While I was busy working in my corner at TMRS lab at 11.30 pm yesterday, Shantanu enters the room and asks me for Nikhil Padhye's phone number.... why?
"He needs to welcome Mr.Steve who is coming tomorrow at 11 am".
"Who.. Steve Buckner ?? " said I.
"Nahi yaar ... I am forgetting his name...Steve...mmmm"
"Steve Jobs to nahi??", giggled we.
"Haan Steve Jobs".
"STEVE JOBS???? are you sure you are awake and its him?"
"Haan bhai Steve Jobs"
"Steve Jobs ...Apple wala?"
"Nahi nahi... IITK ka first mechanical deptt HOD"
Ahh... we took a deep sigh of relief while our heart beat count was already 5 count up.
Then he recalled its not Steve Jobs but Vijay Kumar Stokes who was coming to IITK and was visiting our lab.
Next morning we met the 70 year old young man who still had the spark of IITK alive in him. While Shantanu demonstrated him his classic nanosatellite ppt, we had some great conversations with him. First thing he stated was that he needed the most intelligent person in the lab to remind him at 1 o'clock to meet the director. No sooner had Shantanu started than he interrupted him, asking why is it called nanosatellite. He explained to him the standards for nomenclature and that the name has nothing to do witjh nanotechnology. This was followed by a small dicussion on the use of word nano and micro today. This time Amrit Sagar said like we have Tata NANO, we have a nanosatellite. "No, its not the same. Nano is the name of the car and not the category. You can name yourself Micro Srivastava but you can not categorise yourself as micro organism".
Very soon he was bored with the lengthy and irrelevant presentation and guided Shantanu on making the presentation precise as per the audience. He even went on to mark him fail on the poor quality of indentation and text justification. He said that one should first build the story that is to be narrated then add the relevant content into the presentation. If someone asks you the way to railway station, one should not go on telling him how to catch auto and where to get down and how to pay the driver. Too much of irrelevant details may make the audience miss the flow of talk.
In the middle he pointed out asking if the spelling of "Ahamadabad" was correct. "You are in IITK right, so at least use the spell check. I can easily make out there is something wrong from the two different sizes of Ahmedabad on the slide. While I was coming I saw three different speelings of students' gymkhana at the same place : Student Gymkhana, Student's Gymkhana and Students' Gymkhana." The next thing he pointed was the fancy style of bulleting and inappropriate eye catchy font which changed from 1 slide to other. He emphasized on quality control of things. He gave an example of marathon athlete; he is most tired at the end of the race but that is the time when he should cross the line with full enthusiasm. Quality should be maintained till the end before the result because it is then when it is going to be exposed to public. If everything was good but quality goes bad at the end due to tiredness all the efforts go in vain. So one should get refreshed just before the end for the show. He asked the team to do extensive testing of the components before launching the satellite.
Shubham feeling sleepy, popped up suddenly, "Sir its 1 o'clock."
"No its not, check your watch".
"Sir, I checked Shantanu's watch."
Amrit said it was 12:58 pm by his watch but it was 6 minutes fast. "How will you make satellite when can not keep your watches up to date". Amrit said, "Sir, but I know the right time now".
He remembered faces of people who met him last time. He remembered Nikhil but faintly. Nikhil promptly said, "The only difference is that I have grown older and you have grown younger". In the mean time Vyas Sir had arrived and we had a small photography session with him.
