Day 1 at Convergence India, Pragati Maidan, New Delhi. Delighted with the response.
Will you be visiting us?
Random things we do to entertain/engage our kids...
The kids made me model their bunk bed in 3D for them. They measured the whole bed. They have a future in reverse engineering!
Here is a photo of us painting the bed back in November 2011.
The kids made me model their bunk bed in 3D for them. They measured the whole bed. They have a future in reverse engineering!
Here is a photo of us painting the bed back in November 2011.
I updated my LinkedIn profile recently. Added a patent. This (probably) triggered a flood of recruiter emails.
What is a recruiter trying to convey to a candidate when they say that the opening is most urgent? In general, I've seen that most recruiter emails don't even make sense to me. They are filled with all kinds of jargon and acronyms.
I'm sure some of my own technical emails are equally confusing to readers. I've learnt a lesson in not being carried away by your own problems, and focus on the reader and what they want to know when writing an email.
I think the recruitment industry is totally broken. I wonder how these people hire any mid to senior level guys. I personally haven't been hired through a recruiter, even for consulting gigs, since 2005. How do they survive, given that fresher hiring is also not done through recruiters.
What is a recruiter trying to convey to a candidate when they say that the opening is most urgent? In general, I've seen that most recruiter emails don't even make sense to me. They are filled with all kinds of jargon and acronyms.
I'm sure some of my own technical emails are equally confusing to readers. I've learnt a lesson in not being carried away by your own problems, and focus on the reader and what they want to know when writing an email.
I think the recruitment industry is totally broken. I wonder how these people hire any mid to senior level guys. I personally haven't been hired through a recruiter, even for consulting gigs, since 2005. How do they survive, given that fresher hiring is also not done through recruiters.
Friends, today I live in a true democracy, and I'm loving every moment of it.
http://eciresults.nic.in
Kudos to the people behind this site. Simple and fast interface. Very effective at the job it does. Rare example of a government site that just works, by avoiding fancy shmancy and focusing on function.
Kudos to the people behind this site. Simple and fast interface. Very effective at the job it does. Rare example of a government site that just works, by avoiding fancy shmancy and focusing on function.
In this moment of ecstatic joy, let the common man be graceful. Let us not throw mud on Sheila and Manmohan (soon to fall).
They have tirelessly served the nation. They are senior citizens. They operated within the constraints imposed on them by the feudal politics created by the Gandhi family.
I would hardly call them victims of the system. But they were cogs in the machinery. If it weren't for them, it would have been someone else from Congress being remote controlled. Someone like Kalmadi,maybe.
AAP has given us options. But what were our options before that? When Sheila or Manmohan came to power, what were our alternatives. But they have overstayed their welcome. Out with the old, in with the new.
They have tirelessly served the nation. They are senior citizens. They operated within the constraints imposed on them by the feudal politics created by the Gandhi family.
I would hardly call them victims of the system. But they were cogs in the machinery. If it weren't for them, it would have been someone else from Congress being remote controlled. Someone like Kalmadi,maybe.
AAP has given us options. But what were our options before that? When Sheila or Manmohan came to power, what were our alternatives. But they have overstayed their welcome. Out with the old, in with the new.
Pink Floyd randomly turned up on my phone.
Remembering Pondy.
Did you guys know that I argued with him to be in the seat he was in? He didn't budge. I escaped with minor bruised to tell the tale. He was impaled.
Let's all make our lives meaningful. That's all he wanted to do with his.
Remembering Pondy.
Did you guys know that I argued with him to be in the seat he was in? He didn't budge. I escaped with minor bruised to tell the tale. He was impaled.
Let's all make our lives meaningful. That's all he wanted to do with his.
I'm in Hyderabad after seven years. Anyone wanna meet up?
Biriyani for breakfast, lunch and dinner!
Biriyani for breakfast, lunch and dinner!
Two honest men, standing in the Sun, doing the right thing. Being a traffic policeman must be the most thankless job in the world.
