Our travel to the western Karnataka beach town Udupi

We are spending a week in the winter of 2020 in and around Udupi. We look forward to the sight-seeing of numerous beaches and temples. We are deliberately omitting Malpe Beach and Saint Mary’s Island, as we had covered these during our Mangalore trip. We found them to too touristy. The tentative itinerary of ours looks like what shows in the map below. The red markers represent temples and the blue ones represent beaches.

Itinerary

Day 1

We start by visiting Kapu ⛱ beach including the lighthouse and Mattu ⛱ beach by driving southwards (Udupi 2 on the map above). We also cover Prajaka Kshetra post the beaches.

Day 2

On the second day, we shall drive south-eastwards (Udupi 1 on the map above) and visit temples. The famed Krishna Mutt will be on our list. During our previous trip to Mangalore, we missed seeing the deity over there, as it was late. We will be visiting Chandramoulishwar Temple and Sri Brahmi Durga Parameshwari Temple

Day 3

On the third day, we will take it easy with the sight-seeing, enjoy the resort and see nearby places like Delta ⛱ beach.

Day 4

On the fourth day, we shall drive northwards (Udupi 3 on the map above) and visit Anegudde Vinayaka Temple and Kodi⛱ Beach. We would like to visit Murudeshwar as well to the see one of the highest Shiva statue.

Day 5 is still unplanned. We might become intrepid and visit Jog Falls.

IIT Toppers article in HT Mint 29 Sep 2016

Below is the article, which appeared recently in HT Mint.

IIT-JEE toppers: The brightest men in India?

The hype that surrounds the top rank in JEE is a fairly recent phenomenon. Mint looks at how this impacts the career paths pursued by the toppers

(Left) Sunil Singhal, the 1966 IIT-JEE topper, and Prasoon Jha, who topped the exam in 1993. Photo: Pradeep Gaur & Hemant Mishra/Mint

New Delhi: Sunil Singhal was on a train to Kanpur. He had just cleared Class XII and on that train there were several others like him, students, all on their way to the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) for their interview.

This was the summer of 1966, long before the frenzy surrounding IIT admissions took hold.

Singhal’s first love was the Indian Air Force but his parents wanted him to join the civil services. Getting into an IIT was not even part of the plan. In fact, writing the entrance exam was just a sort of rehearsal for the final goal: the civil services. Getting the IIT admission letter, however, changed all that.

“One of the students on the train asked me what my rank was. I had no idea so I was asked to check my letter. The letter stated that I had the first rank and that is how I found out that I had topped the Joint Entrance Exam (JEE) that year,” he recalls.

Singhal’s blissful unawareness about his rank in the IIT entrance exam, albeit five decades ago, is in contrast to the near-hysterical adulation showered on students that top the exam now. In fact, going by the experience of Tanmaya Shekhawat, one doesn’t even have to be a topper anymore. Shekhawat, who secured the 11th position in the 2016 JEE exam, was gifted a BMW sedan by his coaching institute, Samarpan Career Institute in Sikar, Rajasthan. Sure, the ride is not brand new. In fact, it belonged to the director of the coaching institute R.L. Poonia but apparently the car was in “excellent condition” and had clocked only 1,500km. In an interview to the Hindustan Times, Poonia explained his largesse by saying, “For the first time someone in the district has scored a rank under 100 in IIT JEE Advanced.”

This is still welcome attention. In 2008, Shitikanth Kashyap, the topper, left his home town Patna for Mumbai, fed up with politicians and owners of coaching institutes landing up on his doorstep supposedly to felicitate his achievement but also keen to co-opt him and his success.

There have been more than 50 toppers of IIT JEE since the first IIT was set up in 1956 in Kharagpur. And the hype that surrounds the top rank in the entrance exam, as is obvious from Singhal’s experience, is a fairly recent phenomenon. But what happens once the arc lights have faded, the BMW has been driven away and the coaching institutes with their bill boards, flyers and posters congratulating you have disappeared?

In what way does topping an entrance exam impact the career paths pursued by these men (no woman has topped JEE till now). Mint set out to find an answer to these questions and the results were quite varied.

