“Fifty years ago I came to MIT from a distant land with a dream to change the world. I am still trying. I made many friends from different backgrounds and grew up. Really! Many of my friends were from India (while Pakistan and India were at war). I came late to MIT because there were no planes flying out of Lahore (1965 war), and I had to take a train to Karachi to fly. When the sirens turned on, the train stopped, turned off lights, and waited. The 24-hour journey took 72 hours. The train had bunk beds. There was a holy man on the upper berth. When the bombing-raid siren went off, he would come down and curl up under my berth. His explanation was that there would be a little more protection. And he used to give sermons about war!
“At MIT I had the privilege of going to lectures by Noam Chomsky and understood the world a little better. I was interested in architectural acoustics and got the opportunity to work on all the concert halls being built in the world from 1970 to 1986 with one of my professors, Robert B. Newman. The San Francisco Symphony Hall was the most exciting. The modern 3,000-seat halls had so much volume that it was tough to get ideal reverberation time. To control the volume, in one inspired moment I drew a section that narrowed as the walls went upward. Some colleagues laughed but ultimately the section I drew prevailed.
“I went many times back and forth to my old country to teach there. In 1977 I got married to Shahina, a girl from Lahore, and we have lived in Cambridge, MA. I have a daughter, Fatima, who is a dentist. She has a one-year old girl, Aleena, who keeps me young. Aleena can touch a screen and unleash the magic. How the world has changed us! I had done some baby-sitting for the MIT computer, as it was something available for weekend nights at $1.15 an hour. It was probably a 486 that occupied several rooms. The tapes for tape drives were so heavy that I still remember having to load and unload them. And the card-reader waiting line. Then some mischievous guys changing the order of someone’s card deck (as a joke). Now MIT is so different.
“There’s no more the dining area of the Old Ashdown House, where even faculty came to eat lunch. There’s no more machine for Coke bottles for the naval-architecture students (dime a bottle for the Army students, and no one checked). And the serene garden in honor of a professor at the northwest corner of Kresge Auditorium is in disarray. It used to be such a well-kept garden that the smell of flowers on moonlit nights we spent there still lingers.
“And now that I am a flickering candle in the wind, I’m busy working on a project I call School in a Box. I want to take the advantages of the computer age to people who have no Internet. If I can put a video screen in a small village and a very tiny computer (that can pull videos to play) and a device where I have stored content, then these people can listen to knowledge and learn. Like taking all the videos of Khan Academy (grade two to 12) to these people. And if I get content made for kindergarten and first grade, then the village can have school from the beginning.
“Since childhood my brother (Mahbub ul Haq, who developed the Human Development Index and passed away in 1998) and I were intrigued by the possibility of bringing knowledge to those who could not afford it. But now it is possible to do that in a new way. I’m not a computer expert, so if anyone can help or guide me, please do: javaidaziz@alum.mit.edu.
“I still go to MIT to meet the children of friends who have come to MIT, whose distant parents feel that I should be in touch with them. (As if it will make a difference.) Things have changed. There are no more all-night sit-ins to learn/discuss hot issues in the Sala de Puerto Rico, as we did during the Vietnam War. Mostly I hear about getting jobs and about things like Amazon, Google, etc.”
MIT Sangam Reunion 