Wonderful People

Met some wonderful people yesterday, a Sunday. In the morning, Uttamda was at our residence. Uttamda, one of my inspiration from childhood is more than a Vivekananda scholar. A great organizer, master of time management, he ran a series of article titled "What we can do" in our magazine named "Unmochan". They were truly gem and I wish they are made available to every young person. Great to see Uttamda after a long time who is now teaching Higher Secondary students at Chittaranjan Railway School. Uttamda asked when I am going to upload the ABVYM Annual Camp 2010 pics. It is not yet there in ABVYM website. A team from IITkgp that had three NSS officers, spent one afternoon there. Few pics are available here.

Next, rushed to CEC community hall at about 12:30 p.m. There was a one day program arranged by Vivekananda Study Circle which runs a weekly study circle at F-127, Institute Main Building every Tuesday from 6:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. and has taken up developmental work in a nearby tribal village, named Soladahar. Chiranjeev Maharaj from Deoghar centre of Ramakrishna Mission came along with Dipak Maharaj and others. Chiranjeev Maharaj came several times before and inspires this group a lot. There was reading from Vivekananda, Ramakrishna, song, Q & A, presentation of work carried out by study circle. It was great to see young study circle members doing work so sincerely where work is treated as worship.

As soon as this meet ended, arrived at Kalidas Auditorium at quarter to five. There was a TEDx event on "Ideas worth spreading". Announced in NSS bulletin board .. if we get some idea here for NSS, IIT Kharagpur to pursue. The event started at 3 p.m. and I missed nearly the entire first half. The speakers were talking in turn and taking Q&A from audience. Five lucky persons asking questions would get an opportunity to dine with the eminent speakers. This I highlight for some special reason. Our favourite in Signals & Systems class, Gopich.. was one of the lucky five. We congratulated him when his name was announced. He was quite surprised but I as an instructor of the class was not, having faced volley of questions from him, class after class :-) since January beginning. Gopi, are you listening?
 

Coming back to the TED event, it was great to hear Dr. P. Anandan of Microsoft, Srinivas Mohan, Visual Effects Director, our own student Manoj Mandelia who is turning innovation to start-up, Ashutosh & Swapnil duo of Tata Jagriti. While all spoke very well about the work they are doing, somehow I failed to connect with the theme of the conference "Ideas worth spreading". However, Srinivas Mohan briefly touched his life's journey, the struggle towards excellence for a  college drop out. It was truly inspiring. I was looking for his biography in the net. All I get his work but not him. The presentation by Swapnil & Ashutosh brought out what they wanted to tell about Jagriti Yatra in a very, very professional manner. It talked about outlay and not much about outcome. Probably, time was short and it needs some more time to see the outcome. All in all, it was nice to be with these set of wonderful people through out the day. I was honoured to be called by the organizers to hand over mementos to these distinguished speakers at the end of the function together with another professor. Pics of this Sunday and another wonderful Sunday in January, 2011 at my old place of work can be found here.

Here, I got the second referral of 2011, 'Senior Professor' during my introduction to the stage. This follows 'Active Blogger' of IEEE Techsym. While the first connect me to the older generation, the second one with the younger ones. Remember the dilemma in one Amul Advertizement : I am too old for something, too young for something else, but right for Amul Milk Chocolate. Till then let me cherish life, the delicious!

What a week!

What a week! After a tumultuous week that preceded before (undue stress at office, spilling it over to my family, forcing me to send a kind of SOS to my friends, batch-mates, seniors, ex-students that perhaps it is time to rethink about IITkgp) it was a great, great relief! And what a way to end, few hour back Su... gave me a ring. Our paper in a leading Elsi.. journal got accepted in full. The joy is all the more because this is the output of one of the two new research teams I started building up in two new areas after joining IITkgp. Now that the gestation period is over, this will give a shot in the arm of our speech group which was lagging little behind the biomedical group in terms of quality international journal publications.

But the turnaround was initiated by Vinayak and Chiranjeev Maharaj’s visit (previous post), subsequent reading of ‘Inspired Talks’ from abridged edition of Vivekananda’s complete works and inspirational replies/telephone call from friends. Also I got whole hearted support from my two senior colleagues with whom I shared the problems. I am very grateful to them. But for them it would have been much more miserable! I am sure more support would have come but I didn’t want to talk to others on a request to contain the issue and giving it time to resolve by itself. I believe that was the right thing to do in larger interest though mental duress was almost unbearable. Anyway, that is a matter of past and life always says – Move on.

