The Quest for Redemption

This one goes out to my team....

You cant seriously expect me to publicly mention what exactly is the quest for redemption, but I will instead share two of the most memorable experiences of my life.

December 2005- January 2006

It was somewhere 28th or 29th, I received an email from IIT Bombay, they said that I have been shortlisted for a workshop and competition on Computational Fluid Dynamics, CFD for short. As it happened I did not know anything about fluid dynamics, so through January I studied hard, put in a lot of effort and went for the workshop. On January the 20th, in a classroom full of people from top colleges of India, the NITS and Dr. Atul Sharma of Aerospace Department, IIT Bombay, a first year student of a virtually unknown college raised his hand to tell everyone that he is the only first year student, from a virtually unknown college. I further confirmed I have had no training in fluid mechanics, the 35 people in that room except for me laughed openly, including the professor. By the end of the day nobody was laughing, as I was among the ten students, who made it to the second round. By the end of the second day, people older than me and from better colleges came to me for advise, and by the end of the third day, at completion of the workshop, I had wrapped up the competition and praise from Mr. Sharad Purohit, the director of CDAC. I also got to use ParamPadma, India's fastest supercomputer, ranked just over 100th in all of the world!

On that day I decided I will return to IIT Bombay for the techfest every single year. I was determined to win the biggest competition of the fest. I did make a team and we did participate in Techfest 2007 but didnt win, performed well in our own eyes but not well enough to justify the expenditure.

Three Days ago

The three members from the old team were sitting in my room and discussing the current endeavor. I for the fun of it, found the old drawings that we made last year, for the 2007 Techfest, and seeing those drawing, reduced us to fits of laughter. They are such crap, seriously useless, yet back then those drawing made infinite sense to us. Same goes for a lot of other work. So listen to me, for what I have to say is very important, it was a learning curve. And it still is, we dont claim to know the answers, but we want to find them. Its not about knowing but finding out, and giving your best.

That is what every competition is all about. Setbacks and crappy work comes with being new to any project, and it will pass and hopefully you too like us will look back at these days and laugh about it. Believe me when I tell you that this is going to be the most rewarding experience of your lives. People are always going to tell you that you cant do it, because they didnt do it themselves. It is going to be tough, not all the answers that you want will be staring you in your face but buried beneath mounds of dirt, that you will have to dig. It will come down to commitment, how much time and energy you are going to put in it. Whether you will put it above everything else that you have in life, or will you give excuses of from the everything else in your life to not do your share of work. I know each and everyone of you, and I know you well, even if I never spoke to you before but I know that you are capable of doing whatever it is that is your work. Never lose hope, or the faith in yourself. Also remember, that one person alone can undo the good work of all the others, if one part fails the whole thing will fail. So just keep your head down, and keep working hard because like our Web Designer said The Worst is Yet to Come.