Kavin is excited about Children's Day
Rocketfuel rings the opening bell at NASDAQ
"Women are in general inferior to men in bodily strength and energy; consequently the male part of the community, taking advantage of their corporeal weakness, have denied to them those excellent merits that they are entitled to by nature, and afterwards they are apt to say that women are naturally incapable of acquiring those merits. But if we give the subjects consideration, we may easily ascertain whether or not your accusation against them is consistent with justice. As to their inferiority in point of understanding, when did you ever afford them a fair opportunity of exhibiting their natural capacity? How then can you accuse them of want of understanding? If, after instruction in knowledge and wisdom, a person cannot comprehend or retain what has been taught him, we may consider him as deficient; but as you keep women generally void of education and acquirements, you cannot, therefore, in justice pronounce on their inferiority."
- Raja Rammohun Roy
Reading the above, I feel monumentally inept.
What prose! This was written 200 years ago, by a person born 240 years ago in rural Bengal. No schools, no printed books, no travel outside of Bengal. How did he acquire such a command on the English language? This is perfectly accessible language that makes sense even today; not the kind of flowery crap people used to write in those days.
What insight! He has captured all of society's hypocrisy in one hard-hitting sentence. His thoughts are relevant even today, across the world. Do we unburden women of their domestic chores when they take up careers outside? Do we afford them a level playing field in the workplace? And yet they must outperform their male colleagues in order to be demonstrate their competent.
Thanks to my association with rights groups over the last fifteen years, I've hobnobbed with a number of women's rights activists. I'm yet to see someone express themselves as eloquently as this guy 200 years their senior.
I am a "product" of "elite" English medium schools and a "premier" engineering college (ugh, but that is how the Indian press likes to describe folks like me). Of course, RRR started the first English medium school for Indians, so if anything, I'm a "product" of his legacy. But can I ever express myself as coherently, eloquently, beautifully as this man whose only possible formal education was in the Hindu scriptures.
Before thought must come observation. Can I ever perceive the injustice around me, and recognise my own hypocrisy and of those around me, as this man could?
Why have I not read the works of great Indian thinkers like him before? I've read Jefferson and Lincoln and Marx but not RRR or Ambedkar or JP. I suppose you end up reading more of Gandhi, Vivekananda, Aurobindo, JK and Annie Besant because they have entire publishing societies promoting their works. I suppose this is expected if all you ever read is what the media promotes.
People before us have thought so much. Written so much. We pay such little attention to history, and to writers and thinkers who do not belong to our generation. In my most recent visit to Anand Bhawan in Allahabad, Anuj Mama pointed out the wealth of books in the library there. He observed how our leaders were so well read. If they didn't read so much, how would they develop their own ideas?
I think we give too much importance to "original" thought. Maybe its the startup culture - argumentum ad novitatem (or perhaps even novitate gratia novitatem). When the truth is that most useful human output is incremental. Everywhere you see, the good stuff improved incrementally - hardware, software, scientific research, architecture.
Is it possible, that if you read a lot, you would run out of original ideas, because everything interesting had already been thought before? The infinite monkeys theorem!
At the very least, the more you read, the harder it becomes for you to come up with truly novel improvements to existing ideas. In fact, you're left with very little room for thought. Your puny brain is too busy connecting up all the observations and thoughts of people before you.
But hey, I'm only 33. Maybe I should keep reading books and bide my time till I'm 45, then move to a big city and be a rockstar (which is what RRR did). So the plan is:
Step 1: Get off the grid; go rural.
Step 2: Read lots of books; think new thoughts (or die trying).
Step 3: Write books and propose new laws.
Step 4: Be awesome!
Wait a minute, I know some people who're following exactly this plan. Jean Drèze, Aruna Roy, Michael Mazgaonkar.
Damn. Even my diabolical plan for intellectual domination isn't original.
Maybe I'll just go upgrade Ubuntu on Aruna and Michael's laptops.
- Raja Rammohun Roy
Reading the above, I feel monumentally inept.
What prose! This was written 200 years ago, by a person born 240 years ago in rural Bengal. No schools, no printed books, no travel outside of Bengal. How did he acquire such a command on the English language? This is perfectly accessible language that makes sense even today; not the kind of flowery crap people used to write in those days.
