Article on Sankalp in the ISU Daily

I have just reproduced the article that was printed in our local newspaper today. Yes it carried a big picture with me in the center too. It is too well composed for me to do any kind of editing!

Sankalp: working toward a more progressive India

By Ryne Dittmer — Daily Staff Writer | Tuesday, February 24, 2009 9:27 AM CST

On any given Friday night, a group of 20 or more students gathers in Sweeney Hall. They gather to talk, laugh and work toward building a progressive India.

Sankalp, meaning “determination” in Hindi, is a volunteer-based organization providing financial and logistical support for projects set on improving the basis of life in India. What began in 1995 as the India Literacy Focus Group has expanded to promote worldwide causes raising more than $20,000 each year.

“We engage in funding activities with money we raise for socioeconomic projects back in India,” said Prem Ramesh, president of Sankalp and graduate student in electrical and computer engineering. “One of Sankalp’s main goals is to support and empower the illiterate and the poor and give them an opportunity to effect positive changes in their life.”

A core group of 50 volunteers work at ISU football games, sell hand-crafted items and host other events throughout the year to raise funds. Daawat, a dinner held each spring that focuses on a single project to support, is one event all members greatly anticipate. This spring’s dinner is scheduled for April 5.

Annually, two to three projects are supported by Sankalp’s funds. Numerous requests for funds are presented each year, but to be selected, a project undergoes a multistep process — one that can sometimes become heated as group members are directly impacting the areas in which their families live. Organizations in India contact Sankalp primarily through its Web site. As word of mouth spreads, Sankalp’s requests become more frequent.

Currently under deliberation is the “Backyard Poultry Farming” project. Centered in Angul in the Orissa state of India, the initiative is to give poor families a second source of income beyond agriculture. Specifically targeted by the project are nine villages with an estimated 6,000 people. One hundred women in the nine villages in the region would each be given 100 chicken hatchlings with hopes that they can sell them to generate a steady income. This area averages a total of $375 for annual income.

“Initially they create small groups and educate them. After the project, [we] do a survey to assess the socioeconomic conditions and see the impact of project after implemented.” said Bharath Karthik, project coordinator for the club and graduate student in electrical and computer engineering, describing the implementation.

After looking over the project description, members of the group debate its effectiveness. Some question the total of funds requested and others the reliability of this organization. A list of questions is collected and before a final decision is made, the “Backyard Poultry Farming” group must present full answers. Past projects have been successful and continually monitored by families of Sankalp participants who still live in India. These check-ups reassure the group that its funds are being used productively.

“Sankalp believes that literacy is a part of the overall development, but cannot be tackled in isolation,” Ramesh said. “Satisfying the basic food and drinking water requirements is a primary prerequisite to education, and until these demands have been satisfied, there will be no real development.”

With so many areas of development to be addressed, one project is not enough to create significant change, but Sankalp is not alone in its efforts. Across the Midwest, similar student groups are striving toward the same goals. Organizations on the campuses of Ohio State University and University of California at Berkley all raise funds for sustainable projects in India.

Pushing for a progressive India is the goal of the organization, and its members believe it is an achievable goal.

“I believe that progress has to happen at the level of the rural, urban poor. For that to happen, first we need to address the issues of basic survival. India today has the dubious dual distinction of being one of the fastest growing economies in the world, while still having one of the largest percentage of people living below poverty line,” said Misha Rajaram, vice president of the club and graduate in statistics. “As citizens who are on the other side of that line, giving back will definitely help bridge that gap.”

Funding a project:

First contact: basic information of proposal, Sankalp members decide if it fits within their organization’s goals

Second contact: A more descriptive proposal, including statistical information of the regions and population, along with how the project will be implemented in long- and short-term goals

Evaluation: follows up a selected project to view the success

Exploits on snow ...

The Iowan winter gives me an opportunity to learn various snow and ice-related activities. They are obviously exotic experiences for a guy like me who has spent most of his life amongst the tropics. Here's the list of things I learnt recently, ice skating, snow-shoeing and most recently snow boarding.

