Successful Professor Is A Great Patron Of Music.
Story of a Database Guru and
a Connoisseur of Shastriya Sangeet.

When and how did I leave India for the U.S.
I came to the U.S. in the fall of 1969. I was working as a System Engineer for IBM in Calcutta when I left India. Many friends and relatives thought that I was crazy to give up the prestigious job in IBM, since the company had an extremely high profile in the data processing area worldwide and they were very selective in hiring in India at that time. But my urge for higher studies in the U.S. prevailed; I resigned the job and departed for the U.S. in September 1969.

My current profession
I am presently a Professor and Head of the Research Group in Database Systems at the College of Computing in Georgia Institute of Technology, popularly called Georgia Tech. I have been here since 1990. I have been teaching in the database area for the last 26 years and my textbook: “Fundamentals of Database Systems” (with R. Elmasri) has been a leading textbook in the database area worldwide for the last 13 years. It is now in its 4th edition; a special Indian edition gets printed in Delhi and has become affordable and very popular in India. Our database research group was ranked 7th among all U.S. universities in the U.S. News and World report rankings. I also consult with companies in information systems and products design area and am an Independent Director of GTL limited (formerly Global Telecom Systems), a network engineering and enterprise solutions company based in new Bombay, with an annual revenue around $175M.

Favorite kind of music /musicians
I enjoy Indian classical music immensely. Although I have no formal training in it, I have listened to much of it and enjoy listening to vocalists like D.V. Paluskar, Bhimsen Joshi, Pandit Jasraj, Rajan Sajan Misra, Kishori Amonkar as well as newer artists like Veena Sahasrabudhe, Malini Rajurkar, and youngsters including Sanjeev Abhyankar and Ashwini Bhide. I still feel that I need to learn more about Western and Carnatic classical music. After moving to Atlanta, I realized that there was no organization arranging Hindustani Classical concerts here. So with the help of some key supporters I launched the Indian Classical Music Society (ICMS)in 1994. Our website is at www.ipnatlanta.net/icms. We have been doing 4 to 5 concerts by renowned artists every year and we are pleased that artists from India  have become very keen to perform in Atlanta.

Who has influenced me the most in my life
I feel that having lived with my grandparents through my high school education, both my maternal and paternal grandfathers have influenced me most. My father’s dad was a schoolteacher and taught me the discipline of studying and developed in me a love for mathematics. My mom’s father was an engineering graduate of 1903 and helped me with my organizational skills and gave me a superb grounding in the English language.
 

My family
I have a very wonderful family – wife Aruna, daughter Manisha Navathe Panchal and son-in-law Samir Panchal, and son Amol. I was married in India in 1979 to Aruna Pusalkar, daughter of a friend of my father. She came to U.S. and did a master’s degree in Nutrition and Dietetics at NYU. She has been working as the manager of the clinical nutrition group at the Children’s healthcare of Atlanta, a well-known children’s hospital in Atlanta. She is very active socially and in the community as well. My daughter Manisha was a GT student in Chemical engineering, worked as a Chemical Engineer at Frito Lay and went on to finish her M.D. at UAB (University of Alabama, Birmingham). She is currently a resident in Pediatrics at Stanford University Hospitals. Manisha is married to Samir, who was a graduate student at Georgia Tech in electrical engineering and went on to do his M.B.A. at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. After working with Ernst and Young, he has recently joined as a business development manager in the health and life sciences group at Oracle corp. My son Amol has had quite a varied career, even compared to Manisha and Samir. He finished a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering and Economic Systems at Stanford, then worked for McKinsey and Co. as a consultant, and has now embarked on a 7-year stint for an M.D. and Ph.D. in health economics at the University of Pennsylvania. I am very proud that he would have the most well-rounded education one can imagine -in engineering, medicine, and social sciences! Both children and Samir are also very well traveled, speak Marathi well and are proud of their Indian heritage. They played tennis on their high-school teams and Amol reached the top-30 player status for 16 and under in Georgia.

What is my Core focus & values, my strengths
My focus in life is to be of help to others in every possible way. I hope that I have influenced many young minds in developing good basic skills in the fields that I have taught them. I feel very fortunate that through our textbook we have been able to educate hundreds of thousands of minds worldwide in the upcoming discipline of Information Systems. At the same time, I have always told them to be human beings and not machines in their behavior. My innate strength comes from a belief in the supernatural and the basic principles of Hindu way of life in admitting that one has limitations in terms of what one can and cannot do and not expecting anything when one does a nice gesture to someone. I always look at the positive aspect of every individual and thereby am able to learn something from everyone and enjoy the company of most.

Do I really miss India
Yes, I do miss India. I find that I miss India most on festive occasions like Ganapati festival, Dushera and Diwali. Those are times to be spent among relatives and the family at large and there is a festive spirit in the air, which is hard to feel here in spite of many close friends. I miss the close relationships and the human values that we feel in daily life in India. Even today, while dealing with the Panwala or the Mithaiwala that I meet when I go back, they show some unique closeness and personal interest, which is very touching. Of course, we miss the relatives, but the large set of friends here has taken the place of those relatives in our lives.

What are best and worst aspects of life in the US
The best aspect of life is the work ethic and the respect for the individual that is given to everybody regardless of one’s economic status. I also feel that the common man here is very honest and carries out the duties that he is supposed to perform very diligently. The worst aspect is the role of money as the driver of all activities. Most daily transactions are too businesslike and lack any humanistic and personal feelings, which constantly bothers me. Many humans we deal with behave like programmed robots without feelings, which is very bothersome.

My role models
I have not been a worshipper of any single individuals in politics, science or literary arts as role models because I respect so many of them. I find that people who accomplish a lot in multiple walks of life and do something tangible for humanity are my role models. I meet a number of them from time to time and really appreciate the achievers in performing and literary arts and sports, which are beyond me.