Attitude

This morning, a question came to my mind as to what keeps people going in a routine mundane work life! Sometimes, I find it really hard to motivate myself do things that are boring, but I don't have a choice but to do it. I was reminded of the following article I read 4 years back that I had a copy saved:

GULBARGA, Wed Feb 23 2005: Her husband was the City Improvement Trust Board Chairman. Two of her sons have been chairpersons of gram panchayats. A daughter-in-law is the outgoing vice-chairperson of a gram panchayat. Above all, another daughter-in-law was the worshipful Mayor of the Gulbarga City Municipal Corporation.

But for Neelamma Valakeri the fact that her kith and kin figure in the city's who's who, has not cut her off from ground realities: she still deligently goes about her job of sweeping the dirty streets of Gulbarga.

In her own quiet, unpretentious way, this unusual Dalit pourakarmika is redefining the concept dignity of labour, putting to practice in letter and spirit the teaching of Lord Basaveshwara `Kayakave kailasa' (work is heaven).

Unembarassed and unapologetic, Neelamma has been on the job for the last three decades even when her daughter-in-law Gangubai Valakeri held the powerful post of mayor a few years ago.

In the 1980s when her husband Basavantrao Valakeri was appointed chairman of the CITB, now the equivalent of the chairmanship of the Gulbarga Urban Development Authority (GUDA), the then city municipal commissioner directed the sanitary inspector not to use Neelamma's services as it would be demeaning for the chairman's wife to be seen sweeping the streets.

``Nothing doing, I said. This was unethical. If she wanted to give up the job on her own it would be different. But just because she is my wife, she should not sweep the streets, is simply not acceptable,'' recalls Basavanat Rao Valakeri, Neelamma's 77-year-old husband.

Her work record is outstanding, putting her head and shoulders above her colleagues. A punctual worker, she begins her duties at 6 a.m.. Till 1 p.m. she is absorbed in her duties and can be seen sweeping the streets, collecting the garbage and cleaning out clogged drains.

``Rain or shine, she is on the job at 6 a.m. sharp. Her punctuality and dedication to work is amazing. Though I am somewhat embarrassed to take her roll call every morning, I can't escape it,'' remarks a sanitary inspector.

What compels Neelamma to continue to sweep the streets when it is neither inevitable nor necessary? Her children are all well placed in life with the eldest son Suryakumar, an LPG dealer. Her second son Jagadish Kumar was the chairman of Kusnoor Gram Panchayat for five years and his wife Anuradha is the outgoing vice chairman of a gram panchayat. Another son Pavan Kumar was the chairman of the Nandikur gram panchayat for 33 months and now runs a couple of `dhabhas'. All are comfortably off. But Neelamma is not.

``Their politics and posts are only limited to a certain term. But my vocation is permanent, until I get `vajeepha' (retirement),'' says Neelamma when asked why she was still at her job. Drawing a salary of about Rs.7000 per month, she has been able to construct a house at the Pourakarmika Colony in the city on a plot given by the Corporation.

``I never felt uneasy about sweeping the streets when my husband was CITB chief or when my daughter-in-law was mayor,'' says she. ``When Gangubai became mayor, she asked me to give up the job. But I refused. Instead, I told her to visit all the wards to supervise whether the pourakarmikas were performing their duties well,'' Neelamma, a primary dropout with 13 grand children, says proudly.

Such dedication to duty may run in the family as Neelamma's mother-in-law was also a pourakarmika, while her sister-in-law recently retired as one. And leave seems to be the last thing on her mind: she is not even aware of various types of leaves she is entitled to. She claims her work keeps her active and healthy. And in the process, she succeeds in making many others happy as well.

One can argue that there could be some ulterior motive for her to keep going to sweep the streets, her children don't care about her, any sane person would not go for such a job given her status etc. etc. Whatever her motive is, I am still feeling inspired by Neelamma! I salute her.

A wonderful quote by Martin Luther King, Jr. is very apt here:

" If it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, like Shakespeare wrote poetry, like Beethoven composed music; sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will have to pause and say, 'Here lived a great street sweeper, who swept his job well'."

