The Pleasure of an Alumni Meet

The pleasure in getting together with your past alumni friends is unbelieveable! I had such an experience today at the IISc Alumni Silicon Valley meet in Milpitas, California. (The group operates a Yahoo group web site).

1. A highly nostalgic account of some life as an IISc student was recalled by Prof. A. K. Rao. (He was on the IISc faculty subsequent to his graduation).
2. Dr. N. Balakrishnan of Supercomputer Education and Research Centre (SERC) joined us on the telephone even though it was about 2:15 AM for him! This 20- to 30-minute interaction brought emotional tears in me. You see, unless you think in terms of monetizing any powerful idea, you lost the ability to promote even greater amount of monetizable ideas.
   
3. A rather eye-opening account of volunteering by Dinesh Thirumurthy and his wife immediately after the Tsunami disaster hit the communities in the Indian Ocean in December 2004 was presented. His account was useful in that it made it a little clearer that nearly anyone can provide help of that sort.
4. After lunch, we had a nice presentation of the Tabla by a local maestro Ravi Gutala. (Not that it matters, he is not an alumnus of IISc. He is a close friend and teacher of Murthy Gudipati, a prime mover in the alumni association).

Moral: Don't miss an alumni meet if you can afford to attend it.