20 years ago

[2005-02-05 01:00:40]

My final year project in engineering was the development of a model hovercraft, designed by my project mates and me, and built according to our specifications by us, using a variety of locally available materials. We met with a lot of failure - the damn thing just wouldn't work, i.e. it wouldn't float. We were told by our professors to change our project and do something regular, like a furnace or something (we were in mechanical engineering), but we stuck to our guns. But frankly, we were beginning to get really worried. On the morning of the 2nd of February, 1985, we had a discussion, and decided that if we didn't manage to get it working over the weekend, we would give up. That night, one of my project mates and me worked till late in the night on the model, but it wouldn't work. Totally disheartened, we slumped onto the floor of my room, and my friend tapped the model, whose motor was running. The model hovercraft quietly, and completely frictionlessly, slipped across the room. It was working. And within days after this, we built a larger lifting platform, based on our original design, which we eventually presented during our project viva, and scored more marks than any other project before (or after) us. Why am I writing all this now? Well, throughout the final week before the first model worked, we were stuck in a loop with a single tape playing over and over again. We just wouldn't hear anything else. The night the model first worked, the same tape was blasting over my claypot-speakers. 20 years and 2 days later, almost to the minute, my 15 year old daughter and I stood in front of a huge stage on Palace Grounds, and watched Sting - the erstwhile frontman of The Police - perform "Every Breath You Take" from the album "Synchronicity" - the album that I was listening to 20 years ago when I knew for sure that I would now actually be an engineer. In a sea of humanity, two decades later, I stood and watched something I had never hoped to see - Sting performing live - and though the tears in my eyes were very private, they were very real. The lump in my throat was so big that I almost couldn't scream my lungs out as I sang along. It was an amazing experience, and it almost didn't happen. It took an amazing gesture by some very dear friends to close this loop for me. Thank you, guys. I will never forget this.

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