Seventeen-year-old me had entered the campus of the Indian Institute of Technology, Banaras Hindu University (IIT BHU) with starry eyes and big dreams. It was 2001 and my grandfather in all his wisdom had suggested that I pursue engineering. Computer science was slowly becoming all the rage and that is the field I had selected. There was a simple catch though, I had never used a computer before. My grandfather’s library was full of books of literature and science and math; none with any relation to an actual computer. But the university entrance exam was a test of math and science so here I was, in the computer science course, raring to go.
In the first week itself, the seniors assembled to rag the entire batch. For the unversed, ragging as a culture is a method for seniors to humiliate juniors in an attempt to increase bonding between batches. The seniors asked us to raise our hands if we knew C or C++ or Java (all computer languages). I could not raise my hand for any of these. The seniors had found their target. I was relentlessly bullied and humiliated because I did not know something they considered very basic. I was made to feel ashamed about my “situation” and was later called to the second-year hostel to undergo a round of guilt-tripping about my computer illiteracy.
Quite apart from the negative limelight I had to endure, I was plagued with bewilderment. I was puzzled because it is not that I had failed to learn computer languages even after trying, I had not gotten the opportunity to learn them altogether. I had spent my childhood with my grandfather and we had our own set of explorations in the world of literature and science. Unfortunately, computer never featured in that. I spent the next two days lost and wondering about how to deal with the situation. Somewhere though, I knew that this too shall pass.
I actively took some steps to help myself. I realised that the reason I was an outlier was that I did not have the right resources. So, I set about equipping myself with those. I accessed the computer and the people who could best teach me about the computer. I bought a PC to practice and then went to the same second-year hostel where I was bullied to find the most knowledgeable person in programming. Vipul Goel was that person. I went to him for guidance and he was kind enough to help. He gave me some books and tutorials to go through. (Vipul is now a professor at Carnegie Mellon University: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vipul-goyal-600610/)
The next step was to ensure that the knowledge that I had acquired was put to the test. I committed myself to participating myself in the next programming contest in the institute and convinced two of my batchmates to form a team with me. I wish I could say that we won the contest. That would really be a fairy-tale ending to the story. Of course, we did not win that time. But, we did not give up either. In our second year, our team won the institute level overnight software programming contest. By the third year, we had won so many awards that we were invited to become judges at the college-level events. Even after graduating from the institute, I participated in the global Yahoo hackathon along with another friend (Named Ravi Math, now a senior engineering leader at Amazon Seattle: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ravi-math-3441228/). We won the global hackathon and received awards from David Filo, Co-founder Yahoo.
It has been more than a decade since all this happened. Now I am running an education company providing new age skills to kids globally. Today, when I recollect these moments, it reminds me of certain important things
- You don’t does not mean you can’t.
- Everyone has immense potential and one needs to channelize it in the right direction. If you equip yourself with right set of people, resources and motivation, the word impossible start changing to I-M-Possible
- Adverse situations can make or break you. It is up to you how you take them on.
When I was a kid, my grandfather had taught me by example that curiosity coupled with purpose is a powerful tool ( ). I understood in college that often, the right provocation also creates the curiosity to overcome an adversity which can lead to success. It just has to be accompanied by the right attitude!
Zig Zaglar, the American motivational speaker, summed it up beautifully;
“Sometimes adversity is what you need to face in order to become successful.”