Bits and Pieces of my Life!!!

My family migrated from Kashmir to Jammu and I did my schooling from Army school. The best school to satisfy my inquisitive soul, as I was already going through a cultural shift. I wondered why all people can’t speak “kashmiri”; instead they all spoke different languages. That was the best phase of my life – a confused child with so much to learn all by herself. Almost everyone around me was from army, air force or navy so no one stayed in the school for more than 3 years. So before you could get too close to a friend, it was time for him to say bye. Hence, I had new friends every year. School was full of friends, fun, studies, sports and Co-curricular activities. I learnt so much in school and I was fully prepared to go far and pursue higher studies.

I came to Pune for my engineering, it was known as the “Oxford of the East” so I was bound to be excited to come here and pursue my education. I always wanted to be an engineer esp. in unconventional fields like aeronautics, mechanical etc., but my dad (greatest critic in my family) was against my idea to do so, as his dream for me was to be a computer/electronics engineer with definitely MBA (finance). But being a rebel I just wanted to do something different so as “to stand out from the sheep”. Hence, I decided upon chemical engineering (truly unconventional). Its strange how we never come up to our parent’s expectations, no matter even if you are doing better than what they expected they will still feel “you should have done that way”. During my engineering, I was so happy studying all I ever wanted to … fluid dynamics (my first love), heat transfer, mass transfer, designing, reaction engineering, thermodynamics…… but my dad was not happy as the girl was going all the way in her ways. I so wanted to study further in the same field so like everyone I decided to go for GRE and all. But things changed when I did summer training in a research lab. The scientist I was working with told me to give GATE a shot and go for IIT’s. It was a tough challenge but I managed to get through.

Finally, all my dreams came true as I entered the campus of IIT Delhi, it was so wonderful. Life is IIT was great overall. It had grilling, fun, movies, walks, rendezvous, house dinner, open house and so on and on. My lab was my new home. My guide was the most enthusiastic guy I have ever seen I my life. He was 24x7 willing to work. He knew no day - no night, all he was capable of is to think about the project. The best lesson I learnt from my guide was not only how to work. But he made me realize that any kind of work is not stupid and you should always be ready to learn things from everyone around you. That means – you should leave your ego way beyond and learn from anyone, even if he is not qualified with loads of degrees, but he may be good because of his experience. For he was the professor of chemical engineering with huge list of qualifications and achievements, in one of the best IIT’s (a 10 pointer all throughout) who would have been brighter than him, but he was never ashamed to ask the silliest of questions to the technicians, lab assistants etc. And I truthfully agree with him, who knows more about balloons than the balloon seller……. Then I realized what he said was right, way back in college our lab assistant was smarter than the professors I remember us calling him Dr. Jagtap (for that guy was not even a B.Sc.), but he was brilliant with chemical phenomenon, instruments etc. So from then on I have made it what you call as guru mantra “if you want to learn, leave your ego” and believe me it really works well esp. if you are in research. I don’t want to stop writing about it but in a nutshell, it was an experience worth the sweat.