First things first—it is rare to find an IIT topper (at least the ones over the past two decades) who is still in India. Most of the toppers Minttracked down and got in touch with were either in America or have done a stint there before returning to India for professional reasons. Arvind Saraf topped IIT JEE in 1997 and opted for computer science in IIT Kanpur. He moved to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) following his engineering degree but moved back to India midway. A few months later, he joined Google. “This is around the time people started looking at technology and development and it was all around me in 2004,” he says. But Saraf does admit that the traditional sector is quite different from academia or research, or even the corporate sector—specially in India. “There are always new and unseen situations in India, especially in an entrepreneurial set-up,” he says. Coming from a business family, engineering wasn’t a default option in his family. “In those days education wasn’t seen as linked to the textile business. My parents knew I was preparing for IIT, but it was a little difficult to avoid family functions at home in Surat. My boarding school in Delhi had a lot of noise around IIT JEE. For some of us, almost as if it was the only reason for existence,” adds Saraf.

None of the IIT toppers Mint spoke with anticipated their top rank. Yes, they were confident of doing well, yes they hoped they would get through but the top rank was not something they anticipated. “I signed up for a pan-India exam organized by Agrawal Coaching Classes and was ranked either fifth or sixth,” says Prasoon Jha who topped IIT JEE in 1993. “That gave me confidence that I will do well but I never imagined topping the entrance.” Jha grew up in Bokaro where in his own words the top five career choices were “engineering, engineering, medical, medical and engineering”. And he did well in all the other exams that year. Jha got 93.68% in Class XII boards (this was long before today’s scenario where it is considered just about an average score) and stood fifth in the Roorkee Engineering Entrance Exam. But does this mean he was one of the brightest young people in India that year? “I know people who were gifted. Who could solve calculus in the 2nd and 3rd standard, toppers in Maths Olympiad. Topping IIT is a mix of working hard and working smart,” says Jha. Today he is a lead system architect with Visa engineering though he too has done his obligatory US stint.

And those who have seen the system up close and personal, say that the first rank is often dependent on factors on the examination day. “For the first 10 ranks, the levels remain the same…for the topper, it turns out to be a big deal but factually it is those factors on the examination day which decide the winner although any one out of the first 10 could have been a winner. In an examination like IIT JEE, it is the relative performance which matters, notwithstanding the difficulty level of papers. Even few questions can make a difference,” says R.L. Trikha, director of FIITJEE Ltd, one of the older coaching institutes set up in the country to crack IIT.

Both Jha and Saraf are exceptions in that they are in India and working in the mainstream set-up. Most IIT toppers steer clear of the corporate ladder. In fact, quite a few of them are either in academics or research departments of tech companies like Microsoft and Google.

Subhash Khot, who topped the entrance exam in 1995, is a mathematician and theoretical computer scientist, and is a professor of computer science at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University. He declined to participate in this story citing personal reasons. Arvind Thiagarajan who topped the entrance in 2001 works for the research department of Amazon.

Shitikanth Kashyap topped the entrance in 2008 and had to leave home because of the circus that followed it. He is currently at Canada’s University of Waterloo, where he is completing a PhD in quantum computing. Both Thiagarajan and Kashyap did not respond to emails.

Rina Panigrahy, who topped IIT JEE in 1991, is now a research scientist with Google. With a master’s from MIT and a PhD from Stanford under his belt, Panigrahy says he has done a lot of back and forth between industry and academia. “I found the former to have more of an impact on society. Academic work is more theoretical,” he says over the phone from Bay Area. But most toppers gravitate towards academics as their bent of mind is such.

But how does being a topper affect these boys who are actually at the cusp of adulthood when they are subjected to this level of scrutiny and adulation? Is it something that shapes them for the rest of their lives or is it something that just falls by the wayside over the years?

Singhal ,the 1966 topper, laughs off the questions with a wave of his hand. He says the only time it was ever mentioned in IIT was when he was ragged (all harmless, he insists) for being a topper. For the others, it’s a tag that sticks with them for perhaps the first month or so of the course and then fades away into nothingness. “There are advantages and disadvantages to topping. In some ways it plays out even now in the sense that in some professional circles, people will remember my name, ask if I topped the exam that year,” says Jha.

