Jan. 5: Google CEO Sundar Pichai today explained to students at IIT Kharagpur a law of physics they might not have heard of: "centre of gravity change".

This fascinating insight - and nuggets such as Deepika Padukone being his Bolly favourite - came during a light-hearted interaction between Pichai and an eager audience of IITians. Excerpts:

Dating (wife) Anjali

She was my classmate.... It wasn't always easy. If you had to go get someone at the girls' hostel, you had to walk in the front and request someone there to go and call them. They would go in and LOUDLY say: "Anjali, Sundar is here for you." That wasn't exactly a pleasant experience.

Ragging at IIT-K

We had something called the CG change. It stands for 'centre of gravity change'. As a freshman, you lock your room and go out and you come back and the doors aren't open but everything inside your room has been rearranged. And they do it by putting sticks in. I was (also) made to carry the luggage of incoming seniors (at Kharagpur station). It's a long platform.

Google interview

I (was) interviewed at Google on April Fool's Day, 2004. And Google had just announced Gmail. It was "invite only". People weren't sure whether it was an April Fool joke. During my interviews, people kept asking me "What do you think of Gmail?" I hadn't had a chance to use it. I thought it was an April Fool joke.

Turning the Page

I joined Google when we were over 1,000 people and at that point, (co-founder) Larry (Page) for the first time had stopped interviewing people. So I joke around that I got into Google because Larry didn't interview me.

Replacing Pichai

Be careful what you wish for! Will be happy to discuss this with him (the student who asked the question) over a cup of chai.

Nehru Hall... my dorm... exactly the same.... 25 years ago…

Back on campus, it was me-time for one of the world’s most powerful business leaders. And then he was a boy from the class of 93. Not the Google boss. Pichai stood at the entrance to Room No. B 308. Pichai went to the canteen where he once survived on watery dal and dosa. And to his department, where the leader board still names him as the class topper of 1993. 

Metro brings you Pichai’s pit stops before the chat with today’s students

Nehru Hall, third floor, Room No. B 308

The same yellow wall, the same green door and the same study table. Pichai, 44, could still pass off for a student when he stood tall at the doorway. “It looks exactly the same,” mumbled the Google boss. 

He told a chat with students later: “I see change (in India) in everything I interact with. Though walking into Nehru Hall and looking at my dorm, it still looks exactly the same. 25 years ago… Some things don’t change. This is for the good I guess.” A self-confessed cricket buff, Pichai recalled the students would often be playing on the ground behind the hostel and balls would break the windowpanes. How good a player was he? “Not much, since I couldn’t make it to the institute’s playing XI,” quipped Pichai.

Nehru Hall canteen

The million-dollar question during Pichai’s student days was not related to the big bang computer boom. Far from it. “Is it a dal or sambar?” students would ask while having a yellow watery dish at the canteen. When Pichai shared this anecdote, several students said things haven’t changed. The cooks sounded a different note. P. Shimalu, who has been cooking at the canteen since 1981, said Pichai used to swear by his dosas and uttapams. Asked about the dal, he went to another table.

Metallurgy department

Inside the department of metallurgical and materials engineering, there was a group of students looking at a board with past toppers’ list. No prizes for guessing which name they were looking at — a certain P. Sundarajan beside the year 1993. Not only had Pichai topped the class, he also won the B.C. Roy medal for excellence in academics. “I am thrilled just because I go to the same classrooms and labs which he did,” said Sounak Guha, a student of the same department.

Teachers’ room

Pichai’s academic brilliance was not the first thing his favourite teacher remembered on Thursday. “It was his ever-smiling face,” said Sanat Kumar Roy (in photo), who retired from the institute last year but was invited to felicitate Pichai on Thursday. He has retained that same sweet smile, said Roy. The septuagenarian was also stumped by Pichai’s shyness. Being shy as a student is common, but Roy was “searching” for a changed man. For once, the Google search went wrong. “He is still shy,” said Roy. 

The director, Partha Pratim Chakrabarti, told the crowd at the auditorium that there had been plans to welcome Pichai with drums. But the plan was junked and he instead chose the IIT Kharagpur’s own “war cry”. Thrice the director said KGP tempo. The 3500-strong army of students roared back “high hai.”

Reporting: Debraj Mitra and Kaushik Ghosh
Pictures: Amit Datta, Stup Bagde and Sounak Guha