Mountain

Norway wants to shift its border by 20 meters so as to gift a mountain to Finland, which has none while Norway has many taller ones! Read about it here. If only all countries could be this friendly, the world would have been very beautiful. But friendly gestures are done when countries are in friendly terms. And in most cases friendly terms is a phase, until there is some bad spark somewhere because of whatever reason - an illegal immigrant, a terrorist attack, a resource sharing conflict or a passionate sporting event. But such is the world and its ways. There will always be friends, non-friends and foes, different ones at different times.

But let's focus on another aspect of that gesture - gifting a mountain!!! I mean of all things... a mountain! Those guys must be really obsessed with risen masses of land - the Norwegians and the Finns - one to think it's a treasure they have and the other to miss them enough to consider it a gift. May be the latter actually meant - shuru kisne kiya - when it accepted the gift. If there's real joy in all this, it's cool indeed. But then, what's the fun if things are indeed as they are shown to be? Still... a mountain? Really? It's a strange obsession humans have - for all things sticking out - more the better. A similar obsession is with making tall buildings. There's this recent news that Saudi Arabia is building a 1 km long tower (read here) - 200 floors tall - I guess so tall that the highest floors would be in clouds whenever they visit Saudi Arabia. Would be fun to stand on the terrace and pee into the passing clouds that would go and cause rain in another country! Must be great living in the desert and doing hankypanky with clouds that are not yours anyhow.

In India we have some of the tallest peaks in the world. Our neighbors also have some. Some of our Gods live there... no kidding! I recently saw the movie Everest. It's one sad story of trekkers and their expedition to scale the tallest peak going terribly wrong. I once went with a few friends of mine to climb the tallest peak in the Sahyadris - Kalsubai. We didn't really know it's the tallest when we went there. It was a lazy Sunday morning during the rainy season, and we just wanted to go somewhere for fun. So, clearly, we didn't prepare much for something this big. I don't want to describe this whole trip... long-story-short - we gave up after climbing half way up - it got dark and scary, we ran out of food and we were tired. Well, I don't know if it was really even "half" the way up that we went, but what the hell! I even write in my CV in the extracurriculars section: Avid Trekker - scaled Kalsubai - the tallest peak in the Sahyadris! Well, I did visit the place... That's how CV's go. You do a few lines in Java and you are qualified to write Java under your skills. You get something self-published and call yourself a published author. You stand for some time in a hip-deep swimming pool and say you know swimming. It's fair.

Speaking of mountains, there's mountain of work piled up. Lemme take care of it. It's only like that one Finnish mountain, though - not very high. So can take it off soon. Bye for now.

May be...

Being from these elite institutes of the country puts a great pressure on you to do something that the world admires. Especially in times like now when lots of young guys and girls fresh out of college are starting interesting ventures. Many are failing of course, but we are told that's part of the game. As this new breed is sweeping the business world, people my age are wondering how to catch up. But most of us would soon behave like all older generations - claim respect just coz we have some gray hair! And gulp all ego.. and, while the heart gently weeps, work for these youngsters who are clearly not as smart as we are... come on, elders are allowed to think that way about those younger :)

I myself have had dreams, most of which I forced myself to see, of owning and running companies. And discussing such ideas, or thoughts about ideas which don't come, is one of the most favorite topics of gossip among most people in their 20's and 30's in urban India. The other hot topics being girls and sex for guys, and guys and relationships for girls! (Well, I am just guessing for the latter.) Right now I am part of 2 whatsapp groups where startups keeps coming up as a topic. One is of my friends from IIT and the other is of my friends from IIM, The IITians seem to have more interest in anything related to entrepreneurship - which I can safely generalize about all IITians, as can be seen even from the large number of founder CEOs who are IIT alumni. But not many who are IIM alumni (IIT+IIM not considered under IIM). A very basic reason for that is the culture in these institutes. In the 4 years at IIT, we hear the word Entrepreneur so much that many IITians get inclined to adopt that as the way to go about in life. In the 2 years at IIM, all we hear to that extent are "CV", "Resume", "CV Point", "CGPA", "Job", "Globe" etc. etc. And so all most MBAs want to do is make a good CV, get a high paying job and "globe" their way to the top! And therefore, drawing an inference here from the general observation, in my whatsapp group with friends from IIM, conversations on entrepreneurship lack any real masala.

Anyhow, this bug - entrepreneurship - just flies around without biting me. I am not sure if startup CEO life is what I want. Sometimes I feel these things have been stereotyped too much, to create an unnecessary psychological differentiation where none exists. May be things are not too different either way. May be the barriers to entry into that world which are mostly mental are created by its inhabitants to make themselves sound cool and their achievements too big for common people to aspire for, But then, I am obviously not qualified to say all this as I've never even stepped into that land and felt it for real. I take back what I said... will say it again after I experience it myself and if I ever do. I find this funny - taking back something said and recorded... but since it's considered a legitimate way of striking invalid communications, let's abuse it!!!

The thought of creating stuff that the world finds useful - makes their life easy or fun - is quite exciting. For lazy people, the excitement lies in the thought itself and in nothing beyond that! A true entrepreneur, I feel, should theoretically be a doer, and should love execution more than ideation. Is that true? For great thinkers, there are ways in which thinking itself can be something that can influence the way the world works and even earn money for them. Lazy people have ways to be doers in the world of today. I think I am somewhere in the mid-point in this matrix of traits - thinker, doer, lazy - perhaps a state many call the comfort zone. Probably need to stretch in some of the dimensions, and add an element of risk - may be, I can be an entrepreneur too!

Startup recruitment - the madness needs a method

Placements and offers at IITs will again shoot up the roof once the season starts in December. We'll again hear about overseas job offers by the likes of Facebook and Google with large dollar salaries - even larger now in rupees as the currency keeps dwindling. And now we also have these startups, most of them with weird names, paying huge salaries, like 20+ lacs, to 20-somethings.

I guess in all generations you see people younger than you making more money than what you did at their age, and even what you make now. The bases for salaries are not complicated... coz they are not objective. It may just be a hype cycle each time, leading to crazy valuations. And then there's a price war of some sort - to price same guys higher than what competitors do. In that crazy competition to buy talent, no company really tries to find out whether those prices are realistic, i.e., whether the return on investment on hiring a particular guy or gal at a certain salary would be positive, and by when, if at all... what are the short and long term returns expected from such an investment... how much of professional growth is the company capable of offering any person it hires in his/her area of interest, whatever be the strength of the business model of the company. This should be an important point to consider particularly in the IT industry, especially when choosing among candidates for hiring, coz the industry is composed and driven by individuals of a certain kind - mainly powered by knowledge and analytical skills - thinking individuals, whose skills have short-lived relevance but whose abilities to evolve is tremendous - and hence, so is the hunger for growth. The highly rampant hiring and firing in the rapidly developing tech / tech-enabled start-up landscape is unhealthy for the intellectual and emotional well-being of such talented individuals, and therefore the industry should treat its talent with caution... as smart and talented individuals, rather than commodities with x y z skillset.

Most of the contemporary managers and even CEOs of these start-ups do not have a mature understanding or point of view on these things. They do most of their hiring in an ad-hoc manner and expect everything to settle and resolve in the long run. Can't really blame them for their lack of experience or foresight, coz while that is truly their weaknesses, these are still extremely complex issues with lots of variables at stake for the people running the businesses. Large companies absorb their flab - if they consider some of their workforce as such - until they have to shed some, and economies of scale allow some sustainability to them, in spite of the inefficiencies. For start-ups, even leaders with the right intentions fail to find right and good solutions for managing their human-resource-pool. In the absence of any standard systems and practices, and resources and scale to afford those, things often get unimaginably complex.

