This is a blog from my old web site dated 10th September 2009
I have not communicated with Leslie since I left C-DOT in 2000. These are my little experiences with Leslie which gives a glimpse of the person. Leslie was the Divisional Manager, Switching Bangalore I group (DM SW BI) when I joined C-DOT in 1993. The GET II Batch (1993 March Graduate Engineering Trainees) called him “The Tiger” when he was not around. Tiger because of the sheer respect and awe for the gallant man! Our PMs and SPMs ( S – senior P – program M – manager) reported to him and if there was a crunch situation he used to directly interact with us.
In one instance, I was working at Delhi Cantt. captive exchange with a failure in one of the SP cards in the terminal unit. I was not familiar with this card (designed in the 1980’s) and after a day’s debugging, Leslie called up. I told him the symptoms of the problem and he asks “Can you see if U36, pin 4 is toggling?” I said “No” after probing it. “Check the flat-cable between slot 11 & 12, change it & try”. Of course the problem was in the flat-cable.
I haven’t seen any man other than Leslie with the entire card schematics embedded in his mind. Or was he having it in front of him during the call? – No, I had not told him the symptoms of the issue beforehand, right?
We had this environmental cycle validation with DoT members going on in L&T Mysore for MAX-XL during 1995 and the Central Module (CM) literally caught fire in one of the cycles. It is another matter that the problem was due to grounding difference between DC and AC power supply in L&T and the fire was due to the terminal console connected to AC ground!
Leslie then came down to Mysore to supervise the situation. During the night time, we used to monitor the exchange performance and since we had not much to do, myself and Abraham Samuel were solving “Hindu” crossword which was quite tough. We had finished 5-6 words and then we went out for to have Tea in a nearby Dabha. Leslie was alone and when we came back, we saw the crossword completely solved (within 10 minutes flat). It seems when he was studying in IIT, Bombay he used to travel to college in local trains & that is where he picked up this skill.
Leslie’s brain worked faster than any train in the world.
We were told about his other great skills. He could review a two layer PCB routing (routed manually using the Red and Blue tapes) just within in one night with the help of a couple of packs of cigarettes only, manually! The schematics in one hand, cigarette in the other and the PCB foils laid out on the Table. His eyes searching and comparing each line on the PCB against the schematic through the lens on a brightly lit PCB foil ticking and crossing each signal. We were told Leslie’s reviews of PCB routing were always 100% correct! (It was the cigarettes, not Leslie J).
Leslie’s quest for perfection is unbelievable
BTW, he was also a great guzzler in his younger days (photo proof is in C-DOT 25 year souvenir).
Coming back to Mysore, the next day at L&T, one of the cards failed. We were thinking what went wrong now. Leslie wanders across, puts his hand over the CM, asks us for a stool, gets on the stool with some help from us & looks around.
He comes down and says, “Two fans are not working, check the connections”. Indeed, while transit from Bangalore to Mysore, the fans’ connection was not completely plugged. After fixing it we re-ran the environment cycle including the vibration tests and we passed them all.
Long office hours had hit his health hard and he had developed a back-problem. As you just might have realized, the way he stood up on a stool,
Leslie never let any health issue, small or big, make any difference to his work.
After MAX-XL, we had a time switch ASIC designed for replacing a card in the Base Module. Abraham Samuel had on his own initiative started to use this in the Central Module to convert our T-S-T architecture into T-T-T. Abraham and I had discussed this many times and with lot of theoretical analysis, concluded that this will work. The exchange capacity can change from 40000 to 100000 at least! We were thrilled and at the same time apprehensive. Then we had this review with Leslie.
We presented this architecture in a fully crowded conference room with Leslie sitting in the front-chair, blinking his eyes more than any person, one of his queer mannerisms, with hid right fore-finger under the nose with his trademark little smile on his face as usual. Throughout and after the presentation, there were many questions asked by the audience and we did our best to answer them. After that, we look at Leslie for his verdict. Silence. More silence. Much more silence. Five minutes of silence. Sweat in my hands, heart beating like a humming bird’s. My mind screams “Come on man, tell us what the problem is”. He finally removes the hand from under the nose and says “It will work”. Then he walks out of the conference room. I really don’t know what he was thinking for those 5 minutes but the joy I felt at that time is something that I cherish even now. I don’t know what Samuel felt. My admiration of Leslie doubled since then because I believe the 5 minutes had him thinking of all the corner cases in mind, making sure he has covered every case to say “It will work”. We got the approval for that card. We named it CSW (Central SWitch Card or Chandrashekar Samuel William card). William Clement was also in our CM team.
I will complete this narration with one last incident. This was my very first travel to Delhi in late 1993. My stay lasted for 40 days. I came back to Bangalore and claimed by travel expenses. Leslie had approved 15 days full DA, 15 days half DA and 10 days no DA as per rules. I had actually spent much more than that, but that is not what I want to tell you. I demanded Leslie for approval for 40 days full DA which was very much under DM’s discretion. Answer from Leslie: “BU, you don’t make an official trip to make money for yourself. Spend judiciously the next time around.”
Leslie is an example of a man who would not squander public money at any cost.
I salute and bow to one of my all time icons.
BU Chandrashekar
GET II Batch, SW BI, Staff No 2505,
C-DOT (March 1993 to June 2000)
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10th September 2009