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Charisma it is what sets some apart from the others. What is it that sets apart one institution from the rest? I had always wondered about this while I was a student of the Presidency College, Chennai, for five eventful years.
 It is not the stateliness of the edifice or the scale of the façade or the mere sprawl of the campus that set Presidency apart. That two of the four Nobel Laureates from India walked the corridors of this great institution is not its sole claim to fame. Great jurists, scientists, civil servants, academics and journalists were spawned in this college, which was the first institution of higher education to come up in Chennai. But so were they in Loyola and Christian.
I could not grasp the phenomenon of Presidency College though I roamed the vast Fyson Park for hours, sat spellbound in the big English Lecture Hall listening to Gen. Cariappa talk about patriotism, spent hours gazing at the marble statue of Mr Powell. Was it the time warp? The relentless winding of the four massive clocks that adorn the dome of the college? These clocks were testament to the glorious past but did not deny the present and were ready to absorb the onslaught of the future.
The quietude of heritage I could sense in the marble corridors of the English Department, with its period paintings and chandeliers, was something I had never experienced anywhere else. Each passing day as I entered the classroom, it was with a feeling of sheer joy. This was because there were no Dracos among the faculty and spoon-feeding was unheard of. It was an institution where Ladies and Gentlemen were taught by Ladies and Gentlemen. The crass considerations of careerism were replaced by a holistic concern for living itself. The college transformed boys into men.
An easy camaraderie characterised the kinship between the teacher and the taught. There were only friends, philosophers and guides, no masters. After all were we not the Princes of Presidency? Many had predicted the doom of Presidency College two decades ago. But to anybody who had gone through its portals such prophecies of doom were sheer poppycock. How can beauty die or truth perish?
It was indeed heart warming to learn from a learned survey of Indian colleges recently that Presidency is still in the vanguard and seems to have adapted to the changing needs of society. Coming back to the original question. What sets Presidency apart? I got the answer from a great alumnus who was my superior. Mr. Hari Bhairava
Moorthy.
Mr. Moorthy, at 50, was Divisional Manager of Southern Railway and had an awesome reputation for being an uncompromising task master. I reported to him as a divisional officer in charge of safety with trepidation and a sense of anything except safety. Mr.Moorthy, contrary to prevalent opinion, turned out to be an urbane and cultured person. During the conversation, Mr.Moorthy wanted to know which college I had been to and when he heard the answer, he replied: "I wanted my daughters to go to Presidency, but, you see, who wants education these days…just degrees will do…."
S Anantaraman
Next week: The history of Presidency College
(The author was a student of Presidency College between 1976 and 1981. He majored in English Language and Literature and was the University first ranker in B.A. He is a member of the 1982 batch of the Indian Railway Traffic
Service.)
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