Autobiography of Who???

It was quite a quiet normal day. And by this I mean there weren’t any thunderstorms and there certainly was no big bright heavenly star hanging from the sky when I was born in 1976 in a small town in India called Nellore. It just happened that night! And it could have happened any other night.

When I was four years old I could accurately reproduce the Telugu alphabets and this was not by any measure an ordinary achievement. I was supposed to be an Einstein of modern times. People used to remark, “Venu could reproduce the whole Telugu alphabets and you know, he is only four years old. He will definitely become a scientist one day.”

That shall remain as the only notable achievement in my life. Of course I didn’t become a scientist and Einstein was just opposite to me in every aspect. Speaking of alphabets.. I am reminded of a funny situation. I was four years old and was in pre-school. The teacher wanted me to write “a aa i ee”. I started with a bang.

“a” was easy. “aa” was cake walk. “i” was a little difficult and “ee” was surprisingly difficult. “u”.. “u”?? How the hell did one write “u”?

I was sweating in the class and it was in the middle of December. The teacher suddenly looked as if she were an incarnation of Goddess Durga – Kaali Ma. I was trembling.. I couldn’t write “u”.. Oh God! What should I do now?

I did what I wanted to do right at that instant. And I am quite sure I have never been able to do anything so courageously after that incident till this very second.

I ran.

I ran out from the class leaving the bewildered teacher and the envious classmates behind. I just ran out. I reached the school gate which was slightly ajar and the whole world outside was very inviting. I stepped outside and fled like a Olympic runner.. scared of everything under the sun. Oh Almighty.. What a great sin I had done!! I couldn’t recollect how the hell I was supposed to write “u”.

A kilometer it was and I covered it in ten minutes. I was four at that time you know! and it was certainly an enlightening experience. I came here.. gasping and sweating. My mother was taken aback. Exactly five minutes later my elder brother rushed in. My teacher of course couldn’t think of anything else afterwards.. Understandable! When you’ve got a four year old brat running on the road for a kilometer, you have every reason to get alarmed. She made a hue and cry over the issue and my brother who was studying in the same school was duly dispatched to inquire whether I had reached home safely.

What did you do?

Nothing.

Why did you run home?

Because I didn’t feel like staying in the school.

Spank Spank..

Waaaa!! Sorry! I’d never again do that. Nope! I know the roads are dangerous. I won’t repeat it.

Spank Spank!..

Waaaa!!

I overdid it. I knew I knew.. I knew that even before I typed the first alphabet of this story. Sometimes I just lose control over what I write and produce three hundred pages of useless stuff which I later use as my toilet paper. Yaaaaaaaaaaaaak! Well truth is sometimes bitter. Now don’t let your imagination run wild.

So that was how I started my education.

Well, my academic performance has been on the decline since that moment. I managed 87% in class 7, 79% in class 10 and failed in Intermediate second year mathematics. I scored a great 41 out of 150. A record no one has broken till now in my college.

Thanks to Nandamuri Taraka Ramarao.. There was this thing called “instant re-examination” and I could pull it off gracefully. Otherwise I would have had to forego my EAMCET rank! (I bow to you NTR! For this and this one only)

So the adventurous Venu entered Sri Venkateswara University in 1993. My very first day in the college deserves a few keystrokes here.

‘What is your name?’

‘Venu.’

‘Where from?’

‘Nellore. Heard of it?’

SLAP!

‘Amma!’

‘Say Sir at the end of each sentence.. and don’t kochchen me!’

‘yeah.. yes sir!’

‘So what is your name again?’

‘Sir, Venu sir’

‘Sir Venu? Are you a knight?’

‘No sir.. My name is Venu, sir’

‘That’s better. I don’t like this name.’

‘Sir?’

‘Choose something else.’

‘Sir?’

SLAP!

‘Urgh...’

‘Choose another name.’

‘Nirmal, sir’

‘Good! go around the campus shouting that you are Nirmal’

‘Sir.. please’

SLAP! BANG.. DABB...

‘Yes sir’

And suddenly God appeared from thin air in the form of our college principal. The guy in front of me vanished. ‘What are you doing here?’ asked God.

‘Aw.. err..??’

‘Get into your classroom NOW!’

So, Nirmal had become quite famous in his college in no time. He was that atypical tall guy with an undeniably freaky set of spectacles and who always ‘thought’ about something or the other... who knew what a time-cone was.. and who could get 87% in Microprocessors and Microcomputers in which the university first student could get only 62%.

I spent most of the time in our computer center trying to master the seemingly simple task of hacking UNIX passwords. At that time ‘everyone used to crack UNIX passwords’. No one told me how to do it. They simply laughed at me when I asked them. ‘Oh look at this item! He doesn’t know how to crack passwords.. Ha Ha Ha...”

I was ashamed. I felt like committing suicide. Why should I live when I couldn’t do such a simple thing as cracking UNIX passwords? Everyone else seemed to have done it. BUT HOW?

I couldn’t sleep. I woke up at two in the morning, and peddled furiously towards our computer center. I wanted to do it at any cost.

Of course it was UNIX and I couldn’t have succeeded in my attempts to crack the passwords if Mr. Somebody were not there in the canteen sipping coffee at two in the morning. ‘You know! The problem with you is.. You tend to take the legal way even for hacking passwords... There are a couple of thousands of crooked ways. THINK!”

