Its like being in a relationship...

During my school days I had a great passion for drawing and painting. My parents encouraged me in every possible way they could and never had any doubts on my spirit for it. I had great fun trying out various art mediums like, water colours, poster colours, oil pastels, crayons etc. Shopping for these art materials was like a periodic event, especially during my middle and high school days. My dad used to take me to Avenue road, the place where almost all stationary items are available at a whole sale price, to get the art materials. When ever I saw a new art material at a shop, I used to get super excited and after seeing my excitement, he never stopped me from buying those stuff. Coming from an ordinary middle class family never had issues when it came to persuasion of art, science or sports, all these were valued equally by my parents.

By the time I turned 18 my interest slowly shifted towards Engineering. I got attracted by the very idea of making stuff that could have influence on our day to day life. Fortunately, I was in a great place, doing my Bachelor of Engineering (BE) along with some great minds in my class. Though not all were keen about engineering but they were bunch of ambitious people.

A road perpendicular to Avenue road (where I got art materials) called S P Road became more interesting place after my inception to engineering. S P Road is a place where we get variety of electronic, perhaps engineering stuff , I mean components. We got all the components that were required to do our lab experiments prescribed in our syllabus in S P Road. Few of my friends used to buy some critical components from there to do experiments during our final lab exams, as many of us had the feeling that components provided by the college could be faulty because of which we may not get the right output in the exam. I used to buy components much much before the exams. My close pal during my BE days, Vinod, and I had an advantage of doing all our lab experiments at my dad's office. My Dad used to work in Industrial Training Institute where there was a facility to do electronics experiments. Vinod and I gained great confidence doing experiments in that small lab which we called it as our BELL LABS. Burning the components (by mistake - like wrong connection) during experimentation was quite common, with that visiting S P Road to buy components had also become frequent. That was when I started visiting SP Road.

I had many like minded friends during my engineering education. I had great fun in discussing electronics with them. Two friends who comes to my mind right away are Ashwin Mukundan and Srivatsa Aithal. Ashiwin was my class mate. I must have had discussed with him on nearly all the circuits that we did in our lab and many more that came in some electronics magazines. He was/is a down to earth person with immense interest towards electronic gadgets. While Srivatsa and I did our primary schooling together. Incidentally we both had taken same engineering course (but different colleges) hence we got connected once again after a long gap. Along with them, some more friends from college and near my house, I had made a group to attend a lab based training program/ workshop pertaining to electronics circuits, during our semester holidays. We leisurely did many electronics circuits from morning to evening as the lab in charge had left us with no rules or condition. I specifically remember one incident during those lab days: Once we found a FM Transmitter circuit in some electronics magazine. When we saw the circuit we thought we could try out but we did not have enough components. Ashwin and I decided to do the circuit after buying the required components from SP Road, while Srivatsa was adamant on doing the circuit with the available components in the lab. We , especially I, thought he was crazy. Srivatsa could actually make a working FM Transmitter with a very few components on the desk by evening that day. That's when we came to know the genius in him. Srivatsa had visited SP Road may be ten times more than the number of times I had visited but he had the engineering acumen probably hundred times than that of mine. He didn't just teach us some neat electronics design during that workshop but also shared the spirit for doing electronics engineering.

SP Road helped us bridged from our conceptual understanding to practical knowledge in engineering. Every visit to SP road incrementally influenced on our thinking for engineering. There were electronics components shops, computer shops, electrical hardware shops, mechanical workshop based shops, shops related to constructions and many other shops. We could get a tiny bolt to a dish antenna, from resistor to microprocessor, so on and so forth. Almost every body who did engineering in circuits branch (in Bangalore) would have visited or their project mates would have visited. Some would call it as the hell on this earth for its crowd and dirtiness while some of us found it as a god sent engineering 'gold mine'. Well, at least for me my engineering wouldn't have been real education without SP Road.


After completing my engineering I joined an engineering start-up which was into special purpose machine, robotics and automation. It had a dozen mechanical engineers and a few electronics engineer. My first assignment was to design various circuits that would interface computers with machines. I had done circuits in engineering with little applicability to stand Industry standards , most of them were for fun. When I got into a real design I found my self naive. I made visits to SP road almost every alternate day to buy components that suited my design but to my bad luck I wasn't getting many of the components that I wanted. My boss (who happen to be a Stanford grad) wasn't that result oriented one when I joined the setup. He was considerate person and supported me even when things didn't work. He loudly appreciated when I ever I was able to show even a little progress. He was happy to see me indulging my self into the work. He started teasing me by calling SP Road as my in-laws place. With time I realized that S P Road was not the one stop solution for every need. I decided to move on from there. I found sources that offered many more component, at a little lower price and that too at our door step. My respect for S P Road shop keepers died by the time I completed a year in the company.

I was lucky - I g0t a seat in Indian Institute of Science (IISc) to do my masters, hence I decided to leave that start up after working for little more than a year. Studying in IISc was my dream during my BE days, I was super happy to get in. My research work was primarily experimental in nature. It involved developing electronic systems to set up the experiment. Electronics design was very much part of my research work. I was working under a professor who is an electronics genius and little bit short tempered as well. I had to be care full with his moods swings. When I had to procure components, he insisted that he wants to come with me and also wanted to get it from S P Road. I didn't want to get any components from S P Road as I had made up my mind and also I had built other contacts. I had no choice but to go with my guide to S P Road. He had been in the US for more than eight years, yet he wanted to walk in that dirty road and didn't mind waiting for hours to get components. He enjoyed browsing through the shops looking at components as though he had not seen it before while the truth was that he had worked with all those, just that his excitement remained unchanged with time. We had many discussions on various electronics circuits during that visit to S P Road. The components that we didn't get were replaced by the nearly equivalent components that met the requirement though not the part number or complete specification. He had the knowledge and patience to identify those equivalent components which I totally lacked doing during my work in that start up. My dislike towards S P Road was partly to do with the attitude with which I had taken it. After that visit to S P Road, I went there many more times with him and again fell in love with the street as I did during my college days.

I had got a job in GE during my placements which I joined after spending two years in the campus. I had left the campus with out submitting my dissertation work as I had not completed few experiments. I left as I wanted a job desperately and my guide also let me join with few simple conditions. In a year or so I submitted my thesis and recently got my degree as well. During those two years in GE, I did get a chance to do neat electronics engineering for aviation systems and energy systems businesses but I was missing out on doing creative hobby electronics as there were no real good place in Hyderabad to buy electronic components. In fact during one occasion when I was in Bangalore, I visited S P road to buy some micro-controllers to do some fun project. I could do very few such projects as I wasn't motivated enough to buy components online or else where. I missed S P Road to a large extent during those days.

I quit GE after spending nearly two years. I decided to start a business of my own in Energy domain, to begin with solar energy solution. First thing I did when I wanted to do something in solar was that I got a solar panel and a battery from S P Road to try out the solar charging functionality. However, I spent some three months time in a solar company to get some exposure in solar technology, outside Bangalore. Now I am back to Bangalore.

Few days back one of my uncles told me his UPS isn't working and asked me if I could fix it. I readily agreed. Yesterday while troubleshooting, I could figure out that a component had blown and I also figured out that the component isn't a readily available component in a shop. I went to S P Road and after a brief discussion with the shop keeper I found a component that could satisfy the requirement. Today I was able to fix the UPS. When I was having a cup of coffee at a restaurant near S P Road, I could recollect all these days of my association with the street, which in a way made me an Engineer.