There were only 20 engineering seats when Syed Kutub Alam cracked the Osmania University entrance test by securing the 7th position. His was the eighth batch of the civil engineering course offered by the university.
“For 16 districts of Telangana, there were only 20 seats. Competition was tough. But the faculty and the students were like one family. If I missed a class, my teacher would ask me for the reason with concern,” says Mr. Alam at his family home at Dabeerpura.
The firman for setting up Osmania was issued by Mir Osman Ali Khan on April 26, 1917 and Qutbe Alam was born five years later on March 22 and has seen it all. One of his teachers later became his father-in-law Abdus Samad Saudagar.
One of the images that Mr. Alam recalls vividly relates to a strike by students after a few students of the university were detained by the police for ticketless travel in 1940.
“The students assembled near the Arts College building and threw away their uniform of dark blue sherwani. We raised slogans and marched to Akbar Hydari’s house in Khairatabad (now the Nursing College). As we stood on the lawns and shouted slogans, he sent out tea and ice cream for us. And then, he declared one-month vacation for the varsity. The strike was over,” reminisces Mr. Alam with a laugh.
As the medium of instruction was Urdu, many students who studied in Nizam College found it tough to adapt to OU and dropped out. “Many of the professors were trained abroad and would learn the topic before they took the class and teach us in Urdu. Some of them would teach in English as well,” says Mr. Alam as he shows the bilingual degree granted to him in 1944. His wife Amina Samad graduated with a BA honours degree from Osmania University in 1948.
