Being born on 24th doesn't make for a good news. If anything, I am sure my parents must have been dealing with their dwindling finances towards the end of the month. Being a breezy July, there would be no mercy until the 31st either. Whatever the case, I had to be in the world by then. I would like to think I was named 'Ravindran' only because it happened to be a 'Sun'day.
Nobody can recall the first few years in any great detail. All that I recall is - at the end of the fifth year, which was sometime around 1988 (Oh, did I give a clue to my age??!!) I was put up in a place along with 30 other people to spend the rest of my 11 years of time. Yes, it was at IDA SCUDDER School in Vellore, the only one at those times following the ICSE stream of affiliation in our small town. I would seriously thank my parents for that. Not sure I have too many memories that I cherish as closely as the time spent in my school.
Vacation time is slow time, if you are moving into your higher secondary. The Hindu came in handy to fill in my slot. Editorial analysis, leader page articles, letters to the editor - never mind I had to keep underlining and looking up the dictionary for every third sentence that was printed. But it was all worth the effort, when I saw some of my letters and articles getting published out there in the same columns I read through meticulously.
Shifting into a completely government school from what was rather an elitist school earlier meant more challenges. Nevertheless, every moment at the government Muslim Higher Secondary school in Vellore was enjoyable for me. Tons of new experience. Loads of new friends, especially from a stratum that was not as privileged as what I was. The news reading practice that I pursued with other junior folks in the school remain fresh in my mind even to date.
I had always been an average scorer. That would mean any seats into medical colleges are going to be getting ruled out directly. My principle was always to enjoy the subjects as much as possible. Marks and grades have to necessarily be a by-product of enjoying the subject. Thankfully, I managed to enjoy my subjects to the extent that I could get decent grades on all of them. My parents had the wisdom to see through my principle and let me stick with it. Tamil and English languages continue to be my favourite to date.
Computer Science is something I have never learned formally in any classroom. It was just something waiting to happen to me at Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore. Voila..! I enjoyed my stint with computers pretty thoroughly - especially, the part around systems programming in UNIX and LINUX and look for an opportunity to write a script or two whenever one comes by!
The Traveling Salesman Problem is my favourite in Computer Science. No, not because I am into the core research - more because I face it every time. I love traveling "on-the-go" without much prior planning. So, its always heuristics..! I would pull up mental maps of places and trying to see the best route to take to somewhere (or more often, to nowhere!!)
Oh no!! All through, I never realized that I just completed an assignment for writing something about myself in roughly a page or so..!
