND VEPA

I promptly visited the site and found a goldmine. I downloaded it, sent a thanks to Arvind and mentioned the KTWV.

Here was Arvind's reply:

From: vepaa
Organization: Huron University USA in London
Date: Thu, 24 Oct 1996 12:26:41 +0
Subject: 3 Cheers for Kooler Talk

Dear Mr Matthan,

Thank you for sending the Kooler Talk addresses. Hats off to you Sir, for maintaining the page. For Stephanians, the world will always remain a small place.

Regards,

ARVIND VEPA

Yes, to us Stephanians scatterred around the world, it is a small place. For then I received this letter,

Date: Fri, 25 Oct 1996 23:14:10 -0700
From: amitcv (email address supplied)
Subject: Hello

Hi Jacob,

My name is Amit Wilson and I passed out of SSC this year in May. In case you are wondering (though I wonder why you might wonder) about how and why and what and when.... I share my surname with Dr. Anil Wilson, Principal on leave of/from SSC, its because he is my father.

Forgive me if you find my letter a little(???) weird but I feel its in keeping with the kind of KTs I have been exposed to.

My e-mail is (supplied)

Try and drop me a few lines. I would love to hear from you. I was in Finland last year in June. I had come to attend the World Youth Assembly held held at Aland (the first "A" is supposed to have a little circle on top of it). I had a good time there though it was a little chilly considering it was the height of summer and the place was awfully empty compared to the kind of crowds I am used to.

Anyway, I'm doing my MBA at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore.

I believe that you send out copies of KT. I would be grateful if you could send me one too.

Thanks a lot. Sorry for babbling on.

Regards,

Amit Wilsom

I had to explain to Amit that the Web Version was a Web Version and that I had even stopped sending out the reminder notices since all of you are now dropping in regularly without any prompting.

Pity Amit did not know of our existence when he visited Finland!

I will not keep you this week any longer but suggest that you quickly hop over to the page maintained by Arvind and really relish it.

I will have more next week and Arvind's page will be a permanent link in the Contents list from the next issue onwards.

I would welcome any comments on the history (especially clarifications, etc.) as presented as you recall the characters mentioned therein. Many are waiting to hear from you through these issues of Kooler Talk (Web Version).

See you in a fortnight, take care

Jacob
Stephanian 1960-1963

KTWV01-Issue 6: Variety is spice

Hi Stephanians

(Sorry to Seventh Heaven readers also visiting here for some duplication),

Ad at the top

You may have noticed an ad at the top if you are using Netscape. It is part of a contract with a Portugese group that all my web pages will carry a rotating ad at the top. If it offends anyone or affects your access time or download time, please do let me know. I shall reconsider whether I keep it at the top of the Kooler Talk (Web Verson) page. (Ed: I have to try to earn some money sometime - I am not very successful at that task!)

Annoyance

Last issue I asked whether my annoying reminders should stop - I have a posting of just over a hundred messages to Stephnians. I received a total of 2 replies, one saying not to stop them and the other asking what was the URL-minder. Well this split the response 50/0/50 (undecided), so I am continuing my reminders. Any of you that wants out should let me know.

GOPIO

May I please direct you to the Global Organisation of People of Indian Origin (GOPIO). You can read the letter from Prof. Thomas Abraham from Columbia University in the Letters to the Editor on my main web page. Do take a break and visit it and the appropriate link.

SAJA

In keeping with the message about GOPIO, I thought I would share this tidbit about another Stephanian from Columbia.

Sreenath Sreenivasan, who is the active Stephanian in the Big Apple, is also an Assistant Professor at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. Along with a friend, he decided to form an informal organisation of South Asian Journalists, calling the organisation South Asian Journalists Association (SAAJA) (Ed: Sree, where does that extra A in the middle come from?).

Sreenath is reported, by Laviana Melwani (India-West) whose article "Brown-Skinned WASPS" was run in the 21st January 1996 issue of THE WEEK, as recalling that

"A few of us would see each other at press meets and say, we should get together. So we made a list - we thought there would be about 20 Indian journalists in New York. Actually, there are about 200."

As you would have read from earlier issues, Sree is also active in organising the Stephanian meets in New York. In fact just as I was writing this I received his "SSC new york newsletter". Truly amazing that there are 115 in that city and that as many as 45 attended the get-together. It seems to show the love and attachment we have for our alma mater.

Just for posterity I include the list of those which were mentioned by Sree in his newsletter.

Anil Kumar (eco'60, CFO of Population Communications Intl), Gaurav Laroia (chem'93, studying at NYU medical school); Brij Raj Singh (former professor who left in 1972, professor at Hostos College); Priya Ranjan (a.k.a. PRJ; eco'89; left in 1992, completing his eco PhD at Columbia Univ); the senior-most woman Stephanian: Padma Rao (eng'78, reporter with ADR German TV).
I feel we should all join in wishing him a great success in developing SAJA, as well as making the Stephanian group of North America, popular rallying points. From the Arctic wilderness, presently blazing in summer sunshine, I wish him the very best and thank him for having mentioned this fortnightly webletter.

Hey Sree, any other Stephanians among your SAJA group reading our Kooler Talk (Web Version)?

Other sites mentioned by Sree are:

Krishna Kumar (chem'91; Phd at Scripps) runs Global Alum Directory
Montek Singh - son of Prof. G .S. Bhatia (who, I think, was my Physics Lecturer in 1960-63); spent the first 21 years of his life on campus; did physics for a year; now computer science PhD at Columbia maintains Pix and Info from NY Events.

Rev. Jarvis/Luck

Going back to my college days, does anyone out there have any information about Rev. Jarvis. He was the Chaplain for the first two years of my time (till summer 1962). He was replaced by Rev. (David or Dennis) Luck in my last year. Rev. Luck was a "bigun" from Canada and did not like much noise in Mukarji Block after 10 pm. He did not have much luck (PJ - if you did not notice) in keeping the peace.

One night, around 2 am, he stormed into a lively bridge session and ripped the packs in half. He apologised the next evening to the group and the block for his lack of understanding and patience. I think he even replaced the packs. He knew if he continued his demonic show of brute strength, he would probably have got twice in return. Kundan Singh had warned him of the plots being hatched behind his back. Poor Kundan would probably have had to clean up the mess!

Stamps

Rev. Luck (I would be glad to know of his whereabouts) gave me my first Canadian Stamps and rekindled my childhood interest in that hobby. Now I am an active Stamp Dealer with a very good Finnish and Indian collection in which I trade using the web. So any of you having stamps to buy or sell, please do let me know. I have connections with over 250 reputed dealers worldwide. (Anyone know if the stamp of our college is around - I have many of St. Stephens Hospital.)

Yours in nostalgia

Jacob Matthan
Editor Kooler Talk (Web Version)