The Chosen One !

Courtesy: Inspirations by Sudhir krishnan

Naga Naresh Karutura has just passed out of IIT Madras in Computer Science and has joined Google in Bangalore. You may ask, what's so special about this 21-year-old when there are hundreds of students passing from various IITs and joining big companies like Google?

Naresh is special. His parents are illiterate. He has no legs and moves around in his powered wheel chair.

Ever smiling, optimistic and full of spirit; that is Naresh. He says, "God has always been planning things for me. That is why I feel I am lucky." Read why Naresh feels he is lucky.

Childhood in a village

I spent the first seven years of my life in Teeparru, a small village in Andhra Pradesh, on the banks of the river Godavari . My father Prasad was a lorry driver and my mother Kumari, a house wife. Though they were illiterate, my parents instilled in me and my elder sister (Sirisha) the importance of studying.

Looking back, one thing that surprises me now is the way my father taught me when I was in the 1st and 2nd standards. My father would ask me questions from the text book, and I would answer them. At that time, I didn't know he could not read or write but to make me happy, he helped me in my studies!

Another memory that doesn't go away is the floods in the village and how I was carried on top of a buffalo by my uncle. I also remember plucking fruits from a tree that was full of thorns.

I used to be very naughty, running around and playing all the time with my friends.. I used to get a lot of scolding for disturbing the elders who slept in the afternoon. The moment they started scolding, I would run away to the fields!

I also remember finishing my school work fast in class and sleeping on the teacher's lap!

January 11, 1993, the fateful day

On the January 11, 1993 when we had the sankranti holidays, my mother took my sister and me to a nearby village for a family function. From there we were to go with our grandmother to our native place. But my grandmother did not come there. As there were no buses that day, my mother took a lift in my father's friend's lorry. As there were many people in the lorry, he made me sit next to him, close to the door.

It was my fault; I fiddled with the door latch and it opened wide throwing me out. As I fell, my legs got cut by the iron rods protruding from the lorry. Nothing happened to me except scratches on my legs.

The accident had happened just in front of a big private hospital but they refused to treat me saying it was an accident case. Then a police constable who was passing by took us to a government hospital.

First I underwent an operation as my small intestine got twisted. The doctors also bandaged my legs. I was there for a week. When the doctors found that gangrene had developed and it had reached up to my knees, they asked my father to take me to a district hospital. There, the doctors scolded my parents a lot for neglecting the wounds and allowing the gangrene to develop. But what could my ignorant parents do?

In no time, both my legs were amputated up to the hips.

I remember waking up and asking my mother, where are my legs? I also remember that my mother cried when I asked the question. I was in the hospital for three months.

Life without legs

I don't think my life changed dramatically after I lost both my legs. Because all at home were doting on me, I was enjoying all the attention rather than pitying myself. I was happy that I got a lot of fruits and biscuits.

`I never wallowed in self-pity'

The day I reached my village, my house was flooded with curious people; all of them wanted to know how a boy without legs looked. But I was not bothered; I was happy to see so many of them coming to see me, especially my friends!

All my friends saw to it that I was part of all the games they played; they carried me everywhere.

God's hand. I believe in God. I believe in destiny. I feel he plans everything for you. If not for the accident, we would not have moved from the village to Tanuku, a town. There I joined a missionary school, and my father built a house next to the school. Till the tenth standard, I studied in that school.

If I had continued in Teeparu, I may not have studied after the 10th. I may have started working as a farmer or someone like that after my studies. I am sure God had other plans for me.

My sister, my friend

When the school was about to reopen, my parents moved from Teeparu to Tanuku, a town, and admitted both of us in a Missionary school. They decided to put my sister also in the same class though she is two years older. They thought she could take care of me if both of us were in the same class. My sister never complained.

She would be there for everything. Many of my friends used to tell me, you are so lucky to have such a loving sister. There are many who do not care for their siblings.

She carried me in the school for a few years and after a while, my friends took over the task. When I got the tricycle, my sister used to push me around in the school.

My life, I would say, was normal, as everyone treated me like a normal kid. I never wallowed in self-pity. I was a happy boy and competed with others to be on top and the others also looked at me as a competitor.

Inspiration

I was inspired by two people when in school; my Maths teacher Pramod Lal who encouraged me to participate in various local talent tests, and a brilliant boy called Chowdhary, who was my senior.

When I came to know that he had joined Gowtham Junior College to prepare for IIT-JEE, it became my dream too. I was school first in 10th scoring 542/600.

Because I topped in the state exams, Gowtham Junior College waived the fee for me. Pramod Sir's recommendation also helped. The fee was around Rs 50,000 per year, which my parents could never afford.

