Kerala - Kozhikode   

NIT-C students show their creative side

Staff Reporter

CREATIVE OUTPOURING: G.R.C. Reddy, Director, National Institute of Technology, Calicut, with A.S. Sajith, staff editor, and A. Manu, student editor at a function to mark the release of `Breaking the Shackles,' the institute's magazine for 2006 , on Monday.

KOZHIKODE: Students of the National Institute of Technology, Calicut (NIT-C), have broken the shackles of academic regimen to unleash the creative mind inside them.

The institute's magazine for 2006, Breaking the Shackles, chronicles the story of Rajan, an alumnus of the then Regional Engineering College (REC), Kozhikode, which later became the NIT-C. Rajan going missing during the Emergency and the grief of his father, T.V. Eachara Varier, still shocks Malayalis.

Varier died when the magazine work had been progressing. The article on Rajan traces the events that led to his arrest, his subsequent "disappearance" and Varier's endless but futile search for him, and information collected from Bahavudeen, the then principal of the REC.

"The magazine is a journey through the mind of a revolutionary. It reveals his or her emotions and the thought process of a revolutionary, who, usually, swims against the tide.

Other articles in the magazine are also fascinating. Wanderlust is about gaining experience through travel, Badinage reveals the lighter side of life through humour, Billet-Doux speaks the language of love and Reminiscences is expression of nostalgia, says A. Manu, magazine editor and cultural secretary (literary) of the institute.

It is a labour of love that took nearly a year. "The students were very sincere in their work. It is a magazine with a difference," notes A.S. Sajith, staff editor and faculty of civil engineering.

Focussing on the development of the State, the magazine carries interviews by students with the who's who of Kerala politics: Oommen Chandy, when he was Chief Minister; Communist Party of India (Marxist) State secretary Pinarayi Vijayan; the Bharatiya Janata Party leader and former Union Minister of State for Railways O. Rajagopal; and G. Mohan Gopal, academic and former faculty of Law in the National University of Singapore.

What makes the magazine different are articles in Malayalam, English and Hindi. The institute, which has almost equal number of students from Kerala and elsewhere, can boast creative writing by students from the Hindi heartland.

"We have a mixed culture here. The magazine, we thought, should reflect the feelings of NIT-ians. One of the articles deals with Hermann Gundert. We went to Thalassery and were surprised to find that there were hardly anything that could be considered to be memorials of this great man," Manu recalls.

The magazine was launched at a function at the institute on Monday evening, in the presence of G.R.C. Reddy, NIT-C Director.

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