A life reflection in twenties ... Part 1

Twenties must have been a very complex decade because of higher education, work life and personal life all began and getting settled ... All at once ... Things which start in parallel, end in parallel ... some of them turn out to be successful, some of them turn out to be un-successful ... My twenties began by taking an education break to prepare for further studies ... after one year of preparation, I got a good score in competitive exam which enabled me to go for my masters ... I enrolled for my masters as a Research Assistant (RA) ... It was a two and a half years Masters program ... There is another program which is Teaching Assistant (TA) program ... which is a one and half year program ... for which I was not eligible because of my score ... I enrolled and I was very proud to be a part of IIT ... course work began ... at the same time, I started working to maintain the department's computer lab to be eligible for stipend ... The stipend was Rs 5000/- per month that time ... that much money was sufficient for me to purchase books and pay the fees for hostel and college ... In a way, I became financially independent at the age of 21 (even though the amount was small, it was enough for fulfilling my needs) ... My mini-project started along with my coursework ... I had to work with the students in Instrumentation Lab for my mini-project ... Hiren was one of the students associated with Instrumentation Lab and he was doing his Final-Year project over there ... He was in his student's age ... Very disciplined person even in his student's age ... Generally the students in IIT have the habit of following bizarre schedule (apart from attending the course-work and submissions on time, of course) ... They work for odd hours ... May be till morning 2 am etc ... Since many of them do not like the food in the hostel-mess, they do not have regular healthy food habits ... may be eating outside of hostel too many times ... They are far from their homes right in their teen-age ... Hence the food and sleep habits are irregular ... However I found Hiren was quite unusual person, being so disciplined in his food and sleep habits ... He used to study/work for the whole day, except for taking a nap of 15 mins after lunch ... And believe me he used to stick to those 15 min ... not more, not less ... I am exactly opposite of Hiren's disciplined approach ... I am inherently a very in-disciplined person ... Very irregular food and sleep habits ... Hence Hiren's disciplined approach appealed to me a lot ... He maintained discipline, even though he was away from his home ... He was from Ahemdabad, Gujrat ... I am from Mumbai, Maharashtra ... my home was located relatively near to the college ... only one and half hour from our college ... Ideally, it was possible for me to go home over a weekend ... however, the labs, the study and the student's circle kept me busy ... even over the weekend ... First time in life, I felt a sense of  independence there ... away from the shadow of parental love and care ... I stayed in Post Graduate Women's hostel ... For the initial 6 months, we had to share our rooms ... and then onwards, we used to get a separate room allocated ... My roommate was a Bengali woman ... she was quite co-operative ... Sometimes I used to play the radio loudly (unknowingly) ... However, one day she very softly said, "Didi, can you reduce the volume a little please?" ... I reduced it ... However, one day we both realized that there were pigeons coming in through the window and there is an issue of insects in the room because of the pigeons ... so we complained at the hostel office about it and both of us got an independent room allocated since then ... we parted ways ... As like many other students, I too did not like the food at the hostel mess ... The weekly food items used to get declared beforehand ... I already could decide the time when I am going to eat at the hostel and when I eat something outside ... I used to attend the course-work, work in the computer lab, and then if the lunch is good I used to go for lunch at the hostel ... Otherwise I used to get a cup of tea for me and biscuits ... and go to the hostel directly at 5 pm for snacks ... After snacks, I used to sleep in the evening for an hour or so ... and then used to go back to the department lab to work ... I used to work till 2 am or so ... then go to the hostel to sleep at night ... the department and the hostels were in the same campus ... so it was safe to move around at any time ... except for the fact that there used to be a leopard visiting the campus sometimes during those days ... so the students were a little terrified to move around at night ... But slowly the students overcame the fear and started moving around as usual ... I remember in my mini-project, I was expected to work on a DSP chip ... I began by sitting and reading the chip manual in the Instrumentation Lab ... The manual was very big ... Hiren found it very funny to read the manual in the beginning ... He suggested, first try to understand the problem and then read the manual, only what is required and when it is required ... I could understand that ... Before coming to IIT, Hiren was working in a hardware firm ... For one year ... And it was his experience speaking ... Experience matters ... He also realized that sometimes I do the same experiment again and again ... He criticised that ...  "Repeating the same experiment again and again, is not going to give you different results" ... He also noticed that many times I struggle with the same problem for a long time ... He suggested that I should talk to someone if I feel stuck ... Hiren sometimes used to visit the computer lab ... This lab was accessible to all the department students ... Since I knew Hiren, because of my Mini-project, I used to ask him any questions that I had about computers and internet ... He used to explain without getting bothered ... Meanwhile one of our faculties (who interviewed me for my master's program) asked me, whether I would like to change my master's program from RA to TA ... That will help me complete the master's in one and half year ... I started liking my RA program by then ... RA has less course-work each semester, and more practical exposure ... Whereas in TA, there is a lot of course-work per semester and stress is more ... More than any other factors, I liked the stay in IIT ... So, I asked my faculty back "Do you think I may not be able to complete RA successfully?" ... My faculty replied "No, there is a seat open for TA-ship, and according to the score, you are next in the queue. So I asked you" ... I replied "No, I would like to continue as an RA" ... The conversation ended there ... Days passed ... I was working in the computer's lab and by this time I got quite used to Linux operating system commands ... (not the kernel, only the commands) ... Many Thanks to Hiren for this ... I started thinking about what to do