I am the same guy who once scored 4/100 in mathematics...

I was always an average kid in academics, and my interests were always oriented towards technology right from childhood. Electronics was my big time hobby and it all began when I was in primary school. Coming from a remote village in AP, I hardly knew anything other than the huge and heavy vacuum-tube radios, farming tractors and cycle-rickshaws. No TV, no VCR/VCPs, no auto-rickshaws, no fancy cars, no nothing. This big city was whole new world for me. I was surprised to see that almost every house had a TV and a scooter or a car. Back in the village, the only time we see a car was during elections when the local politicians visit our village to buy or beg for votes. So, initially I assumed that everybody in the city were into politics. It took a while for me to realize that they were not politicians but regular people. I was curious to know about everything in the new environment. Everything from a solid state radio to the functioning of an auto-rickshaw; so, while walking to/from the school, I used to stop at every place where something interesting used to happen. Be it the army personnel training in the 515 army base workshop grounds in Halasuru (Ulsoor), or an auto driver repairing his auto in the middle of the road or the slum people extracting copper out of the junk PCBs next to our school on artillery road. Everything seemed to catch my attention other than academics.

This curiosity grew day-by-day and I wanted to try out everything that I used to see. The first such trial of mine was quite adventurous and also disastrous. When I was in my fourth standard, I stole a small bulb from a roadside auto-rickshaw meter and managed to get it glowing using some old pencil cells. For me, a village kid in the big city who knew nothing but the way to school and back home, this was as good as inventing a light bulb. But no matter what I did, the bulb never used to glow bright. I even used to wait till it got dark, switch off all lights and then try. Then a real bright idea hit me. And that was to plug it straight into the electricity socket. So, when dad was out and mom was in the kitchen, I attached two wires to the small bulb and plugged it straight into the home electricity socket, and switched on the power without a second thought. The next thing I knew was that the bulb had busted into pieces and no electric appliance was working then onwards. I thought I blew out the entire electricity grid. I was so scared that I spoke nothing about it to anybody, and behaved as though I knew nothing about it. Mom realized that the electric stove was not working, and asked for help from our neighbor. Then we realized that the MCB had tripped due to short circuit. Oh boy, that was a great relief. I don’t remember when I realized that a 6 volts bulb cannot be plugged into a 220 volts power source.

My learning that had started out of curiosity and execution trough ‘trial and error’ continues even to date, and I must say, its one of the best ways of learning to do things practically. All through my school and college days, I did a lot of things. Electricals, electronics, mechanicals, carpentry, painting (well, not the art but painting walls), plumbing etc., I never used to be scared of trying new things. I used to screw up things many times. I used to rip open many gadgets, electronic toys, almost anything that was at my disposal. I even used to go to the junkyard in Shivaji Nagar and Sunday Bazaar looking for anything that is of interest to me. I learnt many things like assembling audio systems, emergency lamps etc., and it even turned out to be revenue generating. During my PUC days in RBANM’s college, I found a like minded person in class, Sooraj Prasad. We quickly became good activity partners and did almost everything for a simple water level controller to infra-red sensors to intelligent toy cars. I was involved so much into electronics that I hardly concentrated on academics. All the while I used to fare average (between 65-70%) in academics, but during PUC, I was so much involved in advanced electronics that my academic performance went below 60%. There were many instances where my dad was called upon by the principal to complain about my bad performance. The only subjects I used to fare well were Physics and Statistics. Mathematics and Chemistry were something that never got into me, and the only chemical I used to work with was Ferric Chloride, used to make PCBs, that too outside college.

Me and my brother being the first generation in my dad’s family tree to even go to college, he always wanted me to become an engineer, while my brother was already into commerce stream. He used to always compare me with a relative of mine who was studying engineering at that time and always wanted me to be like him. Looking at my bad academic performance, he forced me to attend tuitions taken by an aeronautical engineer working for ADE. I never liked that person at the first instance itself because he used to smoke at least five times in a span of one hour, and when he spoke, the whole place used to stink. Each time he thought us something, I immediately used to shoot back many questions out of curiosity, as I was more of a practical learner than theoretical. So, he complained to my dad that I was asking too many questions and causing delays in his sessions, and that the other students were getting affected. I quit going to him anymore. The other students in the tutions used talk something about CET and IIT. Frankly, I never knew what all that was about until the middle of my second year PUC. With a great deal of effort and many lectures and beltings from my dad, I somehow managed to get 61% in PUC, and I also took up CET after I realized that it was the entrance exam for engineering courses.

My CET rank sucked, and I never got any seat in Bangalore. The only option for me was to opt for a payment seat in Electrical Engineering at Tumkur. We even paid the fees. But when we came back home and started to think of the consequences of our business if I stayed outside, the proposition seemed very risky. Moreover, an educated relative of mine told my dad that electrical engineering was not worth studying when the whole world was into Computer Science. My brother too was undergoing courses in Computers outside the college. So, the next day we decided to that I will not take up electrical engineering. I dedicated that whole year to our business, and I seemed to enjoy making money both from our business and my hobby. But my dad never liked to see me with those electronics stuff as he cited that as the primary reason for my low grades and bad CET rank. And, I agree that it was the reason. It was after a few years that I realized that the amount of practical knowledge I had in electricals and electronics was something that even most fully qualified engineers lacked.

