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Hemanth ..... The Fourth

Hemanth Kumar( B.E in Mechanical Production and Industrial Engineering from Gandhi Institute of Technology and Management and presently Site Engineer at Hindustan Shipyard Limited for Good Earth Maritime Limited(GML))

Did anyone ever think of the person who discovered smileys that you see on net?. I don’t know who it is that discovered them, but I can say for sure that all the downward lips of all smileys wouldn’t have been there if the person who discovered them had a chance to meet this guy named Hemanth Kumar. Confusion obviously lurks in with the uncanny description that I gave here, but let me bring some clarity on what I am trying to make you understand about this kid. Hemanth, the fourth of the seven kins and the second son of Shree Malleswari Jagupilla garu and Shree Venkata Ramana Jagupilla garu is perhaps born with 99.99% of all his emotions accounted only by smiles. All his ‘all other emotions’ add to a meager 0.01 %( well, please don’t ask me on how I measured that). Come what may, and no matter what the situation is he does his things with only one thing to accompany it always…SMILING & SMILING& SMILING& SMILING& SMILING& SMILING……and you know what follows next in the list.

Malleswari garu loves all her three kids but this guy Hemanth has a special place in her heart because he doesn’t know to look after himself. If you don’t remind him that he has to take his lunch, he wouldn’t have it. I will tell the reasons for this in times to come shortly. I had known him since my childhood. I could still remember the childhood hairstyle of his. I feel pretty much amazed when I see some guys applying gels to make their hair look spiky when I know that for years Hemanth maintained spiky hairstyle with ease. His hair never used to bend to anyone. I still remember him wearing loose pants with the belt tightly fixed to avoid the pant from falling down .I also remember his rosy lips that used to always bleed because this guy used to always remove the outer layer of his lips. As he grew up, he developed a unique skill –the art of keen observation. This skill of his enabled him to gain popularity in years to come and sometimes that also brought him a little bad name. He has this unique knack of mimicking things that he used to observe. Suppose he observes a cycle mechanic fixing a tube that is punctured or tightening a brake that has become loose, he used to try that at home on his own gadgets. This has allowed him to experiment with things and this has enabled his hands to become the finest tools of handling gadgets.

His schooling was not exciting. This kid was an average student in class .For him classroom teachings were a routine stuff. His mind always used to think out of the box. As soon as he reached home he used to experiment with some gadget or the other, be it fan, tube light, sewing machine, his Dad’s old Silver Plus motorbike or other things. Kudos to his family members they never ever objected to his ‘INTELLECTUAL  PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS’.

I still wonder how a guy who is afraid of Mathematics during his early schooling could secure a 93% in Tenth. But again that’s another side of his cubic figure to say in short. At times he can surprise everyone with his unbelievable performances. Unfortunately he scored 3 or 4 marks less for a First class. He then took the Polytechnic Entrance test and secured a seat in Government Polytechnic Institute, Visakhapatnam in Sandwich Mechanical trade. The term Sandwich is famous and is synonymous with a one year Internship in Industry as part of the course curriculum. You can imagine how a person who loves to pursue and tread the path of Individual thinking and Intellectual Experimentation feels when he was given a gold mine of an opportunity. Hemanth found a perfect platform to explore to the fullest extent the opportunity of utilizing the facilities of the labs and the expertise of the faculty at the Polytechnic Institute. Hemanth’s unconventional approach of dealing with things and his attitude of not to believe in anything unless and otherwise performed and confirmed by him, enabled him to conduct research on the gadgets he came across in the labs in his own style. It is not exaggeration to say he became a ‘Mini Scientist’ during this time, for he has learnt the ‘Art of Independent Research’ at this Institute.

