TinkerHub Story #4
How a third-year B.Tech Student from Kerala Saved Lives Using a Computer and Code
The story of how Biswas became a real-life superhero.
On the 11th of August 2018, all of Kerala was beginning to feel the burden of the devastating rains that would thrash the entire state for the next few weeks. Hundreds of lives were lost and the livelihood of millions of people was in jeopardy. On that day, Biswas, then a third-year Computer Science student was putting in another sleepless night with his colleagues to create the ‘Kerala Rescue’ portal which became instrumental in saving thousands of lives.
Join us as we interview the real-life tech hero who is now in his final year at Government Engineering College, Palakkad.
Presenting the fourth story in the series from TinkerHub about young achievers and their success stories that begin with a technology learning culture — How a third-year B.Tech Student from Kerala Saved Lives Using a Computer and Code featuring Biswaz.
Read our previous story here:
We can barely contain our excitement as we interview one of the most brilliant young minds of Kerala!
How and when did your tryst with technology begin?
When I was younger, I would break and rebuild electronic toys. Later on, when I was introduced to computers, I was totally fascinated by them.
Edubuntu replaced Microsoft products in our syllabus, and I began tinkering with it. I started out in web development and used to be a regular in the IT fairs in school, especially in the Web development contest and IT Quizzing competition.
Check out a few of Biswas’ projects here:
At the eye of the storm: The flood and beyond
Intense is how I would describe my experience. I had most of the flood experience with Kerala Rescue. Kerala Rescue was first initiated by Govt. of Kerala, Kerala State IT Mission and IEEE Kerala Section for effective collaboration and communications between authorities, volunteers and public.
The idea for it evolved bit by bit. On 11th August, there was a discussion in the IEEE WhatsApp group on what we could do to help the flood-affected regions. After discussing with Mr Muraleedaran of State e-governance mission, who was also on the board of IEEE Kerala Section, it was decided that a website would be made. At this time, the flood situation was just starting to occur. I created the website in Django framework which allowed for rapid prototyping and modularization.
In the beginning, it was a mere form for people to request food/clothes/water and volunteers to register. Later when the flood started to worsen we started to get rescue requests exponentially. Since the project was opensource from day one, we started to get open source contributions and later on, help from experts from all over the world.
The devastating news of the lives lost coupled with how the code I wrote had a direct connection to it was really terrifying to me. In fact, it is the same thing that motivated and pushed me to pull all those all-nighters.
Read the post below to get a deeper insight into what actually happened in those days from Biswas’ perspective:
How easy was it starting out?
The main challenge I faced was the impostor syndrome. As a beginner, I constantly felt that I was not made for this and I would struggle with programming. Later on, I realized that that was not true.
I was not alone in this struggle. It was just a difficult phase that I went through. And it passed. Actually, beginning is much easier than we think it is.
As Seneca the Stoic puts it, “We suffer more in imagination than in reality.”
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Events, Projects, Contests
Competing in tech events was something I used to do during my school days. I remember winning the state IT fest while I was in 12. When I got into IEEE, there were numerous opportunities in the form of events, competitions and projects just lying in wait.
I worked my way up to becoming a technical coordinator for the IEEE SB and eventually became the Chairman. The IEEE SB at GEC Palakkad held a hugely successful technical program ‘Excelsior’ during my tenure as the Chairman. I was ecstatic to see the strong contingent of 200 people actively participating in the event that we had worked so hard to organize.
Giving Talks and Hosting Workshops
We have to know the audience. We have to craft the material to suit them. Preparations will go to waste if we don’t know who we will be talking to.
I’ve done technical talks where the audience were just tech enthusiasts who did not know anything about the specifics of technology. Looking back, I realize I should have done a generalized version of the talk for them.
What do you think lies ahead for coders in India?
We need better programmers. People are forced to work for service companies and end up not caring about the process of engineering software. They become tiny mechanical arms designed to operate very specific tasks based on an operations manual. They’ll soon get automated.
P.S: All programmers who work at service companies sucks should NOT be your takeaway from the above.
We need more coders who care about their craft.
At PyCon India
I honestly did not think my proposal would get accepted. I had the story of how a community of people who came together to create something incredible like Kerala Rescue. I guess it resonated with everything that the python community stood for.
Watching the community from the stern of Kerala Rescue was an empowering and humanizing experience. I got help from some good minds I met through Kerala Rescue for reviewing my proposal.
Towards the Future
As of now, I reckon that I have a lot to improve as a programmer. So I want to work somewhere where I can learn. A good learning environment and work culture are what I’m looking for.
You may also like: How Asking the Right Questions took Sanket Thakur from MOOCs to Facebook to Bell Labs! featuring Sanket Thakur.
Epilogue: Anything you want to tell the tech community that looks up to you for inspiration?
I want to talk about something called ‘the superhero effect’. It was something I had to deal with. People think that you’re some kind of a superhero (best case scenario) or a socially awkward loner (worst case) when you happen to pull off something good. But that is not the case usually.
These achievers are just normal human beings who just happen to put an extra effort into what they love to do and are passionate enough to make sacrifices to get better at it.
“I just want to say that, if you want to get better at something, there’s nothing stopping you other than your thoughts that you can’t.”
This TinkerHub story was brought to you by Sreeram Venkitesh, Abhijith G Anil and Amrin Kareem from the TinkerHub Team! If you loved reading this post, show your appreciation by clapping below! Stay tuned to us for more reads on learning, building and collaborating.
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