After a year spent at home, I was then looking out for admissions in the regular science streams across many colleges in Bangalore. Then something happened in my life that would change my life forever. Christ College; I got an admission for Bachelor of Science (Computer, Mathematics and Statistics), and I never knew at that point that it would change my life forever. And the reason they gave me an admission for that stream was because I had Statistics in my PUC and had also fared well in that subject.

During my first year at Christ College, I wanted to excel in statistics and make a career in that field. Computer Science was something that I was learning for the first time, and I did not have much interest either. Mathematics was something that I dreaded the most. I would do anything to even score the minimum marks in that subject. But I had maintained a good impression on all the lecturers as being studious and punctual, always seated in the first row for every lecture. I was very quick and intelligent in statistics, and was the only student who boldly said that I was interested in making a career in statistics. My statistics department HOD was very thrilled and happy to find the only student interested in making a career in statistics and not Computer Science, as all the others. I must confess. I had spoken too early. In all the internal exams, I used to fare average in other subjects, while I used to either fail or fare very badly in mathematics.

As days passed, my interest gradually shifted from statistics to Computer Science, with all the logic gates, micro-processors and semiconductor memory. I realized that Computers had a lot to do with my hobby, electronics. While the others in the class found it very difficult to understand all those capacitors and logic gates storing the information in the form of electricity, it seemed to be a cakewalk for me, having worked on the timer ICs and the switching transistors . Immediately, I became one of the favorite students of my CS department HOD, who used to teach Digital Electronics. The same happened with the C language. Many of my classmates used to struggle with C pointers, while I used to learn about them almost effortlessly. Soon, I was considered one of the geeks of the class. I passed my first year with a whopping 78%, my all time high.

In the second year, my dad brought me my first personal computer. The then state-of-the-art Pentium PC with 32 MB RAM, 2 GB Disk and a Samsung color monitor. Clocking at 200 MHz, that was the fastest PC in my entire friends' circle. It used to compile and run C graphics programs in fractions of a second. I was thrilled, and all my friends were envious. I used to have lots of friends coming to my house to see and work on the system. With a PC at my disposal, I dint have to travel to NIIT Computerdrome in Shivaji Nagar to try out my programs. I started spending so much time coding in C that I used to sometimes forget to eat, and I had completely orphaned my electronics hobby. I had all my interest diverted to CS, and hardly concentrated on any other subject.

During this time, we had a new mathematics lecturer who used to think that I was very good at the subject until reality dawned upon her. She was distributing the mid-term exam papers in the class, and announcing the names and marks out loud to the class. My close buddies Janu, Sumitra, Sunil, Sandesh and all others scored high grades as usual. She then announced my name. I stood up, right in the first row. She was shocked to even read out the marks. It was 4. Yes, 4 out of 100; she couldn’t believe herself. She asked me again and again if I was Murali. I said, ma’am, that’s me, and those are definitely my marks. It became a big topic of discussion in the staff rooms. Everybody in the mathematics department used to ask me only one thing. If I would ever clear my final exams in that subject, while the lecturers in other departments where happy that I used to out-perform many of my friends in their subjects. And in computer science practical sessions, I was always the numero uno. And to everybody’s surprise, I cleared my second year with 74%.

Christ College has something good and in a way special that even most of the engineering colleges across the state do not have. Overall development of a student, and an exposure to the industry and healthy competions in curricular and extra-curricular activities; regular inter-collegiate competitions in technical and cultural fields used to give us a lot to learn. I used to proactively involve myself in every activity and every competition. Soon, I was known for winning in every competition involving computers. This was not just in our college, but I won in many such competitions held by many other colleges across the city. Soon, I was known as a geek not only to my class, but to other departments too, including MCA, MBA, BBM and even the Hindi Dept. Everybody used to approach me to get software or websites developed for their respective departments. All this exposure, my knowledge of electronics and the ability to learn things very quickly catalyzed the growth of my skills. Our Hindi lecturer, Senthil Kumar, was an young and enterprising lecturer. I got to meet and interact with many professionals and celebrities from the art and technology fields. I was closely associated with him and we worked towards creating a brand image for the department, which then became a benchmark for other departments to follow, even to this day. In just three years, I had changed from an introvert to an extrovert. I had spent a year at home cursing myself for being such a failure who could not even manage an engineering seat. But towards the completion of my bachelors degree, I was a changed guy. A guy with a never ending positive attitude, high levels of technical and interpersonal skills with the confidence and ability to take on any competition head-on. Taking initiatives for doing new things and activities had got deep into my blood. I was then campus-placed to my first job, as a trainee in a company that developed networking gear and software. So, my involvement with electronics never seemed to end, in one form or the other. And as ever, everything that involved electronics and computers became more of a continuous and easy learning, than something that required me to torture my neurons.

Today, I am here writing this, at the end of my six years of career involved in the design and development of high-end communication gear, transporting terabits of data every second across the globe through copper, optic fiber and satellites. Though not an engineer by academic qualification, I have out performed every engineer I have ever worked with. And, the company that I worked for until now is the one that literally invented all of these, right from the first breakthrough in solid state electronics, the Transistor, to the revolutionary LASER. The world’s most acclaimed and respected research laboratories. I guess I don’t need to mention the name.

I am the same guy, who was refused to be thought in tuitions by a perpetual smoking addict. I am the same guy who scored 4 out of 100, in mathematics.

All that I ever did and still continue to do is to never kill my curiosity to learn about anything that interests me. My only suggestion to anybody reading this is, never kill your curiosity, even if it involves risks. Because, Curiosity breeds Creativity.