I went with Pavan, Jeni, Shivani and Adwait to ice-skate in the ISU ice-arena. Well it was a comedy of errors. None of us knew to skate (except Pavan who had done it just once before). We just wore the blades and stepped on the ice holding the railings at the side trying to walk on ice rather than skate. After about half an hour Pavan left the rails and boldly went to the middle. He could stand without support and he soon persuaded Shivani to come along as well. I followed suit only to start my series of falls. However after the first fall I was not afraid to fall and I kept trying. A chinese man kept guiding me and soon I was skating. After about 1.5 hours I could skate the perimeter of the arena, falling once per cycle. I did manage to give some very spectacular falls and leave blood trails on the ice. I wasn't hurt much and I didn't care! Most of times I fell when I came near my group. Most probably, it was because of my consciousness to show them that I had picked it up :P. All of us skated for 4 hours. It was really good fun. Especially when we tried to take some pictures. I was obviously scared to take my camera and go to the middle. No kidding, my camera is expensive and fragile! None the less we managed it. I had learnt something new and I loved it. Probably, I need 4 more hours and I should be just fine. So here's an invitation to all you guys, I am ready to go ice-skating again, make a plan and count me in!

For snow-shoeing, I had been to King's Peak, Utah. It was really a huge experience for me. I guess, by now I can safely say that I have hiked quite a bit. But this was HUGE. To set the premise, we were carrying 20 kg bag-packs, and lugging 20 kg toy-sledges carrying equipment, food and other rations. We had to plough through snow which at most places atleast knee-deep. We started at 6000 feet and were to reach 13500 feet and back in five days. Well the temperature was never above -30 F. In fact the first night at the base it was -50 F on the thermometer. Kings is not easy to reach in winter as one has to walk around two mountains and walk up the ridge from the south-western side. Obviously, it was no mean feet. And none-the-less my companions were seasoned atheletes or mountaineers. I was actually nervous to be frank. It seemed beyond me, but I guess that was the reckoning. Besides, if I missed this opportunity, there would be a very slim chance that I would be able to do something remotely similar to this ever in my life, and that would be a pity.

However, I did quite well, often leading the group. It's the most difficult thing to do, because the people behind the leader have a trail to walk through. So it is this post which is rotated as often as 15 mins per person. Well I won't write more about that trip because, it will become extremely long. The thing is that we didnt make it to the top, but we made it to 11500 feet. I learnt a lot of things, like rescuing somebody trapped after an avalanche, finding camping grounds on slopes, using my watch as a compass, making snow kitchens, storing water (it's critical), keeping the body warm and saving frost bites, making squirrel traps, making quinzees, starting a fire with just a flint rod. Besides, my experiences were worthwhile too. I heard avalanches at night, saw blizzards, saw huge bear paw marks and fresh excreta (that was not comforting at all), heard the cries of a pack of wolves at night. We were so far from civilization, that one could hear the commercial jets flying even though they were at the flight ceilings. I saw man made sattelites (I have seen that before, but everytime I see it I feel nice). I came to know that one of my compatriots was studying under a professor who designed the code so that the ISS stayed in orbit! I saw the moon lit up the entire frozen marsh well enough to form very dark and well formed shadows of everything around us. Ofcourse, I saw the sun rise and set in the same quarter of the sky. And yes! I was sharing my tent with a girl. It was a little weird. When you are in that level of cold , when the inside of the tent freezes up, people inside tend to press against each other in order to preserve the warmth. In both cases, if I would retreat too much or come too close, it would have been unpleasant. This after she chose to sleep with me would be a disgrace. all in all it was a largely enjoyable trip. It was more about survival than anything else. A trip that I will remember for my life time!

Last Thursday, I was supposed to go skiing at Seven Oaks Resort. It was a beginners course and obviously was a cool attraction for me. Unfortunately, it was cancelled because this warm beautiful weather melted all the snow :(. However, coming Thursday, I am enrolled for yet another session. I might have a chance then. But I can safely say that I would rather put it off to next year.