The top rank, however, does not find a mention either in their resumes or Linkedin profiles. In fact, Nitin Gupta, who topped the exam in 2000 and is now an assistant professor at IIT Kanpur’s biological and bioengineering department, feels that “being a JEE topper makes no difference...than if you were a JEE rank 50 or rank 100 (except possibly in the initial allocation of the branch)—your career after that depends on what you learn and how well you do in IIT and afterwards”.

Till 1994 there were only five IITs in India. Then IIT Guwahati was set up, followed by the conversion of the Roorkee College of Engineering in 2001. In 2008-09, the government decided to expand IITs and eight new ones were set up in Bhubaneswar, Gandhinagar, Hyderabad, Jodhpur, Patna, Ropar, Indore and Mandi. All these IITs together take in around 10,000 students.

This year over 1.1 million students wrote the JEE Main exam for these seats. JEE is a two-tier exam system. While JEE Main is the first level of entrance for selection into hundreds of engineering colleges, it works as a filter to shortlist 150,000 top students for sitting in the JEE Advanced. JEE Advanced is conducted by IITs for selection of their prospective BTech students.

In 2008, the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry had estimated the size of the coaching industry to be around Rs10,000 crore. Coaching hubs like Kota have come up, littered with institutes that include residential facilities where students are expected to stay while preparing for the entrance exams. Coaching institutes offer foundation courses for IIT JEE for students of Class VII and VIII, thus starting the chase for the elusive admission letter, very early on.

In 2008, the Assocham had estimated the size of the coaching industry to be around Rs10,000 crore

The growth of the coaching industry has led many to believe that it has compromised the quality of students who finally crack JEE as they are coached along those lines. In 2008, IIT Madras director M.S. Ananth had said that coaching institutes made it possible for some less-than-eligible students to get into the institutes. “I am looking for students with raw intelligence and not those with a mind prepared by coaching class tutors. The coaching classes only help students in mastering question paper pattern recognizing skills. With this, you cannot get students with raw intelligence,” said Ananth.

According to a 2015 Times of India report , a committee constituted by the IIT council known as the Committee of Eminent Persons submitted a report to the human resource development ministry suggesting a revamp in the pattern of JEE that will help break this coaching culture. The same report, however, also stated that according to statistics disclosed by IIT Bombay, which conducted JEE 2015, of the 9,974 students who finally cracked JEE this year, 4,892 said they had relied on self-study.

“In the current scenario…, it is a rejection process instead of selection. When around 14 lakh students appear for 10,575 seats available in IITs, it is the relative performance and not the absolute performance which will matter. Since school/colleges are not in a position to bridge the gap between learning and application of concepts, good coaching institutes help students in bettering their conceptual understanding and sharpening their analytical skills, giving them a much needed competitive edge…like healthcare, coaching is also a business with a difference,” says Trikha of FIITJEE.

But the toppers, even those who did take coaching, admit to being taken aback by the sheer size of the industry and how it has grown. Panigrahy remembers the cash money Brilliant Tutorials used to hand out even at that time but considers it pretty tame by what he hears happens now.

At the end of the day, it’s really not about the rank that gets you there, but what you leave IIT with

Prestige, a stamp of excellence and a well-paying job that ensures a comfortable lifestyle—the mecca of a middle-class Indian upbringing—are what a seat in the IIT ensures. But that’s for the outsiders. Those who have been through engineering institutes have stories of finding themselves if only to become a stand-up comedian (Biswapati Sarkar, Biswa Kalyan Rath) or chief executives of tech giants (Sundar Pichai) or to set up companies that are household names today (Flipkart). At the end of the day, it’s really not about the rank that gets you there but what you leave there with.

“What IIT teaches you, and not just the toppers is not as much as the chemistry or the advanced mathematics but the way of addressing problems. Every problem break it down, make it into smaller sections and solve it one at a time. It is the way I work even now and that’s what IIT is all about,” says Singhal.