Here are some random real-life cases that are eye-openers of some sort:

• A guy with 4-5 years of technology experience, struggling in his current job, is offered a salary of 98 lacs INR per year from a startup that was recently in news for wrong reasons. 
• An e-commerce startup which had multi-million dollar investment was forced by its investor to hire only IITians and to push the employee count to 20+ in a few months time. The startup ended up hiring fresh graduates from IIT at 10+ lacs INR salary. Those guys failed in their jobs coz lack of any work-experience and absence of training programs in the company to groom fresh recruits.
• Highly skilled employees getting burned out due to being heavily overworked - 100+ hours per week - and forced to quit companies and sometimes even industries, just coz most of the other employees are not competent enough to handle tasks at work.

All these examples suggest that there is something wrong with the way startups recruit and groom their guys to make them true professionals.There was a saying in the 80s in the US among HR managers in the context of recruitment - no HR gets fired for hiring from Stanford and MIT. It seems the same logic is applied in India when it comes to recruiting from the IITs. Some sweeping assumptions:

• This guy has good grades from an IIT - hire him - he'll build our next-gen product! 
• This girl is in a good company - hire her - she must be good coz she's got this big brand on her resume! 
• This guy has a high salary - let's pay him higher and get him - there must be a good reason he's paid that high!

If the above rationale fail, there's still an ultimate rationalization for everything arbitrary - the founder's gut feel. Nobody can dare question the decision of a 24 year old founder of a company who not only set it up, but also managed millions of dollars in investment. In a nation this hungry for jobs, who would really doubt the wisdom of a job creator? But things are soon changing as the nation now is also having to get used to getting laid off in masses. Although it's been rare for placement committees to question salary figures and structures of companies and the sustainability of their payout promises, they're beginning to do that now - the Zomato blacklisting from IITs is the latest example.

The salary offers by some startups are so insane and out of whack that it's surprising they are not questioned by investors for offering such large salaries while their loss-making business models evolve randomly with no strong analyses or arguments backing their decisions, that go with endlessly dragged excel sheets with ever increasing growth to back the monetarily obese recruitment. And the investors turn blind eyes to all this drama, as their bonuses are tied to short-term bets, hoping a majority work out in a booming market. You can't blame a herd for grazing where it's green as long as the grass is growing. It's considered fair in capitalism to try to get a bigger bite. Someone who cautions the group that the grass may get exhausted if eaten at that rate is only considered a fool. The wisdom - as taught by dominant economic thought - is to eat the most you can when all are eating, and conserve your energies for when the grass is gone. The weaker ones will die of hunger, the grass will regrow to satiate those who remain, and the cycle goes on. You are not supposed to question as to why there have to be cycles, coz when you do, you are called insane and kicked out of the race... and there has to be a race.

Everyone is in a hurry now. And in recruitment at IITs and IIMs, the hurry is by design - to create mad rush and chaos, and thereby a hype for the institute. In my experience it neither benefits the candidates nor the companies. A friend of mine heard his ex-boss say this to his CEO - you can't put 9 ladies together and expect them to deliver a baby in 1 month. Very short placement periods - like a placement week - often lead to random candidates getting hired for random roles. Large organizations don't feel the hit so badly when misfit people play crucial roles, as there is already a flab that can be afforded due to economies of scale that cushions things out. But in startups it is impossible to grow strongly when certain parts are weak... and all of the few parts of a startup are very crucial. High quality products have their own lifecycle which cannot be expedited beyond a point just by investing heavily and blindly and falling prey to people-pricing wars.

It is therefore high time everybody questioned their decisions and the way things are bubbling up unnecessarily:

• Investors: Do I have the scientific and economic basis to invest in a certain company? Am I unnecessarily forcing my biases to run the companies in my portfolio? Am I setting the right terms and guidelines to help groom my companies for long term success, rather than making headlines for investment volumes and crazy salary figures?
• Founders / CEOs: Is my hiring based on the right principles? Am I doing justice to the talent I am hiring and to my company in return? What is my explicit and implicit messaging to attract talent - do I project the vision, mission and culture of the company, or the salary I offer?
• Employees: Is this the right salary for me - for the capabilities I bring and the expectations of my role? Is the company's business model sustainable enough to pay me this salary with the expected year-on-year growth for the long term? Will I be groomed as a professional in this company?

A company is not just about the money it makes by managing all stakeholders. It impacts lives of all stakeholders including its employees and customers. In the long term, companies tend to achieve a balance through natural corrections. But for a startup, if all the talk is about money and none, or little, about the value it delivers, there are definite alarm bells which will be heard sooner than later, albeit all the funding and crazy valuations. So startup founders need to introspect and build their foundations most wisely, and set the right examples for future generations of entrepreneurs.

The bubble is not bursting. Only those who have inflated beyond their capacity or have skin too weak are releasing the winds to the stronger players.

With thoughts from Manish Kumar and Ravindra Naik

The God Delusion

The Tolerance/Intolerance debate is going so crazy, it sometimes sounds funny how people can take sides without even looking at the culture we represent, and even more basic, the species we are. I definitely won't say much out of line, coz I am no Shahrukh Khan. Nobody can ensure I am protected from some crazy bunch of guys motivated by an ideology. Or perhaps a hungry bunch of idiots who are motivated by a guarantee of their next meal.

One thing is religion - one's concept of the unknown - and another is all the bull-shit stories written around it, to make the unknown sound very real and manifested in earthly stuff. The need for it in the human mind has been exploited by the smart to control the minds of the dumb masses, and over time all that fiction started sounding real, so much so that now even the smart guys take it at face value. And understandably so - coz most of us are not in a position to question everything with hope of getting a satisfactory answer. That's true even for the so called scientific facts, which are again based on trust and belief that someone must have researched all that following reliable and acceptable procedures and came with genuine readings and valid conclusions. And even if all that's documented, who has time and interest to verify all the stuff! Just like a 6th standard science book says matter is composed of atoms and molecules, some book also says there was a man called Ram who was incarnation of a God called Vishnu. I didn't question the existence of atoms, as I want to be a man of science. Even if I did, I am told there is a way their existence can be inferred. I trust that as well. I can't trust the existence of Ram (or Vishnu) nor the non-existence of him, coz nobody tells me there is a basis to prove it, nor to disprove it. Understandably so, coz any theory for the unknown cannot be proved by definition. And if it can be proved, then it ceases to be a theory of the unknown. There is perhaps a point where known and unknown intersect... and moving beyond is our constant endeavor - either through science or through god. While Science only gives us a feeling of trying to move to higher levels of knowledge and deciphering the unknown, God directly places us in the unknown realm, albeit fictional. But we are gullible humans with short life-spans and looking for excuses to stay motivated and for ways to make sense of this life. So god always wins, beyond a point. That point is where science ceases to be helpful, although it may continue to be interesting.

My secret, silent and lonely life at IIT Bombay from 2000-2004 had long hours of introspection and discussions with myself about truth, life, meaning and beyond. Long walks in the campus, and walks in the hockey field at mid-night - on the fine grass there - were absolutely fantastic. A parallel at IIM Lucknow during 2009 were long jogs around the campus in the dark. Unlike the kind of best memories most people have of these stints, my best ones are these long quiet moments of introspection, which I enjoyed tremendously. I can't claim to have found what I was looking for, but these beautiful moments did mould my personality and points of view to make me who I am, to some extent. There are also a few adventures which form part of my fond memories of these times - one was crossing the extremely dark trail in the jungle behind H8 (IITB) from chinks (that time) to campus guest house at mid-night during the time when the Panther scare was at its peak. In fact a few days before I did that one guy was chased by a panther at night... that guy managed to save himself, but was bedridden with fever for a few days. I don't know what came on me to challenge myself to do it at 3.00 AM - but I crossed the whole dark trail - so dark that one cannot see anything at all - I was lucky no panther showed up and I came back to my hostel safe and sound. It was a stupid thing to do, of course. But I pushed myself and did it... in the name of adventure, I guess. I don't regret it. But I guess I wouldn't do it now, at this age. There is indeed something about the early 20s that makes you take crazy risks. Some take good ones and make their life. Some take stupid ones and recall those memories for life.

