After all my sisters and brother got married, I married my cousin Dr. Mabel David  on 2^nd May 1951. Just after our marriage, I was transferred to Hijli, Kharagpur, to take up construction of the first Indian Institute of Technology, the foundation stone  of which was laid by our late Prime Minister, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru in 1952 and was also inaugurated by him in 1956.

I was very happy to take up such a prestigious project which also gave me the opportunity to  take lectures for the final year Civil Engineering students of the IIT in the theory and construction of high rise buildings. With the help of student labour, I was also able  to complete a Swimming Pool for the Institute.

Mabel as Institute Doctor on a salary of one rupee 

Mabel was appointed as the Institute Doctor on a token salary of Rupee one, but she enjoyed working there, as it was her first appointment. Our daughter Malathi was born on the 7^th September 1952 and son Suresh on the 25^th February 1954. During our stay there, I got a job for Balraj Uncle as Administrative Officer, IIT and both Balraj Uncle and Hepsy Aunty stayed with us till we left Kharagpur. 

Collapse of All Saints Church, Kharagpur

While at Hijli, we took a very active part in All Saints Church at Kharagpur where Mabel was the Organist and I was the Choir Master. We used to have choir practices on Friday evenings and on one such occasion in September 1954, we completed the choir practice at about 8 pm and returned home.

On the very next day at about 4 am, we had a hurried visit from our Church Secretary, Mr. Brewster who, crying and sobbing, informed us  that the Church  where he was baptized, confirmed and married, had collapsed. When asked what was the real damage to the church, he  said  he did not have the courage to go and see for himself, but as soon as he heard that the church had collapsed, he  decided to come over on his motorbike straight to our place which was about 4 miles away, to inform us about the collapse.

Mabel and I immediately got into our car and rushed to the church and what we saw was terrible. The church where we had the choir practice just about 8 hours ago was in complete ruin with the entire church roof except  over the altar and the pipe organ  having collapsed,  smashing all the furniture, pulpit, lectern etc.

I saw that the concrete roof had over 3 feet of lime concrete weather proofing over it instead of the standard 4 ½” thickness, as the Defence Ministry which was then maintaining the church had been adding lime concrete on to the roof every time they received complaints about roof leakage of the church. It so happened that the then Metropolitan of the Church of India, Pakistan and Ceylon, the Most Rev. Aurobindo Mukherjee was in USA attending the Lambeth Conference. I roughly worked out the cost of re-roofing the church by providing Asbestos sheeted roof  and estimated it as Rs. 1,40,000/-. We cabled the Metropolitan informing him about the damage to the church and that the cost of providing an Asbestos sheeted roof  would be about Rs. 1,40,000/-. We received an immediate response from him saying that he would provide 50% of the cost, that is Rs. 70,000/- and that we should find the rest. This became a big problem for the church as the members of the congregation had been using the church without even giving monthly subscriptions, since all their expenditure was being met by the Defence  Ministry. Now, with the Defence  Ministry deciding to hand over the management and maintenance of all churches to the respective Church Organisations after India received Independence, raising this amount of money was a gigantic problem for  the church. The then pastor Rev. Mitrakasi even went to the extent of saying that we may not rebuild the church as the Anglo-Indian Railway congregation at that time would  never be able to raise this large amount and we could build a small school instead. This brought an uproar from the congregation members who decided to  lodge a strong protest  with the Metropolitan about the highly irresponsible behaviour of the pastor when the whole congregation was in sorrow.

Fund-raising effort to rebuild the church:
Garden Fete with 24 stalls

The entire congregation, with full faith that God would provide the necessary  funds, set up a Fund-raising committee including Mabel and me as members along with others. I was made the Treasurer of this committee. We all worked very  hard and decided to have a Garden Fete, which the church never had before, by involving not only the Railway Officers and staff at Kharagpur but all the Railway staff  in  the nearby Railway Zones. We had 24 stalls for games, Fast Food, Embroidery, Needlework, Lucky Dip, Jumble Sale and a stall for New and “almost-new”garments.

Raffle with a white pig as the first prize

The most innovative item at the fete was the raffle with a white pig as the first prize. The ladies dressed up the white pig so beautifully with a nice jewel necklace, red  bow on its tail and decorations all over. A Hamper filled with expensive drinks, cakes, delicious fruits, canned goods etc was the second prize. Turkey, Guinea fowl, Geese, Ducks  and Partridges were given away as the other prizes. Raffle tickets were printed and sent to all  the Railway zonal centres.

Tremendous response

You cannot imagine the tremendous response that we had, as almost all the tickets that we printed were fully sold out. The hamper was decorated, looking as beautiful as ever. The Garden Fete was very well attended, with jostling crowds taking part. The white pig and the hamper created such a sensation that people were rushing forward to buy tickets till the end, necessitating postponement of the time of  draw of the lucky tickets.

The proceeds from the Garden Fete far exceeded all our expectations as we were blessed with a large sum of  Rs. 6.50 lakhs. We  praised and thanked God for this bountiful response as we all realized that without His hand in this, it could never have happened.

Student workforce

Now that we had Rs. 6.50 lakhs with us, we decided to have a concrete roof instead of an asbestos sheeted roof  with beautiful interior decoration with plaster of Paris ceiling and aesthetic mouldings. Our immediate task was to clear the inside of the church of the large collection of  debris and mulba that fell from the collapsed roof and the smashed pieces of furniture. I therefore went over to the Director, IIT and requested him to permit the students to help us to clear the debris. He was kind enough to give the students two days holiday to volunteer their services to do the needful. The students really worked hard those two days by forming a human chain and passing on bucketsful of debris to the outside of the church. 

The clearance was completed and the construction of the church building was then taken up and completed in about 4 months time. New furniture was also purchased to replace the broken ones. The total expenditure on construction and furniture worked out to  Rs. 5.00 lakhs, so we were able to build up a core fund of Rs. 1.50 lakhs for future development and maintenance of the church.

The Metropolitan took a serious view of the complaint received from the Kharagpur Parish against the pastor and set up a Commission to go into the complaint, conduct an inquiry and report back to him. The Commission came to the conclusion that the complaint was genuine and fully supported by facts and that pastor Mitrakasi was found guilty of misconduct. The Metropolitan accepted the recommendations of the Commission and passed an order de-robing pastor Mitrakasi.

Re-dedication of the church

After the Restoration work was fully completed, we had a Re-dedication Service of the Church.  This was presided over by the Metropolitan who praised the congregation for their wonderful and dedicated work in raising the desired funds and restoring the beauty of the church in such a short time. Mabel played the pipe organ at that service. The Metropolitan was gracious enough to present me a beautiful and costly Hamilton watch in front of the whole congregation for the services rendered by me. I thanked him profusely for this kind gesture on his part and for extending  his full cooperation throughout and for his financial support towards the restoration of the church.

Back in Delhi

On completion of the IIT work, I was posted back to Delhi as Superintending Engineer, Delhi Circle in charge of  Repairs and Maintenance of all Government buildings at Delhi including  Rashtrapathi Bhavan and Parliament House. Mabel worked as  Medical Officer for the Air Force Unit and we were allotted quarters within the Air Force camp. During our stay in Delhi, Kamali was born on the 5^th June 1956.

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