Narendra shifted his satchel as he entered the crowded campus of his college in Calcutta. The air in April was heavy with the smell of flowering shiuli flowers and the distant clanging of tram bells. A first-year student, he was eager, though a little nervous, to establish himself in a city famous for its intellectual heritage and cultural vitality.
In the large lecture halls, Narendra excelled. He picked up computer programming concepts and algorithms so easily, astounding his professors and classmates in turn. But when his friend, Kalpana, requested him to join a campus hackathon, he was a little hesitant. "I don't know if I'm ready," he admitted. "I can do the theory, but suppose I botch it when I need to count?"
Kalpana smiled. "You won't know until you try."
Narendra hesitantly became a member of the hackathon team. The task: create a straightforward app to assist students in locating low-cost study material at nearby bookstores. The team brainstormed, coded, and bickered late at night, fueled by tea and samosas from the canteen. Narendra struggled initially-his code, flawless in concept, didn't work in practice. Bugs were unresolveable when deadlines were nearing.
But as he did hands-on work, something shifted. He learned to debug, to collaborate, and to adapt on the fly. He realized that real-world problems rarely fit textbook examples. The feeling of watching their app run at last-however clumsily-was unlike anything he'd experienced in the classroom.
Post-hackathon, Narendra's worldview shifted. He applied for internships, signed up for tech fests, and even assisted in organizing a coding club. With each venture came fresh challenges: miscommunications, dud prototypes, surprise breakthroughs. He found that hands-on experience not only grounded his knowledge, but also developed his confidence and collaboration skills-attributes much sought after by employers and critical to success in the real world.
When it came to Durga Puja, Narendra and his friends built an app that would guide tourists around the city's renowned pandals. Not only did the project involve coding, but grasping Kolkata's multicultural mix of languages, traditions, and localities. With collaboration from neighborhood shopkeepers and festival organizers, Narendra witnessed firsthand how technology could bring people together and make a concrete impact.
In the last semester, Narendra looked back. He had come to college thinking that it was all about knowledge. Now he realized that knowledge was merely the start-the actual change occurred when one implemented it. Concluding a fine quote from another Narendra (Swamy Vivekanandha), he spoke about his experience at the annual fest of his college.
"The benefits of knowledge can only be realized in practice."
