Prof Kesav Nori has left for his heavenly abode and it has created a big vacuum in the lives many of us he touched. He was Kesav, Nori-saab, Prof. Nori, KVN to his friends, peers and ‘mentees’. He was known to leave one unforgettable story as a shared memory for each of the people in his life.
Here is mine! Kesav, I hope you like it, as you settle down in heaven.
While in TCS, I met Kesav for the first time in 1984/85, before leaving for the US for business development. Kesav shared his ideas about compiler technology he was planning to build. Well, I ran into a business opportunity immediately upon landing in the US where Kesav’s techniques could be applied. But it was a tad bit early and premature. Most academics and researchers would have resisted. But not Kesav. His enthusiasm that someone in sales trusted his research ideas even before they were fully baked was good enough.
Fast forward to 1988, I returned to India and joined TRDDC with the objective of creating Object Technology group. I also had unwritten responsibility to be the glue between TCS (the business) and TRDDC (the research). This not only became possible but was done very well because of Kesav. We had intense arguments, different viewpoints and interesting debates. Our basis were different but the confluence we reached was spectacular and sowed wonderful seeds for the work beyond programming languages and compiler technology at TRDDC at that time. With Kesav, even the most differing view point debates were in soft in decibel but intense and loud in intellectual rigour. Whenever we felt we needed a break from the intensity, we would take a walk to the nearby petrol pump on Bund Garden road for some chikki. There was a shop tucked inside the petrol pump. He loved sweets and got me also hooked to chikki. Till date, I cannot eat chikki without thinking of Kesav.
Kesav was the “Buddha” who showed me the light to search the science of software and gather courage to swim in the stormy ocean of computer science. Kesav’s deep knowledge of how to construct software, transform it, preserve its intermediate States, prove correctness, software reliability, formalism of programming languages, concept of a machine behind an application was a vast canvas on which one could walk any path to anywhere starting from anywhere and learn. Serendipity was discernible in this journey. One can compare it to a giant tree where one could climb get hold of any limb and traverse the tree.
Kesav enjoyed functional programming and lambda calculus but was not a fan of AI State of the Art in late 80s. I always tried to convince him to treat it as engineering approach rather than put it through the scrutiny of theoretical foundation of programming.
He was deeply influenced by Prof. Nicklaus Wirth (Father of Pascal programming language and 1984 Turing Award Winner). Kesav spent time at ETH Zurich with Prof. Wirth. He developed ideas around the “complier compiler” tool during his stay at Carnegie Mellon University. He developed an exceptionally deep understanding of “Compiler Compiler”. He was also an ardent admirer of Prof. Dijkstra and Prof. Hoare.
My charter at TRDDC was to expand to other areas that were relevant to TCS. Kesav not only accepted but embraced databases, meta data, persistent data models and rule based engines (that pretty much defined AI in those times) at TRDDC. We built a “meta meta” data modelling engine called Adex. Adex was also viewed as reimplementation on Unix of TCS’ advanced data dictionary technology CasePac. We also enhanced it with ‘meta meta’ data. He was an active participant in Adex and another data engine as much as in any other compiler tool. When Anand Deshpande visited TRDDC and gave a talk on nested relational databases, lots of conversations started on history of databases, Coad’s relational algebra, what RDBMS were doing to application areas, normalization and de-normalizations, complex data objects, object data bases that were beginning to show up, structures compilers deal with etc.
Kesav shifted gears from academics to serious TCS style proposal writing effortlessly. At times, he guessed that I wanted something different than R&D just from the way I walked to his desk. He would quip, “You are going to make me write part of some proposal, right”.
The artist in Kesav was as classy as the computer scientist. He was an Origami expert and was excellent at calligraphy. I remember an incident when we were in Bangalore for a CDAC partner conference. At the breakfast table, mats were made of thick paper. And the hotel was celebrating American week and had pictures of American eagle in the restaurant. Kesav picked the table mat and created a beautiful American Eagle and calligraphed Stars ‘n’ Stripes. The hotel Manager was mighty impressed. We got dinner on the house that evening! His origami was amply visible in the TRDDC library.
There are very few people who effortlessly amalgamate science, engineering, art and business. With Kesav, Philosophy was the fifth dimension. Kesav combined these such that each prospered on his canvass. Besides exceptional professional achievement, here was a warm hearted, genuine and simple person. After leaving Pune, he visited Rajani and me whenever in Pune. Rajani, my wife made bhutte ka kees that he used to like. Bhutte ka kees is a popular recipe from Indore made from grated Indian corn (not the American sweet corn).
We miss you Kesav. But your memories will bring eternal pleasure to all of us. Stay safe in heaven, my dear friend. I hope you’re busy creating art, smiling and enjoying God’s chikki.
