This article is included in the book.
The Key to Solving a Problem
Professor MS Kamath, who taught
Electrical Engineering at IIT-Bombay, was undoubtedly among the best teachers
in the institute. Despite that, stories about how he treated Electrical
Engineering department students ‘terribly’ did the rounds of the campus. Once
he conducted a surprise test on the Monday morning just after Mood Indigo,
IIT-B’s annual festival. We were convinced at that time that he derived
sadistic pleasure from such actions. In the process, he earned some uncharitable
nicknames.
We were initially happy that we
were not Electrical Engineering students. So it came as a shock to us when we
learnt that he was going to teach us the ‘Electrical Circuits and Machines’
course. However, over time, we became convinced that we were lucky that he was
introducing us to the basics of Electrical Engineering. We also realised that
he was not intent on harassing students. He just did not particularly care
about being popular.
There were a few professors who
made us visualise various concepts and made learning easy and enjoyable.
Professor Sinari from the Humanities and Social Sciences department taught us
existentialism, Professor SD Kulkarni from the Metallurgical Engineering
department explained the chemical reactions involved in making steel, our
Physics professor Patil explained time dilation, and Professor Kamath explained
the existence of magnetic fields and the flow of electrical current in
transformers and AC/ DC motors, all by creating vivid images in our minds. They
did not use any audio-visual aids. Their powerful narration was sufficient to
give physical characteristics to various abstract ideas.
Professor Kamath was always
well-prepared for his lectures. He knew exactly what he was going to talk about
and what topics he was going to cover. I do not remember him ever taking a few
extra minutes to logically close an open topic. I do not remember him referring
to his notes or books in the classroom. He knew his subject well. He had his
own method and style of teaching. He always used ‘constant current’ source in
his circuit diagrams because he felt it explained the concepts better that the
familiar ‘constant voltage’ source seen in our day-to-day life. It was a matter
of minor frustration for us that a ‘constant current’ source could not be seen
in real life though the principles were well understood and almost engraved in
our minds.
In many ways, Professor Kamath
was old-fashioned. And I say that as a compliment. He believed in certain
principles and made sure that they were adhered to fully. On the very first
day, the IIT dean had clarified that attendance was not compulsory. Though we
were minors at that time, the faculty wanted to treat us like adults and assume
that we knew what was best for us. Professor Kamath could not make attendance
compulsory. But he reserved five marks for attendance. He started his first
lecture with ‘a few general remarks’, wherein he explained that just by
attending ninety percent of his lectures, a student could get five out of the
total fifty marks for the in-semester assessment. That would apply even if one
did not attend any in-semester tests and quizzes or scored zero in those.
Professor Kamath never rushed
things. Since he made attendance quasi-compulsory, he was particular and
careful about taking the roll-call. He would call every name slowly and with
respect. Mr Deshpande, Mr Gokhale, Mr Mirchandani and so on. Some of us
complained that he did not show the same respect while correcting our test
papers.
He was always seen walking
leisurely in the main corridor. He remembered each of our faces and never
failed to smile and wish even the naughtiest of the students from his class. Of
course, even those students were afraid of him. It would be almost a cliché to
say that he was feared and respected at the same time.
The essence of professor Kamath’s
personality could be seen in the tests he conducted. He did not believe in
giving us too many problems to solve. But answering his questions required an
overall good understanding of the subject. Perhaps patience was an even bigger
requirement. One of the problems in his tests required an iterative solution.
The right approach was to keep discarding infeasible solutions such as negative
current until one got a feasible solution. The very first solution that we
arrived at was with zero current. We happily stopped the iterations and froze
on the wrong solution by ignoring the instruction that there was a finite
current flow in the circuit. With a brief but futile argument with the
professor and zero marks in the test, we learnt the hard way that zero was not
finite!
No one in our batch will forget
one of his peculiar tests. There was only one problem and it was a one-hour
test. He told us in a sombre tone that we should read the full question and
understand it before attempting to solve it. The problem statement was
unusually long, running two full sides of the question paper. I remember
looking at the watch and realising that twenty minutes had passed. By then I
had barely gone through half the question. My first reaction was to panic and
start scrambling for a possible solution. As I understood later, that was the
reaction of almost everyone. Most of us inadvertently entered a maze to the
point of no return. We ended up submitting half-baked, incomplete solutions
along with strong protests that the test was unfairly long and tough. Professor
Kamath quietly explained that he expected us to spend about thirty minutes
reading and understanding the question and about twenty minutes solving it. He
had actually given us an extra ten minutes. We had to grudgingly concede this
point once we had cooled down.
After leaving IIT, Professor
Kamath’s name kept cropping up occasionally in some of our discussions. We
remembered his classes, his style and his tests. We narrated those cherished
memories to our families and new friends. Then I heard he was ill. There was an
appeal to his students to go and meet him in a Pune hospital. I was not one of
his favourite students. It was unlikely that he would have remembered me after
so many years. I was still contemplating whether to visit him when I heard the
news that he had passed away. I do not know what he looked like at that time.
Therefore, the earlier image of Professor Kamath is still intact in my mind:
smiling, looking bright and happy.
It is not just his smiling image
that endures. The Electrical Engineering concepts he taught remain with us. But
more importantly, the other lessons learnt in his class were never forgotten.
He made us realise that the first crucial step to solving a problem was to
thoroughly understand it. Because of his tests, we learnt how to reason
patiently and algorithmically. His students, especially those of us working on
software development, found it useful later on in our careers. That I think was
his biggest contribution to our lives.
Vivek V. Govilkar
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