Moving to a residential school

Living in a residential school was a big change for me because till then my life centred around home and school and I had my parents and sister to take care of all my needs. It was the first time that I was interacting with society. It took one year for me to adjust to the new life.

There, my inspiration was a boy called K K S Bhaskar who was in the top 10 in IIT-JEE exams. He used to come to our school to encourage us. Though my parents didn't know anything about Gowtham Junior School or IIT, they always saw to it that I was encouraged in whatever I wanted to do.. If the results were good, they would praise me to the skies and if bad, they would try to see something good in that. They did not want me to feel bad. They are such wonderful supportive parents.

Life at IIT- Madras

Though my overall rank in the IIT-JEE was not that great (992), I was 4th in the physically handicapped category. So, I joined IIT, Madras to study Computer Science.

Here, my role model was Karthik who was also my senior in school. I looked up to him during my years at IIT- Madras. He had asked for attached bathrooms for those with special needs before I came here itself. So, when I came here, the room had attached bath. He used to help me and guide me a lot when I was here.

I evolved as a person in these four years, both academically and personally. It has been a great experience studying here. The people I was interacting with were so brilliant that I felt privileged to sit along with them in the class. Just by speaking to my lab mates, I gained a lot..

'There are more good people in society than bad ones'

July 28, 2008

Words are inadequate to express my gratitude to Prof Pandurangan and all my lab mates; all were simply great. I was sent to Boston along with four others for our internship by Prof Pandurangan. It was a great experience.

Joining Google R&D

I did not want to pursue PhD as I wanted my parents to take rest now. Morgan Stanley selected me first but I preferred Google because I wanted to work in pure computer science, algorithms and game theory.

I am lucky. Do you know why I say I am lucky?

I get help from total strangers without me asking for it. Once after my second year at IIT, I with some of my friends was travelling in a train for a conference. We met a kind gentleman called Sundar in the train, and he has been taking care of my hostel fees from then on.

I have to mention about Jaipur foot. I had Jaipur foot when I was in 3rd standard. After two years, I stopped using them. As I had almost no stems on my legs, it was very tough to tie them to the body. I found walking with Jaipur foot very, very slow. Sitting also was a problem. I found my tricycle faster because I am one guy who wants to do things faster.

One great thing about the hospital is, they don't think their role ends by just fixing the Jaipur foot; they arrange for livelihood for all. They asked me what help I needed from them. I told them at that time, if I got into an IIT, I needed financial help from them. So, from the day I joined IIT, Madras , my fees were taken care of by them. So, my education at the IIT was never a burden on my parents and they could take care of my sister's Nursing studies.

Surprise awaited me at IIT

Afer my first year, when I went home, two things happened here at the Institute without my knowledge.

I got a letter from my department that they had arranged a lift and ramps at the department for me. It also said that if I came a bit early and checked whether it met with my requirements, it would be good.

Second surprise was, the Dean, Prof Idichandy and the Students General Secretary, Prasad had located a place that sold powered wheel chairs. The cost was Rs 55,000. What they did was, they did not buy the wheel chair; they gave me the money so that the wheel chair belonged to me and not the institute.

My life changed after that. I felt free and independent. That's why I say I am lucky. God has planned things for me and takes care of me at every step.

The world is full of good people.

I also feel if you are motivated and show some initiative, people around you will always help you. I also feel there are more good people in society than bad ones. I want all those who read this to feel that if Naresh can achieve something in life, you can too.

NEN First Dot !

Nen first dot is an national event organized by national entrepreneurship network(NEN). It’s the first national level event organized by NEN. I was one of the lucky ones to attend this event on January 10^th and 11^th 2011. I registered for this event by paying INR 300. I had to reach SSN engineering college, Chennai for being part of this event. So, I travelled in my bike and reached there by 10.30 AM. I entered the college auditorium and first met Vishnu priya (nen consultant, Chennai). Then I got seated, and the inaugural ceremony started within few minutes. More than 700 students attended the event. The key note was given by Ms. Kala Vijayakumar, president, SSN group. Then CEO of sulekha, sathya prabhakar, spoke on social media and marketing trends. Laura parkin, CEO, NEN gave a super active appearance.

Next, the selected 30 startups were awarded with a certificate. All the startups were owned by young students between the age group of 20-22yrs. They were really a great inspiration to many young minds.

It was almost 12.30 in the afternoon and I never checked on my time. Later then, I went on rounds checking out the startups installed. Spoke to few startups and networked with them, Hearing those people say, how they ended up with an idea which was really inspiring. Wish I had some brains like them. Lol ! Networked with twenty19.com team and gave them some feedback on their website, and also spoke with their founder Mr. Karthikeyan.

I also met Mr. Dorai Thodla, a simple man with a coded brain. Attended Dorai thodla’s mentoring session, which focused on technology and its future.

