Some years ago, I wrote a humorous post about the dreaded fitting workshops at IIT Madras. Since then, a number of folks asked me to write about my experiences in greater detail. It occurred to me there was a prequel to my post - my personal journey of what led me to IIT and helped me become the person I am today.

Growing up, my parents worked in two different cities. My dad worked in Mumbai, while I did most of my schooling in a town called Kakinada (in the state of Andhra Pradesh), where my mother was employed. Kakinada at that time was not in the mainstream of things and life was decidedly slower pace, reminiscent of those Malgudi Days stories. In all the years when I was growing up, I heard of maybe 2 or 3 folks who went to do their undergraduate in IIT Madras from Kakinada, one of who was my own uncle. When I was in 10th grade, my parents decided to buy a house in a semi-rural area called Valasapakala, which was connected to the town of Kakinada through what could best be described as a very tenuous means of transportation. While my parents’ decision may have been based on the tranquility and visions of a salubrious quality of life living among the rice fields of Valasapakala, life as it turned out had other plans. What followed was 3-4 years of extreme financial hardship for my family, which had unexpected effects on my life.

In those days you had very limited career options if your family belonged to the struggling middle classes. You had to opt for a professional education. What that meant was two years of grinding and intense preparation through high school to get admission into an engineering school or medical school. In my case, given the number of science and engineering graduates in my extended family, the only feasible career path seemed that of engineering school. I studied in an all-girls school from 5th grade through high school. Most of my classmates did not really have professional ambitions. However, my mother was an accomplished writer in Telugu and a role model for many, so I never had any self-doubts about what path I should pursue.

In my 11th and 12th classes my daily routine consisted of waking up early, practicing math problems, and cycling to “maths” or physics coaching class in a different town. The classes would start at 7 am, and sometimes even 6 am. Cars were an unheard of luxury for the struggling middle classes. In those days, a popular option for commuting were “mopeds” -two wheelers that provided an alternative to spotty and almost non-existent public transportation. My family could not afford the Rs. 5000 (less than 70 dollars, not adjusting for inflation and cost of living adjustments) to buy me a moped, nor the cost of petrol that would be needed. Some days I would have to cycle for a good 30 minutes at least to attend some coaching class or the other. Then I would cycle back home and eat a hurried breakfast before catching a privately operated bus that would take me to the junior college where I did my 11th and 12th. Some other days, I had a different set of coaching classes to attend. Those were the times in my life I walked half an hour to catch a bus, attend a coaching class, then walk another half an hour after the coaching class to catch another bus that would be take me to my junior college.

I still remember with nostalgia the days I would board those private buses plying between dusty little hamlets and towns between Kakinada and the mofussil areas nearby. The “Number 10” bus that would take me from home to college was perpetually in a state of repair. I must say the bus drivers and operators were extremely creative in how they would handle maintenance emergencies, changing wheels and tires by the roadside with consummate ease with the passengers still sitting inside. Early mornings it was commonplace to see women boarding with a fresh catch of fish that would be sold in the town market, and later in the days it would be farmworkers selling their produce in the “big market” in the town. It was not uncommon to see a squalling chicken or two alongside the passengers. During the harvest season, the newly harvested paddy would be spread out on the roads, a creative and energy efficient alternative to employing threshing machines to separate the grain from the chaff.

Somehow in between the walks and bus rides and cycle routes, something changed in my life. I studied in a convent school till 10th grade and hated how math was taught. Suddenly in junior college, math and science suddenly seemed wondrous and full of possibilities. I was always a precocious reader and read extensively, but I began to understand the joy of learning concepts and learnt to connect the dots. I started enjoying the thrill of solving math problems -the frustration when you almost grasp a concept but not quite, the magical moment of clarity when everything comes together, the pleasure of having completed a proof and the sense of a minor accomplishment, however fleeting. What was also different in my two years of junior college was that I was largely left to my own devices, given that I used to leave home very early and come back very late in the evening. I used to bunk classes and sit under some tree or the other in my junior college and attempt to solve problems. Having lots of unstructured time and being free from parental supervision and micromanaging helped hone my thinking, sharpened my focus and strengthened my reasoning.

