Azeez Manzil

A bit of the background....
Abraham and Zachariah in the first year managed to find accommodation through Mr C Daniel who was instrumental in getting them admission in the college. It was not very satisfactory
Even in the second year there was no good arrangement. Peter P Jacob tried William Quan Judge Hostel run by the Theosophical Society. It was strictly vegetarian with restrictive rules. Some had tried the college hostel where the cuisine was very Mysorean. Towards the end of the year everybody wanted a Malayali mess. A distress appeal went out to Avarachen (Mr K J Abraham) a nephew of Mr K Matthan. It was through Avarachen that many of the Malayali students were getting admission because of the tremendous influence wielded by Mr K Matthan
He organised taking on rent the first floor of the building known as Azeez Manzil on Omar Sheriff Road, the road leading down from Krishna Rao Park to the East End road leading away from Lal Baugh second gate to Yediyur Bus Terminal
The building belonged to a retired member of Mysore Civil Service who had recently passed away. His widow, married daughters and other younger children were staying in the ground floor.It was a very spacious building and they were an affluent family
They agreed to let it out to accommodate men students only because of the reference to Mr K Matthan and Avarachen's assurance that he will be personally responsible for the good behaviour of the students
Avarachen organised a Malayali mess (Syrian Christian cuisine) and Azeez Manzil was functioning as a student hostel by the beginning of the third year and with the new comers added on there were more than a dozen students staying there and everyone of them was personally known to Avarachen
Initially the arrangement worked very well.However disagreements rose up and by the end of the academic year some of the inmates decided to find alternate accommodation
Thus there were a few vacancies in Azeez Manzil by the time G Korah, J E Kuriyan and myself joined the college in 1949 July and we gratefully accepted Avarachen's offer to let us stay in Azeez Manzil. All three of us were from Maharaja's College Ernakulam and we had no difficulty in agreeing to share the large room. Thus we became room mates and that camaraderie continued throughout our life.J E Kuriyan passed away in 1989 and G Korah passed away in 1994. The children also keep in touch as adopted family

More about life in Azeez Manzil later

The Beginning

I joined the college in 1949 July
It was when our first year session commenced that the college had all four year classes functioning. The very first batch which commenced in 1946-1947 academic year had reached the final year and the first set of engineers came out of BMS College of Engineering in 1950 April
In the first set of students there were only two with Malayalam as their mother tongue both hailing from the erstwhile Travancore State
One was K K Abraham who already had a B.Sc degree. The second person was K K Zachariah who attended the Alumni meet on 21st Nov 2009
K K Abraham retired from Vazir Sultan Tobacco Company in Hyderabad and settled down there. He passed away in 2005
The Malyali crowd was rather close knit initially
In the second batch there were:
Peter P Jacob
A Cheriyan
Kurien Mathew
K K George
T C Varghese
M M George
In the third batch there were:
M C Cherian
C T Thomas
Thomas Alexander
K E Mathew (Ranjit Kovoor)
P M Philipose
M I George
There was also Jacob John who though technically a Malayali was never in the Malayali crowd having grown up and been educated outside Kerala
In the fourth batch that is my batch there were:
G Korah
J E Kuriyan
Kurien George
and myself (A M Pulimood)

I do not claim this to be an exhaustive list
This is a list of persons with whom we have been in fairly close contact during the student days and may be for some time afterwards