On Sunday, R.K. Singh felt 82 years young.

Back on campus, the alumnus of 1960 batch of BTech (mining engineering) of IIT(ISM), then Indian Institute of Mining, had a blissful time with batchmates D.V. Pichamuthu, J.S. Chawla, Harikirat Singh, K.L. Das and others.

The occasion was the alumni reunion, Basant 2020, during which more than 500 alumni of various batches met up, visited hostels, canteens, playgrounds, labs and classes together, and participated in the general body meeting of the IIT(ISM) Alumni Association.

While 20 alumni were from the 1960 batch, 40 others were a decade younger. The rest were from more recent batches.

“In our time, there were different messes (canteens) for students of different states,” Singh, who retired as director of mines in 1995 in united Bihar, said. “And we were only 400 students. Now I hear the number has gone up to 5,000.”

Biplab Mukherjee, a 1970 batch alumnus who did his BTech in applied geology, had been the deputy director general of the Geological Survey of India. “I am happy my college is upgraded to an IIT,” he said. Raj Jhajharia, from the class of 1975, petroleum engineering, flew in from Bahrain. “We are delighted with the progress in research,” he beamed.