With popular demand of me posting all the Mad Scientists and how it was working with them (especially Aravind Akella and his Guru Atul Gosain), here it comes…..
Perraju Bendapudi: He appeared to be very scary the first time I saw him. His reputation preceeded him, of course, and most notably Arijit Sengupta and I had googled a lot about him before joining. That increased the melodrama. Everyone on campus would look at us differently upon mentioning his name, right from the receptionist. That kind of prepared the whole psychological background. I can safely say that at least half of the c4b guys took three weeks to relax when around him. People tell me he insists on not hiring any girls which explains the female shortage on campus.
Phani Talluri: This fellow was the most approachable mentor of c4b. He has a very inviting smile, a hypercaffenited energetic temperament, and is just constantly happy. Never seen him not smile. Without doubt he is easily approachable. He was initially assigned to me, but I was switched to Hari later that day.
Hari Krishnan: A very sweet, soft-spoken, “Good Boy”, eligible bachelor who is highly undervalued with the ladies. Poor fellow doesn’t realise that without any girls on campus, it’s no big deal nobody admires him. I’m now his mentor teaching him how to approach and talk to girls. He was voted as the best mentor in c4b due to his very distinctive style.
Cassius Duarte: A fun fellow who keeps giving us T-shirts and headphones and all the cool stuff. The administrator for my group.
Arijit Sengupta: A geek and nerd to the last. Totally knowledgable about anything related to anything having to do with Microsoft. Popularly known as the “Son-in-law” since he’s favoured by so many managers and big-shots in the company. This guy spent loads of MS money by making international calls from the mobile phones given to him to work with.
Amit Kumar Yadav: Just a plainminded person. About the most plain minded person I’ve met in a long time. He was one of the extreme hardworkers amongst the entire group. Very sincere, no partying, no drinking, no movies. This guy easily gives the best ROI to MS. Peri had promised him that if he finished his project on time, Peri would jump from the 9th floor of Cyber Towers. I assure you, the next two weeks, we were egging this guy to finish his project on time! Unfortunately, it was too huge to be done in 2 months. His only weakness was his incessant love for the GDCI cafeteria instead of the IDC one.
Sri Satya Aravind Akella: Planning to dedicate an entire entry to him, so won’t spoil it here. This fellow is the Hero of Code4bill. He’s the guy who made c4b valuable!
Mahesh Paliath: A hardworker. Nothing wierd worth mentioning. But did a great project that really made everyone happy.
Harsha S: This fellow is an obssessive coder. He thinks code, eats code and sleeps code. Kinda scray dude. He seems like he has caffine-releasing hormonal gland in him. Never saw him calm and composed.
Atul Gosain: He deserves four or five entries for you to get to know him quite well. Will write more later. Too much is coming to mind. In fact, I wouldn’t be against writing a seven-book series with titles such as “Atul Gosain and the Tennis Court”, “Atul Gosain and the counter malfunction”, etc.
Abishek K: The eventual winner, this fellow was a freak too. One of the best freaks ever known to me. Obssessed about swimming. Making mysterious important phone calls to Banglore every evening (we never did find out who they were meant for). And it seems this fellow completed Akella’s two-month project in one day (which he himself denies, but Akella claims so).
Joseph Joy: One of the reviewers but not quite as mad as Peri. He’s the more rational side of MS (till we met him, we never thought MS had a rational side). He was the first fellow interested in the inside stuff of our projects – architecture and algorithms and all. Till his review, we were used to putting in a lot of crap into the project and not documenting it. After this meeting, he scared the shit out of me and I began noting down exactly what I had been putting into my code. His second review was more fun, since I had done my homework better. At the final party he was quite shocked to see the amout of “research” the c4b interns had done apart from the MS-assigned work. I think he’s really amazed at our creativity. I can safely say he has never met and probably never will meet any group like the top 20 and based on what we told him at the party about what we did for two months, I don’t think he wishes to meet anyone like us ever again.
Shankar Shastri: He was the most normal of all reviewers. Very friendly and somewhat non-aggressive. His reviews were just really nice sessions that made us feel like a million bucks.
Srini Koppulu: This guy talks to you as if he is an entire army. The first time he reviewed our projects, he too scared the shit out of me! But that’s what c4b was all about – about overall personality improvement. We got used to him and leart how to properly deal with him. That was what the internship was mostly about - I doubt whether we really gained any technical ability during those two months. But now we’re capable of interacting much more comfortably with Vice Presidents. Sometimes he can go really soft on you. It’s really nice when he goes into that mood. He’s one of the very supportive people I’ve seen. He has a keen eye for business which many of us lacked initially. This brought up a lot of friction between what he wanted us to do and what we thought we ought to do. Over time we learnt to see what he was exactly aiming at. Once in sync, he’s a fun fellow to be reviewed by.
Anu Engineer: The profound philosopher of MS. He’s responsible for making Kobra chicks really famous on campus. He thinks about a lot of philosophical stuff. His sessions are worth listening to.
I’ll dedicate a separate entry for the girls – Neha, Meenal, Richa, etc. Keep reading…….