There were many of my batchmates at IITB who were followers of ISKON faith. It's a large community of Krishna followers who marry science and teachings of Gita and talk your brains out even if you don't give a damn. They used to sell crazy books in the campus and tried to convert more people into their ideology. That was their little adventure of youth I suppose. There is an ISKON temple in Juhu where many of them went in the weekends for free delicious food. But they talked like real psychos most of the time... anything extreme seems nuts... even Science, and especially when it's combined with god to create some supershitty nonsense. But they were harmless folk. Very tolerant, if you were tolerant to their ideology.

Anyway, after last 2 paras of seemingly unrelated crap, let me come back a bit. I hear lot of people speaking and acting about religious intolerance these days, and a lot of people pointing fingers at them, saying they are politically motivated, citing instances in the past when they did not act in a similar fashion nor raise a voice. I think those pointing fingers need to understand that the strength of numbers doesn't always emerge, and for a herd to form for raising a topic that induces fear otherwise, it takes a lot of chance and coincidence. And people draw strength from the herd once it gets formed, for whatever reason. So a lot are able to speak up coz they have the strength of numbers acting in similar way. A lone shouter may be silenced by our crazy gangs with political support. A group shouts, then it becomes a nation-wide debate... while the group has the security of being part of a herd. So understand and acknowledge, rather than getting defensive and pointing fingers. We all know what we truly are, what our culture truly is, what unites us, what divides us and what India should really be. Let's not fool ourselves and let's not fool each other. Time to clean-up our culture!

Games go on...

I heard the word Entrepreneurship first time after joining IIT Bombay in 2000. And I was really surprised by the way it is pronounced. Whatever be the reason the word got screwed so bad, it still is a powerful word. 4 years of BTech at IIT, you keep hearing tales of successful Entrepreneurs from your college. Those days they were of people who made it really very big eventually - like Nandan Nilekani, Kanwal Rekhi, etc. Small-time startups were few, coz there were no smart phones, very few dumb mobile-phones, no e-commerce... nothing much really as compared to the world of today... people had to get really innovative. Things had to scale or die. It was difficult to sustain in hope, coz the hope had no basis, like we do now - the potential reach and the money. The internet and email were gradually changing the world, and the whole world was only talking about IT and the infinite possibilities it could offer. The possibilities did emerge gradually, although none of those were invented in India. But we are doing well to adapt them to our conditions, and generating huge business. And there sprang hundreds of startups with weird sounding names in the past few years.

For kids in this area, especially in India a few years back, the first thought that crossed their minds as soon as it occurred to them to start something of their own was about having a website URL that was really cool. They would keep thinking about it. A few would even go and check for availability of some they can think of. Most would not go beyond that. I kept checking for SochVichaar.com's availability (although not for a startup... just for my blog) for 3-4 years before I finally decided to spend $10 a year and register it. It's not a huge amount, but still good enough to prevent me from spending even for something that I did want. May be I had a price for it in mind, which was less than $10, until I decided to spend it... some sort of continuous pricing exercise our minds keep doing for everything we do in life.

Anyhow, it's different times now and the way startups are started and looked at is totally different from what it used to be 10-15 years back. What kind of companies are seen as startups and what kind of people are seen as entrepreneurs keeps changing with times. It's often a little confusing who should be called an entrepreneur and what qualifies as a startup. Shopkeepers who buy and sell goods are not generally considered entrepreneurs, nor are their shops seen as startups. But similar stuff done online are seen differently. Entrepreneurship by definition has to have some novelty associated with the venture. So right now online shops, which are among the first few, would be considered entrepreneurial and start-ups. But they're almost at the verge of being considered too common to be called novel or innovative from here on, and they'll lose the respect they get. Although some of them may do something really interesting in the way they conduct their business, but that'll be hardly noticed or acknowledged until they scale to a level where they're not considered a chain of shops.

But times these certainly are to start something, whatever random it might be, and make some fame or money or CV points as long as things are hot and as long as you have ways to survive if you go broke, which I think is the biggest fear that keeps even the best of thinkers and innovators from taking the plunge. As I said this, I realized that it's risk takers and politicians who shape the world, not the most innovative and creative people. In fact, a politician is in a way a manager of risk, and perhaps a bigger risk taker than a businessman, coz his pursuit is 'power', which not only does he constantly need to struggle for, but he also has to trust that it somehow helps him make a living more fulfilling than that of a business guy who strives for money - a tangible medium of exchange for anything material he wants. The seeker of power on the other hand is in a constant valuation game - of power: his and others' - and what it can offer in return, besides the pleasure of possessing the power itself. It is not difficult to see why in this herd of competing power-seekers, a lot have to turn corrupt... coz the valuation game has to produce tangible results in some way for each one of them so as to survive, and produce those in huge amounts - coz the valuation, like anything else these guys engage in, is supposed to add to the power they perceive for themselves, otherwise it is self-defeating. It's all a game mind plays with itself.

These mind-games are what keeps the world going. It's amazing how evolution happens in buckets - survival of the fittest leaders and survival of the fittest followers - looked at broadly! And then some more crooked wiring in heads to make sure innovative minds innovate, dreamers dream, entrepreneurs take risks and do stuff - all that adding some action in this world, making people's lives easy in some ways... making the best of the lost, yet comfort seeking lives we are all trapped into, while also forgetting it in the process... telling ourselves that if the show must go on, then why not be on stage like a hero or sit in the audience enjoying the show eating popcorn, without realizing we're equally part of the show - coz there's no hero without the audience... occasionally a seat gets empty and refilled... there is continuous addition of new chairs, as we keep getting added... and the stage keeps getting bigger and bigger, as heroes keep getting added too... and a few go away as well. But we have to focus on the show... or try to... what option do we have. One can exit. But then one ceases to exist. Our mind tells us we want to exist. So... games go on...

There was no choice

MBA made me like a stereotypical "aadmi" jisse koi bhi kaam karwa sakte ho - jhhadu, bartan, toilet clean, jhhaad ko paani daalna, ghaas kaatna, ghar ke jaale nikaalna, kutta ghumana, sabzi lana, mara chooha baahar phekna, jaam naali saaf karna, bahar ped se amrood kaat ke lana, bachaa hua khana khana, diwali mein jhhaalar lagana, holi mein rang milana, sabzi kaatna, bacchon ke baal kaatna, bageeche mein ghusi gaay bakri bhagana, baahar rangoli banaane ke liye gobar leke aana, jab jo kaam bolo phurti se kar dena... kya bolein, aajkal "aadmi" bhi itna nahi karte, oopar se choon chaan aur karte hain...

Khair apni jagah har insaan ek "aadmi" hi hai... angrezi mein isko 'resource' bolte hain... aur kaam ko hamesha isse measure karte hain ki kitne aadmiyon ka hai... (even Gabbar asked kitne aadmi they)... for example - Prime Minister ek aadmi ka kaam hai... mere office mein mera cubicle saaf karna bhi ek aadmi ka kaam hai... wo "aadmi" ek aurat bhi ho sakta hai... riksha chalana ek aadmi ka kaam hai... train aur plane chalana shayad 2 aadmiyon ka kaam hai, ek ko baaju mein sona hota hai... jo bhi ho, kaam ke nazar mein sab aadmi barabar hain... ya yoon kahein ki kaam ki nazar mein sab aadmi jo wo kaam karte hain, wo aapas mein barabar hain... aur jahaan ye maanaa jata hai ki kisi skill ki zaroorat nahi, i.e., unskilled labor, wo sab kaam barabar hain no matter what the task and what the difficulty and who is more comfortable in doing what... but bhagwaan ne hame barabar banaya nahi...

We are not created equal, so expecting equal things out of us is not fair. But the world offers enough diversity in the roles we can play to get it going. However opportunities to play those roles are not equally accessible to all. Right from school we have mechanisms to test and rank people on same skills, and these ranks largely decide the opportunities that open up for many kids. Kids are pushed by parents to try harder, to try and match that one kid who is ahead of everyone else. And this constant failure of all other kids is not just a rank on their progress report. It is constant torture and a perpetual reminder of their lack of skills that matter, to the level that matters, in this world we are stuck with. It screws with their mind and self esteem, and they tend to even give up what they are actually really good at, and which in many cases could lead to pretty good careers too. And about even the basic skills our schools impart and test, don't we all know how meaningless they are, most of them, in the jobs we do? In workplaces where relationships, smart work, communication are the key for success, why should competition on academics be so excruciatingly competitive, especially at tender ages? And besides, all the stress on the little minds has psychological effects that hinders the growth of kids' soft skills, and ability to deal with people and situations.

