“If you have an ugly daughter send her to CMC, she will definitely find a husband!” This was a popular aphorism making rounds in 1978.
Perhaps this was a corollary of the seven wonders of Vellore, which were told to us ad nauseum:
1. River without water.
2. Fort without King.
3. Temple without diety.
4. Hill without trees.
5. Police without power.
6. Men without brains.
7. Women without beauty.
Now is it because the men are brainless that they fall for the women without beauty? The women in contrast have plenty of brains because it’s a popular belief that beauty and brains don’t go together. Everyone has heard the stereotyped ‘dumb blonde’. So using the reverse logic we have a ‘plain Jane with brains’.
Someone commented, “whoever coined these wonders obviously did not like Vellore.” But there can be no smoke without fire! There may be some truth in these wonders.
Yes it’s true the Palar river is mainly a dry river bed. There is even a hotel on it’s bank with the a wishfully worded name, ‘Hotel Riverview’. It was built at the end of our tenure in Vellore and at that time defined Vellore Luxe. The management is optimistic that there will be a perennial flow down the Palar in the future. Meanwhile the hotel provides it’s guests, rooms with the soothing sight of sand! Literally throwing sand into people’s eyes.
The Vellore fort is a 16th century fort built by the Vijayanagara Kings and it changed hands to the Bijapur Sultans, the Marathas, the Carnatic Nawabs and finally the British who controlled it till independence. Tipu Sultan’s family and the last king of Sri Lanka, Sri Vikrama Rajasinha were held as prisoners during British rule after which there have been no royal resident.
The temple without a deity refers to the Jalakanteshwarar temple in the fort. According to legend there used to be a giant ant-hill at the site of the temple and it was surrounded by stagnant water and at some stage someone placed a Shiva Lingam near the anthill maybe because of the resemblance of the ant hill to a Shiva Lingam and people began worshipping it. The fort was controlled by a Vijayanagara Chieftain named Chinna Bomi Nayaka who had a dream in which Shiva instructed him to build a temple there. So he demolished the ant-hill and built a temple around the site in 1550 AD. Since the Lingam was surrounded by water (Jalam in Tamil) the deity was called Jalakandeshwarar (Shiva residing in water).
During Muslim invasion and annexation of the fort, there were fears of desecration. So the main deity was removed away to the Jalakanda Vinayakar Temple in Sathuvacheri for safe keeping and the temple remained vacant for 400 years and there was no worship. The deity was smuggled back into the temple in 1981 and worship reinstated. So strictly speaking not true now but yes the deity has been in exile for 400 years.
The hills around Vellore are rocky and don’t have the necessary substrate for growth of trees. Even hospital lacks trees in contrast to the lush college campus, which took years to cultivate.
However those rocks were fuel to the imagination of students and a tall, barren hill overlooking the campus, crowned with a rock which had a resemblance to a toad at some angles, was christened as Toad Hill by the students. During my recent visit I noticed that the rock has got eroded and the resemblance now leaves a lot to imagination.
Perhaps the police are little wary of taking action against ‘CMC Doctors’ whenever they violate traffic rules. May be because they never know when they might require medical aid. So perhaps their kindness has been construed as toothlessness.
Men are famous for acting without thinking. Emotions, intoxicants, testosterones, love and lust has got a lot to do with this. Then you add youth to this heady cocktail and you will understand why men are perceived as brainless or think waist down. But true of all men and not necessarily the ones from Vellore.
Let me put this last wonder of Vellore in perspective using the microcosm of Christian Medical College. After all it was the institution which put Vellore on the world map otherwise Vellore would have remained an obscure village in the hinterlands of Tamil Nadu.
Anybody seeking admission in CMC, know they only stand a chance if they declare their love and acceptance of the Almighty, their deep desire to serve the suffering masses and their willingness to work in rural India. Then they must also look the part! For men its fairly simple, white shirt with black pants but for women it’s a little more complicated. So during the interviews trendy clothes, make up etc are out and the ‘Plain Jane’ or specifically ‘Plain Rural Jane’ look was the norm. Before the interview one of our classmates had recently got her hair permed into an Afro, never expecting to be called for the interview. However once she got the call she must have used a whole bottle of coconut oil to undo the ringlets and make two short pigtails. Also out went the contact lenses and on came a pair of the largest, thickest, horn-rimmed glasses. The Pavadai Daavanis, Langa Vonis, Langa Davanis or half saree were brought out of the mothballs and donned with aplomb. There were the occasional regular sarees and salwar kameez and I remember one maxi but that was only as adventurous as it got. The hair preferably was oiled and plaited and malligai poo or jasmine stringed in a chain adorned the oily plaits. And the look, of a people’s person, willing to dedicate their life to the mission was complete! So the more unattractive the better the chance of cracking the interview.
Was this the origin of the wonder, ‘women without beauty’?
There is nothing like an ugly woman, only a woman who doesn’t know how to look beautiful.
Even the organisers of Beauty Pageants confess that all you require to compete is height, the rest can be manufactured thanks to Dieticians, Plastic Surgeons and Orthodontists.
CMC is not famous for it’s style or sartorial taste. Bathroom slippers were an accepted form of footwear and if you wanted to be haute couture a la CMC you could buy MCR chappals from the Karigiri store. Boys wore the standard white shirt made by MIQ tailor. The shirt was a cross between a bush shirt and a lab coat. It had large pockets like a lab coat near the waist. The girls wore the mandatory starched cotton sarees, there were the occasional salwar kameez but then it had to be covered with a lab coat.
I think the students aped the teachers who were similarly attired. One of my classmates recently commented, “In CMC people believed in simple living and high thinking.”
