Vaishali Institute Research Bulletin 2

Author(s): G C Chaudhary
Publisher: Research Institute of Prakrit Jainology & Ahimsa Mujjaffarpur

Page 10

MY REMINISCENCES OF LATE DR. HIRALAL JAIN
C. P. SINHA It happened in July 1960. I joined Muzaffarpur Institute of Technology, Muzaffarpur as Assistant Professor of Civil Engineering, One evening, while walking on road, I luckily met my old good friend Dr. R. P. Poddar who had recently joined Prakrit Jain Institute, Vaishali as Lecturer in English. For want of proper accommodation at Vaishali, this institute was then functioning in a rented house in Club Road, Muzaffarpur. Since both of us were to reside in the same town and we very much relished each other's company, we decided to live together. We hired a building opposite the local Zila School and occupied the same since the first of August that year.
A common point with me and Dr. Poddar was that both of us were engaged in the teaching profession, though our subjects were different. We were then new to the job and felt very much enthusiastic and excited about the same. Very frequently we exchanged ideas and impressions of our work, institutions, colleagues and bosses. We would generally make critical review of every itern and would try to draw conclusions for our future help and, sometimes, also for the sake of fun. All sorts of topics came under the purview of our discussion and we seldom allowed even personal matters of others to escape our keen attention and critical comments. Of course, all this was done quite in confidence and with malice to none.
From what I had heard of the late Dr. Hiralal Jain, the then Director of the Prakrit Jaia. Institute. I had formed a particular image of his in my heart and mind. I thought, he was a profound scholar of Sanskrit and Prakrit, and as such might be speaking chaste Sanskritised Hindi. He was a Jain and a well known authority on Jainism and, therefore, I thought, he might be suffering from religious taboos and philosopher's tersity. He was a retired man having joined this post on contract basis after his superanuation; I felt, he might be a symbol of some spent up force, only talking a lot and not being able to do anything seriously. With this kind of variegated picture in my mind I had the extreme curiosity of having a darshan of the great man.
One fine morning I stepped into the office chamber of Dr. Jain along with Dr. Poddar. I found a fair complexioned spectacled man, dressed in western style, with a long forehead, partially bald head and thick moustache sitting in his chair inclined towards the table and reading some thick book very intently. On his attention having been drawn he raised his head and on my introduction to him, he