The world is changing fast each day. All my formal education seems a bit obsolete now and fails to help me with my career. One has to be constantly evolving with the world and position oneself in a manner best suited to his/her personalty. They should teach this in schools and homes. Enjoying life is also important - there is probably no better way to live life than to spend it happily with minimum pain. Somebody might have created us with some purpose and plan, and we might never figure that out.  What we can do is to make the best of what we've got. Not just be an "aadmi" and go on like a slave, pretending to have made a choice but knowing deep inside that there was no choice.

Information Asymmetry

Underlying most conflicts in this world in Information Asymmetry. And Ekta Kapoor has built an empire on top of that. Look at any of those Saas Bahu serials on Indian TV. In every scene you have someone knowing something the other doesn't, and vice versa. And that creates all the chaos these serials are about. And there is so much importance given by characters in the stories to protecting information that they possess, that it surprises me they are finally characters depicting ordinary people, not those from some secret intelligence service set out to protect good from evil or evil from good. And the information there is after all only of someone cooking something - not food - even food at times. Sometimes the crazy unrealisticity, which is not even a word, gets on your nerves. But a lot of people are bearing it, as they don't think they have other options. They're clearly lazy.

Speaking of lazy, I find it amazing that a lazy body can still have a very active and hard-working mind. It's a personal experience! Whenever the mind-tapping thing becomes a reality, and stuff of The Matrix and Avatar and all that shit becomes contemporary, lazy people will be in better positions to rule the world - but only the virtual one - if they can only dream of physical action. Extending that thought, if right now this world we live in is all virtual by any chance, then the guy who is dreaming me is dreaming me all wrong. How can I control my controller so he controls me better?

This reminds me of economists and their lazy ways.

And also coming back to Information Asymmetry, let me cite another example where it clearly screws up the world, and is yet not acknowledged in the true sense - Markets - stock market, bhindi market, commodity market, marriage market, fish market or the market of opportunities. Nobody has all the information, and yet the ideal models of our economists base themselves on all information being public and driving people's behavior and response. What's the point of an ideal model that is more than 90% away from reality? There is definitely a lot of insider trading, sentiment driven activities, manipulations and all the bla which can tilt the market access and control with respect to different sections and categories of people. All markets are imperfect to serious degrees and yet our economists don't think beyond their ideal models, coz that's all the mathematics they can do - laziness again - in fact trying to understand true economics through mathematics is laziness of highest degree in my view. What do economists control anyhow. The information asymmetry is created, managed and very smartly controlled by whoever can to draw the best returns, while the rest of the people just crib and go away.

I have begun to realize that Information Asymmetry is the biggest source of all power in this world. And if you look around you'll find that consciously or sub-consciously or unconsciously everyone is looking for information which others may not have. Look at work-places. What is office-politics? Taking pride and drawing maximum benefits from knowing information that matters. And one has to be smart in gathering it, coz the source has his/her interests too, and the truth or untruth of the information is always questionable. Timing of gaining possession of the right information - true or untrue - is very important, of course. If you are too late, you'll only be worthy of participating in a chaai pe charcha which is an information sharing/gathering exercise with limited scope of high-outcome-info.

With so many channels of information dissemination and gathering - formal and informal - information overload is a real issue. Diving into tonnes of dark shit and coming out quickly with a glittering diamond is an art which very few are masters of. And managing the precious diamonds - gathered or manufactured oneself - is also a dimension of that art which is inevitable for success.

Freedom to choose one's faith

This post is not going to be long as I've sat through half of my Bangalore-Pune flight doing nothing. Writing is such a boring activity at times and  it's impossible to feel motivated to do it. Thinking happens on its own, but expressing it is a lot of work, and not so exciting at times. Anyway, now that I've started it, let's see where this goes.

I was part of an interesting discussion today with two of my colleagues. One was an American devout Catholic. The other was an Indian devout Hindu. And I was an agnostic mostly non-practicing someone. The American colleague is a much older man with kids and grandkids. And the Indian guy is my age and has a kid. And my kids are not born yet.

The topic of discussion was freedom of religion - whether our kids have it. And I found people had quite interesting views, some of them surprised me quite a bit. That someone our generation thinks that kids have no right to choose their faith, particularly one that's different from his/her parents', and that someone at an age like 17 is not wise enough to make a choice of religious faith surprised me. It also surprised me, though not as much, that it was deeply hurting for an American person to see his kids choose a different faith than his. But then, over the years, he has come to terms with it, and has realized that one has a right to choose his/her religion, and any religion is good as long as it teaches the right values of life.

The argument of the Indian guy, my generation, was two fold - one, that kids have no right to cause pain to their parents by their actions like these; and two, that kids of 17 years and even (older) grown ups are not qualified enough to make choices of faith. They must basically follow what their parents tell them, and not use their minds and make other choices coz what those minds tell them is nonsense.

I agree one mustn't hurt anyone, more so the parents, but if the parents are not thinking right and are hurting themselves for wrong reasons, should the kid pay the price for it by continuing to live a fake life that's not his true self? Of course not. Fixing it once might fix it for all future generations, and would be a great service to a lot of people born and unborn.

And on not being capable of making the right choices... It's the right to choose that makes life more meaningful, rather than choosing right, which nobody knows for sure anyway. And remember, the kid also has only one life which he/she wants to live happily. He should not be denied his right to experiment and search for truth, meaning and realities of the world by making him feel guilty about it.

Reservations

Large numbers of people in India participate in movements to get themselves, their castes, tagged as backward in ways that can get them preferential and promotional treatment in government run educational institutions and government jobs. There are in fact so many people claiming that a percentage be reserved for them in jobs and seats in colleges, that I find it funny that all percentages - reserved and unreserved - have to add up to a cent and probably none of them realizes that cent is a pie of fixed size. Thanks to whoever fixed the max limit at 50% for all reservations, we at least have a cap on the reserved part. It can surely be amended, but for now, we have some bounds for positive discrimination, although positive to someone would be negative to someone else.

Fundamentally, the intention of reservation is to bring about equality in class to people of all the castes, although in a very twisted way. It assumes all people of the backward castes are hindered in their ability to grow, because of resources and opportunities not being accessible to them; and the reservation system provides them with easy rides, combination of both resources and opportunities. And if someone belonging to one of those castes is not really hindered, it's simply his/her good luck. And implicit in all this is also an assumption that all people of the so called non-backward castes have ample resources and opportunities to achieve what they want, and if anybody doesn't, it's his/her bad-luck. And with 60+ years of reservation already gone, there's a further assumption that things haven't improved any bit with anyone in any of the backward castes, and in fact may have worsened considerably, which calls for more reservation. And over these 60+ years, it's been found that many more castes qualify to be considered backward - some had to fight to prove it - and therefore deserve to be awarded with some reservation. Such castes are the few which have managed to cross the line separating the haves from the have-nots.

All these may be partial truths and logical ways of looking at things, but the funny part is, everyone knows it's none of it which is really driving things. It's something else... the screwed-up political system of India, the way our leaders think, the incentives that drive our peoples - which is really shameful, and the sadly manipulative democracy that we consider ourselves, which ironically the common man is incapable of changing much for good. A model where claiming backwardness is incentivised forever can only degrade a culture and screw up the self-esteem of its people. But we should not complain, coz our forefathers were another bunch of mental cases, who practiced the equivalent of slavery in India for centuries, and someone has to pay the price for it now. And to make matters worse, there are millions of mental-cases even now who are carrying forward the legacy of those forefathers with depraved minds.

