"Close Encounters of the Third Kind" is a Father's Day tribute?

Madras, nalla Madras!

It is one of my favorite movies ever.  It is not only because of the fantastic movie it is, or for how uniquely the movie depicted humans and aliens communicating with each other, for Richard Dreyfuss' crazed and possessed looks ... But also because it is a reminder of a glorious time in my childhood.

I was a little more than 15 years old when I was one of the few students who qualified for the interviews after the success in the written part of the National Talent Search exams.  Two other students from my class, Vijay and Krishna, had also gotten to this stage. 

(Spoiler alert: Vijay, who was always a step ahead of the rest of us was awarded the prestigious NTS scholarship. Krishna and I have never talked with each other about our experiences.)

The interview was to be held at the Madras campus of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT). The prospect of the interview itself did not excite me as much as the thought that I would be at the fabled IIT campus for some serious, official, business.

My father took me to Madras, which is how Chennai was called.  We stayed at the home of my favorite uncle, whose sons were always a delight to hang out with.

The following day was the big moment at IIT.  But, I didn't care about the interview, and was immensely excited playing cards and cricket with the boys.

The morning came.  We reached the campus and the interview site.

The interviewers were three serious looking men, about my father’s age. Looking back, I find it bizarre that they said nothing to put a 15-year old kid at ease. They could have used conversation starters, for instance, “we see that you are from Neyveli. So, where are you staying in Madras?” I suppose it was the old ways of conducting business. Nothing touchy-feely about work for the brain and to demonstrate one’s capability.

It did not take me long to know I messed up my chances.

It was a simple question.  Really, really simple, compared to the later ones and even though I did well in the ones that followed, I am sure that the "golden duck" played a huge role in why I lost the scholarship.

That simple question was, "what is the maximum value of the tangent of an angle?"

Throughout my school life, right from the earliest days that I can recall, my math teachers tried their best to help me understand that I needed to pause and think about the questions before I answered them, even when confident of the answer, only because of the remarkably silly mistakes I did while being in a hurry as if I were in a race against the devil.  But, stupid is as stupid does, as I would learn much later from Forrest Gump.  

If only the interviewers had asked me "is that your final answer?" with dramatic music in the background!

But, they continued to toss more questions my way, including one where I was required to solve a problem on the chalkboard.  A green board it was, in contrast to the black boards I had been used to. I wanted to tell them how much I enjoyed looking at a green board and working out the problem on it.

While exiting the campus, I realized the enormity of erring in that first question itself, which was the simplest of them all.

Even now, after decades have passed, as a retired man older than the age of the interviewers then, I want to smack my forehead for the remarkable mess up. If only I had the ability to forget all the bad experiences in life! ;)

Perhaps my father realized that I was kicking myself. He had to have observed and inferred because we did not talk about feelings those days. Now, I, as a middle aged man and he, as a super-senior citizen, we talk about feelings too. But, that was not the case more than forty years ago.

My father did two things. 

First, he took me to the beach. Looking at the wide open waters calms any troubling mind, I would think.  We then walked over to a restaurant across from the road, where I ordered a cucumber/tomato sandwich, something out of the ordinary who was used to eating idlis and dosais, which have become a rare treat after I moved to the US. 

And then he said we could go to any movie of my choice.  Which is how we went to "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" at the Satyam complex.

After the movie ended, and as we were exiting, father said, "I didn't understand anything there."