Most of you on this thread are very young and may not know me.\u00a0 I was at IIT Bombay H7 from 1980-1985, in the last 5-year batch, played hockey all 5 years, and served as captain and secretary as well.\u00a0 I have very fond memories of Appaji and I wondered if something through Skype could be arranged in case there is a party for him.<\/p>\n
I was from Delhi and was from the last 5 years batch but could not get into IIT Delhi first time around so came to IIT Bombay.\u00a0 Next year IIT changed to 4-year program and I gave JEE again and could have got anything at IIT Delhi.\u00a0 I remember Appaji sending then our Hockey Golie Satish Rahi also from Delhi to my IIT Delhi counseling and making sure that I did not fill out any choices as he did not want me to leave the IIT Bombay hockey team.\u00a0 It is amazing that against everyone\u2019s wishes, including my parents (as my home was literally 5 minutes waking distance from IIT Delhi), this actually happened in that I had to turn in a blank ranking form!\u00a0 Rest is history.\u00a0 This was probably the best decision I have made in life thanks to Appaji.\u00a0 Living in a place where I did not anybody and with no cell phones and internet connect those days made my personality evolve in a fairly significant way.\u00a0 I think that aspect has carried through more than any technical IIT education in my life.\u00a0 He taught us discipline and value of being a complete human.<\/p>\n
There are way too many stories from our IIT meets some of which I can tell you will be hard to beat, including one, where the night before our first game at the IIT Kharagpur meet, half of the team went to Calcutta.\u00a0 Missing the last local train and then hitch-hiking an express train by sitting in the guard compartment after generously bribing him to arrive at the Kharagpur station at 3 AM and literally giving Appaji a heart attack was something that cannot go out of my system.\u00a0 Most amazing was how Appaji handled all of us in a calm and gentle way knowing we had a game in few hours.\u00a0 This taught a very valuable life lesson but displayed the enormity of Appaji\u2019s personality.<\/p>\n
Anyway I can go on and on.\u00a0 All I can say is that you all look very sharp in the photos.<\/p>\n
All the best,<\/p>\n
Vijay Gupta<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Most of you on this thread are very young and may not know me.\u00a0 I was at IIT Bombay H7 from 1980-1985, in the last 5-year batch, played hockey all 5 years, and served as captain and secretary as well.\u00a0 I have very fond memories of Appaji and I wondered if something through Skype could… <\/p>\n