Dusty Roads Lead to Gold

As our autorickshaw driver expertly navigated its way through the congested and filthy streets, I peered out towards the constantly changing backdrop which quickly sped by. The smell was pungent, the air stung with humidity, the sound of horns blasting and pedestrians on their way engulfed us, and the hum of the motor underneath our seat made it impossible to forget exactly where we were or to forget exactly how far we had come.

What had started out as a whim project in my dorm room in Cambridge last October had led me here. For the past few months I had spent countless hours online and exchanged thousands of emails with her, she was the lead engineer on this project, after all. But up to this point she had existed only as a name on a screen, as an email in my inbox. I had never even spoken on the phone with her, and now as our autorickshaw bumbled down the road, on the way to to her house, I felt a mixture of emotions; I was both nervous, excited, and anxious.

I thought about how different the scene passing me by was from my work station back in Cambridge. Oxen pulled carts, women carried jugs on their heads, and vendors on their streets hawked their goods. Just ten days ago, I had never even heard of Chennai, but, for some reason, I now found myself zooming through these obscure yet crowded streets, taking shortcuts through one-way allies, lined with straw and tin huts, off to meet my coder, all in the name of opportunity.

I thought it interesting how my pursuit of success, my quest for achievement, had brought me all the way from Cambridge - home to MIT and Harvard - arguably the seat of knowledge and perhaps also of academic and professional opportunity - to here, down a dusty road, and into the unknown.


-Zak