directory colors

[Gaurav Agarwal <csu97122 cse iitd ernet in>]

Good day,
        I was just not able to get my ls command show colors.I know that
if you do 'ls --colors' then it displays files in set colors but the thing
is that my departmental lab has a setting that allows normal ls commands
to list files in colors.
                        No, the departmental system did not set alias ls
for ls --color and so it did something different.I even tried copying
DIR_CLORS to .dir_colors in my home directory ,as mentioned in DIR_COLORS
but on doing source.login I got a host of messages giving command
undefined. 
          Is there anybody who can help me with that.Thanks in advance.
                                                   
               					Gaurav