What insight! He has captured all of society's hypocrisy in one hard-hitting sentence. His thoughts are relevant even today, across the world. Do we unburden women of their domestic chores when they take up careers outside? Do we afford them a level playing field in the workplace? And yet they must outperform their male colleagues in order to be demonstrate their competent.
Thanks to my association with rights groups over the last fifteen years, I've hobnobbed with a number of women's rights activists. I'm yet to see someone express themselves as eloquently as this guy 200 years their senior.
I am a "product" of "elite" English medium schools and a "premier" engineering college (ugh, but that is how the Indian press likes to describe folks like me). Of course, RRR started the first English medium school for Indians, so if anything, I'm a "product" of his legacy. But can I ever express myself as coherently, eloquently, beautifully as this man whose only possible formal education was in the Hindu scriptures.
Before thought must come observation. Can I ever perceive the injustice around me, and recognise my own hypocrisy and of those around me, as this man could?
Why have I not read the works of great Indian thinkers like him before? I've read Jefferson and Lincoln and Marx but not RRR or Ambedkar or JP. I suppose you end up reading more of Gandhi, Vivekananda, Aurobindo, JK and Annie Besant because they have entire publishing societies promoting their works. I suppose this is expected if all you ever read is what the media promotes.
People before us have thought so much. Written so much. We pay such little attention to history, and to writers and thinkers who do not belong to our generation. In my most recent visit to Anand Bhawan in Allahabad, Anuj Mama pointed out the wealth of books in the library there. He observed how our leaders were so well read. If they didn't read so much, how would they develop their own ideas?
I think we give too much importance to "original" thought. Maybe its the startup culture - argumentum ad novitatem (or perhaps even novitate gratia novitatem). When the truth is that most useful human output is incremental. Everywhere you see, the good stuff improved incrementally - hardware, software, scientific research, architecture.
Is it possible, that if you read a lot, you would run out of original ideas, because everything interesting had already been thought before? The infinite monkeys theorem!
At the very least, the more you read, the harder it becomes for you to come up with truly novel improvements to existing ideas. In fact, you're left with very little room for thought. Your puny brain is too busy connecting up all the observations and thoughts of people before you.
But hey, I'm only 33. Maybe I should keep reading books and bide my time till I'm 45, then move to a big city and be a rockstar (which is what RRR did). So the plan is:
Step 1: Get off the grid; go rural.
Step 2: Read lots of books; think new thoughts (or die trying).
Step 3: Write books and propose new laws.
Step 4: Be awesome!
Wait a minute, I know some people who're following exactly this plan. Jean Drèze, Aruna Roy, Michael Mazgaonkar.
Damn. Even my diabolical plan for intellectual domination isn't original.
Maybe I'll just go upgrade Ubuntu on Aruna and Michael's laptops.
Me: Where do clouds come from?
Kavin: China?
If it weren't for those dang himalayas in the middle, he could be right!
We were reading the water cycle in Larry Gonick's Cartoon Guide to the Environment.
Kavin: China?
If it weren't for those dang himalayas in the middle, he could be right!
We were reading the water cycle in Larry Gonick's Cartoon Guide to the Environment.
This is why we send our sisters to medical college :-)
Typhoid.
Elementary, my dear Watson. I've had typhoid before in 2008, and should have seen the signs. Maybe it was denial. My cousin saw them instantly.
This is how my conversation with her, over the phone from Lucknow, went:
She: Twelve days of fever. All tests are normal. Ultrasound में obviously कुछ नहीं आया होगा। Enlarged liver I'm sure. Typhoid.
Me: But Typhidot was negative.
She: When?
Me: Ah, never mind. (Protip: Typhoid manifests itself in tests only one week after the first fever. My blood tests were done on the sixth day. Too soon.)
She: Widal कराया?
Me: I'll get it done tomorrow.
She: You're still eating Typhoid antibiotics. (Protip: Thirteenth day of fever. If you're going to wait, your intestines will start popping. Nobody in their right minds waits for Widal once typhoid is suspected.)
