Good Afternoon.
My name is Gautam Bhargava, and I am a classmate of Rajeev’s from IIT Kanpur. I have known Rajeev since 1978, our freshman year at IIT, where we were the first-ever class of Computer Science undergraduates at the IITs, and then beyond that as a truly wonderful friend for the last two decades. I have also had the privilege of having Rajeev advise me on two of my startups through inception to their eventual acquisition by large Fortune 500 companies. I have known Rajeev as a teenager, a fun loving, rock-n-rollin’ party guy, a super-smart classmate, a word-class academic, and as a Board member with amazing business savvy.
Our hearts are still filled with grief and the hurt hasn’t gone away – but we are here today to celebrate Rajeev’s life. I want to take the next few minutes to talk about Rajeev’s fun-loving side, right from his early days. Stuff that you would never find on Wikipedia!
Let’s rewind to our IIT days …
Hardly anyone in those days called him Rajeev. To us he was, and still is, Mots, which was not short for Motwani, as you would expect, but rather short for Motwayne! As our friend Mohanram recalls, for some reason we always had a story going that this was Motwayne, the younger brother of the movie star John Wayne! But this alleged younger brother of John Wayne was never seen wearing a 10-gallon Stetson; rather he was most often seen in a kurta, jeans, chappals, with a cloth book-bag slung across his shoulder! J
Now everyone here knows about Rajeev’s amazing brilliance. That would make you believe that Rajeev was this immensely studious type who spent all his waking hours studying and hitting the books hard. Au contraire, Rajeev was an incredibly fun loving guy always ready for a party! In his dorm room, next to his bed would always be a stack of science-fiction books waiting for eager consumption. Rajeev would spend endless hours solving the hardest crossword puzzles, playing bridge or volleyball, and hanging out with friends -- then he would show up for the tests and magically ace them! Now if a course were “crazy hard”, say, like the one on Number Theory, Rajeev would effortlessly breeze through, with amazingly elegant answers to even the toughest of problems. However, if the class were “easy”, Rajeev could easily lose some interest. Rajeev thought time could be better spent listening to music or hanging out at the canteen eating “hakka chowmein” or “anda parathas”. Some of you know what these are!
Similarly, as our friend Jaideep recounts, during his Berkeley days Rajeev spent quite some time in deciding on his thesis topic, and didn't publish ANY papers in his first 3 years - not because he couldn't, but rather because he considered many of the problems that came his way just too simplistic. People who didn’t know Rajeev considered that risky, but that was indeed the quintessential, fun-loving, brilliant Rajeev. Of course, once he chose his thesis topic, he got going in a big way and what he did in the next three years is legendary in research circles.
Rajeev was also quite a music lover with a particular fondness for Rock’n’Roll. During our IIT years Rajeev was also the “Audio Club Secretary”. This was indeed a prestigious job as the Audio “Secy” controlled the keys to the Rock’n’Roll kingdom – and decided when and where the amps and the speakers and the other equipment would be made available. As usual, Rajeev took great joy in running that club and recruited a bunch of his friends to lug those heavy amps around! When this got too much he decided it was more fun to play the bass … his favorite tune for riffing on bass was “Badge”! Later he started doodling on the keyboard … and as our friend Madhavan recalls, they only played songs in the key of A-minor so Rajeev could just play on the white keys!!! Rajeev could also create musical wonders with another “instrument” – you just had to hear him use a wine glass and a fork to play the chimes for the Bollywood hit “Chura Liya Hai”. J
As is the case for a lot of us, our college years are a big part of our life. It was no different for Rajeev. IIT Kanpur was a big part of Rajeev’s life. In his case though, Rajeev was a big part of IIT. For our graduating class’ 25th anniversary gift to IIT Kanpur, Rajeev was instrumental in helping set up a curriculum for entrepreneurship. The Pan IIT movement, which represents all the different IITs -- and not just IIT Kanpur -- just recently instituted a “Lifetime Achievement Award”. And the first recipient of this incredibly prestigious honor is Rajeev Motwani!!
The hurt is still here in our hearts, and I can often imagine Rajeev on the other end of the phone line saying “GB, this is Rajeev”. But we are here today to Celebrate Rajeev’s life. To paraphrase a famous Sanskrit shloka, that Prof. Goldman recited earlier, … If to be living is to be remembered and celebrated by others, Rajeev will live amongst us forever.
Thank you.