Dream your own dream – Rama Govindarajan (Summary)

Dream your own dream – Rama Govindarajan (Summary)

Rama Govindarjan’s essay “Dream your own dream” is the finest exemplary and inspirational success story for younger generations of students. The students who dream big will certainly achieve. She encourages the students to dream their dreams in order to set their goals in their lives to achieve them. Rama Govindarajan was also as ordinary student as others were. At the end of her school education she was not able to scribble in the autograph books of her friends more than the prosaic words like ‘housewife’, ‘graduate’ or ‘bank employee’ under the query “your ambition is to become a……….”.   She was not even able to understand the term “Research Scientist” for several years.

Rama Govindarajan was greatly influenced by her grandmother, Alamelu and her mother Shakuntala. Alemelu, as a young bride, who fought tooth-and-nail for what she believed was right and never obeying a rule of which she was not convinced. She never compromised though she risked ostracism by her own community.  When, she was socially boycotted she prepared to adjust in a small hut with a Dalit family and ate “meenkozhambu” with them. Shakuntala, Rama Govindarajan’s mother, was practically a single and working woman, who had worked hard to create a home. The home in which poetry and laughter were able to substitute luxury. Rama was always regretting that all her achievements fall far short of her mother’s sacrifice.

It was a great opportunity and superb experience to study B. Tech. in IIT Delhi. She studied her course of B. Tech by heart than by simply memorise. She enjoyed the fun of discussing science matters with her peers. With all these efforts, Rama emerged as a topper of her class with lot of confidence and self-assurance. She developed the attitude of “can do anything”. In spite of all these, she is blessed with a home where completely no gender bias and its manifestations, which unleashed her to have the best education and heavy-duty determination.

Later, Prof. Roddam Narashimha as her Ph. D. advisor in Fluid Mechanics was biggest influence on her scientific career. He taught her to do her research in the right way, which includes a thorough and critical understanding of the subject with extreme care in methods and zero exaggeration in making claims. With all her commitment and determination in her research, she was the first choice among the students for scientific discussions.

Soon after her graduation, she got a job in Mumbai as an engineer. She used to travel in a packed women’s compartment of a local train to her work place that starts very early morning by 6.57. Slowly, she adjusted to her situation and tried to understand the incredible hard work of various women who are hurrying to their jobs in the early morning trains.  Sometimes the stories of those women are too terrible to describe. With all these experiences, she understood that the important ingredient for success is the willingness to accept the hard work.

After two months of her service as an engineer in Mumbai, she realized that she was not satisfied with the present job. She decided to do M.S. in US to launch herself in a planned orbit in an industrial R&D.  As soon as she returned to India from US, she married to a person who is confined to Banglore city. With her conjugal relations, she was forced to stay in Banglore though it was not suitable place for chemical engineer's career. She tried in software industry when it was in its boom. She felt joining in software industry is just like wrong person in a wrong job. Later she went into the defense-related aerospace industry in Bangalore, wherein she wanted to develop the indigenous systems of control and computing skills instead of importing them from the other countries.

In due course of time, she joined as a professor in Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, in which she has independence and constant exposure to other researchers, which always unveil crucial research results.  She was fulfilled with the job satisfaction, which gave her an opportunity to focus on research. Now she was recipient of the most covetous Shanti Swarup  Bhatnagar Award for the year 2007 for her outstanding contribution to the nation in the field of research. Thus, Rama Govindarajan released her dreams who dreamt to be a ‘Research Scientist’.   

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