My first experiences

[Published in The TERI Times, October 1998]

I joined TERI on 8 March 1983. There was nothing to be ‘impressed’ about TERI when I first joined, except Dr Pachauri’s pleasing personality and Dr Dilip Ahuja’s simplicity. (Many people tried to emulate Dr Pachauri’s style of beard, thinking that his personality rested on it, like Samson, the legendary Bible character, whose strength was contained in his hair.)

The accommodation: Our office was a total of two rooms, a corridor and a TTO (toilet-turned office – something like an actor-turned politician!) at the India International Centre. There were 12 employees in all, including myself – The director, one Consultant, two Fellows, four RAs, one stenographer, a clerk, a driver, and I. The director (you know who), Dr Leena Srivastava, Dr Ranjan Bose and Prabhakar Thomas are still proud employees of TERI. While one room was used by the director as his office, the attached TTO was used by his secretary, Ms Anupam Chopra. Mr K.S. Subramanian, Consultant, and Dr Dilip Ahuja and Dr D Bhattacharya, Fellows, occupied the second room. The rest – the RAs and I – were accommodated in the corridor.

My first assignment: Typing out six copies of four reports (about 150–200 typed pages each) on a hired faulty typewriter was my first assignment! I had to struggle with the hard and unfriendly keys of the typewriter for those six copies. In the previous office, my job profile was to independently handle the subscription and distribution of two international journals, and here I was typing out reports throughout the day! I felt bad and wanted to return to my previous office.

The dream machine: One day Dr Dilip Ahuja (he is now at the GEF Secretariat, Washington, D.C.) told me that there was some kind of a machine called the Word Processor that had a keyboard and a screen and you could actually watch the alphabets as you typed. You could make corrections on the screen itself before taking the printouts and could also store the comments in the memory. Incredible, it seemed! “Is it true that there is a machine of that kind?” I asked him. “Yes, and you will get one of the same kind in the future”, he replied.

The first electric typewriter: The first electric typewriter that TERI bought was the Facit Electric Typewriter that had the facilities to use options like bold and centre and was imported from Sweden. The cost was an astonishing figure of Rs 51,000!

The first computer system: The first time I saw a computer was when TERI bought the Pragati system. With the availability of six monitors, only six people could work on it at one time.

This was after we moved from IIC to 90, Jor Bagh in August 1983. A few more people had joied TERI by then. Dr Ashok Gadgil was one of them. An expert on computers, Dr Gadgil was the one who negotiated the deal with the company, recommended the configuration, etc. And it was he who taught us how to log in, how to insert a diskette (the 8” ones), Wordstar and other applications. I still remember the day he told, “You can do anything to the computer and it will not break down. You can hit hard on the keyboard, you can give wrong commands, anything. So just don’t worry! But if you insert the diskette upside down in the drive, it may collapse.”

Confidential: Opportunity to view intimate affairs of couples visiting Lodi Gardens!

The farthest end of the IIC merged with the backside of Lodi Gardens. A secret rendezvous for couples who were unaware that their behind-the-bushes activities were no secret to us. IIC guards also had a nice time viewing the romatic scenes. One day Dr Pachauri opined, “Oh! You have got nice scenes to watch whenever you get bored!”