In Black & White
by Vikram Muthanna
Recently, Mahesh Ballal, the owner of Rock Salad, was in SOM office to place an advertisement for his company’s 21st anniversary. Along with him was a boy, more noticeable for his oversized black thick-rimmed glasses, like from the 1970s. He seemed timid and geeky, yet confident and calm. The boy looked familiar, so asked Mahesh about him. It turned out his name was Nikhil Ravishankar. I immediately knew who he was. He was the son of Copywriter Ravishankar, who also ran an advertising agency. I also knew that Ravi had died a year ago of colon cancer at a young age. I expressed my condolences to the young boy and asked him how he was doing. What followed was a story that is a testament to the power of human spirit. A story of tragedy and triumph. A story that I had to share with my readers. So here it is:
Nikhil, from a poor Brahmin family, but enriched by priority for education, loves reading and words. Just like his father. By the time he was in the 6th, he had already become the National Junior Scrabble Champion. He won the championship twice. When he was in 10th, he participated in a competition called ‘Intel Iris,’ a science fair for high school students across India where they had to submit an original paper. Nikhil wrote a paper on a subject he enjoyed … words. His paper was called “Linguistic Impact,” brought about by new wave of technology. He won a gold medal for it! And was short-listed for the International Intel Iris. Unfortunately, he didn’t make it there. But this subject sparked in him an interest in Psychology and after his 10th, he chose to study in St. Aloysius College, Mangalore, as only they had a Psychology combination with the subjects he wanted.
Four months into his studies, a phone call would change the young boy’s life forever. Nikhil got a call informing him that his father was diagnosed with 4th stage colon cancer. He had to quit college and return home to care for his father as everyone else in his family had deserted them.
Soon they sold whatever they had left to raise money for the treatment. With no funds, Nikhil stopped going to college. But knowing well that education is the only way out, he registered to the ‘National Institute of Open Schooling’ (a government body that recognises home-schooled students) and began ‘home-schooling’ himself. This, he says, he did for three reasons — first, he didn’t have money for college fees; second, he could finish his studies in one year and get a job to support himself and three, he could stay home and take care of his father as no one else was there to.
But he also had another, fourth reason: home schooling gave him time to find a way to save his father — cancer research.
So apart from his formal studies, Nikhil started reading research materials on cancer. While doing so, he came across a book by the Indian-born American physician, Siddhartha Mukherjee’s Pulitzer winning book, ‘The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer.’ Inspired, Nikhil delved into information on cancer. After all, his father’s life was at stake.
Soon he found a mentor in Dr. Shreedatta Hebbar of Sai Guru Clinic and then Dr. Anil Thomas, who was treating his dad at Preethi Centre for Oncology where Nikhil shadowed the good doctor and collected more information about cancer patients.
He soon realised that his knowledge was not enough to understand all the research material he was reading. So Nikhil registered to study the free online course material from MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) in Biology and Chemistry. But unfortunately, all the research did not help him save his dad and Ravi passed away in April last year leaving behind a 17-year-old Nikhil with no money and no home. Except a cycle, which is his primary mode of transport even now.
Luckily, one of his father’s relatives gave Nikhil a room on the terrace of the family home, which he shares with his older brother, who is studying at CAVA. Noticing Nikhil’s interest in research and academics, his father’s friend Mahesh Ballal bought the boy a laptop. Nikhil, to support himself and help his brother, got a job at The Hobby Place teaching scrabble and did some copywriting for his father’s old clients.
Soon self-schooled Nikhil’s PUC results came out and he had done well. He decided he wanted to be a doctor and started preparing for CET. But then still obsessing over his father’s death, Nikhil changed his mind. He says, “I realised doctors could not save my father. Only researchers can, so I decided that I wanted to be a research scientist.” So instead of writing his CET, Nikhil decided to go to the United States, where research is given high priority.
That’s when he remembered some boys he had met during the Intel Iris science fair talking about SAT, an exam taken after PUC to get admission in American Universities. He also found out that if he scored well he would get a full scholarship.
And so with the little money he had saved up, he paid his SAT exam fee and started studying. Study hard he did and it reflected in his scores. The maximum score in SAT is 2400 and Nikhil scored… 2400! A perfect score! The SAT exam is taken by over 20 lakh students across the world and Nikhil is one of the 400 who got a perfect score! All this from a boy with no one to care, no money and no formal schooling!
Yes, hard work and focus can make you achieve the impossible, but humble Nikhil says, “Sir, I had no other way, this was my only ticket out.” Now Nikhil has secured admission to the most elite Universities in the US. He has got admission to MIT, Stanford, Harvard, Princeton, Caltech and Brown.
Even better, all of them offered Nikhil a full scholarship and a monthly stipend. But MIT went one step further; they offered him an air ticket to fly to USA to study in their University. Americans sure know how to reel in talent.