I thought then. I sat in front of our library on the grass and then ‘thought’.

It was three in the morning. There was a cool breeze.. a breeze that would make the sailors forget their homes.. a breeze that traveled all the way from the seven hills... a breeze that told me how to crack Unix passwords.

I ran to the computer center completely forgetting about my bicycle which was parked in front of the library. I opened up my login shell and wrote a simple script that acted as an “alternate front end”. It looked, felt and smelt like the original HP-UNIX logon screen.. But it was just a program running on my logon. The unsuspecting user would come at eight in the morning… enter her login and password and my program would promptly mail them to me and log her off! Poor gal... She just couldn’t realize what was going on.

I cracked UNIX passwords...

I did it. I knew what Nitya’s password was and that was enough for me. My self esteem had gone up a lot. Nirmal was arrogant, skeptical, too thin and too hi-fi... I was the most talked about guy in our class. A kind of ‘Quizzing dude’...

Unfortunately none of these accomplishments seemed to impress Nitya the only girl who had managed to gain a strong foothold in my otherwise secluded world of infinite dreams. I wanted to talk to her but I didn’t. I wanted to walk with her but I couldn’t.

Life had been pretty boring for a while after my success with the UNIX system.

No new challenges and all old faces! God! Gimme something new!

He gave me something new... High Blood Pressure... The doctor who tested me shook his head in the most complex trajectory one could ever shake his head in.

‘200/100 and you are still so calm!’ Of course I didn’t stay calm after hearing to those literally astonishing BP levels.

Why?

Perhaps your kidneys have gone bad.

How?

Perhaps you need to be examined thoroughly in Madras Apollo.

The college seemed to be on a different dimension from that evening. I was kinda detached. I spoke to none. The high blood pressure thing had killed the enthusiastic Nirmal. Even Nitya could see something was happening to me.

Why are you so dull nowadays?

I am dying believe me.

Come on!

Then a family friend visited us from Delhi.

What?

Yes!

You have high BP at the age of 19?

Yes!

Who told you so?

Mr.Arun Ganapathy MBBS.

Screw him. Let us go to some other doctor. Let us get a second opinion.

And so we went to another doctor. I was least interested in the proceedings because I was sure nothing could save me from death. I was dying. I had to die. It was my destiny. And last checked, destiny was invincible.

The doctor looked at me with a strange expression on his face.

You have high BP?

Yes.

What medication did you take for that?

Inderal.

What??

You heard me. Inderal.

FOR HOW MANY DAYS?

Three weeks.

Did it reduce your BP levels?

Not exactly.. But my pulse rate has come down to 52 per minute.

Mr Venu…

.

Yes doctor.

Your BP is 120/72.

What??

I checked it thrice on three different days and at three different times of the day. Your BP is just normal.

But...

Get another opinion if you want.

So we went to another doctor. He commented that the first doctor should better check his head for mental anomalies. When I came out from the hospital, the world seemed to be quite alright. It had shunned its mysterious dimension and returned to normalcy.

I stopped taking medication. My pulse rate improved and I started looking healthy. I got back my wit and humor. Nirmal was back to his senses. He was the guy with those great spectacles. He was the guy who could repeat the System-Internation definition of “second” without referring to the book...

All was well. Then I lost my spectacles. The world seemed quite fuzzy without them but I grew accustomed to that. I didn’t miss my glasses. They were simply gone and were not replaced. I am still without glasses and I still cannot see very well.. But I am happy because I look like Nirmal when I wear spects and I look like Venu when I don’t.

No interesting episodes had happened in my life after the BP fiasco till NFCL campus-interviewed me when I was in my final year of Electrical Engineering.

What is a transformer?

Something that transforms energy.

What is the difference between star and delta connections?

Star is open. Delta is closed.

What is Thevenin’s theorem?

Err?

OK.. tell me Ohm’s law

E=CR

What is E?

Electromotive Force.

You are selected.

Thank you.

And then I started my wonderful career as an electrical maintenance engineer in NFCL Kakinada. I had worked there for six months before realization dawned upon me one dusky evening.

SOFTWARE!!!! What am I doing here in this metal crap? I should be writing code for real-time embedded systems! Where is the appointments page?

I walked into Software-Solutions Ltd. one fine day. It was a great experience. Quite exhilarating you can say.. I solved a couple of puzzles and told the interviewer what Virtual Reality was all about. Dr. Ivan Sutherland would have had a heart attack if he were in the interview panel. But as a matter of fact he was NOT there in the interview panel and the guy who was doing the interview knew zilch about Virtual Reality. So he offered me a job gladly because you know! very few people knew what Virtual Reality was at that time.

It took me quite sometime to figure out that I wouldn’t be writing code for real-time embedded systems. I was placed in Powerbuilder and I spent two and a half years in that field trying to wake up from the horrid dream.

It of course was not a dream. It was real. And dreams cannot be real. Then I had a real dream.. a really nice dream.. in which the business manager approached me and asked me whether I could take up a Unix project.

I said yes!

of course I would.

Won’t you miss your Powerbuilder?

Nope I won’t.

How comfortable are you in UNIX?

I could crack UNIX passwords when I was in school.

Great! You are fit for this project.

Thank you.

And the dream is still going on friends.. Here I am working in a UNIX project and suddenly life has become so interesting.... that I am pretty sure this is all a dream.

Nirmal, as you all might have guessed, is a pessimist.