Somehow, I took it into my head that I would aim to get into one of the IITs -an almost unthinkable pipedream, living where I was and the very meagre resources I could command. To crack the JEE to get into an IIT required two plus years of intense preparation. Most of the students, I should say 90-95% of those admitted into IITs, came from large metropolitan backgrounds where they attended dedicated coaching centers that trained them in the art of solving those arcane problems necessary to get through the dreaded JEE. The handful of folks who were not from big cities still came from large towns with coaching facilities. Besides, almost all those folks who got into IIT had one thing in common- their gender. IIT was an almost exclusively male bastion. IITs had less than 5% women in their classes. For boys in high school, it was common to have a peer group where everyone worked together in solving those JEE style problems. I was a young girl, living in a small village, working completely on my own. I had no tutors for JEE, no peer group, no one to compare notes on what I did correct or what I got wrong. All I had was an interest in solving problems and a strong sense that I needed to have some aspirations for myself.

For generations of Indians, who either due to parental pressure or self-imposed masochism yearned to attend an IIT, the JEE was a rite of passage. I remember the time spent on log tables (calculators were not allowed in those dark ages), questions on projectiles and pulleys, calculating the rate of acceleration of blocks placed on other blocks and random problems on coin tosses (pun intended). I used to remember short cuts for complex multiplication and division and even remember having memorized some commonly used log tables for speedier calculations. Parts of it were fun, parts of it were sheer drudgery, but in my case, preparing for the JEE was a way to concentrate my energies into a pretty tangible goal, and one that would change the trajectory of my life.

After all these years, some of the books I studied from have acquired an almost mystical aura. I remember I learnt physics from Resnick and Halliday as well as Sears and Zemansky. The Andhra state board math was quite good, but I struggled with it at first. I studied in ICSE till 10th grade, and suddenly in 11th class I had to learn calculus for the first time. My peers already had been acquainted with precalculus and the basics of limits from AP State Board. One of my mother's colleagues helped me for a few weeks and gave me a crash course on calculus, for which I am very grateful. My mom taught undergrad level chemistry, I would just read undergrad level chemistry textbooks on my own and ask her for help if I didn't understand stuff. My precocious reading habits stood me in good stead when it came to digesting complex material on my own.

There was another twist to this tale. In my 12th grade, my mother was transferred to another town, Rajahmundry, which was more than an hour by train from Kakinada. She would wake up at 4, make breakfast and lunch for us kids and take a cycle rickshaw that would take her to the train station in Kakinada to board a 6am train. As a young girl, my life was severely constrained. I was out of my home for upwards of 12 hours every day. It was unthinkable that I could go to a restaurant or even roadside tea shack by myself. My mother would pack me both breakfast and lunch. I would be toting these containers around, in addition to my heavy backpack containing all the JEE prep, engineering entrance material, my college textbooks and what not. The backpack incidentally also contained contraband novels and non-fiction that I was not supposed to be reading, since I was supposed to be channeling all my energies into getting admission to an engineering college. I remember reading Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children when I was supposed to be studying for some exam or the other.

Miraculously for me, everything worked out at the end of those high school years. I was a top ranker in my state engineering entrance exam (3rd rank in EAMCET) and in my state board exams (I placed 9th in the state in my board exams) and did get admission to IIT. If I were a character in a movie, there would be an aria playing in C major by the time I finished my high school. Through elementary and high school, I was one of the youngest kids in class. I left home before I turned 17. In the decades hence, I have traveled the world and have met with everyone from corporate leaders to media personalities. I took classes with a Nobel laurate and co-authored with academics who worked with Nobelists. While I have come far from the days of boarding the number 10 bus with thoughts of math problems swimming in my head, sometimes I look back and think that the naïve, but determined, 15 year old - who wanted to read everything and was undaunted by knotty math problems – was, and still is, my most authentic self!