next in the lab ... There was one guy named Vishal, in one more lab called SPI lab ... He was mounting all the computers in the SPI lab on NIS/NFS ... With this setup, the students can log on to any computer in the lab with their own log-in ID and password ... They can have their own folder with allocated computer space, which they can mount on any computer and start working ... Keep their work-space separated and secure ... Before I started working on NIS/NFS, each of the computer had "guest" login created on them ... Which would make any computer available to anyone ... And if students want to work on any of their computers, they have to take a backup of their work without forgetting ... Because there were chances that their work may be deleted/corrupted (knowingly/unknowingly) ... I talked to Vishal, if he would help me out by explaining the system function ... He explained ... I started working on it ... Of course there were hurdles like, the filesystem would get unmounted sometimes, may be because of timeout ... The systems on which I was working, were unavailable to the students, till the time I complete the setup ... But at the end I could setup the lab ... Thanks to Vishal and his inputs ... While working in the computer lab, I had to visit Prof. Govindrajan at one point ... I started talking in Hindi and Prof mentioned he doesn't understand Hindi ... I agree, in IIT's official  environment, I should have spoken in English... A point worth mentioning here ... even though I had completed my engineering from a good college in Mumbai and did my masters from IIT, I did not have an exposure to "spoken english" until I joined the job in Bangalore ... most of the students in Mumbai know Hindi very well... so we tend to speak in Hindi whenever required ... I did not interact with the professors a lot ... probably because I have an ability to read and understand the lessons on my own ...and  I realized by that time that I do not have an ability to "debate" ... which is expected in Technical world to "prove a point" ... my way of communication is either to "understand" or "do not understand" or "make a completely new point" ... if "do not understand" ask questions ... either to yourself or someone else ... But sometimes the peers get bothered by questions ... I understand ... As a part of my lab work, I was getting to know new devices like routers, gateway, ethernet cables, domain name system, emailing system which are required to setup the network in the lab ... The course-work, lab-work and the mini-project was going on fine ... Days passed ... I also came to know the feedback about Hiren while working in his lab ... "Except his English there is no problem with Hiren" ... Somewhere that feedback was registered at the back of my mind ... First semester got over ... Hiren asked me whether I could find some time to talk to him ... I said "Ok" ... I was not very serious about it ... Then a few days passed ... He asked me again if I could find some time to talk to him ... I was a bit annoyed ... And asked "what do you want to talk? " ... Actually by this time my mind started speculating about his plans ... It was his time to leave the campus and join his job ... So I was speculating if he is thinking about me as a future life partner ... Actually I was knowing based on feedback, that he is a very good guy ... But I always saw him as a senior and a guide ... And also I did not want any distraction during studies ... He said "Let's talk for some time as friends" ... I said "Ok" ... Actually, I realized being far from home, these guys must be missing their family ... After some days we met ... In an open area near the department ... I was still reluctant, annoyed and apathetic ... I was so sarcastic, that my first question to Hiren was "What do you want to talk about? Do you want to talk about marriage?" ... Any other capable guy would have walked out over me with that level of insensitivity over marriage ... But even after being capable of doing so, Hiren stayed ... This one thing I liked in Hiren even at that time ... Persistence... And patience ... No one had tolerated my nonsense this much ... He said "No, I was thinking if we can just be friends." ... I said "I do not want to just be friends, if there is nothing serious" ... Hiren said "If we are talking about marriage, then you should know that my parents will stay with me" ... I said "I am the eldest daughter of my parents. And there are chances that I will also have to take care of my parents." Hiren said "That should be fine" ... That meeting ended with mixed feelings on my behalf ... I was not quite ready, but still jumped in ... Before Hiren left the campus, Hiren and I had a few meetings subsequently ... sometimes in the coffee shop ... sometimes in the open space ... in one of those meetings I asked Hiren about his family background ... his first statement was "let me see how brave you are as a listener" ... I felt I was put in a "challenging" situation ... I accepted the "challenge"  ... saying "tell me" ... then he told me that both his parents are "deaf" ... I had "empathy" for him  ... in one of the meetings he also told about his sister ... his sister was in love with her current husband then ... he was very worried about it saying he did not like the guy ... as any other brother, he was worried about education and financial stability of the guy ... He was explaining to her not to go for him ... but she was not listening ... I told Hiren even at that time "don't go for explaining ... it will not work ... just remain calm and let her focus on her education ... when she completes her education and become financially independent, we will see then ... " Hiren had enquired about his cast with me being a Maharashtrian and the guy being the same ... He asked me whether he is a Brahmin? ... I said to best of my knowledge, he does not seem to be ... after a few days I got a call from his sister in the lab ... "why did you tell Hiren, he is not a Brahmin ... he is the most uppercast Brahmin ... " ... I said "Ok" ... it looked like Hiren did not follow what I said ... Or maybe being a disciplined person, he wanted the exact things to be done at the "exact time" ... which may mean "immediately" ... but life is not always "professional" ... some things just take their own time ... especially what people call as "love" ... Takes time to fade away ... Meanwhile I chose my final-year project ... My guide informed me that "there is not much literature available over this project. So it may be a challenge to understand and complete it". I said "ok" ... I told that to Hiren on the way to hostel ... he said "you seem to have a habit to accept challenges ... " ... it seemed like he was proud of what I have done ... whenever Hiren and I went to the coffee shop, I made sure that I will pay for my tea ... because he never had the habit to drink tea or coffee or anything ... he had appreciated me to pay for my own tea ... I was happy for it ...