This Thursday, I went snow boarding and trust me my bum is still sore :D. We went to the slopes of Seven Oaks and again it was a beginner's course. Well to be frank, it is not so easy. The board doesn't stand, it always slides, even as you are getting up. You have to maintain your balance, control your speed by putting your weight on the hells or off it, move your weight around to change direction along with using the various edges of the snow board. And well while learning, you are bound to fall. However, the ice skating experience had really taken away the phobia of falling. Except that I didnt want to pick a lot of speed and then fall face-first! Well to be frank, I wasn't too good at it. My balance was very good and I think I picked up a lot of speed but I couldn't master the art of swaying from one side to another. I guess, it's just a feel and I just need to get a hang of it. And once I get that, I am very sure that I will be able to stop gracefully as well! I am going again coming Thursday. I am pretty sure that I will master it by then and I will try a couple of runs on the advanced slopes. If I can do that, I will be pretty happy with my this years exploits on snow!!!

P.S. Things that I am looking forward to this spring/summer: I am enrolled for kayaking, canoeing and tennis classes. Also, I am looking forward to my first chance of getting my hands behind the wheels of Mustang GT and possibly a BMW Z4! Also through my RA this summer, I should be able to fund my flying lessons and atleast one ski-jump!

My new office!

My skying trip for the evening had been postponed. So, I rather collected the keys to my new office from the department. There were two of them. One was to open any of Sweeney Hall's outer doors. The other could open up rooms numbered 1322 and R1143. With some anxiety, I walked off towards Sweeney hall at 6 PM.

Sweeney hall is actually dedicated mostly to Chemistry department but it sometimes host a few Computer Science classes. So well, my office as a grad student working on supercomputers and clusters had to be slightly misplaced. What the hell, I didn't care! The weather was light and so was my mood and so I strolled down the length of the first floor of Sweeney Hall. I couldn't locate either of the rooms! So, I strolled back. No they were not there! I walked out of the building and rechecked whether I was really in Sweeney Hall. Yes I was!

I was looking through the directory of rooms at the entrance, when I heard a female voice from behind, "What are you looking for!". I showed her the room numbers I was looking for and she had no clue either. She said that she knew that most of the graduate students had their offices on the third floor and that's where I should be searching. However, both of us were sure that no room on the third floor would start with 1. So we both started looking once more! Finally, we found R1143 and burst out into peels of laughter. It was the girls' restroom on the first floor!!! So I have the permission to go into the lady's restroom in Sweeney (Well I have to check that tomorrow).

After that laugh, I bid farewell to my new friend and started looking for room no. 1322 on my own. I started walking around the building and found out a small wing running between the Sweeney parking and the Durham Centre! It sure looked rickety. Hmmm! So I opened the door. It was dark unlike Coover, Durham, Hoover and the Nuclear Engineering buildings around. A chemical smell hung in the air. Through a second door I could see the new PriSUM car of ISU. Well just in case that you were wondering what I am speaking about, PriSUM is the famous solar car of ISU which has won many competitions and yes it looks very much like the ones you have seen on Discovery Channel! So this was a garage I was in. Through the light coming in through the door I could see that there was yet another door to my right and the door number read '1322'. I had found my new office! Almost in a garage and whose entrance was not even lit! I used the light from my cell phone to open the lock and I went in and trned on the lights.

It was indeed a large room as Dr. Leucke had promised with many table and chairs. and just 3 computers. Two of them were taken! So the third must be mine! there are two large windows near the place I woud sit. One of them opens towards Durham Centre and the other towards the main building of Sweeney Hall! And yes it has a barbeque grill and a printer side by side :). So that is it! thats going to be my second house for atleast an year to come and to tell you frankly, I queerly liked it!