So Nikhil didn’t have to spend a pie, all he had to do was pack up and leave. But he chose not to! Why?! He says, “earlier I did not know, but Columbia University has the best research programme. So I waited for one year to apply as I missed this University the first time round.”
In this gap year, inspired by an American High School boy, Jack Andraka, who had produced a research paper on ‘Pancreatic Cancer,’ Nikhil too wanted to write about his own research on ‘Colon Cancer.’ He also decided to work on a home screening kit for colon cancer. Which he says if his father had, his cancer could have been diagnosed earlier and treated.
Nikhil had read that people with colon cancer have blood in their stool but it is not visible. So when the patient comes in for a colon check, the cancer is so advanced that it’s too late to treat successfully. Now, Nikhil wanted to find a way to pick out blood in stool.
So once again from his meagre earning, he set up a small lab in his room with test tubes, beakers and a few chemicals. He began testing stools. When asked how he collected stool samples, he says with a grin, “I shat for science” and added, “I tested my own stool.” All the trying yielded no result until one day, when he was watching his favourite show CSI (Crime Scene Investigation) on his computer he saw that in the show, the Police were using a method called ‘Kastle-Meyer Test’ to find blood at a murder site. Nikhil adopted this test, tweaked it over and over again, so the test would not confuse animal blood and certain vegetable enzymes with human blood. Soon he realised that by adding a chemical called ‘Dimethyl Sulfoxide’ he could isolate only human blood.
He also found that this had met his three criteria for a home colon cancer screening test — specific, sensitive and cheap. It was specific to colon cancer, it was sensitive to human blood and it was indeed cheap, costing just Rs. 20 ! Nikhil causally mentioned about this kit to his friend, who replied “then may be you must patent it.” And so Nikhil did. He got three provisional patents on his home colon cancer screening kit!
Nikhil then sent his research paper on the screening kit to various authorities across the world and heard back from one Prof. Tyler Jacks, Head of Oncology at MIT, who was amazed by Nikhil’s research. Now, Nikhil has been invited to speak about his research at MIT in June this year. The conference has a few eminent speakers who are professors and physicians, Nikhil will be the youngest speaker there ! When asked if he is excited, he says “Yes, but I’m more excited that I will be meeting Siddhartha Mukherjee whose book inspired me, he too is a speaker at the conference.” Surely the boy from Mysore has come a long way in such a short time and in such demoralising circumstances. So obsessed is Nikhil about research that when he was trying to find information on cancer, he could not get enough as the hospitals throughout the world did not have a central information sharing system. So he came up with an idea called ‘HealtherNet.co’ an interface that connects hospital records from across the world. The idea was good but Nikhil did not know anything about computer programming. So, he put across the idea to a friend he had met in a discussion group about SAT exams. That boy was good with computers and he agreed to do the basic programming. The website was up and could run a few simple tasks. But they needed money to develop such a big idea and they put up their project on crowd funding sites. And behold one day he got a call. It was from none other than Eduardo Saverin! The man who partly owned Facebook with Mark Zuckerberg! Soon Eduardo had a video chat with Nikhil and expressed his desire to fund the project. As of yesterday, Nikhil has a very tempting offer letter from Eduardo. When as
ked if he will take it, Nikhil says, “it’s tempting, but I want to go to Columbia or MIT for research. And we may just keep our project open source so it’s free and benefits all.”
Now, while Nikhil is cycling all over our city for work and research, in June he’ll be flying business class to USA to present his paper at MIT and in August will be leaving for USA to pursue his dream of being a research scientist at Columbia or MIT. Yes, one more brain drains. But this story is truly inspiring especially in these times when parents obsess over expensive schools and tuitions as guarantee of excellence. It once again proves passion and focus beats all.
Nikhil’s story is a case of the triumph of the human spirit. The story of a young boy whose formal education was cut short by tragedy, a boy who was deserted by his close ones, a boy left orphaned and in penury, yet undeterred, he educated himself and with focus and passion pulled himself out of what would have buried most of us.
He did not sit on any excuses, he did not ask for compassion, he did not get any reservation, but he ran with his passion and now will fly high in his chosen profession, unfortunately it will be in another nation.
It is also a story of love. The love of a son for his father that inspired him and took him on a path to find a cure. A cure, that could, one day save the lives of millions of fathers, so they don’t end up with broken homes like Nikhil.
SOM has a column called ‘Mysureans Making Us Proud…’ We are sure, we’ll see Nikhil there soon. But then… he already has made us proud. Godspeed Nikhil. Your father would be proud of you…just as we are.
e-mail:vikram@starofmysore.com
source: http://www.starofmysore.com / Star of Mysore / Home> Feature Articles / Monday – February 16th, 2015
