On trying things
and a blatant invitation to Chennai Mathematical Institute
To avoid getting into any trouble, a particular name has been pseudonymized. Those familiar with the Indian coaching scene will know exactly who I’m talking about, even though I’ll call them Badal Institute here.
The early internet felt like a giant playground. People built things just to see if they could. There was less polish, more curiosity. People would try and post whatever that resulted in.
And with both working parents and holidays on Saturdays, and rather good understanding of English; here I was surfing on the 2012–2013 internet.
I would sit for hours trying to make origami birds and bookmarks and figures. I then started bullet journaling and then reading. I started maybe 6–7 YouTube channels. Tried to ‘startup’ 4–5 times.
Close to 2020, something changed for me(as well as the internet, although that is a topic for another day). To begin with, I entered the valley of despair that was Indian competitive exams. Coachings (read: prep schools) convinced me that you can only focus on one thing and that I had to work ‘very hard’ to get to a good university. That was perhaps the darkest period of my life—and for reasons I hope to write about in detail another time.
I stopped crafting. I hardly had time to journal. I didn’t get time to write stories and books—hell, I slowly didn’t have time to read books or watch films. And whenever I did, I felt guilty.
A story (from the Mahabharata) I was often told was:
During Draupadi’s swayamvar (a contest to win her hand in marriage), her father, King Drupada, set a difficult challenge for the suitors. A rotating fish was placed high above, and the contestants had to shoot its eye while looking only at its reflection in the water below. Many princes, including the Kauravas and Karna, attempted but failed.
When Arjuna’s turn came, he fixed his gaze only on the fish’s eye in the reflection. Before shooting, he was asked, "What do you see?" Arjuna replied, "I see only the eye of the fish." He released the arrow, hitting the fish’s eye with perfect accuracy.
This story is often told as proof that focus and determination make you like Arjuna (the mythological character I share my name with). But here's what I don't understand—why would anyone want to be like him? He was not the hero of this story, despite what popular depictions may portray.
He was a tragic figure whose single-mindedness and ego caused him to lose his entire kingdom, and then be part of a war, killing his cousins, teacher, and mentors. Many of them were not good people, but saying Arjuna is a figure to be looked up to is an incredibly shallow interpretation.
His so-called ‘focus’ won him Draupadi, but it also locked him into a life of violence and political chaos. He needed Krishna—literally god—to remind him of his duties and shake him out of paralysis before the war. That’s not the mark of a perfect hero; that’s someone lost in the storm of his own contradictions.
This story, to some extent, was people constantly reminding me, “Jack of all is a master of none.” That I had to focus. I had to lock in. I couldn’t do what I did in school, pay attention to studies 2-4 hours a day and fool around all the other time. That this was somehow more important than everything else.
In India, you are often asked as a science student to choose between biology and math. Choosing both is seen as digging one’s own grave. I liked both math and biology, and despite initially choosing the latter, I used to do a lot of recreational math.
I remember one of the Badal teachers telling me, “If you don’t leave math, you’ll end up in Bhavnagar” (a slightly lower-rated med school). In a way that still makes me want to puke.
At that time, I was in Badal’s highest batch in Ahmedabad, which meant I was living away from home. That added another layer of pressure—being surrounded by equally anxious students, many of whom had bought into the idea that everyone is competition; isolated from my family, and constantly being told that everything I loved doing was a distraction.
I left Badal in the middle of grade 12 and moved back to my home city. The Badal branch head called my mother and told her that we were making an error I would regret. That my medicine dreams were in jeopardy. I am very grateful that my parents kept their step down and decided to pay no heed to whatever Badal had to say.
A few months later, I gave the exam for Medicine (NEET), Engineering (Mains + Adv), Statistics (ISI), and Research (CMI) and secured billboard scores on all of them (which Badal did use).
At home, I didn’t spend 16 hours studying (something Badal does say is ‘required’). I didn’t stop doing everything else. Instead, I cooked a lot of food, started reading and writing again, did some crafting and became somewhat happier.
But this experience somewhat traumatised me. When I decided to join Chennai Mathematical Institute (the research option) for a dual major in Math and Computer Science, I was fearful that I would have to deal with the same issues—same toxic teachers, over-competitive and unhelpful peers, indifferent seniors, and what not.
Well, I have never been happier to be wrong.