Coming back to the week that it was -

(i) the classes went very well, covered lots of ground in theory as one student termed it ‘heavy duty’, the other spending more time on this subject in the daily schedule he mails to me; I will be on time to finish the syllabi.
(ii) played my small role in tech. tr. gr. of students and April workshop where one of our invention HSA will be showcased.
(iii) MO... signing and receipt of 1st year’s funding from a renowned physician who besides providing clinical facility, hospital trial is also funding our new three year long research project towards a new innovative product for a 50 percent ownership of the would be IP. It is a significant amount of funding and coming from a person (and not usual funding agencies) for a futuristic product shows the confidence he has on our team. We feel honoured and it is a great morale booster for us. The outcome of two sponsored projects we finished in a different area were also very highly rated by the two funding agencies - DST and ISRO.
(iv) received lot of accolades for whatever small work I did for big interdisciplinary IITkgp team looking into a multidimensional problem; the team leader who was not known to me even a month back (I was included in the team by another senior member of a different department. In that dept. I took some classes 3 years back which was received very well by the students) now places lot of confidence in me.
(v) my team members prepared two slides to give an overview of our group’s work in two areas for Adv.. VL.. Con... presentation which was termed ‘too good’ by any standard. Our involvement there is through a kind of invited project which too generated lot of confidence in our young team and faith in our work.
(vi) received royalty cheque, quite a significant amount of money :) from General Manager of a publishing house who few weeks back commented "I sincerely appreciate your dedication towards every single project you take up. Working with you has been a great honor and a learning experience in several ways" at the beginning of my new project with them. I would say, it is an honor and fulfilling experience for me to receive such comments from the leading most technical book publisher of the country.
(vii) had interaction with three different groups (two inside campus, one outside) on how are they working towards social upliftments and their need; had discussions with students who are not yet in any of them but are interested; also I was humbled to receive a telephone call from Chiranjeev Maharaj of Belur Math.

When I was thinking that there are seven wonder-ful reasons to feel great about the week that gone by, got the telephone call from Su.. this morning, the icing(for an academician) on the cake, the elsi… paper. As I end this post I recollect and try not to forget what Vinayak told as his favourite from Vivekananda - “Manifest your divinity (i.e. good qualities) and everything around will be harmoniously arranged for you.”

A rejoinder being added on 21st March, 2008 : Sa…, the PhD student of Biomedical group, rang at about 8:30 p.m. Visited ‘Author Centre’ of a Elsi.. journal having impact factor more than the one where our speech group’s work got accepted one week back. Our work is ‘Accepted with minor modification’. If it is a fight like this, to excel one another, great to be a part of that. Wish both the speech group and biomedical group scale newer heights!

An afternoon with Vinayak, our alumnus and Chiranjeev Maharaj

Vinayak (our alumnus from Mining Engg., MBA from IIM Kolkata, founder of Parivaar – http://www.parivaar.org/) as always, was soft spoken and spoke little. He narrated how he started Parivaar, an home for homeless, mostly girl children, the most vulnerable in our society (which we call civilized) from his private tution money in his IIM days with moral, physical and some financial support from fellow students, lots of them were ex-IITians. It was difficult days with no donation coming from anywhere. But he and his team had a resolve. And within 5 years their conviction percolated to the masses so that fund is no longer an issue. He is invited to open centre at various parts of the country e.g. IPL famous Deccan Chronicle is trying their best to have branch of Parivaar in Hyderabad. In Parivaar, every volunteer is called ‘sevabrati’. What is seva? Vinayak said that it is not crores of rupees you spend on others but more to do with a state of mind which should come to one when he meets another in the form of “What can I do for you?” Money etc. is secondary. If one has that feeling he is sevabrati and is a part of Parivaar. The most important ‘take home’ point for me from Vinayak’s talk was what he considers as his guiding light from Vivekananda – “Manifest your divinity and everything around will be harmoniously arranged for you.”

Swami Satyabodhanandaji (Chiranjeev Maharaj), true to his name was more incisive and didn’t believe in sugar coating what is satya –truth. That we have decided not to see, face, understand what is truth for our own convenience as ignorance is bliss. Truth may trouble us at least in the beginning. Truth asks us to get rid of our inertia. Truth asks us to sacrifice lower things for higher. What happens if we do not face Truth? We deceive ourselves, suffer, repent. What is Truth? Truth is that even today people in our neighbourhood die of hunger, kids do not get education, crores do not have medical facility. In any other civilized country if one is so poor, other would have rushed to offer food and cloth because it is a shame for that country when a person dies of hunger. We spend 50 lakhs – crores to buy a flat in Bangalore, a fraction of that could give 50 families some shelter. Does it ever come to our mind?

