Getting news that is
interesting is not the easiest of tasks. When this writer asked Sanjay Chadda ’81
if he had anything juicy to relate after the trip that he had made with Sandeep
Mehra ’82 to Sri Lanka, Sanjay replied that he could not relate any of the
juicy bits as wives also read SAM. So, you would appreciate that any
information of consequence has to be collected by yourself.
For the record, Sanjay Chadda
is on the way out from RITES, while Sandeep Mehra is posted in his place.
Sanjay is teaching Sandeep the ropes these days, not only of how to export
railway rolling stock, but also, we expect, how to have juicy times in Sri
Lanka and elsewhere.
Talking of juicy times,
J.L.Singh ’65 has probably had the time of his life after more than 4 months in
Jamaica. It is amazing the number of times he was asked about how juicy the
stay was. When told that his wife was with him in Jamaica, one of his
colleagues remarked, “You mean to say that you went to a banquet and took
packed lunch along.”
The Sam community in RITES
has grown significantly in the last year of the millenium. It is nineteen
strong at the time of writing (late November 99). Leading the pack is G Shankar
’59. He married off his son recently. Then there is CP Agarwal ’60 who is
heading the wives-away sub-club that the RITES’ Sams have formed. His wife is
away to the US as is the better half of J.L.Singh. S C Saxena ’63 is also a
member of the sub-club, his wife being at the not so far off Kuwait.
H R S Tyagi continues to be
DT while S C Saxena heads the marketing wing of RITES. Brahmanand ’63 is busy
exporting to all and sundry. YB Sharma ’64 heads the new division in RITES that
is designing rolling stock. Latest reports indicate that they are doing well
and should be on the way to getting some patents soon. Anil Madan ’66 is seen
more often on the streets of Bogota than Greater Kailash. Atul Sud ’69 went
through the trauma of a heart bypass earlier this year. Just shows that even if
you maintain yourself in a slim and trim condition, your heart can always get
the better of you. Of course, surgery appears to have done Atul a lot of good
and he is looking his normal self. Atul’s batchmate, H C Joshi, is looking
after the inspection office at Calcutta. Also in inspection but at Mumbai is a
new addition, KD Mainrai ’70.
‘71 batch has two
representatives, Sumit Sinha and Ghanshyam Swarup. ’73 also has two, V K Jain
and A K Kansal. The ubiquitous Ravi Kochak ’74 is working with Y B Sharma in
the design cell. Along with Sanjay Chadda and Sandeep Mehra, the 80s batches
have Anuj Prakash ’80, who is looking after ropeways.
The ending to the Newsletter
is not a happy one. It is with a deep sense of loss and sorrow that I report
the untimely passing away of Anil Kumar ’65. Anil joined RITES in April this
year and a week later suffered a massive heart attack. In the early hours of
the morning of 15th April ’99, he breathed his last. The sense of
personal loss was enormous, as I had not yet recovered from Jayant Sinha’s
numbing death two years back. Our batch, the ’65, has now lost 3 members, if
one includes R C Shekhar, who had joined as an SCA but left while we were at
Jamalpur itself.