Next agenda was unconference, where the audience speak, and share their ideas instead of the speaker. The topic was, if we were given some money, what business would we start and why? A lot of students shared their ideas based on different opinions.

After unconference, I had to leave early, as I had to travel by bike for a very long distance. Missed the cultural events later that evening. Anyways, I was happy that I had met many people and educated myself enough.

Cheers !

Road Trip To Kolli Hills !

My fren shrinidhi hande, a avid blogger and business analyst at accenture, posted on his facebook wall regarding a roadtrip to kolli hills which is 30 kms away from salem. He does road trips once in two months. I wanted to do something new, and immediately I replied him to “count me in”. He then emailed me the details of the trip and told me the expected expenses.We had planned the road trip, on December 18^th 2010, leaving at 10 pm. Shrinidhi asked me to wait outside F5ive technologies at virugambakkam. He was returning back from another road trip with another group of people and dropped them outside F5ive technologies after that he picked me up from their. We had to pick up two more people on the way, Dhruv and harishankar.

We started getting introduced to each other. Myself and dhruv were sitting at the back seat, shrinidhi was driving and harishankar was taking turns to drive. Myself and dhruv were discussing on various topics. I shared the activities which I am involved in. We Were observing the highway, and we all discussed about politics, highway revenue per day, funny billboards on the highway. We kept admiring the full moon and tried to take pictures without stopping the car, but never succeeded. We kept staring at the road, without sleeping most of the time. At times we took turns to sleep, while hari and shrinidhi took turns to drive. We stopped at a tea shop around 3 AM early morning and had some tea, and continued our road trip non stop.

We reached salem at 6 Am. We parked our car at a place specified by Praveen, the next participant to join our team. Praveen owns a business “auxil solutions” at salem. He arrived to the place specified by him, and towed us to his residence. He was kind enough to offer us his place to fresh ourselves and his mom served us some hot tea. After refreshing, myself, shrinidhi, Praveen and his brother, dhruv and hari started off for kolli hills, which is around 30 kms from salem town and has 70 hair pin bends.

I’d expected the top of Kolli hills to have a fairly smaller surface area, but it turned out to be large enough, similar to Yercaud. Various tourist destinations are spread in different directions. We went direct to a place which looked like town (with a bus stop and few small hotels, where we had breakfast, at an economic cost of Rs 138 for 6 people).

Then went back to the main temple called Arapaleeshwarar Temple, several kms away. The Arapaleeshwarar Temple is fairly small and typical of any other temples. Photography is banned here and it is believed that this god has some wired powers-of destroying photographs taken by devotees. The inside of the temple is fairly dark, as in any temples and no quality photo can be taken without using flash. Anyways, if the god can ensure that no one can take photos, then why ban it? People can be allowed to try their luck, since god would anyway delete those pics. Anyways didn’t find this temple and its photo ban powers worth worrying about.

Two waterfalls exist near the temple. The main one is far and one needs to climb down several hundred steps to reach there. We didn’t have time for this one and had to skip. The other one was a smaller water fall, shown here

Other tourist attractions on Kolli Hills are a viewpoint, another waterfalls (which looks great from a distance, full view won’t be visible once you go near), a small natural lake with boating and a Shiva temple (though boat ride was priced at 15 Rs for 20 mins, we found all boats unoccupied- either the service was not there or no one preferred the boat ride.

Another destination was Pot Burial-a different kind of cremation ground. An entrance which called itself Botanical Garden was closed and when Dhruv peeked inside, he found nothing exciting. We stopped to buy jackfruits, honey and other fruits at the bus stand and commenced our return journey.

A resort called Nallathambi Resort exists on top of Kolli hills, but this is a small building with few rooms and not really a resort. They didn’t even have a restaurant to serve food. Wildorchidcamp, which provides Swiss tents, seems to be another option to stay there, but I didn’t notice any signboards pointing us to this place. Not sure where it is located. Salem will be the nearest town for luxury hotel rooms.

My next trip has been planned to colombo and will be sharing my experiences here.

cheers !

RAIDERZ OF THE WATER WORLD !

Finally I am blogging about my hiking experience with Chennai trekking club with Chennai trekking club organized by the A team on September 25, 26 and 27 of 2010. The A-team members are Ansar ahamed, Rajinikandh and Manoj Kumar Natrajan. This trip Officially made me one of the members of the CTC.

Day Zero. Friday Night – Leave Chennai

We all assembled at Chennai central railway station, in front of Hotel saravan bhavan. Myself, vignesh, anand dorapalli, deepak, prassanth and praveen arrived early and started getting to know each other. Then rest of the members started joining. we were asked to fill out a form for personal details. The train started off around 3.30 pm.

