Viren Vaz | Chapter 2 | Lost in Numbers, Found in Philosophy
The Unconventional Series
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Viren joined St. Andrew's College in Bandra for junior college because that is what you got for 76%. During this period, he lost interest in woodworking because life became too exciting with the new experiences junior college brought. There were girls in his social group, the thrill of traveling alone in Bombay, and exposure to different religions and cultures. He realized there was an ocean outside his tiny well.
He encountered several cultural surprises. One of his Muslim friends refused to share his tiffin because it contained pork, changing Viren's perspective and making him realize that some people don't eat pork. Similarly, he discovered that while taking a bath in the morning was a ritual in most households, in Catholic homes, you bathe when you're dirty, not necessarily in the morning. He recalled thinking, "Why should I bathe in the morning when I'm already clean? you guys have too much water."
The only connection that he had with woodwork was the Bandra bus stop. While waiting for the bus after college, he would spend hours watching carpenters work in small shops opposite the bus stop, often missing his bus. He also enjoyed gifting miniature models of his grandmother’s chairs that he built, to girls. I said to him, "These miniature chairs were your guitar for impressing girls," to which Viren replied, "Yes, in a Catholic colony, you can't impress girls with a guitar, football, or jive (a form of dance) because everyone knows them."
His father had a love for technology and always brought home the latest gadgets. In 1996, his father bought a desktop computer. Viren was instantly hooked. He recalled, "I took to computers like a fish to water—programming it, deconstructing it, everything made sense. We would typically call the technician once per problem, and if it recurred, we would open the computer and fix it ourselves. We could open up a computer and rewire it as we wanted. We knew the settings, where the hard disks and motherboard were, which slot to put the motherboard in, and where to plug the hard disk inside. Terms like ATA and SATA were part of our vocabulary. I also started learning programming languages like DOS and QW BASIC from books."
He and his friends would try programming games, drawing elaborate diagrams on graph paper before figuring out how to replicate them on the screen. Much of his junior college years were spent exploring programming with friends. He graduated in 1997 and faced the dilemma of choosing a career path. Like many, he had no idea of what he wanted to do in life, but he knew he liked computers, carpentry, and biology. Carpentry was out of the question because it was considered a hobby. Opting for a B.Tech course seemed a lot of hardwork, as he saw his friend's elder brother wake up at 5 am, study until 7 am, attend college, and then continue studying. So, computer science engineering was off the table. Medicine demanded 2X effort than engineering, so biology, or medicine, was also ruled out. He reached a dead end.
Seeing his son’s interest in computers, his father took him to visit a friend, Venkatesh, a software developer at TCS in Pune. For the first time, Viren met someone passionate about coding, and was writing software programs to automate testing of TCS's software. Viren was awestruck by his work. He recalled, "Your eyes are big, your whole body is tingling. It's like, oh my God, I need to learn this stuff. I need to know this stuff. It would be amazing fun."
Mr. Venkatesh advised him to pursue a bachelor's in mathematics, which would help him clear the entrance exam for the MCA (Master in Computer Applications) program at Pune University, one of the best institutes at the time. Despite graduating with only 66% in science, Viren secured a place at St. Xavier's College in Bombay for a B.Sc. in mathematics, thanks to a quota for Catholics from St. Andrew's.
Viren had a grand time at St. Xavier's. "I had a grand time at St. Xavier's. My friends and I would hang around in the foyer, canteen, and library all the time, hardly attending classes and often getting pulled out for low attendance. Here, I discovered that the math you study in a bachelor's program is not the math you studied in 11th and 12th grade. It stops looking like math—where are the numbers? There are entire subjects in math that don't have any numbers. There's no plus or minus, all that chit-chat. Suddenly, you're studying things like rings, fields, and sets. It was too tough, a different level that I was not expecting. I did not enjoy studying at all."
He would enjoy subjects if he could find logic in them. The math taught in the bachelor's program was at a level where he couldn’t relate, similar to history and geography in school—why does someone need to know Nagpur is the orange capital of India? In St. Xavier's classes, a professor would write huge math proofs on the board for students to copy, and that was a 40-minute class. The only interaction with the professor was when the board was full, and he would ask if he could erase the first column of the proof, to which students would shout, "No, no!"
He abandoned woodworking altogether because he had reached a saturation point and didn’t know how to move forward. For example, he went to the British Council Library and picked up carpentry books to understand how to sharpen a chisel, but since the book had no illustrations, he misunderstood and couldn’t actually sharpen a chisel. He didn’t have any mentors or resources to advance.
However, his group of friends started evolving his thought process, shaping him into the person he is today. They would read books by Ayn Rand, Richard Bach, and Paulo Coelho and discuss their philosophies. He remembers reading "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead," which shook his world. "The Fountainhead shakes your world, and then 'Atlas Shrugged' takes that world, turns it upside down, and beats it up. We would spend days and days discussing—what does money mean? What are we trying to do? And somehow it never completely got into real life. It was just a superficial discussion we were having. But I never asked myself, what are you doing with your life? Do you really want to study math? Do you really want to be doing this computer thing after that? No, it was never a question. You’re in this very metaphysical space in your head while discussing philosophy. Then you go back to college the next day, quietly sit, study, and your old mindset returns—I'll become a software developer."
Richard Bach made a big difference with his concept of evolving definitions. He wrote "The Bridge Across Forever" on the concept of a soulmate. Two years after writing the book, he divorced his wife, whom he talked about as his soulmate. This created confusion for Viren, making him question if the soulmate concept was valid like the author himself has decided छोड़ ना (leave it) this soulmate is not a concept.
He debated existential questions—purpose of life, government structure, humanity, and the institution of marriage. Through these debates, he built a construct for himself based on multiple perspectives and his own understanding. All these books sowed the seed of deeper inner reflection, which would surface years later when, as a 35-year-old, he would question everything.
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