Meet Jayanth ... Among all the lakhs of GATE aspirants through out the country, he is one of those exclusive 28 members to get a seat in the prestigious IISC .. Gate Rank 256 ..
K.Jayanth Kumar ... a little guy with a hair style that would beat malinga’s hair style ... this is how i saw jayanth when i first met him in Inter. He said he had vowed not to cut his hair till he visited tirumala for tenth class exam results. Now i wonder he must grow a forest on his head for the feat he has achieved – A SEAT IN IISC. An incredible achievement.. !!! ... Only Jayanth himself can describe how that feeling is. I can certainly not describe how his parents must be feeling, his mother a humble housewife, his father working at a local shop on Gandhi road. Though i am not Jayanth, i take this opportunity to describe his wonderful journey from AVILALA to IISC through my eyes and how lucky i was to witness and learn from that as a part of our 6 years of close friendship.
All the way back in inter, In that SUPER-F*ckin-FAST-TRACK-BATCH of IIT, Narayana college Tirupati, here was a guy sitting in the first bench, solving every maths problem faster than the lecturer, yelling answers louder than every other student, asking doubts which were like the bombs in the lecturers heart. He left me clueless & puzzled with his speed, his clarity, his confidence and his guts to question a lecturer ON HIS FACE. He left everybody like that. Personally, he scared the shit out of me. The fact that i had to beat this guy and achieve an IIT seat gave me nightmares. He used to cycle all the way from his village called AVILALA to Narayana College in Gandhi Road bearing the heat of Tirupati day in and day out. Later in the second year, though being a day-scholar, he never went to his home to avoid all the time waste of cycling to his village. He stayed over every night at my house, sometimes slept on college benches, sometimes on the chairs, sharing the beds with other college hostlers, sometimes in little rooms not greater than an arm’s length. He lived hs entire Inter on his Mom's tiffin box, coz he hardly had the time to go home and eat peacefully. Despite all these, i never saw him he complaining about anything else. I only saw him put his goal above everything else.
Since he stayed at my home every night, i think i had the chance to observe him closely than anybody else. One of the things i observed was his sheer enthusiasm to learn. He was always ready to learn, ready to teach and ready to share knowledge. He was the only guy in class to promptly attend and listen to every single class with great attention. One could say he was totally immersed into that teaching-listening experience. He is the best listener i have come across in my life. No subject was tough for him since he loved them. He immensely enjoyed working on subjects, studying them in great detail, a habit which he carried with him to engineering and probably for the rest of his life. We had a wonderful time in inter, solving problems, creating new problems, dissecting theorems, arguing about theories and enjoyed the process of shared learning. We shared our beds, our bedsheets, our lunch boxes, our ideas, our thoughts and i still remember having the longest of my consversations with till about 3am on everything about life and subjects. And those conversations were one of the best ones i had in my life. I learnt from him and he learnt from me and we have been doing this or years. We were probably one of the few people who enjoyed subjects of inter which were supposed to be dry. And Jayanth is the best person to have in your shared study group. He’ll clear your doubts and straighten your mind on that concept just like an expert tailor unknotting a tangled mess of threads into one straight and fine pieces of strings.
Despite all his efforts in Inter, he never could achieve his dream, i.e.. Getting into an IIT. He had this habit of committing petty mistakes which cost him a lot. But he was never exhausted of the 2 years effort. He wouldn’t give up. He ended up in Aurora engineering college, 50 km outside Hyderabad. He dint complain about it. He dint complain about his hostel life, dint complain about staying away from home, dint complain that he lived his entire college life in a lifeless town. As i said, he never complained about anything else and put his goal above everything else. As soon as he discovered his second opportunity to get into IIT,... i.e GATE he plunged into it without a second thought.
He prepared for GATE bearing the hot summers, Chilly Winters, ignoring mosquitoes in his lousy hostel. He sacrificed the weekend fun of college life and travelled 100 km every weekend to the city for the coaching classes. The failure in Inter did not disturb him. The way he analyzed his weakness and mistakes and eliminated them one by one on his way to success, Jayanth reminds me of the Batman in the movie Batman begins, who struggles, falls, commits mistakes, only to rise back up on his strength and makes his own legacy by vanquishing all his inner weaknesses. Through his enthusiasm and love for subjects, combined with hours of planning and preparation, Jayanth refined himself constantly for the exams, just like a kid who sharpens his pencil every now and then to make his writing better. Jayanth became that crisp and sharpened pencil by the time he faced GATE exam.
One another quality within himself, he is never shy of accepting his weakness, even if someone of lower calibre is pointing fingers at him. He accepted that he couldn’t speak English despite the 90+ marks in school level English. He accepted that he dint knew to which country the Sydney city belonged. He accepted that he was weak at soft skills. After all, how much can one expect from a kid, who studied in a school which was as small as my school’s basketball ground, that too in a village growing up in almost an illiterate atmosphere. He embraced all these facts and learned everything from everybody possible. And many a time, he out mastered his teachers themselves
The persistence that he displayed during this four years of preparation is probably what that made stand out from the lakhs of GATE aspirants. Jayanth too, like every other engineering student went through the typical anxiety of “what next “question about his future career. His college had scarce amount of campus placements and he never got a job on campus. These things did pose a question about his future for which he answered me “GATE IS MY ONLY WAY OUT “. And i realised the confidence behind that answer right away, hence i wasn’t surprised with his achievement. I knew he would do it. I knew it because i could see how easily he used to clear my doubts with crystal clarity. I could see how he confidently outsmarted the lecturers themselves with analysis. Only a person with the uttermost understanding of a subject would do that. He dint achieve that level of understanding overnight, It was 6 years of constant learning process in which Jayanth never ran out of fuel. He never let the “WHAT-IF-I FAIL-IN GATE” types of negative thoughts into his his mind ever. Now that’s what i call confidence.
Jayanth is not that typical first-benched-self-centered nerd like that Chatur in 3 idiots. He would explain things to dullest of students without exaggerating about himself. He would learn things from others without biting his teeth from the Inside. He was never shy to learn English from me, Never hesitated to learn math from some below his caliber level, Never ignored the arguments of anyone regarding the subject and he always listened to them no matter what. He is an ever learner. Ever listener.
As you read this, you may a get a Goal-oriented-serious-guy impression on jayanth, which he is not. He enjoys his social life with friends, travel’s places, has his part of fun and entertainment. He is not serious. He is sincere. He is persistent, focussed, ever learner, a great listener and puts his Goal above everything else. And these are the qualities that got this AVILALA boy his IISC seat. He’ll achieve many more things in days to come. And i don’t just have to hope for that because i am damn well sure that HE WILL DO.
CONGRATS AND GOOD LUCK MAN ... Technically speaking, you are the first person to settle down in life. Am Always with you..
NAJEEB
