More conversations -- Balaji

One person that I have been talking to, every now and then, is R. Balaji. Balaji is an interesting guy. He is an old friend of mine. We studied for JEE together in Vizag and I was struck by how singleminded his focus was and how he could keep studying for the full day without a break. After joining IIT he took a 4 year vacation from studying :-), for reasons best known to him. After IIT he basically dropped out quickly from the mainstream. He spent a long time (2-3 years if I remember right), basically doing the kind of exploration that I am thinking of doing now. It was an extremely non-conventional step that he took so early in life, and the level of independence in thinking that it implied is huge. He just spent those years travelling to all kinds of projects, talking to people, seeing what they were doing and trying to find some answers to the questions and inner turmoil. At one point he put his chemical engineering skills to use and started a handmade papermaking unit as an employment generation scheme for backward villagers in a remote area of Andhra Pradesh. After a huge amount of thought and discussion, he finally decided that the non-mainstream stuff did not have any compelling answers for his questions and returned to the mainstream. He came back to IIT, did an MS, took a job with HPCL in Bombay, got married, got children :-). That is pretty much where he is at this point. He has done well at his job and executed some challenging projects with solid outcomes and recognition.

Balaji is pretty negative about the non-mainstream stuff at this point in his life. He has been consistently cautioning me about the negative side of these efforts. I don't know quite what to make of his comments. He feels most of the people in these efforst are confused and don't have clarity and finally this reflects on the work. To make a non-mainstream effort viable, one needs a lot of strength and commitment and this is not often there. It seems he is basically into critiquing all the efforts and none of them meet his standard. He has the ability to get 'under the skin' of people and point out their deficiencies. That usually shakes people, and probably makes his evaluation even worse. This critiquing approach is a good one, and I know he is a serious guy. However, the critiquing mentality is also a detached one. When you are detached, the whole equation changes. My approach is 'human' -- I am sympathetic (to a fault) to people's honest efforts, even I percieve problems with the approach. Also I am coming to this much later in life with a lot of experience compared to him and I also think I have less baggage. I am open and curious and I don't have an inner turmoil and I am not using this non-mainstream stuff as an escape. So I will be open to what he says, but its not seriously concerning me at this point.