I was headed on my annual visit to the boys when I found an email in my inbox from my professor colleague in Iowa State Unie, requesting me to be agreeable to write a sort of autobiography of a friend who was his IIT buddy and now lived in the US for the last four decades. Kamala Rajan had grown up dirt poor in a slum in Chennai and through various serendipitious chances which he grabbed with both hands he got into the prestigious IIT and then onwards and upwards to the US.
When I first aw the email while I was travelling through London to the US I felt who the heck wants to write about a rich dude who just wants to show off? Hardly what I would enjoy writing about. My travels took me onwards to the US and there my Professor friend said cummon write the book, hes a very decent man. I said give me time to read the brief and I'll get back and that was that. One month flew by in the US and I arrived back in the UK. Sitting quietly in my room one afternoon while the house was quiet, with all away on their work I re read the email and the brief and was instantly hooked.
The story was a shocker and so compelling for me, coming from a fairly comfortable back ground. The hunger Rajan had faced was unimaginable for me. Just by chance his muslim friend asked him to accompany him to Loyola college to put in his application. Loyola was my dads old college so that was another plus.
Standing there in the que with rich children he was embarassed with his broken chappals. When the registrar came and shouted at them for coming to this hallowed institution, his friend stood up for him and said -- look at his marks card and you will see his true value. The registrar looked at the marks card and walked up to the principals office with it. In minutes the principal came out in his cassok and asked -- Who's Rajan? and the rest as they say is history. The Jesuit priest saw Rajans worth and gave him the first step forward like all our religious institutions do.