Cracking the IIT-JEE

Have you ever wondered what the ‘secret’ of topping IIT JEE is? How to prepare for IIT JEE like a topper?

To answer these questions and more, ConceptOwl founder Rajan Singh, Prasoon’s senior from IIT Kanpur, sat down to chat with him.

Question (Rajan): Did you expect to top IIT JEE? Is getting All India Rank 1 all about intelligence or more than that?

Answer (Prasoon): No, absolutely not. I did not expect to top IIT JEE. I was doing well in the mock tests and was expecting to crack JEE but I was far from 100% confident. In fact, I wrote four other engineering entrance exams (e.g., Roorkee (it had a separate test in 1990's, West Bengal JEE) before the IITJEE results came out.

Cracking IITJEE or topping it is NOT just about intellect. Many people have the intelligence required to crack IIT JEE. What really matters is how you master the fundamental concepts.

To do that you need:

• A solid preparation methodology
• Consistent and balanced study routine
• High concentration

Everything else will take care of itself.

Question: Tell us how you prepared for IIT JEE and what you did differently.

Answer: I kept things simple and had a singular focus – understanding the fundamentals extremely well.

Remember, it is NOT about the number of questions you solve or how many hours you study. It is about concept clarity.

Which means, I did not rush to just solve questions but invested time to grasp the theory. In Physics, I would read Resnick Halliday very carefully, and give it as much time as needed to fully absorb the concepts.

I maintained a very regular schedule. I would give the credit of my success to:

1. A steady schedule: studying everyday regularly
2. Focus on understanding concepts extremely well
3. High concentration while studying
4. Some smart study techniques, which I will talk about

Question: Ok, please give us some tips on how to crack IIT JEE. What techniques did you find most effective?

Answer: Here are a few things I did which really helped:

• I spent much more time on theory than most people do. Put a lot of emphasis on reading good books like Resnick Halliday and S.L. Loney. You really don’t need any fancy books.
• Before attempting problems, I would understand the theory and write it back in my own words to fully absorb the concepts. It is a simple but amazingly effective technique.
  • I did this not just in chemistry, which has more theory, but also in physics and to some extent in math.
  • I would read multiple times if needed. Give time for concepts to settle down.
• Solving quality problems: e.g., I would solve all the problems in Resnick Halliday in each chapter. [The 2ndedition had 30-40 questions in each chapter. Newer editions now have 60-70.]
• Give time to all subjects. I was more interested in Physics and Maths, but I deliberately gave sufficient time to Chemistry as well. It made a huge difference.
• Where possible, try to solve the same problem using different concepts.
  • g., in Physics, if I had solved a ‘mechanics’ problem using laws of motion, in a later chapter I would try to solve it using energy.
  • When you see how different concepts connect with each other, it gives you immense clarity.

Question: Give us some tips on the methodology that you followed and what worked for you.

Answer: Here is what worked for me:

• A step ladder for mastering concepts:
  • Initially master each concept and solve problems relating to that concept. I did that in Maths and it worked amazingly well for me.
  • Later solve problems involving multiple concepts across a chapter
  • Then solve questions covering concepts across chapters
• Learning by ‘Cheating’ :
  • When I could not solve a whole bunch of Irodov problems, I would look at the solutions of one or two problems, and see how they applied the concepts. Often that would give ideas on how to crack other problems. Let us call it ‘cheating’ (the good type of cheating)!
  • But don’t go and see the answers to all the questions. Just look at one or two, and then try to solve others. Trying to solve problems you are stuck at makes you think hard and helps solidify concepts.
• Relationship among chapters: when you read a new chapter, think about how relates to what you have studied earlier. E.g., how conservation of energy can solve the problems solved using newton’s second law.

Question: How many hours did you study?

Answer:  I did not study very long hours but I had a very regular schedule. During school days I would study 5-6 hours after school. I took breaks between study and would sleep at 10 PM without exception.

Some people study without any break for long hours. I would not recommend studying late in the night and cutting on your sleep. It will badly affect your efficiency, and ability to absorb and learn the next day.

