Meet the ‘Pookie professor' who won hearts on IIT Ropar's graduation day

Indian Express

a day ago

Lionel Messi's slow-mo walk and victory pose, Korean finger hearts, fist bumps, the dab pose. By the end of a three-hour convocation ceremony, Professor Rajeev Ahuja, 60, had mastered many complex Gen Z moves and done the seemingly impossible task — of walking across the generational aisle and meeting his students where they are.
On July 16, at the convocation ceremony of the Indian Institute of Technology, Ropar, as student after student went up on stage to receive their degree certificates, Ahuja, Director and professor of computational materials science at the institute, obliged them by striking the most playful of poses.
In his white kurta and yellow graduation sash, Ahuja fumbled through some of the moves, but did them alright — turning the affable professor and his act into a viral social media sensation, and earning him the title 'Pookie Professor', with 'pookie' a Gen Z term of endearment. Videos of Ahuja and his students at the convocation ceremony have garnered over 30 million views on Instagram alone.
'Convocation is a day of celebration in the lives of students. A student spends 5-7 years of his life dreaming, preparing and working hard to be an IIT graduate. And when that moment comes, it has to be celebrated the way students want. We need to bridge this gap that exists in India between teachers and students,' says Ahuja, who taught at Uppsala University, Sweden, before he joined as Director of IIT-Ropar in 2021.
He says it was in Uppsala, Sweden, where he started off in 1992 as a post-doctoral fellow before joining the faculty, that he noticed how convocations are community events, where 'the entire family and even the village come together to celebrate a student's degree'.
'Here we make convocations tense and monotonous events. In Sweden, everyone joins in, not just for convocations but even if a student has to appear for a PhD viva voce. It's a once-in-a-lifetime celebration for a student. The least I can do is to make students feel at home, so I just listen to them,' says Ahuja, who has more than 1,200 scientific papers to his credit. His main area of interest is materials science with a focus on energy technologies and high-pressure physics.
With his roots in Pakistan's Sargodha, from where the family moved to India during Partition, they eventually settled down in Haridwar in Uttarakhand. A science graduate from Gurukula Kangri, a deemed-to-be university in Haridwar, he did his MSc and PhD in Physics from IIT Roorkee, before moving to Sweden and finally returning to India in 2021.
While the internet may have just discovered 'Pookie Professor', students and alumni of IIT-Ropar, one of the eight new IITs set up in 2008, say they have been feeling the shift since 2021, when Ahuja joined the institute.
From several new initiatives to ensure the physical and mental well-being of students to 'being a guardian-like figure' on the campus, from 'never saying no to justified demands' of students to writing reference mails and promoting innovative projects and start-ups on campus – students say 'Pookie Professor' didn't earn his title in a day.
'Other IITs such as Delhi and Mumbai may be ranked higher than us but we are proud that IIT-Ropar is in the news for making students feel good, for letting them express themselves and giving them the space that is required to be innovative and successful. Our Director sir has always been very clear — that we simply don't have to copy other IITs. The convocation was just a small example of how he is so different from the others. He never imposes his authority as a Director,' says Aditya Sahu, a B-Tech mathematics and computing student who is among the new graduates.
Sahu, who was president of IIT-Ropar's student council, says, 'We have a very strong student council. We recently built a student council room with all modern amenities. All I had to do was write an application and it was approved by the director with no questions. We told him that we needed more people to coordinate for placements and it was done. He has publicly announced on campus that if a student faces any health issue and the family is unable to afford the treatment, he will contact the best doctors and ensure timely care. He is very approachable. That's why our college has always felt like home.'
While the high-pressure IIT system is a given, students and faculty say they have avenues to reach out to. Among the several initiatives on campus is the appointment of 'faculty advisors', with each advisor in charge of 20-25 students with whom they interact on a personal level. 'It is compulsory for faculty advisors to hold at least two meetings with students in each semester. If there's an issue — financial, personal, academic, less scores, mental pressure, anything — we can tell our advisor. We also have 'Snehita buddies' on campus with whom we can share just about anything,' says a student, speaking on condition anonymity.
In March this year, when an IIT-Ropar student died by suicide, Ahuja had asked students to speak up, instead of suffering in silence. He also urged them to choose shared accommodations over single rooms and reassured students that placement delays are not to be seen as failures. 'Every IIT student is talented. No setback is worth sacrificing one's life,' a student quotes Ahuja as telling them during the emotional meeting he held in the wake of the tragedy.
Kartik, a civil engineering graduate from Haryana's Rewari who only goes by his first name, who was among the first to ask the director to have 'some fun' on the convocation day, says he asked Ahuja to pose in black shades, setting off a torrent of requests from other students. 'I knew I could get away with it. He is a chill professor,' says Kartik.
Tanisha Daharwal, a BTech graduate and a fan of the Korean boy band BTS, got Ahuja to strike a 'Korean hearts' pose. 'You really don't expect an IIT professor to do all this cute stuff on stage, but he readily agreed. That's how you earn respect. He allowed us to have our own special moments. He just asked me what this pose meant. Last year, he even let us open a Fashion Club on campus,' she says.
Shubham Singh from Uttar Pradesh, who has a Master's degree from IIT-Ropar, says, 'Though I graduated in 2018 and he joined in 2021, he helped me launch my air purifier start-up and put me in touch with the Punjab government. His office continues to follow-up, asking if we need any further help. Students look up to such professors.'
Ahuja, however, doesn't make much of the sudden social media fame, except that he realises that 'the times are different'. 'I cannot turn to my students and say 'hamare time mein to aisa nahi hota tha (This never happened in our times)',' says Ahuja.
'Such is the pressure of studying in IITs that even your neighbour is interested in your salary after you graduate. Every student who comes to IIT is a topper and comes with that baggage to excel. I want to help students take off that pressure. In today's times, a teacher does not know everything. We need to learn from our students as well. I am just trying to do that,' he says.
Divya Goyal is a Principal Correspondent with The Indian Express, based in Punjab.
Her interest lies in exploring both news and feature stories, with an effort to reflect human interest at the heart of each piece. She writes on gender issues, education, politics, Sikh diaspora, heritage, the Partition among other subjects. She has also extensively covered issues of minority communities in Pakistan and Afghanistan. She also explores the legacy of India's partition and distinct stories from both West and East Punjab.
She is a gold medalist from the Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC), Delhi, the most revered government institute for media studies in India, from where she pursued English Journalism (Print). Her research work on 'Role of micro-blogging platform Twitter in content generation in newspapers' had won accolades at IIMC.
She had started her career in print journalism with Hindustan Times before switching to The Indian Express in 2012.
Her investigative report in 2019 on gender disparity while treating women drug addicts in Punjab won her the Laadli Media Award for Gender Sensitivity in 2020. She won another Laadli for her ground report on the struggle of two girls who ride a boat to reach their school in the border village of Punjab.
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