I wanted to check the rest of building especially the restrooms nearby. So I got out of my office and locked it shut. This time I entered the door behind which the PriSUM car was standing. I walked passed it and its office where a guy was reading some magazine! I looked around for the rest room and I found amongst a set of lockers. It was small and I think it is a common bathroom for both men and women. Now, I have never seen that in ISU! Trying to understand the buzz in my mind, I moved around a bit more and lo! There a glass blowing workshop and a heavily bearded grey professor was teaching his students. So that was the source of the stench! However, it was beautiful from inside. with red hot furnaces and colourful glass figures all around them. I will surely go there with my camera some day and get you all some good pictures!

My phone buzzed. I realized it was already 7:25 and it was Yuzhu on the call! I had promised her a movie today. Actually she had seen 'Yesman' recently and she felt that I was, in nature, just like the protagonist. So she wanted to show me the movie! Who says no to a free movie :). Definitely, not a 'Yesman' think-alike :). So I walked out through the other side of the wing which I had entered about half an hour ago. The garage gate there led me straight into Sweeney's parking where I waited for Yuzhu.

The breeze outside had become chillier and it ruffled through my hair. I really felt very light and I don't know why. Was it because my search for my office was over! Or because it was such a search! Or because I had such a setting for my office, weird but romantic (in my sense)! Or was it because I always wanted to join th ePriSUM team, but it never materialised and perhaps this is going to be a good reckoning! I don't know. But I was surely smiling at a silly thought in my mind! It was the thought, that most big companies today started off when university graduates started working in a garage!

Follow up!

Hi all,

Remember the girl and the boy from my blog, "Some people always pay more". Guess what, they are most probably getting married! The boys parents met the other side and his mother really liked the girl. She has still not said an yes but is almost at the verge of giving her consent. I can't express well enough how happy I am to report this.

Kudos to both of them! May God shower his blessings on the couple and may I be able to get a free dinner :P! Between, for those of you who havn't been to a Bengali marriage, they have elaborate food arrangments often containing many many courses.

So I guess, my prophecy on the previous blog was wrong. Or may be the cardinality of such people is much smaller. Either way it only makes me happier :)

Dairy entry of a wonderful day!

This is going to be a huge one! As it was a HUGE Tuesday!

Monday night I went to sleep with lots of questions in my mind, lots of uncertainties. I distinctly remember typing, "There are a lot of loose ends to tie right now in my life!" just before I logged off Gtalk. I was broke, without an internship, overloaded with TA work, and without a major professor and hence with no direction of my thesis. This had manifested in me taking 3 credit subjects and 2 audit subjects. Along with a half time TA, any graduate student will tell you that's a LOT! Besides, there was the obvious scare of how long this recession would continue. Internships are rare, and people are loosing jobs everywhere. Will I be able to secure a job in an years time? How long can I extend my stay here in ISU in case I cant get a job?! How do I find the funding! Obviously not a great feeling to go to sleep with (Be rest assured I would have slept well anyway :D).

So, there I was walking down from the car parking towards the lab, thinking of whether I should join a professor who had shown some interest towards me working for him. I had not followed it up any time. Our research interests didn't match. But then he was one of the best 5 people I have ever met in my life. Lost in thought, I picked up my gaze and I saw a professor from our department smiling at me. On our way, we discussed a topic I had raked up in his class. Suddenly, as we were crossing a road, he popped me a question, "Indranil, are you looking for a major professor?". I said, "Yes sir!". And then he started discussing his research. 'Well, well!' I said to myself. 'Wasn't he one of the professors I was kind of interested in working for?' HMMM, so I listened to what he was saying and added a few afterthoughts as well! So there I was with an indirect offer to approach him as a major prof, or so I believed.

