Remembering Tanuja Nautiyal (As in Aug 2025)

Other Journaling Days

"Who was she?"
She was the Chemistry teacher during my first year at Northern India Engineering College (later renamed to Akhilesh Das Gupta Institute of Technology and Management).
Later she headed the Discipline Committee at the college.
Further later, she was made the Examination Cell Incharge.

"How did I caught her eye?"
I think I was highest ranking student in my class who joined NIEC. That's how I caught her eye at first for the good reason and that was the last good reason.

As I sit down here today, I am feeling everything I tell myself about Tanuja Nautiyal is because of stories I tell myself, impressions I formed, feelings I felt. Not because I have an incident to quote to you that proves anything here.

From third semester onwards, when I felt I was unnecessarily getting pulled into mess with young and female teachers, I always thought that I know I am not wrong and that Tanuja Nautiyal has my back.

When I felt I was being followed around in public transportation services (the bus service I used to take was Delhi Metro Bus service running between Mayur Vihar and Shastri Park), at the same time there were teachers who used to look at me with suspicious looking (thought provoking) eyes like Priti Verma Dhaka, Garima Sethi or the Swarnlata (who taught us "Software Engineering" briefly for about 2 weeks in fourth semester I think), I used to tell myself how does it matter, what can they do, am I not safe? I used to tell myself that let it be, if you would go and tell them to stop, they would not stop anyway. It was something outside of my control. All I had was trust in Tanuja Nautiyal (heading Discipline Committee) that she would make things right once what-this-was-an-investigation-surveillance-or-what ends after they know enough about.

The truth is that enough never came.

Lessons I learnt from my experiences with Tanuja Nautiyal are:

1. Never lay too much / unreasonable amount of trust in anyone

2. A little bit of Discipline in life does not have to hurt, it would rather help you. It helps you exert some control over situations (though outcomes are still out of control).

3. Ethics and Integrity are important.