What was going on when I was born?

An article on student loans in the Personal Finance section on May 20 gave incorrect information on the status of some student loans. Peace Corps volunteers can get deferrals for paying installments on National Direct Student Loans, and interest will not accrue, for up to three and a half years. They can get deferrals for paying installments on Guaranteed Students Loans for up to three and a half years, although interest will accrue during that time.

An article Thursday on members of the Sikh religion in the United States gave an incorrect estimate of the number of Sikhs in the New York area. Sikh representatives estimate the number at 15,000.

The Talk of LaSalle Street CHICAGO, June 10 - The business scene here has suddenly witnessed an explosion of unusual activity. In between the arrival of Rupert Murdoch at The Chicago Sun-Times in January and the continuing saga of the shaky Continental Illinois National Bank and Trust Company, a series of mergers, stock deals and extraordinary exchange trades have helped change the way Chicago thinks of itself. During the recession its status as the nation's ''second city'' was lost to Los Angeles as the Sun Belt and the suburbs continued to drain away population and resources. LaSalle Street, the Chicago equivalent of Wall Street, fell into the doldrums. Chicago's chief distinction - insular capital of the nation's industrial and agricultural heartland - became a dubious honor. 'Rust Bowl' and Commodities Regional companies, such as International Harvester, wobbled on the edge of insolvency. More plants were abandoned. The term ''rust bowl,'' meaning areas of industrial blight, entered the language. And Middle Western farmers, never having fully recovered since the 1980 limitation of grain shipments to the Russians, continued to cry about low commodity prices.

Bogdan Lis, the second-ranking official of the underground Solidarity trade union, has been captured and arrested, the Polish television announced tonight. In a terse announcement that gave neither the time, place nor circumstances of the 31-year-old Mr. Lis's arrest, the Government broadcast declared that the ''Gdansk security service'' had arrested Mr. Lis. A former shipyard mechanic, he has been in hiding since martial law was imposed in December 1981. The newscaster described Mr. Lis as one of the members of ''the so-called Temporary Coordinating Commission,'' a clandestine council composed of those former Solidarity leaders who, unlike Lech Walesa, have assumed responsibility for underground activities in defiance of orders banning the union.

The House of Representatives is expected to approve a bill Monday aimed at protecting manufacturers of semiconductor chips from piracy of their easily copied products. The bill, an effort to catch up with the fast pace of developments in high technology, establishes a novel form of government registration for the ''masks'' or stencils used to produce the tiny chips that are the brains of much of today's electronic equipment. Legislation approved by the Senate in May takes a different approach, allowing producers to copyright the masks. Both measures, however, would protect the manufacturers' rights for 10 years.

At a minute after midnight the other night at the Port Authority Bus Terminal in Manhattan, a Ridgewood, N.J., man was on his way home with two friends. He was mugged on an escalator. At 12:05 A.M., a man wearing a business suit stepped into a bathroom before catching a bus on a third-level platform. Two men attacked him, and stole his watch and his wallet.

MONDAY, JUNE 11, 1984 International A conference on monetary reform may be called in 1986 to realign the economic order among Western nations, similar to the Bretton Woods talks of 40 years ago, according to a senior Administration official at the economic summit meeting in London. (Page D1.) The summit meeting just ended had similarities and differences when compared with previous meetings. (D4.)

Early in his term, President Reagan abolished interdepartmental consultations for covert operations by the Central Intelligence Agency, a move that continues to influence the number and character of covert operations, according to former and present senior officials of the Administration. In interviews last week, the officials said the President abandoned the longstanding procedure in favor of discussions and decision-making by a small group of senior political and national security advisers. One result of the reorganization, some officials said, was a fivefold increase since the last year of the Carter Administration to over 50 continuing operations. The intent of this reorganization, the officials said, was to reduce the risk of unauthorized news disclosures. But according to knowledgeable officials, the result has been a steady expansion of covert actions by the C.I.A., a result in part of the organizational shift.

It has come to this: For the first time since 1978, and only the 13th time in 38 National Basketball Association championship series, there will be a seventh and deciding game. Pat Riley, the coach of the Los Angeles Lakers, said that it would be ''the ultimate game.'' The Lakers forced the final game because Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, their ageless center at 37 years old, scored a game-high 30 points today despite having been awakened during the night by a migraine, and because Byron Scott, their youngest player at 23, played what Abdul-Jabbar called ''the game of his life.'' Scott scored all of his 11 points in the second half to help the Lakers rally from an 11-point deficit.

Ivan Lendl won his first Grand Slam tennis tournament today, making a spectacular comeback in the French Open to defeat John McEnroe in a four-hour match that left 16,500 spectators dazzled and chanting the winner's name. The scores were 3-6, 2-6, 6-4, 7-5, 7-5. McEnroe raced to a two-set lead with his usual aggressive style, including a scorching serve, that seemed destined to turn the match into a rout. But when Lendl broke him in the sixth game of the third set, he also broke the tempestuous American's momentum. From there on, it was a sparkling, emotional endurance contest that seesawed until Lendl made the final break. McEnroe's last shot was a potentially easy volley that he tiredly knocked out of court. It seemed to symbolize the steady decay of his game. ''I saw hope as soon as I broke him,'' Lendl said of the crucial third set. ''I felt that once I could break him, I could do it again.'' A disconsolate McEnroe, who missed the chance to become the first American male to win here since 1955, said his game seemed to deteriorate as the match went on. He also said he had injured himself slightly when he fell in reaching for a shot. But he did not blame the injury for his defeat. ''I couldn't ask for any more chances,'' the 25-year-old left-hander said. It was his first loss of the year, after 42 victories. Lendl's remarkable victory complemented Martina Navratilova's singles triumph Saturday that completed her Slam - successive victories in the Wimbledon, United States, Australian and French championships. Today Miss Navratilova added another accomplishment by teaming with Pam Shriver to become the first women's doubles pair to win the Slam.

President Reagan repeated today that the Western allies were eager to renew nuclear arms negotiations and other talks with the Soviet Union, but he said there did not appear to be a consensus in Moscow on how to respond. A senior Reagan Administration official said that during the summit conference's long deliberations over East- West issues, Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau of Canada pressed particularly hard for the other six countries to do more to promote detente with Eastern Europe. ''The President took off his glasses,'' recalled the official, who was present, ''and said, 'Damn it, Pierre, what do you want me to do? We'll go sit with empty chairs to get those guys back to the table.' '' Speaking to reporters before leaving for Washington, Mr. Reagan went somewhat further than he has recently in discounting the possibility of improving relations with Moscow soon. ''We're so accustomed,'' Mr. Reagan said, ''to viewing the Soviets as engaged in various kinds of machinations and so forth, it's beginning to occur to some of us that maybe the silence is because they don't know what to say right now.''

With bombast, poetry and some Olympic-class hoopla, eight bottles of crystalline and not-so- crystalline water - the pride of eight cities - were gurgled, sniffed and slurped by a trio of judges here today in a Great North American Taste-Off. Amid oooohs, aaaahs, smacking lips and a moue or two, judges from Munich, London and Dallas rated the water samples for clarity, aroma, flavor and the wine taster's sixth sense of ''feel.'' They tried clear mountain water from New York. They tried Lake Michigan water from Chicago. They tried kitchen sink water from Toronto.