Satya Nadella was not my classmate. I don’t even know him, and frankly I hadn’t even heard of him a few days back. Shantanu Narayen you may not know. I certainly don’t. (But I do know his parents Babu and Leela). He is the CEO of Adobe. Sanjiv Sidhu I can honestly say is a schoolmate I know and have hung out with. And he was one of the early boomers.

What these three guys have in common is that they all have Hyderabad connections. And all of them have at various times in their lives, done well for themselves in the United States. And all of them are from HPS Begumpet.

Strangely however only Satya Nadella’s elevation to CEO Microsoft was greeted with front page frenzy and a sudden, renewed HPS pride. From paan waalas who sold him cigarettes to medical shop bhayyas who must have dispensed him the odd condom, every one is jumping onto a crazy bandwagon. And every connection worth making is reaching out for the benefits of the after glow.

I have nothing against the man but I do think some of us have gone overboard. Satya is not an exemplary student from any account, and he seems to have risen to the top through sheer grit. He’s plodded through a career, not raced through it. He has no top school, Indian or US in his resume. So let’s just feel good for him that he achieved what he did.

And feel proud, just as we should have felt proud of the others. Prem Watsa who’s behind the Blackberry resurrection. Aloke Gupta of the 1972 batch who went on to head Philips in Singapore, CJ Karira who is an RTI activist. RVS Ramakrishna who heads ITW, Talat Aziz who wows the world with his mellifluous voice, Chitrajit Cariappa who keeps people safe in the skies, Avijit Dutt who turned out to be a great actor. Zak Alladin who’s one of the best ‘sound’ guys around. Mani Shankar who’s using all his tech-savvy to help promote Narendra Modi just as he helped Vajpayee and PV Narasimha Rao…oh the list is long. There are enough Hyderabadis and HPS students who have achieved, who have made a mark, who have shown that they have been molded by school and city into something different if not extraordinary.

But while we celebrate all these names, we also have to live with students who disgraced the Eagle by becoming Wimp Ministers. With students who strayed to the wrong side of law. And with students who smoked themselves to oblivion.

So let’s just wish Satya all the best. And avoid placing the mantle of great expectations on his shoulders. He has just stepped into some legendary shoes and he will need everything he has got to help him fit in. If he is blessed, he will outgrow them shoes, but for the moment I am quite sure he will be content even if he manages to walk in those old shoes without tripping.

Let’s hope he remembers that whichever shoes he wears, and however high he flies, it’s the barefoot walks in the park that give us all joy and keep us connected with our roots…indeed with the earth itself.