The worst downside of this positive discrimination called reservation and all the allied set of benefits that come with it, is that the youth of this country, most of them, who don't otherwise believe in caste-bullshit, get frustrated at losing out in the race to someone less deserving - even if one accounts for access to resources and opportunity - and then the whole system seems unfair, yet incapable of change. And this somehow leads to stronger feelings of casteism - rooted in hatred resulting from frustration - it's difficult to expect someone so frustrated to not have such thoughts and feelings. Especially when the whole system that wronged them is visibly driven to a large extent by opportunism rather than any real concern for the backward and downtrodden. And whatever were the intentions of introducing the whole reservation system, we've ended up promoting the very problem it tried to solve.

Everyone in India knows these things. Then what's the point of writing it down again?

And I don't see a point in trying to suggest solutions either - coz firstly it's nothing nobody has ever thought of - and secondly, for any social challenge, when the political solution and the real issue are not aligned and yet the political class is the beneficiary of the prevalent solution, what's the incentive for the political leaders to enforce or try to put forth an alternative solution less beneficial to them in the short run? And who really thinks long-term these days? Indian political class of today has mostly built its career on issues like caste and religious differences, not on growth and development. For such politicians to think differently would mean playing against their strengths.

Possibly reservation, over the years, has been designed to preserve the caste & religion based divides in our societies, so that our political class, which draws its power from such divisions can continue to thrive. Therefore for reservation itself to end, this political philosophy has to end... But our leaders come from among us. Before we talk about cleansing of our political class, we have to therefore talk about cleansing of our social mindset, which allows these politicians to draw their incentives by playing on divisions like caste and religion. The most challenging part of this transformation is to bring the beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries of the reservation system on a common and equal platform - no appeasement, no demeaning - and design a new social fabric for this country. It does need a strong and charismatic leader who can bind all together with a common message. Who is also capable of thinking long-term, even way beyond his/her lifetime. (S)he may be killed before (s)he succeeds. And another leader has to emerge. And (s)he will. I hope its not an endless pursuit. I hope it begins for real. And ends too. I hope human minds are really capable of achieving happiness and equality for all, and together.

Swachh Bharat

"If Modi can clean Banaras, he can clean India", says my wife. Can't be more true, I felt. I hear Modi is pushing hard the Swachh Bharat campaign all over India. And Benaras happens to be his constituency. And Banaras is very dirty. Combining all three facts, Banaras would be an ideal place for him (or let's say 'his government', although nobody generally says so) to set an example for the campaign. Probably too ideal and challenging. It's been more than a year now since he took office. But I saw not much of a trace of Swachh Bharat Abhiyaan in Banaras during my visit past 2 days. The ghaat where Modi turned a sweeper for the cameras - assi ghaat - is also dirty, although a bit less I guess than others. But I need to see a before-after analysis of that place to know whether anything has changed there. May be it was just a more convenient place to launch a political campaign, being in a slightly less crowded area of the holy city and one of the less popular spots among visitors. And the state government has every incentive to make sure the campaign fails so that Modi fails. Dirty politics of cleanliness!

As I went around the city, I could see heaps and heaps of garbage, comprising all kinds of things, in every little distance. Somebody has to pick them up, the municipal corporation is not doing it in time for sure. But these heaps are such dirty rotten smelly ugly spots, we in India should rethink this whole mechanism of collecting and disposing garbage in cities. I've seen this in all major cities in India - people or agents collect garbage from various places and dump it in heaps at specific points in the city, generally roadsides. It lies there, rotting and stinking for as long as it takes, i.e., until the municipality truck comes to pick it up. Such open dumps, although temporary are both unhygienic and ugly. And the stuff tends to get scattered over a larger area than intended, as people further throw stuff there, carelessly without aiming it right. The mix of biodegradable and non-biodegradable junk makes it complex. And the former leads to stench in no time. Then cows and buffaloes flock there and try their luck to find out if there's anything edible for them, and create a further mess as they poke into the heap. And they can't be blamed if they also lay around some shit in the process. Dogs and crows also come by to explore any non-veg options they might hit upon. And flies, mosquitoes and lot of other insects have fun too. And go micro, and there are organisms always at work. All that nature happening in the open is not something to be proud of. But it seems culturally we don't really care, coz individually a lot of Indians, may be a majority of us, don't really mind throwing stuff around and moving on, a few do with some guilt, a few ensure no one's watching. It's not about people of certain class alone. The rich are as careless as the poor. The educated are as pathetic in this aspect as the not-so-learned simpletons.

May be an initiative like Swachh Bharat can pull the right triggers to bring a change in mindsets. It's not happened effectively so far. May be a lot is left on the culturally screwed people i.e., us, to realize and change and start doing things differently. But the problem here is, although one can possibly see the incentive in collectively behaving differently, one wouldn't do it unless he/she sees a few others around also doing it, and a sense of collective action developing, albeit gradually. However the few who don't show any inclination to change can really disturb the will of others to keep going if the defaulters are considerably powerful people in their social standing. And in India, the powerful are particularly more arrogant and stubborn in being compliant. And many of them are filthy and careless outside their homes, both in thought and actions. I am sure the leaders who are designing movements like Swachh Bharat are themselves gobbling crores of rupees sanctioned for it. If municipalities do their job, we don't even need such movements. If people really cared, rather cared enough, India would have been Swachh anyway. So it seems to me, that we don't care enough. Cleanliness of our public places is probably not a very high priority for us. And that's why we don't care much while spitting on roads and walls, throwing that platic bottle or tin can or plastic bag out of the car window, throwing stuff here and there and not caring to look for dustbins, etc. Anything said about the need for change will not be effective as this carelessness about cleanliness is deep rooted in our culture of today. We need cultural change. It's not on Modi or his government or a few people to do it. It needs some basic values to change. How can we bring a cultural change of this kind?

Recession Coming?

Are we headed for another recession? Articles have started emerging more frequently now that say a recession is around the corner, and almost there. It's weird coz I have been feeling that we're still recovering from the last one, and now I hear the next one is near by. I read a technical analysis (predictions based on historical trends) just now that said UK has had a 7-year bull run, i.e., since 2009 - one this long happened only twice in the past: before the great depression in 1929, and before the dotcom bubble burst in 2000. It surprises me, firstly, to know that there's a bull-run somewhere since 2009. And secondly, to know 7 years bull-run is that significantly long and rare. There are other similar indicators all over the world, related to commodity prices, China slowdown and market crashes, fucked up emerging markets, shale oil and oil prices, Greece default, and so on. And something tells me it's going to get real bad very soon.

I have been really unlucky with the timings of these recessions. I was studying civil engineering during the recession that followed the dotcom shit and I was studying management during the recession following the subprime shit. I remember nothing of the shit I studied in either, but towards the end of both I was in the phases of global economic recovery and I was also looking for jobs. On both the occasions placements were screwed up, although not as bad as the previous years'. Me and my batchmates did get jobs, although not very high paying. And subsequent years on both occasions had unprecedented placements and rubbed salt on our wounds, as our batch placements did to those of our seniors.

Anyway, can't do much now to make up for the poor timing. Don't want to go back to school, as every time I did so in the past, I triggered a recession and came out in not the best of times. But on the flip side, being in college during recession is the best situation to be in when people in jobs are getting fired. And I was blessed in that aspect, twice. But if the next recession is almost there, am not going anywhere this time, no chance it can happen right now. So let's face it and see if I get fired! By the way, there is always a possibility I might get fired even if there is no recession. But that's not the topic we're discussing. And on this, I refuse to digress :P.

Wish I worked in the Indian Railways like everyone in my father's generation did in my family. Recessions and economies were not their headache. Economic cycles are a gift of capitalism to the world. And a very expensive gift indeed - all expenses paid by the poor and middle-class to the rich. And something makes the world a more beautiful place, as a result. Wish something made it more equal, instead.

SochVichaar on SochVichaar

My posts are generally chains of thought leading to each other without much of post hoc rationalization. In fact, on many topics blogging has helped me develop thought processes and reach my own conclusions as I wrote about them. Thanks to my friends who encouraged me to blog, I've had this beautiful journey of 10 years, albeit with many large gaps in between. I sometimes look back and wish I had written more. More often, I look at now and wish I wrote more. But then, thoughts and ideas evolve at their own natural pace, and until they are mature enough, they don't do anyone any good.