He gained the name of ‘TECH KID’ in his college and all his classmates used to approach him for clarification of doubts. He then got an opportunity for a six month internship at Visakhapatnam Port Trust. He was paid a meager 600 rupees as stipend and this guy used to give all the money to his mom. I used to remember that his mother used to give him somewhere between 10-20 rupees from his salary. You have to see the spark in Hemanth’s eyes. He used to feel as though he was rewarded with a 1 million lottery. Such was his innocent heart. He never used to utter any word before his mother .Whatever my aunt Malleswari garu used to give to her kids they used to accept that without any complaint. To Malleswari garu that money was helpful to get along with the family expenses to some extent and her kids know that their mother knows their needs and she also knows the appropriate time to reward her kids. Their family bonding was one thing of which I am very proud of. One of the rarest and fewest times that I had seen a family that used to feel plenty even in times of little. There is one instance when Malleswari garu bought Ravi Chandra, the elder brother of Hemanth a calculator using Hemanth’s one month stipend. Unfortunately Ravi lost that Calculator while travelling in a bus and her mother was upset. Ravi was upset too. Ravi was staying at my house during that time as his college was nearer to my house than his. Hemanth came for the last bus of the day to our village, with another calculator borrowed from one of his friends. I asked him why he came this far at this time of the night. To everyone he said he wanted to hand over the calculator to his brother. But to me and Ravi we knew that he came to lift the spirit of Ravi who is upset for the loss of the calculator. His smiling face and his words” Don’t worry brother!!, I will buy another one for you with my next month salary” made Ravi and me feel proud of the little brothers we have. For the first time in my life I felt I am so small before these amazing cousins of mine who have an ocean of a heart.

There is another instance when he was doing his next six months internship training at Krishna Motors in Visakhapatnam. Malleswari garu, Ravi, Anand and I went to the garage to see Hemanth. We couldn’t find him near the scene. Suddenly came out a guy wearing a shirt stained with grease and Engine oil and with a couple of mechanic gadgets in one hand and a dark and black stained cloth in the other, from under a car. His face was full of sweat and had patches of engine oil and grease and it took a while for us to realize that it was Hemanth. Hemanth’s mom took her kid into her hands kissed him and put a sweet in his mouth that she had brought from elsewhere. I got a glimpse of “Loving Motherhood” to the core. To Hemanth, to work and play with automobiles is Fun. To his mother, her kid bearing the wear and tear of the mechanical rigors of the Workshop is a learning experience (something which many parents wouldn’t allow their kids to do, I believe).

Hemanth is such a workaholic that he completely forgets the outside world when he is involved in any work. Let it take 1 hour or 10 hours he doesn’t move away until the work is finished and I have seen innumerable times when his mother used to feed him his lunch and dinner. Such is his commitment for any work that he takes on. Hemanth then took the ECET exam and scored a state rank of 48 and secured a seat in the MPIE (Mechanical Production and Industrial Engineering) branch in the prestigious GITAM engineering college in Visakhapatnam. He was not a great student in subjects outside his major in Polytechnic but he is unmatchable in his core mechanical subjects, thanks to the wonderful training at the Polytechnic Institute and the Internships at VPT and Krishna Motors. He took no time in making the class realize that he is indeed a ‘TECH KID’. The legacy continued and he is once again the most sought after person for clarification of doubts to many of his classmates in core mechanical subjects. I enquired once with his friends on how this guy is faring in the class. I am stunned to observe the respect that this kid commands from his friends. I’ve also heard from them that there were instances when Hemanth suggested some modifications in the protocol of the experiments to the Professors in the college for a better output. To the Professors of his core subjects, Hemanth appeared as a ‘Genius Unparalleled’. His weak training in English and his slack communication skills couldn’t secure him a seat in some of the big companies that came for Campus recruitment. Hemanth was never dejected and neither was his Mom. One day he got selected in the Good Earth Maritime Limited interview for the post of Site Engineer for their ongoing ship building projects at Hindustan Shipyard. He went to meet his friends (who were then playing cricket in the ground) after he got selected for the job and can you imagine the reception he got from them? Everyone stood in two rows and they lifted the bats and asked Hemanth to pass between them. It was an amazing reception befitting a wonder kid and a hard working genius like him.

There you are, 8 months into the job; Hemanth commands the respect not only from his subordinates but also from his seniors at Job for they were mesmerized by his skills on site. The faith that his superiors bestow upon him is personified by the important company documents that they allow Hemanth to take home for a review. Amazing, isn’t it?

Hemanth has another dimension in his plethora which makes him laugh for astonishingly long times when he comes across a funny scene or instance, be it outside or in movies. The Telugu movie ‘Ladies Tailor’ ran 175 days without break in his little computer at home and I wonder how this guy can derive fun from the same scenes that he watches time and again. For him nothing becomes obvious no matter how many times he sees it if it is a fun scene in a movie or does it if it is a work related to his job. Perhaps he doesn’t like the phrase ‘Got Bored’. Recently I came to know about another dimension of this guy. I heard that he seldom gets anger but when he does, he is the nightmare for all his family members. But again, as I said at the beginning, all his ‘all other emotions’ account for only 0.01% of his life.

What can I further say about this person . Well, only one thing- Lucky we for having a cousin like him……..