Sundar Pichai finally picks up his distinguished alumnus award from IIT-KGP

“Sundar Pichai was conferred his Distinguished Alumnus Award in the Board Room of IIT Kharagpur on January 5, 2017. The award was given to him at the 2015 convocation but he was unable to come and receive it in person at that time,” IIT Director PP Chakrabarti said in a Facebook post late Thursday.

Pichai was back in the campus after 23 years to interact with students. He visited his old hostel Nehru Hall, went to his old room, common room, mess, library, and refreshed his memories, Chakrabarti said.

In a heart-to-heart conversation at his alma mater IIT-Kharagpur on Thursday, Sundar Pichai talked about various things in his college life, ranging from his girlfriend, bunking classes to mess food. He visited the campus after 23 years, when he addressed a town hall packed with students.

Also Read: Google’s Sundar Pichai to IIT-KGP students: Education needs to go beyond books

When he was asked about his wife Anjai he said “Anjali is my wife and she was my classmate. She lived in…think you still have S.N. Hall, that was the only girls’ hostel then. I hope there are a few more now. It wasn’t very easy. If you had to get someone at the girls hostel, you had to walk in the front and request someone there to go call them. And so they would go and loudly say, “Anjali, Sundar is here for you”. So it wasn’t exactly a pleasant experience.”

When talking about his Hindi Sundar recounted, “I came from the Chennai. I learnt Hindi in school but never spoke it much. Just listening to how people were speaking, I just thought you address people this way. One day there was someone in the mess and I had to call him. I called him “Abey saale!” In my first couple of weeks, I thought you call people that way.”

Pichai also announced the Digital Unlocked programme for SMEs in India during his India visit. Google’s new initiative will help businesses in India go online.

With IANS inputs