Yet, this blog is not meant for expressing my damn opinion about every damn thing. After all, the world doesn't really give a damn. Thoughts expressed in this blog should be of some value to the readers. Although it may not always achieve that intended effect, but I try my best. In this age of posts which have character limits, blogs with predominantly textual content are a load difficult to bear for net-surfers. To be honest, even I don't generally read articles as lengthy as the ones I myself write, unless I find them very very very interesting after reading the first few lines! But I strongly feel real value can't be delivered under character length limits like 140 characters. Such limits can work only for breaking news which say something unsettling without revealing much detail and keep the reader shaken for some time. Or for celebrities whose each word matters, no matter what they say.

I sometimes wonder about the future of this blog and its content. This blog has changed locations thrice in its career. It was first hosted on o3.indiatimes.com in 2006. But indiatimes gave up on that site, I don't know why, and as it was getting increasingly difficult to post stuff on it, some time in summer of 2007, I moved the whole content - post by post - to livejournal.com. I literally copied each article and pasted into livejournal editor, and also set the date of the article to its original posting date - livejournal allowed setting dates for posts. That's why you see some of my oldest posts on blogger - the current host of my blog, still dated as per their original dates. The movement to blogger from livejournal was done using a tool that did some XML based import from livejournal and export of the XML to blogger. And the great thing about that tool was that it was capable of copying everything - content, title, date, comments - and create a copy on blogger. I had to move to blogger around 2011 coz the Russian guys who ran livejournal decided to shut it down and sent me a date by when I had to move... So I had to move. And I mapped this blog to sochvichaar.com domain name, which I bought for the first time in December 2012 after having an eye on its availability for a long time and finally convincing myself that I wasn't wasting any money buying it. My blog was always called SochVichaar, whatever be the parent hosting location. And having a URL itself called sochvichaar.com for my blog feels awesome, and gives a unique and exclusive identity to my blog.

I could never make any money from this blog... People don't click the damn ads, although I do have a good number of visitors now. So, ladies and gentlemen, please click these ads hanging around and make me some money. I am at $15 right now, earned over 5 years... And need to reach $100 mark to get paid by Google (should I call it ALPHABET now?)!

An update - 20th Aug 2015:

Here's a video - it's my interview taken by Pankaj Mishra when we were at IIML. He did it for an assignment for some course. But like anything else he does, he conducted this interview with a lot of seriousness, which I didn't expect when we started. Although it doesn't show up much, I also got a bit nervous as the conversation was getting recorded with the camera only on me. I think it was Sankalp Mittal who was holding the camera, and he did a good job. It's interesting to hear my views 6 years back. We don't change much, do we?

Global Warming - why are not many worried?

Global warming, as per a report by a guy named Hansen, is taking a dangerous shape at a rapid pace now. Due to warming waters, the animals in the oceans are migrating under water to find better habitats, many are dying. And many species on land are already on the verge of extinction. We may end up having a mass extinction phase soon, and it may have already begun. The future of life on earth would be totally different, and who knows, we humans may be gone too in this large scale wipe-out.

Should I be worried about it? Why should it matter to me as an individual that 100 years later, the species that I belong to may no longer be found on this planet? Or anywhere? As long as my lifetime is not at any big risk, should I be worried? But how to ensure that it is indeed safe until I'm alive? What if it is not? What if the probability of something conclusive happening next year is not 0? What if something pathbreaking happens in research and we find ways to keep ourselves  alive for longer periods and escape natural death - and then be stuck with an earth that we screwed up thinking we'd die before it gets too bad? And what about my family? I don't want them, at least 1-2 generations after mine, to suffer after I die. The generations beyond are too far to worry about.

I think the risk that something might happen in the period of our concern - that's what makes us want to play safer than we'd otherwise do. But since this risk is not really proven and established, it's not that big a worry for most common people. Coz human behavior, as it seems to me right now, is not designed to make one really act on risks that won't materialize in his/her lifetime. Global warming is still a topic of scientific curiosity, and political and business interests. And for common people, it is entertainment and gossip, although while talking about it, they pretend to be seriously worried about something, which they themselves are not sure of. Until someone proves that global warming will kill us soon, adoption of counter measures, like moving away from oil, will still be driven by factors like convenience and style for the rich, affordability for the middle class, commercial viability for the businessmen, entertainment for passionate scientists, career for other scientists, and 'WTF?' for the poor.

This aspect of natural human behavior is understandable, given the kind of selfish instincts built into us by design to secure our individual existence and the all pervading fear of death. I don't know how those jihadis' minds are manipulated to want to die happlily for an outcome that they'll never see. Possibly it needs one to have a strong belief in life after death or reincarnation, and then some random chain of reasoning to guarantee incomparable luxury in that other life somehow linked to the cause they're dying for.

No wonder ban of pornographic movies, corruption, traffic, prices, jobs - these are more important for common people, than issues like global warming. But that is expected and justified coz to ensure a better future and design policies accordingly is the job of the leaders, theoretically. And in democracies, which most countries are today, common people 'elect' the right leaders to do this job by evaluating their relevant capabilities thoroughly, theoretically. Even in countries with other forms of governments, leaders are expected to have that kind of capabilities and wisdom, theoretically. But in reality, leaders are also human (and animal) and are driven by greed and selfish motives. And they are intelligent. If all were to die, the rich and powerful would die last. Well, I know there'll be exceptions, but let's talk majority.

So common people can only benefit from long term transformations pushed by people who are thinking right, and are also able to establish a reasonably strong and near term material benefit of working towards change - a business model - which in the current scenario won't emerge until there is mass adoption of the idea, which means the rich and middle class have to pick it up for whatever reasons. And as noted earlier, the factors driving them would be convenience and style for the rich and affordability for the middle class. Coz the former would help create the brand and social acceptability, while the latter would make it viable and help generate the desired impact.

Do post your views on it.

Thoughts from the sky

Another article coming from an airplane! I have a solid hour and a half to write some shit. It's funny how the word 'shit' is used in general these days for anything at all. Anyway, it's not much use getting senti over things like that. Language is constantly evolving and we humans should be constantly adapting, as we probably can't out-evolve our own creations.

Oops, some turbulence... All's shaking... This is a small aircraft - ATR - Jet Airways flight between Hyderabad and Pune... Shaking scarily now. Just now felt like a free fall for a while, like in a giant wheel while coming down. Am sitting right adjacent to the engine and the fan is making a lot of noise... It was loudest when the plane was taking off, almost hurting the ears. I guess am now flying between clouds, coz the visibility is extremely poor. Must tell you it's 10.09 pm at night - so indeed dark. But with these clouds I now can't even see the grids and lines of lights on the ground. Don't think this small toy-like plane is flying too high.

Since I joined Wipro about a year back, I have been traveling very frequently for official purposes. And all that by air. When I was a kid, flying in a real aeroplane was inconceivable for me. I used to think that seeing one noisily fly high up in the sky was all I could afford in life. I grew up, world changed and air travel became both affordable and normal. I flew for the first time in 2004, when I was 22. Am sure the younger generations fly much earlier than that age. It's just like how the age-of-losing-virginity kind of statistics have been falling over generations. Anyway, the first time is always special, in whatever age you do it. And after many times, you don't even regret the years lost in being-eligible-but-not-doing-it state.

Among a few things that I think am losing time on is traveling the world - all kinds of places (not the obviously risky ones), all over the world. Almost half my reasonably-energetic-for-lot-of-travel life is over, and I've seen only 3 countries - India, Maldives and the US. And even in these 3 countries, just a few parts - though a lot more in India as most of my life has been spent in India... and just a few months in the US, spent mostly in hotel rooms and offices. The latter tells me it's no fun traveling for work. I went to Maldives as a tourist, and it was awesome 5-nights-6-days. Therefore, I want to travel the world as a tourist. But where's the money for that?

