To us, here and now, it appears thus

East or West, home is the best, goes an old saying. Many a time, one would silently smile at such witticisms, but only rarely does one realise the truth behind such sayings. Leaving home, a place which has been so good to me, is more than simply getting on a flight and saying goodbye. Its a weird emotional experience, that brings forth bountiful emotions you never knew you had.

India - Its the land of my fathers and forefathers, an eternal connection that I could never sever, it’s a part of me which would never depart from me, and to which I hope I never depart from. Its too complicated to put it in words, for some emotions are necessarily beyond words.

So, India, my love, my mother, my motherland, I bid you adieu, but donot forget me as I won’t ever forget you. Remember well, for this parting is only that of time and space and not that of heart or mind.

Signing Off,
Vishnu Vyas

Telekineses. Now I know what I missed at IIT, the ability to magically move things with my awsome powers of concentration. Damn! the voodoo courses I took at SRM seem to pale in comparison to using the ‘force’. You can get in your underwear and dance around chanting and still not get as much as a peanut, let alone doughnuts - No wonder our syllabus sucks!

Signing Off,
Vishnu Vyas.

If you have been following my blog, which hasn’t been updated in quite a while you would have been surprised at the childish outburst of mine involving homer’s characters. But I might as well break the surprise and go and announce what I’ve been holding for weeks. I will officially be a graduate student of computer science from January onwards at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles.

Yes, no more anonymous doormat in a public sector organisation, no more ‘IT professional’ badge and primarily no more living in a third world country with first world comforts. My world has been turned upside down. Henceforth, I will be living in a first world country with a third world lifestyle. But this post is not about me, but about what I have come to call the Desi Support System (DSS for short). What prompted me to write this post was when I was browsing casually through a book on algorithms and to my surprise found these lines.

Suppose, for example, that your friend Raj has just accepted a summer job at a large telecommunications company CluNet. A few days later, the small start-up company WebExodus, which has been dragging its feet on making a few final decisions, calls up Raj and offers him a summer job as well.

Now what was that about these lines that prompted me? It was in a book written by two authors who work in Cornell, their main demonstrating example seems to be Raj, most definitely an Indian. I’m sure that they didn’t decide to name him after shooting darts at a world map. I guess its the ubiquitousness and the success of Indians everywhere, especially in the US, in fields of computer science and mathematics.

Many say its in our genes to be smart, but thats bullshit. Its probably because of the intense competition, the pressure to succeed, an almost ruthless determination that puts most of us where we are, but I’m sure thats not all. There is more at play here. A strange, subtle, almost intangible sense of common identity, a feeling of fraternity (or sorority) that we seem to share. A weird commitment to certain core values and all this is expressed in what I would call the Desi Support System.

From a friend in Belgium who assures me that she can make sambhar and fish fry, desi style all sourced from local stores to the heartland of Hollywood there is an invisible network of desis, of all colors and creeds and with a unifying love of cricket and a sense of common identity. Its amazing how helpful they are. Whats more, its amazing how ubiquitous we are. From helping me circumnavigate the Bradley terminal to making abysmally silly movies like Signs, we seem to be every where, Computers, Engineering, Mathematics. Its amazing that how we somehow, are able to find rare bonds in an alien land, which we wouldn’t realize in our home lands. Its mind blowing that you mention IT or Computer Science and you probably would find an Indian silently lurking behind, with a benign smile, and probably helping out others. It is these intangibles that make us succeed almost everywhere. The invisible threads of friendship, or rather kinship that gives us a head start. A support system that we can fall back on and that almost always and universally available.

Science works by standing on the shoulders of giants. Indians work by standing on the shoulders of others, all part of a giant pyramid.

Signing Off,
Vishnu Vyas.