At six, Somak Roy was already a voracious reader, adept at both Shakespeare and Math. It was also the age at which he, and more importantly his father, interacted with IITians for the first time in their hometown of Asansol in West Bengal. Meeting the young engineers in training had, admits the 40-something-year-old today, changed the course of his life.

To Roy’s father, the two IITians symbolised a bright India on the cusp of the 1990s’ economic boom, and he wanted his son to be a part of that future. Asansol has a literacy rate of 84 per cent and is a major industrial centre at par with Jamshedpur. Despite this, few outside the state know about the city. Meeting the IITians there opened a window to a whole new world for the father-son duo. “Although to me they felt like full-grown adults, at the time they were just 19-year-old kids who had come to intern with my father,” Roy tells us over a phone call.