University Hires in India
By: Atul Kabra
Mark Twain, the famous author said "It is older than history, older than tradition, older even than the legend and looks twice as old as all of them put together".
He was referring to the ancient Indian city of Varanasi.
Situated on the Banks of the holy Ganges, and believed to be the oldest living city, Varanasi is at the epicenter of ancient Indian culture and still carries some of the oldest traditions and practices known to mankind. There are nearly 80 "ghaats" along the Ganges in the city and each "ghaat" has a unique and fascinating story to tell.
From hippies to historians, Varanasi has enough attractions to attract tourists and religious pilgrims from world over, but the most famous form of tourism here is perhaps the tourism of death. People come to the city to die and if not that, then at least have their last rites performed.
The hindu culture believes in the concept of reincarnation and rebirth. But it is believed that if your last rites are performed in Varanasi along the banks of the holy Ganges then your soul is freed from the clutches of the birth-death-rebirth cycle and you attain 'moksha' or 'nirvana' or the eternal salvation.
There is a reason why Varanasi has this unique distinction of being the city of nirvana. The reason being that Varanasi is not believed to be a part of this universe of life and death. It is intact believed to be situated on the trident of Lord Shiva.
According to Hindu mythology, the trinity of Gods include the Lord Brahma (the creator), Lord Vishnu (the provider) and Lord Shiva (the destroyer or the transformer). In the engineering parlance, one can say that the process of destruction, or cleansing, so that old can be replaced for new to be created, is owned by Lord Shiva. Shiva thus gets to decide what needs to be recreated or liberated. And those who find their last rites in his city i.e. the city of Varanasi, get his blessings for liberation.
Shiva is arguably the most complex and yet the most simple of the Hindu gods. Amongst his many forms he is recognized as 'parameshwara (the limitless)', 'mahadev (lord of the lords)', 'bholenath (the simple minded)' , 'natraja (the lord of dance)', and 'rudra (the angry destroyer)' . In his 'rudra' form, Shiva unleashes his anger over the evil thru his transcendental dance form know as 'tandava' and ends up opening his third eye that casts spells of fire to annihilate evil.
Among the many etymologies behind the name of our organization, 'FireEye', as pointed out by our founder Ashar in one of the interviews, this too is one of them.
'FireEye' thus has an umbilical connection with the Lord Shiva and by extension with the city of Varanasi.
No wonder then that the forces of nature acted in a way that the first university in India that we started the 'university relations program' with was situated in the City of Varanasi, IIT-BHU.
Nearly a hundred years old, the Banaras Hindu University (BHU), was formed by the great social reformer and thinker of thinker of that era, Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya, with a vision to impart world class secular education to the Indian youth. The entire university was built on funds raised by numerous donors of all faiths across the nation and without any form of organized state sponsorship. The campus is built on an area of 1300 acres and is one of the largest residential universities of Asia. The importance of the university was attested by the fact that it's inaugural speech was done by none other than the most well known Indian ever, M.K.Gandhi, also known as father of the independent India.
Post Independence the administration of the university was taken over by the union government of India. When the Government of India created a system of engineering colleges known as the IITs for extremely high quality engineering education , the engineering college of BHU was inculcated into it and finally renamed as IIT-BHU as it's prominence was no less. Over the years, BHU has produced many eminent personalities and some of it's globally notable alumni include Dr Krishan Kant (ex Vice President of India), Dr CNR Rao (holder of the 'Bharat Ratna', the highest civilian honor in India for contributions to the field of science), Mr Nikesh Arora (Chief Business Officer, Google), Mr Deepak Ahuja (Chief Financial Officer, Tesla Motors), Mr Thomas Anantharaman (Part of the 3-member team that created the Deep Blue Super Computer at IBM) and Prof. Ahmed Hasan Dani (intellectual and archaeologist from Brtish-India who went on to become a noted civilian in Pakistan and was awarded for many of his works) among many others.
Mr Sridhar Jayanthi, the head of FireEye India, holds BHU in extremely high esteem and that certainly acted as a catalyst for our amazing HR team comprised of Ms Urvashi Muni and Mr Garrett Hetrick to put together an extremely efficient and useful 'university relations' program with BHU that included the hiring of new college graduates, internship program and sponsorship for a technical event.