Ravish Tiwari: At IIT, ‘woh kehta thha usko pyaar ho gaya journalism se…’

At the start of the millennium, among the top 1.5 per cent of 1.5 lakh students to have cracked the IIT-JEE was a lanky youth with his roots in a village in eastern Uttar Pradesh’s Deoria drict.
Having secured a berth at the prestigious IIT-Bombay, Ravish Tiwari would sign up for a dual-degree (B.Tech + M.Tech) course in the Department of Metallurgical Engineering and Materials Science.
As days passed and friendships developed, word got around among students in the department that one of their batchmates has a rather curious response to the question one dreads most as a freshman: What do you want to become in life?

“Uska jawab sidha hota thha ki mujhe Prime Miner banna hai (His straight answer would be, I want to become the PM),” Navendu Agarwal, Tiwari’s batchmate, recounted.
Later, the professors would decode the many layers beneath the cryptic response.

“Politics was something he was deeply passionate about. It was on the top of his mind even when his dealing with subjects that were not even remotely connected to the world of politics,” Prof Ajit Kulkarni recalled. “We used to have long conversations. In my career till then, I was yet to come across a student so certain about what he wants to do. I believe politics he essentially meant that he wants to ultimately bring certain changes in the society, adminration and governance.
“For him, journalism provided a window to that world.”

Prof N B Ballal, now retired, remembers Tiwari’s remarkable sense of purpose. “He often spoke to me about his wish to bring some transformative changes in the political and adminrative system. That is where the idea of becoming a journal germinated in his mind. He used to say, ‘that is where I can start making some difference to the society’,” Prof Ballal said.
For Chaayos founder Nitin Saluja, two batches junior to Tiwari at IIT-B, the loss is deeply personal: “He was my big brother. He was my daughter’s favourite tauji (uncle). I used to call him daddu because he performed the role of infrastructure manager at the annual Techfest event two years before I did…. He was among the first people who I told about the idea of setting up Chaayos. I feel shattered that the person who helped me build that dream will not be around to see it go from strength to strength.”

For Tiwari, journalism was not a job but a passion, Ankit Gupta, a batchmate, emphasised. “If you sat with him even for an hour, you returned intellectually enriched. In the last three-four years, I saw him lay emphasis on putting relationships and friendships above anything else, and that is remarkable.”
Batchmate Gagan Goyal feels that with time, Tiwari “fell in love with journalism”. Goyal said, “He became so engrossed. Recalling his dream during the college years, we used to say we will support you in every possible way if you want to enter public life. Par woh kehta thha usko pyaar ho gaya journalism se (he used to say he fell in love with journalism)…”
Zishaan Hayath, another batchmate, remembers the evening Tiwari had come to his room with the draft of an SOP. “He asked me to polish the language,” Hayath recalled. “He was applying for Rhodes scholarship. At that point, 90 per cent students taking GRE, CAT had no idea about Rhodes. I advised him to focus more on his area of study than public policy in the SOP. But he went with his gut and made it to Oxford.”