I've started reading the book 'The Great Divide' by Joseph Stieglitz. It's a collection of his articles in the recent times and is focussed on the theme of rising inequality of wealth in the US, and how the top 1% own the most of it, with their share increasing in the past few years due to fucked up government policies designed to favor the rich. His earlier book - 'The price of inequality', also dealt with the same topic. I read in some article I came across on facebook today that if Bill Gates decides today to exhaust all his current wealth in the next 30 years, he has to spend a whopping $6mn every day, on an average. While I don't need to explicitly say that's a crazy amount of money he has, I feel it is very unfair that there's this great divide. I will never make that kind of money, probably. It's both sad and amusing to realize the fact that with Bill Gates's average 1 day spend that exhausts his wealth in 30 years, my wife and I can travel all the places in the world we want to and also live happily ever after. Funnier is this - I just made a rough calculation: if Bill Gates keeps all his money in my savings account in SBI just for 1 day and takes it back, at 3% per ammum interest rate, I would roughly make the same amount of money from the interest for the day that he needs to spend every day for the next 30 years to exhaust his wealth, and that I need so as to travel the world with my wife and spend the rest of our life happily ever after. In fact, if Bill Gates keeps all his money in SBI today, he can earn $6mn dollar interest every day which he can spend or do whatever he wants and his deposit will stay as it is forever, unless he spends more than the permissible average on an average, which is insanely high anyway. So, if he keeps his money in a savings account in India, Bill Gates can never exhaust his wealth by spending like normal rich people. He can only give it away. But the idiot will keep it in some American bank, which pays no/low interest. I hope he reads my blog and makes some wise decisions.

Flight has landed safely! Bye for now.

Hello ISRAEL!!!

Something very strange happened yesterday - My blog got 2714 visits from Israel. Check out the table above and you'll see why that's strange. Also note that there hasn't been a single visit from Israel in the past one month before yesterday. The next highest number of visits yesterday was from Russia - 45. I've been getting visits from Russia in the past few days, and until I saw the Israel visits the Russian traffic was surprising to me. And equally surprising now, in comparison, is the low number from India, which I considered normal and significant earlier - given my blog's lack of popularity and regularity - until Israel messed it up. Now everything else seems terribly low. Or there's some serious bug in google's traffic monitoring.

I generally post links to my latest blog-posts on facebook, so that my friends can read them. I do not have a single friend in Israel and Russia. More than 90% of my friends are in India and the US. Other countries may reach my posts through lucky google searches or extremely lucky forwards from common friends or friends of friends or by some such chain. But in no way should these lucky coincidences lead to more readership than from India. Or can they?

Perhaps... if whatever shit I write appeals more to the Israelis and Russians! If that really is the case, I must say I  have finally found my true audience. But they are popping up more like aberrations, than real fans. Come on guys, I need some loyalty from you. So keep reading more of my shit and show me you are my loyal readers. Otherwise, sadly, SochVichaar will remember you like a one-night stand... I hope it's not... :P

At least to some extent, we can figure that out... Readers from Israel and Russia - can you please comment on this post and let me know you're not a bug! At least leave some sign to show me you are real... Look towards right and you'll find my email address as well.

Chalo phir... bye bye... see you...

Should we read books?

Is too much reading really a good habit or plain waste of time?

The world is full of people who will tell you what you should do and what you should not do including those who write all that stuff in books. And somehow there is so much sanctity assigned to the printed word, that we fail to see that it's written by a human who may just be bull-shitting to make money.

Let's ask some basic questions. What could be the possible reasons why reading may be a good thing to do:

1. It helps you learn things about life - I think a better and faster way is to live life better. However, because of human limitations and those of resources & logistics, there is only so much that is possible to experience first hand. So books are supposed to fill that gap and give you perspective about things you've not experienced. Makes sense, but with advances in technology over the past 100 years, books have become too slow a medium to fill gaps. We have other faster ways, that rock, at least superficially. And even if books are still the chosen medium, the fundamentally flawed assumption in this argument is that people read stuff that they do not get to experience. I think that's not generally true. Most people enjoy reading fiction or stuff about others that they can themselves relate to, at some level (say a similar feeling, situation, experience, etc.). They feel some sort of external acceptance or confirmation of being normal in the process and also feel good about whatever they are. And to ensure this feel-good outcome, people are very careful at hand-picking what they read.
2. Reading for pleasure - Well, everyone has a right to choose his/her ways of giving oneself pleasure. So this motive can't be questioned, as long as it is harmless for anybody else. And as mentioned in pt-1, most reading is for pleasure and self-gratification, including feeling normal in this screwed up world.
3. Reading for knowledge - I can't question this motive as well, since seekers of knowledge deserve their freedom to choose where they get it from. And I think there's an inherent assumption that they are wise and mature enough to choose their source based on what they seek. However wisdom and maturity are vague stuff and can't be defined, nor trusted. Anyway, by whatever means, it's important to be selective and smart here so that one does not waste a lot of time reading garbage. And the reason this is important is related to the reason we seek knowledge, rather the reason we should seek knowledge - to make sense of the world we live in. This knowledge is different from the kind referred to in pt-1, which was more related to human experiences. The knowledge am talking about here is factual information about the earth and the universe - whatever leads to the ultimate truth.

I think pt-1 basically means the same as pt-2 - reading for pleasure... and modes of entertainment should be rated based on the pleasure they provide, not by the pace at which they transmit information, and books do pretty well as entertainers for readers of a certain type.

Books, or rather written content, in various forms, have been the prime means of preserving and communicating knowledge for ages. The only other means I can think of are pictures and word-of-mouth. With advances in technology, we have other ways and means of transmitting information, which are faster and more convenient than books, including books on kindle. But at the same time, our minds have a minimum comfortable rate of processing new information, and it needs time also to evaluate and form a point of view. With books, we have a control over that. Books also have more explicitness in the content, so it is less likely that we'd miss important details which we might while watching a video. And physical books can be touched, felt, seen, stored and carried anywhere. It feels like real knowledge in hand.

All in all, although I started writing this article with the opposite view in mind, I now feel books are indeed a powerful medium for acquiring knowledge. And for pleasure, it varies from person-to-person as to which ones, if any at all, are more entertaining.

lots of shit

Just how crazy and sick jobs have become these days can be imagined by considering the fact that in the evenings in India, i.e., from the time America shits to the time America goes to Lunch, there are thousands and thousands of people in these two countries just on conference calls. And often for many in America there is no shitting and no lunch coz of other more urgent things lying in those conference calls and and emails. But beyond a point, shit waits for nobody... and thankfully, phones come with mute buttons. Even while they are not muted, it's shit all over these conference calls. There are different kinds of shit. Drink Red Bull and attend a conference call, and blurt out tons of bull-shit. And follow every call with lengthy unintelligible horse-shit in emails without giving a rat's ass about anybody or anything. And then, open a new can of Red Bull, and proudly bull-shit yourself by saying - "This part of my life is called - Leadership".

And leading who?

Well, the Red Bull part is true only for those in America. Coz of two reasons - First, we in India don't drink so much Red Bull. It's still very expensive for us. We drink Tea from the canteen, or better still, free coffee from the coffee machine at the corner! And second, we are not leaders anyway. Leaders are all in America. The IP for all bull-shit lies there. And in India, we have engineers who write code to ensure the bull keeps on shitting, a bunch of old guys who approve their leaves, and MBAs who, while waiting for their moment to become leaders, decorate imported bull-shit with cherries, whipped cream, client name and love you message, and export it back. The 3rd category is the most stupid and clueless one, and I have belonged to it for quite some time now. I can call myself anything ranging from leader to consultant to manager to architect... but deep down, even god is confused how I am any of that. But given the closest to bull-shit nature of my job, my kind are seen as future leaders by the current leaders in America. And god shouldn't have any problem with that.