We all had good fun during the journey, few were playing cards, some were playing "Mafia" lead by sunita dugar- "he mafia queen", and few were chit chatting. However the ultimate goal was to kill time somehow during the journey to bangalore.

We reached bangalore, within few hours and further had to travel to shimoga. Before that we had to have a our dinner. so a group of people decided to go out and get dinner for everyone. We had idly and chapati for dinner, sitting on the platform of the railway station. By the time bangalore members too joined in. We immediatly, moved to the train which was departing for shimoga. It was a 5 and 1/2 hours travel, so everyone grabbed their seats and went early to bed, since we had a big day coming up next.

Day One. (At Sharavati)

We reached shimoga early morning, and we had a bus arranged already by CTC. We quickly got in, and settled ourselves. We were headed to sharavati, water sports was waiting for us. Our bus had to drive through the forest to reach our destination. The forest slopes too inclined and the pathway was totally affected due to rain. So we had to leave the bus after a certain distance and started walking. We reached the base camp, where we kept our backpacks and got ourselves freshed.

First we were given certain set of rules before jumping into the water, or doing any kayaking or rafting. The magic word was "dont panic". lol! We were provided with life jackets before going into the water. This was great advantage even for people who never knew to swim. We had fun swimming for a while. Then came the surprise, we wer allowed to do rafting, kayaking. We took turns to use the kayaks. It was real fun.

After all the rafting and kayaking activities, it was time to have some lunch. We had sambar rice with Papad. Most of us immersed half of our body in the water and ate our lunch, which was a new experience. We never had the feeling of looking at our watch for knowing the time, but it was evening very quick. Manoj organized a kayak race. We were two groups, comprised of three people in each group. I was also involved in this activity. I enjoyed the race completely, but i was unable to win.

Time for campfire. Ansar came forward and introduced himself to all the new members of CTC. He asked one by one to come out and introduce each other and say something unique. Each one took turns to introduce themselves. After that we played antakshari, which was real fun, where every started dancing and singing.

Day two.

Most of us got up very early. We had the opportunity of looking at the sun rise and take some beautiful pictures. Few swam on the lake. Then we were served hot breakfast. Today's agenda was trekking. We had to go to another destination to start our trek. So we were all dumped in a truck, which was used for cows. Though it was a thrill ride, it was a bad idea to do so. The truck was stinking and most of us were sweating really bad, that increased the bad smell. We reached the destination and we were asked to apply sniff powders on our feet, to avoid leeches. But it was of no use. During the trek we had to cross many streams, which washed away our sniff powders off our feet.

I thought leeches were to scary and would bite us to death. But we didn't have the feeling that they got on our legs. They are blood suckers and grow bigger and bigger, sucking our blood. We wer asked to keep walking, to avoid leeches getting stuck to our legs.

We had walked through dangerous paths, to reach the twin falls. The falls was awesome. Cant believe the nature. Falls somewhere into dense forests. WOW! We took bath in the falls and got rid of the leeched stuck in our legs and foot. We then walked back the same way which we came, for our lunch. Biriyani for lunch. :D

We returned to base camp by 9pm and had our dinner. We then quickly went to bed, and were allowed to sleep only for 2 hours, since we had to start for our next destination. We woke up at 12 in the midnight and started off for a 4*4 jeep ride. We all were sleepy, and the jeep ride kind of woke me up and i completely enjoyed the ride. It was 6 hours drive to reach sita nadi. The driver kept talking to me all his life long experiences, which he had gone through driving in the forestry area.

Day three.
We reached Sita Nadi at 6 AM in the morning. Our group reached first and we got the first opportunity for our next activity "White water rafting". We got into our life jackets and got ready for posing for the camera's. Though it was white water rafting, the water was really friendly. It was not the season for water to be wild. Whatever! We enjoyed rafting.

This was a memorable adventure trip with the A team and I still cherish the best moments, like playing cards in the train (P.S: though i never knew to play :P), having lunch by immersing half the body in the lake, best kayak experiences, white river rafting and a lot of fun fun fun.

Finally Blogging

I always wanted to write and keep a diary of my experiences and day to day activities so that I could show them to my kids and inspire them and make them understand there were difficult times and there were good times too. But recording my day to day activities was not a possible thing for me, since I never got the time. Now I have started blogging and I am getting motivated in many ways by looking at people around me who also blog and how well they prioritize their time. I personally feel that everyone of us should prioritize our life, so that we get to involve in everything around us. Blogging is a nice way to throw all our feelings and thoughts into writing. The present generation has developed more in social networking like twitter, facebook and blogging, we need to equally keep us connected with all that which everyone does in order to present ourselves as a unique personality. So to all my frens out there happy blogging.

Cheers !