Student community is most neglected of all

A professor of civil engineering at the city-based College of Engineering, Pune (CoEP), Suvasish Mukhopadhyay has eight books to his credit. While some of these books are purely based on technical subjects the others describe his personal life experiences. The books on his experiences reflect optimism and give insight in to the life realities, faced by many of us at various stages. His latest book An Eternal Quest for Peace, published by Viva Publications, is based on the art of living. He tells Manasi Saraf-Joshi about the book and why all his books revolve around students.

How different is your book, An Eternal Quest for Peace, from books written on the art of living?
My books on the art of living depict the realities of life, which we experience every single day. My first book in this series, Happiness Code, deals with optimism in life while Eternal Quest for Peace is based on different incidents of my life and how every experience has taught me about how to live life in a better way.

All your books revolve around students. Why are they always the focal point?
To me the students’ community of our country is the most neglected fraternity. Being a teacher I feel that grooming them is very important. If we teach them positive attitude towards life then certainly they will be better equipped to tackle challenges of life.
In my book, I have depicted both the positive and negative sides of students. During one phase of their lives, they learn important lessons of life. In my book I’ve narrated an incident where IIT

Kharagpur students disrespect others due to their inflated egos. Similarly, another incident describes how some engineering college students look after their college library as if it is part of their own home. Both these incidents depict different attitudes and learnings of students.

What has inspired you to write books that are non-technical, although they still have a technical background?
My mother passed away when I was 12 years old. She succumbed to kidney cancer. I don’t have many sweet memories of my childhood but these incidents taught me to look at various situations in my life in a positive way. Thus, all my books speak about peace, happiness and optimism.

What more could be done to make lives of students better?
I believe that faith, which is the foundation of life, is missing among a vast section of students. During admissions, we ask students to get their certificates attested from a gazette officer. This shows we don’t directly trust them. On the other hand, we expect them to have complete faith in teachers and the education system. When we teach them about faith, we first ourselves should learn to trust them.