My Personal Odyssey!

I was very touched by all the lovely messages and congratulations pouring in from everyone, so I decided to do something I have never done before. I wanted to share my personal journey and what shaped me become the person I am today.  

Growing up, my parents worked in two different cities. My dad worked in Mumbai, while I did most of my schooling in a town called Kakinada (in the state of Andhra Pradesh), which was back then a sleepy little town, where my mother was employed. When I was in 10^th grade, my parents decided to buy a house in a semi-rural area called Valasapakala, which was connected to the town of Kakinada through what could best be described as an extremely spotty means of transportation. While my parents’ decision may have been based on the tranquility and visions of a salubrious quality of life living among the rice fields of Valasapakala, life as it turned out had other plans. What followed was 3-4 years of extreme financial hardship for my family, which had unexpected effects on my life. 

 

In those days we had very limited career options if your family belonged to the struggling middle classes. You had to opt for a professional education. What that meant was two years of grinding and intense preparation through high school to get admission into an engineering school. In my case, given the number of science and engineering graduates in my extended family, the only option was to aspire for an engineering degree. I studied in an all-girls school through high school. Most of my classmates did not really have professional aspirations. However, my mother was an accomplished writer and a role model for many, so I never hesitated about aspiring to higher education. 

 

In my 11^th and 12^th classes my daily routine consisted of waking up early, practicing math problems, cycling to “maths” coaching class in a different town. The classes would start at 7 am, sometimes even 6 am. In those days, a popular option for commuting were “mopeds” -two wheelers that provided an alternative to spotty and almost non-existent public transportation.  My family could not afford the Rs. 5000 (less than 70 dollars, not adjusting for inflation and cost of living adjustments) to buy me a moped, nor the cost of petrol that would be needed. Some days I would have to cycle for a good 30 minutes at least to attend some coaching class or the other. Then I would cycle back home and eat a hurried breakfast before catching a privately operated bus that would take me to the junior college where I did my 11^th and 12^th. Some other days, I had a different set of coaching class. Those were the times in my life I walked half an hour to catch a bus, attend a coaching class, then walk another half an hour after the coaching class to catch another bus that would be take me to my junior college. 

 

I still remember with nostalgia the days I would board those private buses plying between dusty little hamlets and towns. The “Number 10” bus that would take me from home to college was perpetually in a state of repair. I must say the bus drivers and operators were extremely creative in how they would handle maintenance emergencies, changing wheels and tires by the roadside with consummate ease with the passengers still sitting inside. Early mornings it was commonplace to see women boarding with a fresh catch of fish that would be sold in the town market, and later in the days it would be farmworkers selling their produce in the “big market” in the town. It was not uncommon to see a squalling chicken or two. During the harvest season, the newly harvested paddy would be spread out on the roads, a creative and energy efficient alternative to threshing machines. 

 

Somehow in between the walks and bus rides and cycle routes, something changed in my life. I studied in a convent school till 10^th grade and hated how math was taught. Suddenly in junior college, math and science suddenly seemed wondrous and full of possibilities. I was always a precocious reader and read extensively, but I began to understand the joy of learning concepts and learnt to connect the dots. I started enjoying the thrill of solving math problems -the frustration when you almost grasp a concept but not quite, the magical moment of clarity when everything comes together, the pleasure of having completed a proof and the sense of a minor accomplishment, however fleeting. What was also different was that I was largely left to my own devices, given that I used to leave home very early and come back very late in the evening. I used to bunk classes and sit under some tree or the other in my junior college and attempt to solve problems. Having lots of unstructured time and being free from parental supervision and micromanaging helped hone my thinking, sharpened my focus and my reasoning. 

 

Somehow, I took it into my head that I would try to get into one of the IITs -an almost unthinkable pipedream, living where I was and the very meagre resources I could command. To crack the JEE to get into an IIT required two plus years of dedicated preparation. Most of the students, I should say 90-95% of those admitted into IITs, came from large metropolitan backgrounds where they attended dedicated coaching centers that trained them in the art of solving those arcane problems necessary to get through the dreaded JEE. The handful of folks who were not from big cities still came from large towns with coaching facilities. Besides, almost all those folks who got into IIT had one thing in common- their gender. IIT was an almost exclusively male bastion. IITs had less than 5% women in their classes. For boys in high school, it was common to have a peer group where everyone worked together in solving those JEE style problems. I was a young girl, living in a small village, working completely on my own. I had no tutors for JEE, no peer group, no one to compare notes on what I did correct or what I got wrong. All I had was an interest in solving problems and a strong sense that I needed to have some aspirations for myself. 

 

For generations of Indians, who either due to parental pressure or self-imposed masochism yearned to attend an IIT, the JEE was a rite of passage. I remember the time spent on log tables (calculators were not allowed in those dark ages), questions on projectiles and pulleys, calculating the rate of acceleration of blocks placed on other blocks and random problems on coin tosses (pun intended). I used to remember short cuts for complex multiplication and division and even remember having memorized some commonly used log tables for speedier calculations. Parts of it were fun, parts of it were sheer drudgery, but in my case, preparing for the JEE was a way to concentrate my energies into a pretty tangible goal, and one that would change the trajectory of my life.

 

Miraculously for me, everything worked out at the end of those high school years. I was a top ranker in my state in the engineering entrance and in my state board exams and did get admission to IIT. If I were a character in a movie, there would be an aria playing in C major by the time I finished my high school. I was one of the youngest kids from elementary through high school. I left home before I turned 17. In the decades hence, I traveled the world and have met with everyone from corporate leaders to media personalities. I took classes with a Nobel laurate and co-authored with academics who worked with Nobelists. While I have come far from the days of boarding the number 10 bus with thoughts of math problems swimming in my head, sometimes I look back and think that the naïve, but determined, 15 year old - who wanted to read everything and was undaunted by any knotty math problem – was and still is my most authentic self!