One of my friends, who is really into physics, googled the prof for Classical Mechanics 1 and reached Prof. Govind Krishnaswami’s homepage.
Prof. Govind had then recently written a book on Classical Mechanics. So he decided to ask him for a free copy. Prof. Govind asked him for the reference, as he had never heard of me because this was before the first day of classes. After I mailed him, he mailed both of us a discount code.
A few days later, he mailed notifying us that his book was now on Lib Gen and we could download it for free.
The first day in English class, we were asked to introduce ourselves, and educate the class about our cities and languages, impromptu. Now I have done extempore competitions before, but that was before 2020. I was scared, but the class, as well as Prof. Usha Mahadevan, were supportive of each and every person.
The same can be said about almost everyone I met at CMI.
Perhaps the least liked professor I met at CMI was better than the best ones at Badal.
Prof. SP Suresh is a major reason why I fell in love with functional programming to the extent I did. Like—I was interested in programming, and Haskell is basically what I always wanted a language to be (my main was C++ before that), and he almost always supported whatever extra things I was reading throughout the course. No “focus on what you can handle” or “Don’t do extra.”
The head of India’s National Statistical Commission, Prof Rajeeva Karandiker is a professor at CMI. When I got interested in Game Theory, one of my seniors asked me to approach him. I just, in the middle of the day, knocked on the door and walked into the office of this person, with no idea what I was doing or how to do it. And he guided me, and then introduced me to a student of his—now a professor at IIM Indore—for further guidance.
On a whim, I started making a clone of Marriage Pact in Haskell. I was not told that I was unqualified or that it was a waste of time. I even made a ‘best friends’ version of the algorithm to help find people their best friends on campus. Prof. Suresh later found a small bug in the code which had caused some people getting wrong matches. I am planning to write a full post on this, so I will talk about it in detail then.
Was any of it perfect? Hell no! But it is fun to try things. To see what sticks. To not be forced to satisfy people that you are working to win—people who don’t even want to see you win. It is liberating to be free to try things, and not need to answer the question: “Why did you waste time?”
I worked on a betting model and a virtual coin, a coin whose app was set up by Sahil Lakhmani bhaiya by working through the night, despite me falling asleep. The project bombed. But Sahil bhaiya never complained or even mentioned it. And this was when, unbeknownst to me at that time, Sahil bhaiya had a graduate entrance test a few days later.
And while I am not naming a lot of other helpful and creative and incredibly cool people, and I sure I have some issues with some people, almost everyone at CMI is great.
CMI feels like the early internet again—a place where trying matters more than appearing polished. Where curiosity isn’t punished but celebrated. And in that sense, it’s not just a research institute. It’s a reminder that the best things in life often begin with questions, not answers.
Just like early internet, CMI rewards and applauds trying, effort and intent. We don’t try to appear effortless. We don’t try to appear minimalist. And that is what makes CMI a powerhouse of research. Instead of publishing quick work, CMI people tend to publish less frequently, but with better result quality (and yes, it does beat IITs in research output per employee).
Most CMI folks dabble in and out of many topics, whatever grabs their fancy at that time. We have Prof. HS Mani (legendary physicist) at 88 taking Foundational Machine Learning and Data courses to update himself.
To complete the quote: Jack of all trades, master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one.
Warm Regards,
Arjun Maneesh Agarwal.
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PPS: If any of this resonates with you—or reminds you of someone you know—here’s something worth knowing:
The Chennai Mathematical Institute (CMI) entrance exam registration is now open.
They offer:
B.Sc. (Hons.) in Mathematics and Computer Science (3 years)
B.Sc. (Hons.) in Mathematics and Physics (3 years)
M.Sc. in Mathematics, Computer Science and Data Science
Ph.D. programs in Mathematics, Computer Science, and Physics
What makes CMI even more special is that financials don’t get in the way. Tuition is already among the lowest in the country, and on top of that, there are scholarships that cover fees and provide pretty generous stipends.
So if you know someone finishing high school this year—or someone in early undergrad who feels boxed in or unhappy with their current program—maybe send this their way. Sometimes, the right place makes all the difference.
And if you know a STEM-inclined kid, even if they’re still a few years out, it’s worth saving this information for when the time comes. CMI might be exactly the kind of place they’ve been looking for—without knowing it yet.