So simple that one of my classmates mistook a professor of pathology for a lab attendant! The professor wore full white with the mandatory MCR slippers, which was also similar to the attire of the attendants. My classmate got shooed out of the pathology museum but he was still not convinced about the authority of the person, asked the professor, “who shall I say told me to leave the museum?” To which he was told, “tell anyone who asks Professor______ told you to leave the museum.” But the professor was large hearted and he forgave and forgot (maybe it happened to often for him to recall all the culprits, but I’ll give him the benefit of doubt). He was once spotted outside Verghs Canteen (Verghese Canteen but in it’s present avatar it’s has the more amorous moniker of Darling) sharing a chai and cigarette with my classmate.
The two notable changes which occurred the year we joined were a new Principal took over and the fees was hiked from ₹800/- to ₹3000/-, I believe it still remains the same after 39 odd years. The previous principal was liberal and didn’t mind the mixing of sexes, his successor was more straitlaced in these matters. So before we joined not only did every batch give the freshers a welcome party, the freshers gave return parties to all the batches. These parties gave the senior boys a chance to ‘gonad’ with the junior girls. The party games like ‘Shrinking Islands’, in which the couples were supposed to stand on a newspaper which was folded to a smaller and smaller size, promised close physical proximity (is that game still played?). The winners were the ones who could balance themselves on their toes of a single foot and embrace each other tightly for balance.
The parties ended with a disco, with loud music and muted lights. By this time pairing had occurred and dances like ‘the bumps’, where the couples were supposed to collide their hips with the beat of the music and of course the slow waltzes. The Cinderella time of 12 midnight was not rigidly enforced.
The new principal began by cutting down the number of parties so henceforth freshers did not have to give a return party. Then discos were banned and the Cinderella time was enforced. When seniors met him to allow some leeway in the discos and Cinderella time, he was adamant and even made a statement like, “After 12 mn passions rise!” He left a lot unsaid as to what else rose and why it could not rise before 12 mn. He had many acolyte and the women were told in their Hostel, “Girls are like cotton and boys are like fire. And you know what will happen once cotton meets fire!” Again leaving a lot unsaid.
The Community Orientation Programme was designed to prepare us for a life in rural India. It involved staying in a remote village, interacting with the villagers and teaching them healthier practices by example.
Our senior batch broke all records and in the 15 days stay in the village most of them got fixed! Or paired off. This statistic must have come to the notice of the new administration so in our Batch only the boys spent the night in the village while the girls were bused back to the safe confines of the Women’s Hostel. Safe from conflagration.
The boys made hay while the sun shined or in this case ‘set’. We discovered an isolated well and skinny-dipped in it with impunity until we spotted snakes swimming in the light of the day. That ended our night swims.
Life comes to a standstill in rural India after sunset and not much entertainment. One study did blame the population explosion to this factor, citing the example of Mexico when the population growth fell after introduction of popular soaps.
In any residential campus romance definitely prevails and sometimes results in the pairing of the most unlikely people.
Once a couple is paired or fixed, they become inseparable. They study together in the Student’s Association (SA) Hall or library, they eat together in the canteen. Except for sleeping in their respective hostels, they are constantly together.
Ours was a time of limited communication and there was just one phone in Men’s Hostel, under the staircase in a wooden booth next to the mess. The watchmen would answer the phone and in case anyone gets a call, he would stand on the drive, under the block where the person stays and shout “XYZ Saar! XYZ Saar!” This would be repeated until XYZ opens his door and peeks down and says, “Enna Watchman?”. To which he would get a reply, “Phone call Saar!”. Immediately others would burst out of their rooms and shout “De! De! XYZ, steady da!”
All this worked on probability, the chances your parents phoning you was almost zero. In those days having a phone in your house was a rarity and if your parents wished to make a call, they would have to go to the Central Telegraph Office, book a trunk call which was expensive. Only 3 minutes time was given and that was not long enough for you to descend from your room to the phone booth to answer. Instead the probability of it being from the other side of the road was high. The phone call was a public announcement that XYZ is now officially fixed and it’s his wife (as they were wrongly referred to) calling him to SA Hall.
Of course once in a while it was a false alarm, the female class representative calling the male class representative regarding some class matter.
There were designated ‘bushes’ in the Bagayam campus. The base of College Hill, Scudder quadrangle, the corridor in front of the old physics lab leading to the Chapel, the tennis courts, a quiet spot on Arni road, Bagayam oval to mention a few.
There used to be a small gate in front of Women’s Hostel which lead to college hill, now it’s been closed. Arni road is no longer desolate. It’s full of habitation. The tennis courts are used even in the nights now. So these no longer can be counted as bushes.
After intense study in the SA Hall, the fixed couples required an amorous interlude. Then the bushes came in handy. Each couple had their favourite bush and poondaxing or encroaching on other’s bush was not a done thing. In case another couple did poondax they could be sent away by a discreet cough. Once some tennis enthusiasts decided to have a night game. They went into the courts and either didn’t hear the coughs or ignored it and turned on the floodlights. The rest I leave to your imagination!
There used to be a coffee stand in front of the mess run by Swamidoss. Normally the non fixed who studied in their rooms would gather there for coffee and gas session at around 11:30 pm. The Bushmen would be seen walking to their rooms or some of them would join us for coffee. Once in a while a particularly cheeky Watchman would comment in Tamil, “I know why your looking so tired!” Confident because the Bushman didn’t understand Tamil.
Some of them came in pairs, sometimes as a result of chance meeting on the drive but in one of the cases the wives were very good friends and they even shared a bush.
This classically as what you can call ‘strange bedfellows’!
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