The attitude to work is more important than the work itself!

Inspiration from an old man

Yesterday, I was at the graduate director's office to get his approval for my master's degree presentation. There was an old man waiting before me to meet the graduate director. He was frail and had quite wrinkled skin hanging from different parts of his face. He was having many sheets of paper in his hand and was carrying a fully loaded conference bag. I was wondering why on earth such an old person would want to meet the graduate director! He looked at me and immediately started a conversation.

"Do you know what ECN stands for?", he asked me pointing to an ECN magazine lying on the desk at the office. I didn't know the full form of ECN and I thought I could figure out what it is by looking at it. I quickly flipped through the pages and could not find it. I gave up and replaced the magazine silently back in its place.

He then asked me some questions related to registering for the Systems Analysis graduate course at the ECE department. I figured out that he wanted to do that course and was surprised! I told him to e-mail the instructor and he said, "The instructor will not reply. You know how many e-mails I get per day?"

"No!" I said. "190", he retorted. I asked, "Who sends you those mails?"

"The IEEE," he said. I figured out that he subscribes to a lot of techie stuff online. I was amazed that at this age this guy wants to keep himself updated.

Our conversation drifted off, and he was complaining that the graduate director was not on time to his office. But the director was not very late and this old man went into the director's office and told him he wanted to take the course and got it approved. He showed some transcripts to the grad director, but the director was not interested in seeing that anyways. I wanted to know more about this old man, who at this age wanted to do the systems analysis course. I find it hard to keep myself motivated to do the Ph.D. at this young age!

It was my turn next and got my job done in no time. I wanted to catch hold of this old man and ask him more questions. I came out of the office and saw the old man doddering down the hallway and I ran behind him to talk to him. Here is the conversation between me and the old man, whose name I later found out to be Dirk Plummer:

Me: How old are you?

DP: 78.

Me: Why do you want to do the systems analysis course?

DP: Because I want a Ph.D.

I was puzzled! Why does this old man want a Ph.D. at this age? May be just for fun. I wanted to know more.

Me: Why do you need the Ph.D.?

DP: I want a job at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) and they will not hire me if I don't have a Ph.D.

I was taken aback by his answer! "This man really has a goal", I thought. But was he close to getting his Ph.D? Or is he just starting his Ph.D? Man, he is already too old!

Me: How long will you take to finish your Ph.D.?

DP: I will take five years.

I was bowled over by this answer! This guy will be 83 years old if he is alive and everything goes well, by the time he will get his Ph.D. Why will PPPL hire an 83 year old guy? Does he have anything special?

Me: Why do you think you will be hired at PPPL? Why do you want to work there?

DP: Because, the researchers in PPPL are building a nuclear reactor and they think they know how to build it! They don't know and I know how to build it. I wrote a paper that was published by the IEEE in 1995 that showed that you cannot build a reactor with negative slope...

He showed me a lot of math from the paper. Now, there were only two possibilities. Either this guy is an extraordinary person or he is an eccentric guy (because it is hard to believe that people in PPPL are that dumb too.) Nevertheless, he was a great person to meet. I took a picture with this guy and told him he was a great inspiration. But I wanted to know why his ambition in life was to build this better reactor?

Me: Why do you want to build this better nuclear reactor?

DP: Because I have a daughter and I want to do it for her. It will make this world a better place to live.

I didn't have anything to say to his reply! We talked for some more time and he told me that he drives 34 miles to get to the campus. I stay just 3 miles from the campus and don't even feel like going to the campus daily!! He also told me that the toughest thing for him was to get A's in the courses. I felt I am so blessed that I can ace courses easily at my age.

I left the place with a big inspirational lesson. This 78-year old had so much motivation, drive and a single-minded goal. I have the advantage of easily understanding the latest technology as I grew up with it. He seemed to be struggling with getting used to new technology! But the drive in him was so inspiring!

