Darr ke Aage Jeet Hai (Conquer your fears !)
Nothing teaches you resilience more than the hard knocks life serves up for you. While this rings true for me after many years post Kgp, I sure did not think much in these terms back then during my undergrad days. But then, the tapestry of events that unfolded over 1 semester changed
everything.
Looking down memory lane, we (me and a few friends collectively) started the 2nd year of college with a sense of achievement with having put the 1st year behind us, and now being closer to the actual department and specialisation. Little did we know that surprise and challenges lurked
beyond just round the corner. “Electrical machines’ was waiting to pounce on us (I mean, literally). A couple of initial classes / tutorials were uneventful, post which the fun began. We were to get
increasingly conversant with Parker Smith (book full of ungodly problems) and run through real time problem solving during the tutorial sessions. With immense belief in our established process of last night, just before exam cramming schedules, I and three (3) of my batchmates planned to
sleepwalk through the tutorial sessions, and be physically present only (mentally, we had enough and more diversions on the hall, campus and beyond).
Week 1 and 2 were lucky escape, some joint solving, but no major cause for concern. It was week 3 onwards when the professor wisened up to the fact that most of the solutioning was being provided by him. Lo and behold, he pivoted completely and wanted to make the sessions more
interactive. So he invited a friend and depmate (let’s call him A) to solve a rudimentary problem in front of the class for everyone’s benefit. As luck would have it, A was not even close to the subject, having invested past weeks in hall and other extra mural activities. Him attempting to
solve the problem on the board were one of the longest 7 mins I’ve experienced. No solution emerged, despite the prof’s help, and A, utterly humiliated and dejected returned to his seat. Me and a few of my other friend were now mortified (we exchanged side glances to share concern
that anyone of us could be next). The rest of the session happened without many casualties, but this solitary experience instilled the fear of death in us.
What got set off over the next weeks was pure escapism at it’s best. Fear had set into our bones, and me and 3 of my batchmates bunked 2 consecutive tutorial sessions post this. It took the professor’s warning and implied threats to get us back into the sessions. Then the realisation
collectively dawned “We have no escape, we shall be educated”.. With this, we implored the prof and a few batchmates of EE dept, to help us with the sticky, mind bending concepts and problems. Fast forward to a few weeks of intensive effort, we became decently good at most problems, and the constant gnawing fear slowly left our souls. We realised, maybe in different
words and phrases, that most things are doable / feasible, the fears (Darr) speak to our present deficiencies, and that is another hill we have to surmount on the path to progress.
~Sameer Kumar, BTech(EE), 1998, Nehru Hall of Residence
