It was nice to see Sundar Pichai being named as the chief executive officer (CEO) of Google, the core unit of the reformed Alphabet Inc powered by tons of cash from the search engine. We also know that he is educated from IIT-Kharagpur. One of his hostel-mate remembers the ‘boy’ who was once a favourite of Raggers.

“There has to be something in the water”. This is a familiar refrain from those who had spent their years at Indian Institute of Technology-Kharagpur (IIT-KGP) assigned to Nehru Hall of Residence, in particular between the years ’85 and ’93.

It was within these years that the hostel housed three individuals, two of whom went on to win Magsaysay awards -Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and prominent social entrepreneur H Harish Hande -and became game changers in the Indian socio-economic-political sphere.

The third has been occupying the upper levels of Google management for some time now and was recently made the chief executive of what is one of the most significant players in the internet space, something that impacts not just our work but almost every facet of modern life.

Beyond What Met the Eye:

It was in 1989 that a young Sundar Pichai (Sundi, as he was known in IIT) arrived in KGP and was greeted by a group of seniors at Nehru Hall who were excited at the prospect of yet another ragging period. Yes, those were the days in which ragging was still the norm. New entrants arrived fresh from the station, dropped their bags and were immediately led to a roomful of “raggers” who then proceeded to orient them in the ways of IIT-Kharagpur. It was a bit of a miracle if one was reunited with one’s luggage that same day.

I recall Sundi as being someone who did not need much persuasion to jump on a table and do something absurdly selfdeprecating or lean out of a balcony and hurl choice epithets (at a senior’s bidding) at some unsuspecting passer-by. Sundi thus soon became a favourite of the raggers, something that usually leads to fairly strong ties between the ragger and the ragged.

A Bag of Expectations:

I don’t have much of a recollection of Sundi for the rest of the academic year, other than the everyday interactions that hostel-mates routinely have. It does seem strange, in an impressive way, to think of that “boy“ as now being the chief executive of Google. The internet has changed the world over the last decade and has contributed to significant gains in the lives of people in the developing world.

However, I think that the jury is still out on how it finally plays out in terms of balancing inequality in today’s world, or how our privacy is protected as the “internet of things“ pervades every inch of space in our homes.

Google is going to be one of the companies that will play a strong role in shaping this development and for the foreseeable future, Sundi will be at the helm deciding the course of action. I wish him the best in his efforts and hope that the camaraderie at Nehru Hall, resulting in empathy for people from various backgrounds and needs, weighs heavily on his decision-making. From the various write ups I have read about his management style and his achievements at Google, this certainly seems to be the case.

The last recollection I have about him is from the end of my stay in IIT. I had brought a camera from home for a short while and one day I set off with a group of first-year students exploring various corners of the campus. It was a rainy day. We were definitely off the beaten path and the group that decided to make this trip included Sundi.

I pulled out some of those pictures today and he looks fairly similar to pictures I see on the web. Little did we realise that we were looking at a future chief executive, heading a company whose core services would have felt like something out of a science fiction novel to all of us on that damp day in Kharagpur.