Jamshedpur: The two-day NIT Jamshedpur alumni meet, which had some 165 former students mainly from the 1965, 1975 and 1989 batches, ended with much laughter and a catch in the throat.

The memory of Malli Mastan Babu, NIT old boy and ace mountaineer, who lost his life during an expedition to Mount Andes in South America on March 24, 2015, got fresh life during the get-together.

Four scholarships worth Rs 25,000 each were given to students who excelled in sports in Babu's memory.

They were bagged by metallurgy student Nilesh Kumar for chess and third-year civil engineering student Rishabh Chandra, second-year electronics and communication engineering student Riya Mehta and K. Monika for athletics. Malli Mastan is best known for his 2006 world record feat of climbing each of the continent's highest peaks in the shortest span of time at that point - a total of 172 days.

Chittaranjan Sahay from the 1962 batch, who's now a professor with University of Hartford in Connecticut, USA, gave away the Chittaranjan and Saraswati Sahay scholarship of Rs 20,000 to first-year computer science student Shantanu Kumar for his JEE score. As Sahay couldn't make it to the meet, his batchmate P.S. Jaiswal gave away the scholarship.

"It was two days of learning and fun with our seniors," said Abhishek Jha, secretary of NIT Industrial and Alumni Relations.

On Sunday, the former students interacted with current students on career options followed by a visit to Jubilee Park and Tata Steel Zoological Park. "Attending the alumni meet was like getting young again," said Sandeep Mishra, an industrialist in Jamshedpur.

Around 122 saplings were also planted on the campus, supported by Jusco.