Mr. Vineet Buch

Mr. Vineet Buch

B. Tech from IIT-Kanpur

(A venture capitalist based in San Francisco)

Vineet Buch still remembers 10 June 1987. Bhopal. The Indian Institute of Technology All India Joint Entrance Exam (IIT-JEE) results were announced. Buch, then a 15- year-old dabbling with career choices, scanned through the rank—holders list. Then he scanned it again. Soon he made up his mind. He would try and finish No. 1 in the entrance exam. “It seemed like a cool thing to do.”

Every year thousands of Indian students aspire to get into an IIT. Close to 400,000 candidates lined up this year. One in 65 made the cut. Twenty years ago, the number of applicants wasn’t as staggering but there were fewer seats. Golfers will tell you that the odds of an amateur pulling off a hole in-one are 1 in 12,750. Still, that’s a doddle compared to what Buch was up against.

“Hardly anyone in Bhopal even wrote the JEE. Let alone got in,” says Buch, 37, a venture capitalist based in San Francisco. “I found it tough to get the right books, like a Russian physics book by IE lrodov. My parents [who were IAS officers] requested the Indian embassy in Moscow to photocopy the book and send it across.”

In June 1989, Buch was declared No. l in the [IT JEE exam, arguably the most challenging and competitive exam in the world. Only around 50 Indians have experienced the feeling—the numbness. the ecstasy, the dizziness.

Once every year, JEE toppers appear on television and newspapers carry congratulatory messages. You see mug shots of students. Interviews with parents, and advertisements for coaching centers. We spend a lot of time celebrating their success, but rarely do we look Further.

What becomes of these brilliant I7—year olds? What are he challenges they encounter? Do any of them pursue unconventional careers? These were some of the questions Open set out with while tracking down the very elite group of JEE toppers.

IT HELPS TO BE NO. 1

During his days in IIT Kanpur, Buch was a long-distance athlete, weightlifter and footballer. He competed in both the 5,000 and 10,000 meters. But in August 1993, a doctor at Delhi’s All India Institute of Medical Sciences diagnosed the 20-year-old with ankylosing spondylitis, a progressively crippling disease without a cure.

Buch suffered inflammation of the eyes and internal organs. “Sometimes it was so hard for me to even sit, stand or sleep,” he recalls. Things got progressively worse over his two-year graduate program at Cornell University. “When I finished in 1995, I was immobilized throughout much of my body. A doctor advised me to stop working and apply for disability payments.”

Buch refused. He moved to San Francisco and started a self-directed rehabilitation programme. He began with long sessions of swimming and gradually started to walk, bike and hike. In 2001, he successfully undertook the Death Ride over five alpine passes on the Sierra Nevada mountain range in California, US. But biking hurt his knees. Searching for a sport that didn’t tax his legs, he discovered surf skiing, one that uses a long, narrow, lightweight kayak with an open cockpit and a foot—pedal controlled rudder. On 17 May, Buch took part in the 2009 Molokai Challenge in Hawaii, a 32-mile surf ski race between Molokai and Oahu, in rough waters swarming with tiger sharks. He finished the race.

“I thought being No. 1 in JEE was tough,” says Buch. “But overcoming this disease has been something else. The JEE effort definitely helped with this—I knew the levels of determination I was capable of and refused to give up.”