I reached Dr. Luecke's (http://www.public.iastate.edu/~grl/) class, a class that I was auditing. I had dropped it from credit to audit only in the last class! I will tell you how you feel when you have done it. In one word, lackadaisical! After the class, as I rose to leave, the professor said, "I would like to talk to you!". Apprehensively I waited next to him, while he cleared the doubts of all the other guys. After the whole class had left, he turned to me and said, "I am working on project from NSA on compilers for distributed computing. I guess, you might be interested. If you would work for me I would like to fund you through your studies here including your summers!! But you would need to let me know a little quickly, as we have a hard deadline and have lots of pending work". I was at a loss for words. It was not because I was awestruck, but I was thinking how to sweet talk my way through this :). I had to know more before I said something, about him, about the group, about the work, and about the product. But hey, here was my sure shot funding!!! So I said, "Prof, this is extremely lucrative, lets talk more in your office. I have to scoot for another class right now. I can drop in anytime after 2 PM". "2 PM it will be, came the reply". I ran to the next class. There was a spring in my steps!

2 PM, arrived and I was at his office. After the discussion, I knew this was a HUGE project. It was really cutting edge and on distributed computing, in other words SUPERCOMPUTERS! I got the feeling what a big shot this man was! I will give you a measure. He goes and proposes somethings to heads of the likes of IBM, Dell, Cray, Sun, NSA, NASA, Hitachi etc etc. They ask him for a price tag. They don't even give a competing bid! That's the prof. And then I would be the only MS guy in the team. The other members are full time workers on this project and a PhD! One lady is going to join after she gets her Ph.D. from Ecole Polytechnique France. She is about to join in 1 month. And yes there is an obvious interest from Berkeley (the project extends/validates UPC). So there I was, a midget considering whether I should join this group or not. I was thinking, "How could I have missed out on considering him earlier?". Well that was because he was an adjunct professor in our department and was actually a faculty of the Maths dept!

"OK! I am interested" I told him, "But, I am a TA now and I am not sure whether I could change over to an RA this semester". So he called up the office to find it out. And he was smiling as he heard over his earpiece. He kept down the phone and said, "you are wanted everywhere!". I knew that it must have meant that I had done a good job as a TA. Good news was that the department would try to look for a substitute. Obviously, it was good for them, they could fund another guy. So I left the room, walking in a trance, thinking about things I had to do before committing to him, things that have to work out on their own, and marvelling at the opportunity that I had just got. My phone was buzzing, it was Pavan. "Dude, last sem's TA evaluations have come, go and get it from Dr. Kamal", he blurted. So I went up to meet Dr. Kamal. I was confident of a good evalutation.

I opened it in my office and my heart leapt with joy. I knew why Dr. Luecke was smiling. My TA evalutaions were fabulous. I had managed 3 sections last semester. Each section evaluated me for 12 questions, on a scale of 1 to 5, 5 being the best! I had got above 4.8 in all! There were comments like "Yes!, Roy roacks". For an international TA, that must be great. Actually, I hope, I win the "Best TA" prize :P!

In the evening I played badminton. I played well. It had to be. In less than 24 hours, my life had taken a huge turn. My studies were funded, my research was defined, I had a major prof who could literally get me a job in a phone call, and performance evaluation had come out great! What else can you ask for in a day! I called up home, then charted the course of the rest of my MS, including getting a minor in management here (well, that's part of another plan, and probably of some future blog), chatted and boasted about my accomplishments on various chat boxes and went off to a sound sleep. Well, that's the only part which was not different from the previous night :)!

P.S. I got the RA by Friday on a higher pay than usual. Dr. Luecke is going to pick up the tution fees as well! Ofcourse, I had to change his class from audit to credit again :P.

Some people always pay more!

".... I can't take it anymore. I am helpless. I am already crying here. I am in a lab. Don't say anymore ....", those were the messages on my chat screen at 3 AM in the morning. There was a momentary pause, before I replied anything back. I typed, "then just sit there and cry"!, hit enter and then watched the screen blankly, trying to analyze my action. I knew she must have been very close to me for me being able to type that, but WHY?!!!