Then Jijaji reeled off two of the best.
So, who says you can't get medical advice on FaceBook? I got the best advice possible. Change your doctor!
Typhoid.
Elementary, my dear Watson. I've had typhoid before in 2008, and should have seen the signs. Maybe it was denial. My cousin saw them instantly.
This is how my conversation with her, over the phone from Lucknow, went:
She: Twelve days of fever. All tests are normal. Ultrasound में obviously कुछ नहीं आया होगा। Enlarged liver I'm sure. Typhoid.
Me: But Typhidot was negative.
She: When?
Me: Ah, never mind. (Protip: Typhoid manifests itself in tests only one week after the first fever. My blood tests were done on the sixth day. Too soon.)
She: Widal कराया?
Me: I'll get it done tomorrow.
She: You're still eating Typhoid antibiotics. (Protip: Thirteenth day of fever. If you're going to wait, your intestines will start popping. Nobody in their right minds waits for Widal once typhoid is suspected.)
Then Jijaji reeled off two of the best.
So, who says you can't get medical advice on FaceBook? I got the best advice possible. Change your doctor!
Are diseases more complex than they were before? Are doctors less empowered than they were a generation ago? Or have our expectations of medical science become unreasonable?
I've been sick for twelve days now. And I still don't know what's wrong with me. After a battery of tests, the doctors have only given me a list of what I DON'T have.
I've been regularly having the antibiotics and other drugs prescribed to me. Yet today I have the highest fever of the last twelve days! Are humans getting weaker as a species? Or are the virii that cause viral fever getting more virulent?
How scary must situations like this be for the poor? Without access to expensive tests, these long drawn illnesses must be terrible for the daily wages types.
Harsh Singhal is now going to ask me if these are rhetorical questions, or am I expecting reasonable responses. On Facebook.
These extended illnesses give me a depression. Its a chemical thing. Whatever hormone causes happiness in humans, decides to go on vacation every time I fall sick. So if you have any spare PG Wodehouse books lying around, please send them to me. I'm trying to maintain the chemical balance through external stimulus.
I've been sick for twelve days now. And I still don't know what's wrong with me. After a battery of tests, the doctors have only given me a list of what I DON'T have.
I've been regularly having the antibiotics and other drugs prescribed to me. Yet today I have the highest fever of the last twelve days! Are humans getting weaker as a species? Or are the virii that cause viral fever getting more virulent?
How scary must situations like this be for the poor? Without access to expensive tests, these long drawn illnesses must be terrible for the daily wages types.
Harsh Singhal is now going to ask me if these are rhetorical questions, or am I expecting reasonable responses. On Facebook.
These extended illnesses give me a depression. Its a chemical thing. Whatever hormone causes happiness in humans, decides to go on vacation every time I fall sick. So if you have any spare PG Wodehouse books lying around, please send them to me. I'm trying to maintain the chemical balance through external stimulus.
Barry is at it again. This only gets better with time.
Kavin enjoying a long distance train ride on his fourth birthday
1. Outsource the kids.
2. Hit the town for a night of decadence.
3. Get too drunk to dance or drive.
4. ...
5. Score?!?
2. Hit the town for a night of decadence.
3. Get too drunk to dance or drive.
4. ...
5. Score?!?
Kavin
Kavin performing at Panchatantra's Annual Day in spite of his injury.
Automated roti (chapati) maker.
An update on the 2nd August photo from Sulphur Mountain. My Mom drew this painting from the photo.
Radio Silence.
If you haven't heard back from me, it's because the beauty of this place has made me speechless
If you haven't heard back from me, it's because the beauty of this place has made me speechless
Lunch with the boys
Doing in the US what we're too cheap to do in India - dining on the train
Kavin, my younger son, narrates a story he created himself. He turned two last month.
If you like the story, visit http://www.facebook.com/namitaj1 and encourage Namita to record more!
If you like the story, visit http://www.facebook.com/namitaj1 and encourage Namita to record more!
Cool shades
Bhailog
it's a boy!