So you think you are a rebel?

                The first time I saw him, his eyes were red from the lack of sleep. Or probably from last night’s hangover- who knows and who cares! I was least interested in the untidy man sitting in the corner of the room, working on a laptop. We, I and my project partners, were standing in the ten by ten (10 ft by 10 ft) room of that office to get the PCB of our final year engineering project made.

Our project guide in the college was a shrewd, old man who wanted us to work on the project because he could not make a chip work. He wanted us to do it for him, fully knowing that the chances of our failure were high. Though he could not teach us much about our project, he put us in touch with Mr.Manish Gupta, the person who made the finest PCBs in town.

                Gupta Sir was a great engineer. He knew the hitches in our project and we started working on the project with him. The second room in his office was smaller than the first one and this was the room where he worked. Both the rooms would always be filled up with smoke - Gupta Sir and Chaitya, the untidy man, were chain smokers. Every circuit that refused to work and every circuit that was made to work, required a cigarette! And this would happen every few minutes.

                Chaitanya Godbole or Chaitya, as he was fondly called by Gupta Sir, worked on the software that could make these chips work. He was a pro at hardware as well. He could fix any hardware problem but the software of Embedded Systems was his first love! From my project team, I was the one working on the software. During this time, I got to know the untidy man more-Gupta Sir spoke a lot about him. When we were not working, Gupta Sir would be telling us stories of ‘Chaitanya Godbole’.

                Chaitanya Godbole’s typical, conventional Marathi name could deceive anyone. He was everything but conventional. Unkempt hair, unshaven beard, eyes red with hangover/lack of sleep made him look very untidy. One pair of his clothes would always be at the office, he rarely went back to his rented flat. Drinking alcohol was religion. He and Gupta Sir would have atleast one peg every night.

A university topper in Electronics Engineering, with 77% marks, Chaitya was selected by “Pari”, a leading (and as per my knowledge, the only) robotics company in India. He refused to work there after he was handed out nuts and bolts to be assembled on the first day. He knew his engineering thoroughly and wanted to do nothing but engineering. He left Pari and joined Gupta Sir, who he had met while working on his final year project. Their love for engineering connected the two. To Gupta Sir, Chaitya was his son. Chaitya had lost his father few years back and his mother stayed a few hundred kilometers away.

                Chaitya was only 23 years old but working 22 hours a day for two years made him look older. He always stayed in the small office. For him, it was home. He would take a break at his will and watch movies during the break. Gupta Sir never told him what to do.

***

                It was the night when I had a fight with my father. I stayed in a hostel, “Sharada Niketan”. I was late to go back to the hostel because I was working on my project. The office was small and everyone heard me fighting with my father over the phone. After the fight, I got back to my work. Chaitya joined me. “I am sorry, I had other work to do in the past few days; I could not help you.” he said. With the number of maa-behen ki “galiya” that he used, I thought a person like him could never be emotional!

***

                I can write pages and pages on Chaitanya. I was in love with his passion for engineering. My friends tell me that I ‘have a thing’ for geeks. I think it was Chaitanya who gave that to me. In a conversation with one of my friends, I told her, “Even if Chaitanya lives a short life, he is the one who will have truly lived his life.” Five minutes after I made this statement, I got a phone call telling me that Chaitanya and Gupta Sir had met with a car accident. Gupta Sir was admitted to a hospital with a broken jaw and Chaitanya passed away. His body had become very frail from all the alcohol and the smoking.

                Chaitanya was a true rebel- a topper who chose engineering over money. He was the only person I know who worked 22 hours a day for scanty sum of money. So the next time you think going late to the class and not attending classes will make you a rebel, think again!