Maharaj narrated a story that can be linked to the hypocrisy we, the so called learned indulge in. A king once announced that whoever can teach him the art of making 'Jilipi' (a kind of sweet liked in Bengal) he will be offered half the kingdom and hands of his daughter. As it was being announced everywhere, the queen also heard it. Anxious, she called the king and asked if he knew the consequence of his announcement that half his kingdom will be gone etc. King was unperturbed and asked the queen not to worry. Queen said - Why should I not worry? King replied - It is because I won't learn however best one tries and thus the kingdom will be saved. The queen, surprised, asked - Why then do such stuff? The king said that it is to get some fun from monotony of life. We may feel perplexed to hear such a logic but isn't it also applicable to many of us? We have heard, read, discussed and debated many noble things, came across lives and teachings of great men but we have decided not to learn and reflect the same in our life. It is enough to consider this as an intellectual exercise and not to attach any more importance than that. Why then do we do such stuff? There you are! The king of the story in us! It gives us some sort of fun, kick. How much we hear the sufferings of our fellow men but we have decided not to feel perturbed as if we have no responsibility at all!

Maharaj was in IIT in his return journey from Amlashole, a place in West Midnapore district, 2 hour drive from IITkgp which recently became known for wrong reason – death due to poverty. Shabar tribes living in hills have no access to basic amenities of life – even food is not available everyday and thus they, even the little children have to fast. Education, healthcare are distant dreams. Maharaj, Vinayak and some volunteers are starting an initiative there.

Maharaj continued. Truth is that we are selfish. Truth is that spirituality, concept of God is very simple. We make it complex because we do not want to understand it. Who is spiritual? The one who thinks that what is his due is also due of others. Who is God? The one who thinks of only what is due of others and does not worry about his own due.

Spiritual theories are burdensome. Still if one tries to reason one can find there is one. Why do we love to tell IIT alumni is big and not small? Why we want to have more? More money, more property …? What is the limit? There is none. Why? Because we are infinite. How do we say that? Take a fish out of water, it wants to go back. The finite I in me wants to get back that infinite status and thus the insatiable desire to grow. Extending this logic, in ultimate analysis, there is no other self. It is me only. Till he is happy I cannot be happy and that is the Truth – however hard we try to hypnotize ourselves and forget our real nature. The thought of losing individuality frightens us. But don’t we experience it everyday? In deep sleep – can I identify whether I am an IIT student or a Caltech student or even so basic individual attributes like whether I am a male or female? Individuality and ego comes hand in hand. The one who pushes ‘I’ factor has a trouble within. How? Look at our body parts. The knee lets us know that it is there when it has a problem. Similarly the throat, heart, lungs etc. Till that time we hardly recognize that they are there. If we are doing fine and not creating trouble, our ego will be less and we will work in a quiet, diligent manner.

Maharaj highlighted few other issues like a beggar cannot be happy. And one need not beg in the street to prove that. He mentioned that he was told by a company top executive how a high salaried IIT grad once begged for a US position in his company and looked completely distressed simply because he was placed in India. He narrated one interesting SMS he received few days back. God was asked – What surprises you most in mankind? God answered – That first they lose health to get money and then they lose money to get health (There were few more lines which I couldn’t write in my running note) that is to say if the destination is 5 feet away we go 15 feet foward and then retreat 10 feet. Why not think of having a 5 feet course right in the first place? Same is true in our journey of life. Where do we want to reach? What is being sacrificed and at whose altar?

Maharaj said that the education is different from information gathering. It is development of character and an all round personality and this only gives a person the highest satisfaction in life. Maharaj read one paragraph from Vivekananda’s writing where he called a person traitor who does not think of his fellow men. He narrated how social awareness and social service is an integral part of some US universities and 15 students of one US university will be visiting India soon to work in underdeveloped area as a part of curricular program. He praised Islam as the most practical religion for the majority as most of us need to be forced to make a move. In Islam, one must share minimum 2.5 percent of his earnings with poor people who may be a distant relative in poverty or some neighbour etc. Maharaj though of Hindu faith practised Islam too, offering Namaz etc. once he found in his hostel (at Ramakrishna Mission, Belgharia) there are three Muslim boys. Maharaj requested people to give back to the society. Depending upon broadness of heart one should take care of at least parents, then relatives, local people, countrymen etc. in increasing order of capacity.

Maharaj expressed great hope and sees an important role of IITians in nation building exercise. He requested people to do something for others, even if it is little to start with and not merely think. He wanted the campus study circle (http://vsc.iitkgp.googlepages.com/) to be an initiative of the students where faculty members will come as a support and not the other way.

(Disclaimer : The above is as it appeared to me. Misconceptions, faults, if any, should be attributed to my own misunderstanding and not to Vinayak or Maharaj.)