Question: If you did not study long hours, you must have done something to make your preparation so effective?

Answer:  When studying I would be in a very high concentration zone and would be completely absorbed in it. I could do that because I was genuinely interested in understanding the subject and was not studying only to crack an exam.

That helped me truly master the concepts, which I was able to apply in JEE even when questions were difficult.

Because I understood the concepts really well, I got the 5th rank in West Bengal JEE, though its syllabus and pattern was very different from that of IIT JEE.

Question:What are the biggest mistakes IIT JEE aspirants make?

Answer: There are quite a few. Here are some mistakes I can think of.

• Many people ignore some subjects (especially Chemistry) and focus on subjects they love. That is a huge mistake.
  • Even liked Physics and Maths more, but I put equal effort into Chemistry and ultimately started liking it just as much.
• Some people try to guess the exam pattern, and focus on ‘important topics’ and ignore others, especially difficult topics.
  • This is dangerous since IIT JEE pattern can drastically change year to year.
  • I studied all topics instead of focusing on so-called ‘important’ topics. E.g., Mechanics was supposed to be hard and I mastered it really well. It helped me a lot since many questions in JEE were from Mechanics.
• It is a big mistake to cut down on sleep and study very late in the night. It reduces your effectiveness the next day and hurts your preparation badly.
• Not balancing your schedule: e.g., if (God forbid) you have a tuition at 6 AM, don’t study till midnight. Plan to wrap your studies by 9 PM.
• Often people focus on solving large number of problems instead of solving quality problems,which deepen your concepts. IIT JEE needs depth;it does not matter how many problems you have solved.
• When revising, most students just solve more problems without visiting theory again. This can be a mistake.

Question: What were the mistakes you made in IIT JEE preparation and what would you do differently?

Answer:  Looking back, these are some of the mistakes I committed.

• I made notes of key formulas and concepts, but never referred to them while revising. I used to read the books all over again. This slowed me down a lot.
  • As a result I could not fully revise the class 12th
  • Take notes and use them to revise. Notes are powerful tools and you should use them well.
• I did not have a study circle of friends for group study. I think it would have really helped if I had done that. In 1993, 34 students cleared IIT-JEE. 33 (all except me) did a classroom training under RN Singh. Though I did not have a circle, but I could focus more on self-study.

Question: Many students feel overwhelmed and panic. Any advice?

Answer:  You should take your time to understand the concepts and there is no need to be far ahead of the syllabus. E.g., when I was in class 11th, I was not able to solve even one problem from Irodov. And that is okay.

Only in 12th did I start solving Irodov problems. Even then, I did not do all the problems till the very end.

So my advice is to not panic if you have not done all the problems you had targeted. If you have understood the concepts well, you will do fine.

When revising, find time to revisit theory and not just solve problems.

Question: Tell us about the day when you heard that you had topped JEE. What was your reaction?

Answer:  The memory of that day is absolutely fresh – I was traveling back from my village and I heard the news when I reached Bokaro. It was totally unbelievable. In my heart of hearts, I wasn’t even 100% confident cracking IIT JEE! Hence I was planning to write all the other entrance exams. Topping IIT JEE was something I had never imagined of.

So my advice to all aspirants is that don’t worry if you have self-doubts. Stay focused on learning and you will do fine.

Question: Did you participate in math Olympiad and would you recommend it?

Answer: I never participated in math Olympiad. We did not have that exposure in Bokaro Steel City for the same. It is good to try it but not at the cost of losing focus on mastering the fundamentals.

Question: Have you ever considered teaching for IITJEE or do something in that field? How do coaching classes help the test preparation?

Answer: Teaching a topic is very different from knowing it. As of now, I would love to focus on computer science, which I truly love.

Coaching classes like Bansal’s were created by very well known teachers and would have created a very solid learning methodology. One can see the results in the large number of successful candidates they have produced.

I had taken the 1-year Agrawal Classes course, which had succinct notes at the beginning of each chapter, which I found very useful. I am sure the quality of material available today would be even better.

Question (Rajan): Thanks Prasoon for taking the time.

