2.
Entering the Professional World After completing his masters, Joshi wanted to use the following one year to prepare for the competitive examination of UPSC. To join services was his cherished dream. C. D. Deshmukh, a person he admired a lot, was many things, but originally he was an ICS officer. During that year Joshi wanted to find a job as a lecturer; which would give him adequate salary and also enough time to study. He could continue to stay with his family in Mumbai so that he would not have to waste any time in managing the household. He also reckoned that even after his UPSC examination, by the time final appointment took place a year might elapse and it would be good to have some job in the interim. With all this in mind he had applied for the job as a lecturer at Bombay University. However a sudden turn of events made him go to Kolhapur to teach for one year. A new Commerce College was being started there at the initiative of Ratnappa Anna Kumbhar, a wellknown Congress leader from Kolhapur. Dr Bhalchandra Shankar Bhanage, a professor in Sydenham, was to be the first Principal. Dr Bhanage strongly urged Joshi, his former student, to take up a job in this new college. He even offered to pay a starting salary which Joshi would have otherwise got only after serving for three years in Bombay. Initially, Joshi was rather reluctant because the sheer idea of starting a Commerce College in a small town like Kolhapur appeared ridiculous to him. Seventy five years ago Kolhapur was pretty rural and unlikely to attract sufficient number of good students. However, Joshi ended up Entering the Professional World
Q
33