Well the answer is that I actually didn't want her to continue to be on the wrong side, the side which always pays more. I realized this while chatting to her. She was being dumped after a two year courtship. The boy suddenly realized that he can't go against his mother. Thereby, he had given the conscent to his parents to go ahead and search alliances for him. Hmmm, common isn't it! Ya, but here are a few more details, the girl had fought for the same time with her parents. Trust me guys, if she would have given a go-ahead to her parents, there would be a bee-line for her. But then she couldn't bear to be anybody else's wife. When she confroned him with the question, "Do you understand how much this is going to hurt me?", he supposedly said that it is fine with him if her parents start finding alliances for her. Afterall, he was still trying. But his parents were about to meet her parents and formally put an end to their story.

Nothing very strange or unusual. I wasn't moved by the sequence of events at all. What troubled me was a set of questions. Why is it that she is suffering more? Is it because she chose to care mor efor him than anything else ? Does she care about her parents as much as he does for his? Does going against her parents hurt her as badly? Don't her parents have the same concerns and wishes from her as anybody else's parents? Havn't they been dreaming about her and her marriage since the day she smiled her way into their world a few decades back? Sadly, the answer was yes to me for all the questions. So she was paying more because she was ready to pay more. She was being forced to make a huge sacrifise because she was the only one who was ready to make it!

So for the next hour, I asked her to be selfish! Think and care about her and her parents! What advice was that?!!!!!!!!! But I chose it over soothing her, going to sleep and feeling good about it. Ofcourse, I could have come up with awesome lines and made her smile and giggle for the same time. But, then how long will that have helped her? Well, I think the maximum that it can last is till the next morning when she opened her eyes and took stalk of the world around her. So what's the point?! So I rather asked her to be strong and selfish. We literally screamed out her feelings, her pain, her anguish and then parted smiling. I hope that thought and that smile lasts her more than a night. I wish that new thoughts and smiles originate from this new channel of thoughts. I hope she never has to pay again, because of all people, she chooses herself to go through pain rather than anybody else!

I think that both of us changed during the course of that conversation. Both of us had atleast started thinking about paying less! And I am glad that this was the outcome!

P.S. I seek forgiveness from the guy and his parents. I know they would be going through tremendous amount of trauma. My intention was not to hurt them or anybody who has been in their position.

The start

It has been 25 years from the time that I started observing, cognizing, interprepetting, analyzing and opining. Then of course I have taken decisions, some based on what I thought were correct but most them were hypocrytic. Of late, I have started thinking differently. My thought process atleast have broken the shackles. What remains to be seen is whether I can break free.

At the onset though let me just reproduce an introduction of mine I had recently put up somewhere. Hope the bragging makes for some good reading:

I am a free soul! Anything and everything interests me. I am one who believes at every point, that life is really beautiful, just look out and thats it. I like to enjoy the chill of the breeze with my shirt off, the scorching sun tanning my skin, skin deep beauty and beauty from deep within. I have no favourites and I dont know of anything that I hate. Everything is just a state. It is meant to be! I am in love with the common.

And I love speed. Speak to me about automobiles or planes and I can bore you for hours without looking at your poor face even once!I have loads and loads of friends, but I am esoteric to the core. And thankfully my friends understand that. Some of them complemented, "You have a strange way of making people feel comfortable in your presence" or something like that and that is a complement that I keep very very close to my heart.

The thing that makes me really happy - that inexpressible feeling in the eyes of somebody at the moment when he has just realized something he had to really work hard for, so much so that he had started to yearn for it like a dream or when he has just learnt how to conquer the worst of pains. You know why I like it so much? Because its rare, very very rare! In todays world I am yet to meet a third person who knows what he really wants in life or is really mature in handling pain. I might be wrong here, please forgive me!

My aim in life, let's keep that off for another day! But surely, I find it very interesting to do something new. Anything new. By the time I have grandchildren, I don't want to run short of bed time fables.To do list: to learn to fly (that's a childhood dream), skydiving, to roam the streets of the world (I have a long list of places I want to visit, I have no desire to go to any tourist spots).Well is that me? Probably yes, but then how do I know ...