What are some hobbies and activities that you enjoy in your free time?

When I have free time, I like to watch the most nonsensical movies and serials like Crime Patrol, something I can watch and forget—just to be distracted for an hour.

Any favourite spot you have on campus?

My office. If you track my location, you’ll only find me in my apartment and my office, and earlier at SIIC, I don’t go anywhere; I don’t venture on campus.

Any campus lingos you are aware of?

All the departments’ nicknames, from Basbey to Hathora to Batti and many more, and Tempo High Hai. Some of the campus lingos infused are from outside Kanpur, such as bakaiti, etc. I recently learned from an Instagram post that it is Kanpur lingo.

Any places that you want to travel to?

I like the sea, so I would love to travel to some remote islands in Indonesia or the Maldives or Mauritius, and other places. And if I have company, then perhaps Antarctica. I don’t enjoy cities for traveling purposes.  But you know, with time, I have become a little less agile. So, strenuous treks nowadays, for more than a day, are a challenge for me, but in a day, if you ask me to make a 20-kilometer round trip, I’ll happily do it.

Who is the character/personality you most resemble?

One obvious person is my father; I’m a carbon copy of my father, and he was exceptionally curious. Just to give you a hint of what he used to do, he was an agricultural scientist. His research area was to develop a strain of rice that would grow in salt or deep water, both of which are bad for the growth of rice. So he did genetics and came up with a breed of rice that could grow up to a foot really fast. He was very excited about describing that to me when I was in 9th or 10th grade. That’s what shaped my imagination, and I’m just equally excited about Science. It could just be a trivial question, but if it is a question that has come to my mind, I generally like to go into its depth. I think like him, and I’m really easy-going and approachable. And I, too, am a foodie, in fact, a big-time foodie.

Apart from that, I may be a little bit of Aamir Khan type. I’m a perfectionist, but I love to have fun.

What is your favorite food?

Mutton Biryani

What cuisines do you enjoy?

I pretty much enjoy all sorts of cuisine, but I am a little more into food with a good aroma, so I am just in the right place. Awadhi cuisine is perhaps the most aromatic, light cuisine. So I love that. After that, possibly Mediterranean cuisine. I like that. Unlike many people, I am not a huge fan of Italian food.

If you could have dinner with any three people, dead, alive, or fictional, who would they be? 

A fictional person would certainly be Professor Shonku. I think none of you know this. He is the creation of Satyajit Ray, the great Bengali scholar, film director, and author. Professor Shonku was the character in his science fiction books. On the one hand, he was intense with Science but completely unorganized, too, and he did crazy stuff that would generally be on the side of the good.

The dead person that I would love to be with would be Mendeleev. Just imagine the power of his imagination that he not only created the periodic table and placed the elements in their places but was also confident in saying that there would be other elements that would be placed here. That’s the power of logic. I am a huge fan of logic and its application. 

The living person whom I would like to watch across the table would be Amitabh Bachchan. Not just because I am a huge fan of his movies because I grew up with his movies, but also because I like his professionalism. He has many negative things about him, which I’ve read, but still, nobody can deny that he is a thoroughbred professional at the age of 82.

What inspired you to get into academia?

As I said, like my father, I was academically good when I was growing up, just like any faculty member here. My father was a very, very brilliant scientist, and he would often engage me in deep scientific discussion, disregarding the fact that I was not mature enough to understand. Some of his excitement just got transmitted. So, I thought that this might be a fun career. I was quite determined to be in academia from Day 0.

If you weren’t a professor, what would your profession be?

Perhaps a medicine doctor. I think that medicine is also about connecting the dots. Unlike surgery, I make a distinction. So medicine is like patiently listening to patients’ history, then connecting dots to figure out exactly what the limit might be, and then prescribing the medicine. I think that trait is very similar to what we do as bench scientists, where we study phenomena.

What’s your life philosophy in one sentence?

Every night when I go to bed, I should not have any regret that I have done anything wrong on that day. That’s it.

As a Professor, what are some rewards and challenges that you have experienced?

The reward is love and recognition of people that I have worked with, particularly those who reported to SIIC, the companies that I helped create, which are currently valued at more than 500 crores, and I’m pretty sure they’ll acknowledge. 

To do Science in India is a challenge because your imagination goes much ahead of realities because there are way too many hurdles on your way, which are non-scientific; that is the challenge. Otherwise, I guess most faculty members of IIT Kanpur and I have a very good life.

What would you say to your 20-year-old self? 

Whatever you are doing, try to be the best in it, whatever it is. If you are trying to learn exercise, try to be the best at it. If you are trying to drive the car, be the best at it. Whatever you do. Another thing that I have learned and realized much later is that fiscal prudence and financial planning are very important. If I were 20 years old again, I would have done much better financial planning today, knowing where things can go wrong.

What is something students do that totally confuses you?

Oh, you’ll not like the answer. The steadfast refusal of students to learn is actually very mind-boggling because IIT Kanpur has some of the smartest kids in the country. Still, they have this attitude that I don’t want to learn much of the things.

What are the most valuable skills a student can gain from college?

How to get along with people and how to interact with people.

What is the most memorable interaction you had with any student?

There was a student from the mechanical department, Btech. He wanted to take my course, but he had no biology background. He had to spend hours with me to learn because I teach an advanced-level subject. He was able to grasp it and then run with it, and then eventually, he’s doing biomechanics for his PhD. I really enjoyed it.

What would be the title of your memoir?

Perhaps just one word, ‘transformation’, because I am a basic scientist, an absolutely basic fundamental biologist. Still, somewhere along the line, I was made the head of the SIIC, and now I think I have become more of a baniya than a scientist. There, I had to learn, at least, the technology aspect of a very broad domain, from aerospace to biotechnology to tribal technology. That has been a transformation, and that has actually transformed my life.

What are some changes you have seen in IITK throughout your tenure?

Well, IITK, over my tenure, has become increasingly more ambitious regarding research objectives and what it wants to achieve, which is on the positive side. Infrastructure quality has improved but students’ sincerity and honesty, on the other hand, has gone down. 

Any common myths about professors that are not true?

That we take ourselves too seriously. That’s not at all true. I tried to explain this to my students. In the classroom, I have a job. My job is to teach and assess whether you have learned what I taught there. Outside the classroom, I am just another person. 

How were you as a student?

I was fun-loving, like if we talk about extracurricular activities, I used to be a Boy Scout. My scout group used to participate in national competitions, so I gave a lot of time. I grew up in a small town, so I did not have other kinds of opportunities like, you know, playing tennis or football, and athletically, I was never good. But scouting is something that I enjoyed, and I devoted a lot of time to it. Despite that, I did pretty well academically, but there was a phase during my Bachelor of Science when I was like many of you; academics took a back seat, a serious backseat. But the difference is that I took full responsibility for my mistakes and did not expect to be accommodated despite not doing what I was supposed to do. But after this, I never looked back, I must say.