A life well lived

The news about an amazing tale of a desperate WWII pilot’s encounter with a German flying ace reminded me of Grace, a 92 year old woman I met recently. She is an American, but here parents were of Japanese origin. 

During WWII America wasn't very kind to people of Japanese origins. When she is now asked what she feels about it, she always says "I forgive them". But the big story is yet to come. So at the end of WWII, she was given the job as a nurse at a military hospital. But they were worried about the reaction of the injured American soldiers returning from Japan towards a nurse who looked Japanese. So the hospital provided her an escort between some places in the hospital. When the soldiers whom she was nursing came to know about this, they volunteered to be her escort.

She told this in the most stoic manner(I am sure my jaw was on the floor), And then it continued. She mothered a special child. The doctors said he wouldn't make it beyond 4 years. He made it to 49. Not only this, she has been a volunteer at the special Olympics for close to if not over 50 years now, winning the best volunteer award.

I stood there, tears running down my cheek. Tears of joy on meeting a person, who could not have lived a better life. I really wanted to hug her, but I just shook her hand and childishly congratulated her over the life that she had led. I wish at the end of my life, I can look back at my life with half this much pride.

Terrorism and our response to it!

Last week, the world encountered yet another hate crime. A trigger-happy white supremacist walked into a place of worship, a Sikh Gurudwara at Wisconsin, and killed 6 people and injured many others including a police officer. A lot has been written about this deplorable act. I can't condemn it enough, so I will not try to. I will only share an interesting view point of a friend and leave you to draw your own conclusions.

Driving to the courts, he suddenly asked me, "Roy, are there a lot of Sikhs in India?". I knew where he was coming from. So after answering his question in the affirmative, I asked him for his reaction to the event.  He expressed his displeasure about the heineous crime, but said that the government should not call it an "act of terrorism". I revolted! I said, "If a bearded Muslim youth would have done this, you would have no qualms about calling this an act of terrorism!". He said this is a "hate-crime". I said "So is any act of terrorism". To this he had no answer and he agreed with me.

He corrected himself and finally got to what he wanted to say. He said, look at the response from the government and the community. It is unequivocally deploring the act and speaking out against it quite loudly. The same is not true about other communities, whose youth, though isolated, commit acts of terror. The response is not strong and sometimes even borders on tacit approval. Now he had a point, which I could not counter!

The response of both the communities involved  in the aftermath of this incident is extremely laudable. The US flag will be flying at half mast till 10th August (an entire week). The FBI has conducted hundreds of interviews with the family and associaties of the gunman. The Times of India reports that it (FBI) has issued 180 federal subpoenas and is following 101 leads worldwide. Even the mother of the gunman has expressed her disgust publicly and apologized for her son's act. The Sikh community on the other hand while bemoaning the act has strongly commended the act of the gallant police officer who put his life on the line, even after being shot multiple times, to try and protect as many people as he could. This is how communities should react to an abberation of human conduct.

In stark contrast is the violence of Bodo-Muslim tensions in Assam, India. 77 people have died. Millions have had to flee their homes. There is a media blackout in the region and a strong curfew has been imposed. However, voices from both camps condemned attacks ONLY from the other group and justified acts of their camp by means of "retaliation" and/or "self-defence". Not one waited for peace to be restored first. And those who spoke against their own camp where branded as "pseudo-secular"!

My friend's words, though said in some other context does provide some scope for introspection. I ask the Muslim community. I understand that most Muslim people are peace loving people. And that a handful of "extremists" carry out acts of terrorism which has to be borne by the entire community. But has the Muslim community been sufficiently vocal against its youth who have/are carrying out these horrible acts around the world? The same question can be asked to many Hindus about rising Hindu extremism. Aren't we as  communities too docile towards the handful of youths who bring bad name to our own community?

P.S. Before you start judging my friend, let me tell you a little about him. He is man of Russian origins, in his late 60s who migrated to the US about 20 years back. From my long discussions with him, I can tell you that he is a very liberal man from any point of view, be it race, religion, politics or economy.

The curious case of the India's best engineering students.

Ask any engineering student from any college in India. What do you want to do after you graduate? The answer is generally prompt and more often than not has nothing to do with engineering. Most of us want to do an MBA or an MBA after 2 years of a job, join a financial institution, and some want to become a chartered accountant. Can you remember the last time an engineering student told you that he wants be an innovator or a very good engineer in his field?

I did not study in the best engineering colleges of India. Somehow, my expectation form the students there were also not very high (the fault here lies with me and nobody else. Anyways, moving on) My lament is on the state of premier engineering colleges in India. In this blog, I have spoken about by experiences at IIT Bombay which is undoubtedly a very prestigious engineering college in India. I am actually hesitant to generalize my observation to other premier colleges, but there is a good chance that this is true for many other institutions as well.

First, some context. I am a gradute student. Last year, I had the wonderful opportunity to stay and work at IIT Bombay for 5 months. I like almost every Indian child interested in engineering wanted to go to the IITs. In my childhood, I was surrounded by IITians (including my father) who I looked up to and aspired to be an IITian one day. That day never came. It is the biggest lament of my entire life. Something which I think will take a lifetime to overcome.


However, the IIT that I had imagined and the IIT that I saw was completely different. I had imagined the best brains in India (and indeed the world) striving to become the best engineers in the world.  Most of the people wanted to get the best financial jobs or into the IIMs or CAs and the likes after they graduated. Nothing related to their 4 years of training as an engineer! What a waste of 4 years of training of the best minds of India!!!

I had expected an IIT campus to be full of innovators. Unfortunately, what I saw was nothing but the ubiquitious rat race which is present in any other engineering college in India. Albeit, the goals were higher. But without exception, I did not speak to a single student who wanted to become the ultimate engineer in his field. In fact if I ever brought up the topic, I would immediately get long faces. And what about giving back to the country which spends so much for their education.  I only got huhs- and huhs. I might be wrong here but from my personal experience, the amount of engineering innovations coming out of the IITs for the betterment of poor and the needy is seriously questionable. I follow many blogs on grass-root innovation in India. Very rarely do I read anything from the premier institutes. 

My professor also noticed this. He is an endowed chair at IIT Bombay. His opinion on this was: "Double-triple the intake of IITs. After one year, have a placement round with all the financial companies. All those students who want to go into the companies should do so. The rest should be trained for the remaining three years. The placement round after going through the three extra years should have no financial institutions. This is a win-win situation for everybody. Students who want the highest pay packages in the country need not waste 3 years, earn hefty salaries instead. Industry also doesn't need to wait. And the country truly gets to train the students who want to be engineers". 

I am sure that the quality of education provided in the IITs is world class. However, the management of IITs should seriously consider how the IITians should be oriented. Should it stay the provider of a shining badge which is a stepping stone to everything but engineering. The placement cell should not boast of what is the highest salary or average salary of every student. It should rather publish figures as: The highest and average pay that an engineer from X field got while staying in the X field. Or should it become the gurukul which produces excellent engineers and innovators who by and large stay true to the profession that they were trained for. The goal of IITs as I undertand is not of a placement agency. It is the ultimate gurukul where one goes to in order to become the ultimate engineer. I hope in days to come IITs get known for that tab and that tab alone and not the most difficult institute to get into from where you get the highest paying jobs.

P.S. I understand, for this to be viable we need industry to absorb this engineers as engineers. But remember, I started this blog by saying that this is just a lament because I respected IITs very highly and the present state which I saw saddened me greatly.