Meeting Bob Wilson

I did attend last week's picnic celebrating Jim Gordon's 80th birthday. I was amazed to see a group of world-class physicists who had come to attend the picnic. They spoke praising Jim Gordon for his exceptional leadership skills. Notable among those who spoke were: Herwig Kogelnik, Arthur Ashkin, Linn Mollenauer. It was inspiring to hear these people say that Jim was just a great colleague and manager, and created a great atmosphere for research. I could imagine the electric atmosphere for research at Bell Labs those days!

The most exciting moment came when Jerry introduced me to Bob Wilson, who won the Nobel prize in Physics for his discovery of cosmic background radiation, that provided the experimental evidence for the Big Bang. "Nice to meet you" he said, as I shook his hand. I immediately started asking him some questions. "Did you build this telescope?" I asked, pointing to the horn antenna behind me. He said, "that horn was already there when I joined". "It's a section of a parabola," he said, pointing to the curvature of the horn antenna.

"Where were the pigeons?" I asked, as I had read the story of pigeons being killed. "Oh! the pigeons are dead! We shot'em. They were in the small chamber and I sent it as far as the campus mail could get". He meant the Whippany campus, when he said "as far". "There was a guy who loved pigeons and we sent it to him. He found that they were junk pigeons and let them free. They came back to the antenna. We finally had to shoot them," he sounded sad.

"Do they pay the Nobel prize money in Swedish currency?" I asked. He said, "Yes! they do. I had to convert to US dollars here. Those days the Nobel prize money was tax-free. Nowadays, it is not." He was apparently 72 years old and he still works in a Radio Astronomy lab at Boston. He was also telling us about the radio telescope they built in Hawaii.

It was great to meet and talk to a Nobel Laureate. They are normal human beings, do not have a great ego. I guess they just work hard to earn their fame!

Inspiration

The final lecture of the WINLAB seminar series was scheduled to be given by Rajiv Laroia (Senior VP, Founder and CTO, Qualcomm Flarion Technologies) today and I decided not to go to Crawford Hill. Jerry Foschini had told me that I should not miss the picnic, but I really wanted to attend Rajiv Laroia's talk. The picnic was to celebrate the 80th birthday of Jim Gordon, who was one of the pioneers in quantum electronics. He used to work in the building and retired a few years ago. His experiment to make the MASER work had dawned the era of quantum electronics.

Jerry called me at 5 PM to ask me if I wanted to discuss a presentation I had to give at Crawford Hill on Thursday. He was very excited about a speech by Charles H. Townes, who was the thesis advisor of Jim Gordon. It is just amazing that Charles Townes, 93, flew a red-eye flight from CA just to attend his student's 80th birthday celebrations at NJ and flew back immediately to CA -- the reason he gave was he had a busy schedule!

Charles Townes won the Nobel prize in Physics in 1964 for his contributions to fundamental work in quantum electronics leading to the development of the maser and laser. Jerry was understandably very excited when he was telling me about Townes's talk. Here are some things he told me over the phone:

When Townes was appointed an associate professor at Columbia University, he was dissuaded by I. I. Rabi and Polykarp Kusch, the then department chair of the Physics department of Columbia University not to pursue his ideas about making an oscillator at longer centimeter wavelengths, where ammonia has intense resonances. Rabi and Kusch were outstanding physicists themselves -- both won the Nobel prize in physics. But as an associate professor, Townes had tenure. A department chairman could not fire him simply because of a disagreement or incompetence. "No," he said. "I think the experiment will work and I am going to continue." Among other people who thought that this experiment will not work were Neils Bohr and John Von Neumann.

Two months later, Jim Gordon rushed into the class that Townes was teaching and excitedly told him, "It's working!". The whole class followed Townes and Gordon to see the demonstration of the maser.

Jerry was really excited that he shook hands with Charles Townes and got to speak to him. I was so inspired at the other end of the line. Here is a great man (well known for his contributions to communications theory) getting inspired by another great man! I surely missed seeing a great scientist. But finally Jerry told, "Chandru, I will treat you for the picnic on Thursday". He made my day!!