My Mentor --- Mr. Ravi Gopinath

I have just started reading the book “Surely you are joking Mr. Feynman” and I was reminded of this guy(since he used to quote a lot of examples from life of "Sir" Feynman) who was my mentor for chemistry during my preparation for JEE, Mr. Ravi Gopinath . he is one of the few people I admire and have personally met..

(Sometimes I wonder why we don’t admire,care people when they close to you or you are in contact with them and when they are memories or the contact is lost people keep wondering those days and lamenting and longing to meet again…….this all is nowhere fitting with what I’m going to write further, yet I miss the company of the genius and my mentor)

In the following text I’ll be trying to bring out the best I could remember of my teaching days with this philosopher, scientist, teacher , T.V. person….multifaceted human character and that is why I admire him the most…jack of all trade and master of'em too!!!!!

He used to take our tuition classes at his mother-in-law’s flat!!!!!!! This might sound bizarre but this is how it is…..and this is just the beginning..this person was real cool. Our classes used to take place around a dining table with 6-8 people surrounding "their" sir while the next batch waited silently in the drawing room at aunty’s place (sir’s mum in law). Classes were fun, in our batch,we were initially 8,out of which 5 had completed schooling, including me and 3 were still in school, 12^th grade, although 2 people later left thinking sir’s theory and his way of teaching was not even worth a crap, I was on similar thinking lane but continued clinging to his lectures to get more of “crap”.

Sir was real fan of cricket and it's masters the Gavaskar, the Tendulkar , the Sarfaraz Nawaz, theWarne and some other legendaries. I should have mentioned this before, it was during my first encounter with him,I realized the fact that sir is cricketing fan, he used examples of legends quite frequently.

I first met him on my birthday, to get enrolled for his classes and there came the lecture and long one in which he tried to explain me that IIT was not my piece of cake if I haven’t done the job of being crystal clear with concepts of chemistry or any other subject for that matter,during my school days. The example he gave was.."you might be the master at your street level cricket or even at step higher level but you cant outplay Mr. Warney buddy!!!! You’ll get out on the very first ball………" in this example the player was me and JEE played role of Mr. Warne. After chopping off my hopes on my birthday and looking at my dull grown face he said my idea was not to discourage you but to make you aware of the reality, if you are still interested,you are most welcome.

So I joined his “tuition center” which neva existed….the very first lecture was on basic chemistry and he emphasized on removing "the crap" ,the INDIAN AUTHORS have filled our minds with. He asked everyone which book they referred, out came the popular Indian publishers the pradeep, the ABC, comprehensives and many other crap,and he smiled after every publisher’s name(INDIAN) was called…the smile was telling “ fella!! I was looking for this answer..now i’ve something to nail you down..ha ha ha”..So that was our first class.

His lecture on atomic theory was the one that exhibited his talent in giving lectures.. chapter which everybody thinks to be simple enough to learn just by flip of page, this person made it look simply damn difficult!!!!! The example he used was “think of yourself being blindfolded and trying to poke a football hanging via rope in a dark room” and then something else(while explaining Heisenberg uncertainty principle)..which every one thought that they got his point ….but then came the limitation which I fail to remember but everybody was mesmerized and we all looked at each other as if we've witnessed some brilliant magic show….his examples were awesome and I cant tell the joy I’m feeling by reliving those moments through this writing.

He later showed book that he wrote in 1992 on chemistry and launched in the market but had to pull it out for low sales…alas, he said these students don’t want content they want kilos, I’ll explain what he meant, the price of any supplementary book was around 400-500 Rs. (I don’t know how much they cost now) and most of them weighed close to 2-3 kilos and the book authored by sir priced the same but was just 250 gms or even less with just 100 pages!!!!!! So the fraternities favored kilos over content and also institutes that claim to prepare students for JEE used his book for their study material illegally, so he decided to pull books out of market. It was through this book where introduction to author was written i got to know abt his qualificationsàsir was a grad from IIT, went to Princeton univ. worked for T.I.F.R. ,did Mass Comm. from Jamia, part of technical team of the science show Turning point,(my fav when it used to be aired,I was in 3^rd -4 th standard then) and many other I’m failing to recollect.OMG…..i said then,when I read this and I am saying now when I’m typing this….so many things done successfully…and earning each of that is as hard as trying to make an elephant wear an underpant !!!!(he he he) { it might be unbelivable for many,but sir was no fake,not a con man for sure}…..the year in which he joined priceton he was only person chosen from India for that course and just 6 other all around the world!!!!!!!!OMG again and Mass Comm. from Jamia which is best in whole of ASIA so imagine the competition!!! And this person had it all…….how did I forget graduating from IIT…toughest undergrad exam in the world and then TIFR,normal people don’t (cant) do all this.

THis page has already grown too large in content(just the intro) than I inteneded to write about him........but this is allure of genius,what to do??

This person Is great,I regret I didn’t utilize his teaching well but reliving past is just so much fun!!!

Thank you sir!!!!!

For Corrections of any sort,mention in comments.thank u

Rao