B Tech I SEM : Trailblazers: G R Gopinath

Gorur Ramaswamy Gopinath is an entrepreneur and founder of the Indian airlines ‘Air Deccan’. He is a retired captain of the Indian army, an author, a politician and a pioneer for low cost air travel within India.  
                G.R.Gopinath was born on 13^th, November 1951 in the village of Gorur in Karnataka. His father was a school teacher and farmer. When he was in fifth standard his school head master informed all the students that an admission test was going to be held in their school for those who wish to join Defence Forces. Unfortunately, Gopinath could not get through the exam as it was in English.
              The headmaster wrote a stern letter to the Ministry of Defence and pointed out how an all India test could only be conducted in English. After few days, Gopinath took the examination in Kannada and passed with flying colours. He learnt an important lesson from his headmaster that a person must be proactive to steer things one’s way, which he would remember for the rest of his life.
             Later, when he was commissioned as a captain in the Indian army, he took part in Bangladesh liberation war in 1971. He left the Indian army and purchased ten acres of barren land. He received the Rolex Laureate award for establishing an ecologically sustained sericulture farm. It was a good example of his grit and confidence. He started Malnad Mobikes, which supplied Enfield motor cycles. He opened a hotel in Hasan. He contributed articles in Kannada for magazines. With his experience in agriculture and farming, he established Water Resource Management Consultancy and started supplying irrigation systems.
             After securing solid reputation, he decided to tackle the world of politics. G.R. Gopinath, A.J.Sam, and Colonel Jayanth Poovaiah together started Deccan Aviation, the low-cost airline carrier in India. His business expanded and under the banner of LCC ,developed into a major player in the air industry. He received the “Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur”, the highest civilian award conferred by the French government.
            In 2007, Air Deccan was merged with Vijay Malaya’s Kingfisher Airlines. Then he started Deccan Charters and Deccan 360, which focus on cargo and the express logistics business. The future lies wide open for G.R. Gopinath.

B Tech I SEM Trailblazer : Sudha Murthy

       

               Sudha Murthy is an Indian social worker and author. She was born in 1950 in Shiggaon in Northern Karnataka. She is the daughter of a famous surgeon Dr. R.H. Kulkarni. She began her professional career as a computer scientist and engineer. Sudha and her siblings were raised by her parents and maternal grandparents. These childhood experiences form the historical basis for her first notable work entitled ‘How I Taught My Grandmother to Read & Other Stories’.

                She is the chairperson of the Infosys Foundation and a member of public health care initiatives of the Gates Foundation. She has founded several orphanages, participated in rural development activities, supported the movement to provide computers and library facilities to all Karnataka government schools and established 'The Murthy Classical Library of India' at Harvard University. 

                    She completed B.E. in Electrical Engineering from the B.V.B. College of Engineering & Technology. As she stood first in her class, she received a gold medal from the then Chief Minister of Karnataka. She completed M.E. in Computer Science from the Indian Institute of Science and received a gold medal from the Indian Institute of Engineers.

             After graduation, Murthy had applied to the company and was told that only men were eligible to apply. Then , she  had written a postcard to the Chairman J R D Tata, complaining about the gender bias at TELCO. As a result, she was granted a special interview and hired immediately when found eligible. Murthy became the first female engineer hired at India's largest auto manufacturer, TATA Engineering and Locomotive Company or TELCO. She met  Narayana Murthy at TELCO, and the they got married. Murthy is recognized as the seed investor of the Infosys. She teaches computer science and composes fiction.

                    In 2004, Murthy was presented “The Raja Lakshmi Award" by Sri Raja-Lakshmi Foundation in Chennai, in recognition of her outstanding contribution to social work. In 2006, Murthy was awarded the Padma Shri, the fourth highest-ranking civilian award from the Government of India, and received an honorary doctorate for her contribution in the spheres of social work, philanthropy and education. In 2011, Murthy was conferred honorary LL.D (Doctor of Laws) degree for her contribution in promoting formal legal education and scholarship in India.

                     She is a prolific fiction writer in Kannada and English. She has published several books that spell out her philosophical views on charity, hospitality and self-realization through fictional narratives. She was the recipient of the R.K. Narayana Award for Literature.

B Tech I SEM : Luck by Mark Twain

                Mark Twain was an American author and humorist. His wit and satire in prose and in speech earned praise as the greatest American humorist of his age.

            Once, the author attended a banquet. It was held in honour of Scoresby, an illustrious English military officer. A clergyman, who sat beside the author, whispered that Scoresby’s glory was an accident and was just a product of incredible luck. The author was surprised.

       After some time, the clergyman revealed that, forty years ago, when he was an instructor in a military school, Scoresby was a stupid and ignorant boy. Out of compassion, the instructor drilled the boy in some stock questions. Luckily, he was asked no other questions outside the drill. The boy came out in flying colours. Throughout the course the instructor stood by the boy and he always saved himself just by miracle.

       During the Crimean war, luck again favoured him and he was made a captain. As a captain, he did nothing but blunders. Every fresh blunder was misinterpreted and increased the lustre of his reputation. Thus Scoresby ascended grade after grade.

       The war reached a crucial stage. Scoresby detached his regiment from a vital place and ordered them to charge over a neighbouring hill where there was no trace of an enemy. But again luck favoured him and the unsuspected Russian army in reserve stationed there. They suspected that the entire English regiment had come down upon them. So they turned tail and went pell-mell. In no time, Scoresby got a splendid victory. He was honoured by the Marshall on the field itself.

       He achieved a sweeping and splendid victory, merely because he mistook his right hand for his left. The decorations on his breast were the proof that the best thing in this world that can befall a man is to be born lucky.

B Tech I SEM : The Dying Sun by Sir James Jeans

       Sir James Jeans was an English physicist and mathematician. In the lesson, 'The Dying Sun', he analyses the geographical details of heavenly bodies of the universe and the possibility of life in them.
              With a comparison between the geographical area of the star and earth, he says that most of the stars are so larger than the earth .There are some immense stars, large enough to contain even millions of earths in each star and leave space in it. He adds that there are in numerous stars in the universe, like the total number of grains of sand on all the sea-shores of the world.
             Secondly, He highlights how big, immense our universe is. He says that there is immense distance between the stars and it is very rare event that one star come near to another. With an excellent comparison between a star and a ship on an empty ocean, he says that an average star is well over a million miles away from its nearest star.
              He systematically describes how the solar system came into existence, and about the results of it. In a detailed manner, he explains how the planets became cooler. He explains about the availability of life only on earth. He further explains about the gradual growth process of living organisms on earth, and about the establishment of human society on earth, their emotions, and religious beliefs.
            James opines that we all find the universe frightening because of its immense distances between each heavenly body, because of the stretches of time which is so great that we cannot even imagine, because of our earth's extreme loneliness in the midst of this immense universe. Moreover to all these, we find the universe frightening as we are unable to find any other heavenly body like the earth, in which life exist in it. That is why, perhaps, he opines that "life does not seem to have any part in the plan of the universe except on earth".
             He opines that most of the heavenly bodies are extremely hot and most of them are extremely cold, which is impossible to live in them. He remarks that we have a very narrow space in between the two belts of extreme hot and extreme cold.