Answer (Prasoon): It was great talking to you and I hope this is of use to the IIT aspirants. Success in IIT JEE needs hard work but you don’t need to study crazy hours – just focus on basics and be regular. Finally, you need a bit of luck. On that note, my best wishes to all your readers!

Short Bio: Prasoon graduated with B.Tech in Computer Science from IIT Kanpur and works as a software professional in Bangalore. For him software is a tool to solve interesting problems, which is what he loves doing. He is an amazingly down to earth person, who is very kind and approachable.

Prasoon Kumar's HSS courses at IIT Kanpur

Recently, there was a question on Quora, a Q&A site regarding HSS (Humanities and Social Sciences) courses at IIT Kanpur. So, I thought of writing a backgrounder on the same based on my (Prasoon Kumar) experiences during my B.Tech. studies in 1993-97. The B.Tech. education at IIT Kanpur is not a static array of courses to be completed in each semesters  There are some electives, which you can take depending on your aptitude and future goals. As India's leading engineering college, it is not the case that all courses taught are maths, science and engineering driven. For a wholesome development of individual, a balanced learning is what is advocated at IIT Kanpur.
First thing to be demystified is that yes, you as an IIT Kanpur student are in charge of some components of your education, so better start deciding for yourself. There is an array of economics, psychology, social sciences and other subjects to choose from. Some of the future elective can influence your current decision. Let's say you want to do an MBA post B.Tech., which is one of most popular option nowadays and probably has surpassed civil services aspirations. Economics and Organizational Psychology subjects would serve you well in that case. I remember a friend of mind, Tapas Misra from Rourkela was like: I read so many novels anyway, so I might as well take a course, which is like that, which was offered that semester. Such a course might not be in ala carte menu of courses in the semester, as it varies. some people would take courses based on proficiency of professors. I took psychology based on that and a little bit of aptitude. somehow I ended up taking 2 more courses in psychology based on my desire to build expertise in a particular area and also sometimes ease of getting a good grade. I took social and organizational psychology subsequently, where I remember doing a project paper on use jingle in advertisements.

When and how much

Many people wonder what is the best time to study and how much? I used to wake up between 4 and 5 depending on various factors and study till 6:30, before scooting off to school. After coming back I’d study from 3-5, take a break. Study 6-9 again and go back to sleep. My body rhythm enabled me to study during mornings. Some people are more tuned to studying during night. Let me warn you, if you like doing group study, being a morning person, you'd be in minority, as was the case with me at IIT Kanpur.

General IIT JEE tips Part 1

I will be writing a series of articles covering IIT-JEE tips based on my experience of scaling the IIT JEE mountain in 1993. The format has changed, but fundamental way of cracking exam wouldn't have. So, let's start:
I quoted to Bokaro Darpan or some such publication after acing IIT JEE 1993. I still stand by that.

सभी  विषयों के सारभूत सिद्धांत को आत्मसात करने से ही सफलता मिल सकती है ।

This translates to the following:

Learning the fundamentals of all subjects is the key to success.

During 1980s and early 1990's, the times when I followed the pattern of IIT-JEE, you'd encounter a lot of subjective questions, which you had not see before. So to be able to solve that required understanding Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics to the core. I will dwell more on this in a different post.

Misleading reprting by Nalin Verma in Calcutta Telegraph on IIT JEE topper coming out of Bihar

Mr. Nalin Verma of Telegraph reported wrongly in a newspaper article on Sat, May 31, 2008 about the first IIT-JEE topper from Bihar being Shrikanth, but I had topped IIT JEE in 1993 and Abhinav Kumar of Jamshedpur in 1997. This was before Jharkhand was carved out of Bihar. some readers of PatnaDaily have also expressed their complaint. I was jealous, as chief minister Nitish Kumar met the families of Shrikanth, but while there rumours of then chief minister Laloo Prasad Yadav meeting me and giving a merit scholarship, none happenned. It is interestign that all 3 IIT JEE toppers from Bihar/Jharkhand have joined IIT Kanpur. It pains me that in recent years, it is no longer toppers' choice. Infact 86 of top 100 joined IIT Powai in Mumbai.