There has always been a funda that you should get out of large companies and work for start-ups, if you want to come out of all the bull-shit. Not a lot but on a few occasions I got a chance to interact with these so called entrepreneurs - the guys who found and run these start-ups. I felt these guys talk talk and talk. An extremely self-obsessed breed, and each one a fan of Steve Jobs. And they offer people difficult lives for same or low salaries - sometimes high if there's good funding somehow - in the name of challenges and learning. Here's something a startup in Bangalore is offering, copied from an email I got on IIML alumni group advertising their job... first a bit about what they think they do...

At <company name>, we are building the next­generation ­ competitive intelligence­ platform to deliver business insights through extensive data mining and analytics. Our clients include some of the biggest names in the world of Angel investments and Venture Capitalism. We are a small, tightly knit team, growing very quickly and looking to add quite a few high performers over the next few months.

What we have to offer:

• Long hours, Lots of learning
• Fabulous opportunity to network with VCs, PEs, IBs, incubators and CorpDevs
• Extremely flat hierarchy, No bureaucracy
• Meritocracy ­driven, candid culture
• Very high visibility regarding which startups and markets are exciting globally
• Like­minded, intellectually ­curious colleagues from IITs/NITs/IIMs and BITS

What we DO NOT offer:

• CTC to die for
• Frills such as free food and cab
• Swanky office (though it'll be cozy)

Sounds like a job that can screw your life. But there are people who fall for this shit. I sometimes do too. And there are those - very few indeed - who genuinely enjoy it. Most take these up to get higher designations sooner and then switch to bigger companies at higher levels and better salaries. Sounds like one needs to be too lucky and smart to manage all these eventually... it's like somehow getting an opportunity to dance behind the hero in a bollywood dance number and dancing very well - the best you can - hoping some day someone notices and gets you bigger opportunities - like a dance where you lead - then an item number for you like dard-e-disco - then a lead role in a movie... if learning to dance better in the process, even if nothing else works out - not even money, is a motivator, then you can go a long way... at least have a career dancing behind until you're too old to shake whatever you're asked to shake.

I also wonder whether these entrepreneurs are happy doing all the bull-shitting hoping to change the world. I mean, if they say they are happy, they may still be bull-shitting. Some bull-shitters genuinely believe their bull-shit although it may not be true. They are people living in illusions. But possibly we all live in illusions of some sort. It's just the illusion that carries us away that matters. Mine seems a little messed up right now, as you must have guessed.

Resale Home Buying - A few Tips

Although I am not a very real-estate savvy person, but I did get some hang of it in the whole process of buying a flat in Pune, and a very long process it indeed was. It was property resale, and from finalizing the property to the final registration, it took about 3 months. Here are some of the key learnings in the whole process, including property search:

• Property search is a tedious task and requires lot of time and patience. The guiding principle is to not compromise on a few key things you want from your home, and be sure of that. Eventually you'll find what you are looking for. (That's what my wife says, and I trust that, as search was mainly her department :P ... I reviewed once we had a shortlist, then we both reviewed many times and we mutually decided).
• If you care about vastu, hire a good vastu consultant whom you can trust and who is not very expensive. A good knowledgeable pandit, for example. Professional consultants are very expensive...
• Don't shy away from brokers, but beware. Brokers control access to a lot of the inventory out there. And you can't do away with them. Focus on the larger battle and don't worry too much about the brokerage expense. It is better to be clear and upfront on it, though. Make sure the broker agrees to the 1% norm even before he/she takes you to show any flat. And make sure the broker looks confident enough to facilitate the whole transaction, once you finalize your target.
• Ask and agree on all other expenses during the transaction and who bears what. I've had the following
• Society NOC charges - borne 50-50 by buyer and seller
• Other charges on paper-work by Society Office - buyer
• Lawyer fees - buyer
• Electricity Bill name change - buyer
• Property Tax name change - buyer
• Stamp Duty & Registration charges - buyer
• Everything else, and I know I'm missing many - buyer :-)
• If it's the first time you are buying a resale home, or any resale real-estate for that matter, better do engage a broker to handle the entire transaction and related formalities. While the agreements can be in English, a lot of documentation in Maharashtra, especially the Index-2 and stuff like that in the registrar office are in Marathi and if you don't get it, you better have someone handle it for you. Make sure the guy is well-versed with the entire process, and also has connections in banks to help you with your loan application.
• Banks need to review a lot of documents for the property to approve the loan. So it is wise to get a list of the required documents from the bank while you are searching properties. And when you are agreeing to buy the property, do check with the seller on the availability of all the documents you need, as per the list.
• Brokers need to be pushed and questioned. It is true you are paying the guy and he needs to do his job. But the brokers have a habit of overcommitting with confidence like you see nowhere else, and forgetting it altogether. Brokers also tend to get unreachable at times when you need them the most. They are frustrating, they are terrible and they don't care. And you have to pay them. So, although it's some sort of a paradox, don't trust them completely, nor rely on them. Figure out what's needed and be on top of everything.
• Keep xerox copies of every damn paper that you come across or create in the process. You will end up with a huge bunch of paper, but keep that safe.
• Lastly, and most sellers don't know this, and most brokers don't tell this during initial agreement between buyer and seller - 1% of the whole deal value (excluding stamp duty & registration fees), i.e., the cash which the seller gets, has to be paid to the mighty Government of India as TDS. This payment has to be done by the buyer and he/she has to deduct the amount from the total cash he/she pays to the seller. The payment can be done from NSDL website. Read the FAQs here. Quite a few important things to note here:
• This applies for properties with value greater than 50 Lacs INR
• The buyer is responsible for making the payment
• The buyer is responsible for downloading the form 16B and handing it over to the seller
• The buyer has to deduct the 1% TDS value and pay only 99% to the seller
• The seller can use the form 16B to claim tax exemptions
• This is a legal / statutory / whatever requirement, and not doing it can get you into trouble
• It is better to bring it up initially, i.e., before agreeing to buy the property, to make sure the seller accounted for it when quoting the price
• It's a recent rule and may not apply a few years later... so check for similar things that apply in your times... this is for readers of this blog a few years later :-)
• And do keep this in mind - you will definitely end up spending more money than you thought or budgeted for... so keep a few lacs handy, over and above whatever all likely costs add up to, while agreeing for the transaction.

All the best!

Ishita Bhalla ki kathaayein

There was a dog. Its name was Bosco. It used to run here and there after every car on the road. Then one day it found a car it liked on CarTrade.com. Bosco wanted to buy it, but it needed permission and money from its owner - Ishita Bhalla, wife of Raman Bhalla. Bosco never liked this concept of being owned by a human, and wanted to start a movement by all dogs and bitches to demand equality with human kind. But all other dogs were too loyal to their owners to support Bosco. Not that Bosco was not loyal, and not that Ishita tortured Bosco or anything. Just that Bosco was too much of an intellectual to accept being owned by someone. Anyway, Bosco went home to talk to Ishita and also grab a meal.

Ishita and Raman had been married for quite some time. They had 2 kids - Ruhi and Adi - from Raman's first marriage. Ishita loved Ruhi and Adi like her own kids. She loved Bosco also as her own kid. Bosco, Ruhi and Adi called her Ishi-ma. They all lived in Delhi, near the giant Hanuman statue.

Bosco reached home and went running to Ishi-ma with Samsung Galaxy Tab hanging by his neck. He wagged his tail and shook his head so that Ishi-ma noticed the shaking tablet. She did. She quickly unlocked the tablet and saw the open window, which showed the car on CarTrade.com that Bosco wanted her to buy for him. She bought it. The car was delivered the next day. Bosco picked up his gal friend and drove around in the car in Delhi.


Bosco wanted to marry his gal friend and settle down. He drove to India gate, stopped the car and proposed to his gal friend. She said yes. But had only one condition - that after marriage she and Bosco live with Ishi-ma and Bhalla parivaar only. Bosco couldn't ask for more. They didn't kiss, they subconsciously decided to save it for long after marriage, coz in Bhalla parivar, even making out after marriage somehow doesn't happen very naturally, spontaneously, regularly, frequently and soon. But who wants all that!

Everybody loves Ishita. Ishita loves everybody. Ishita is the best. She is mother India. She is Ishi-ma.

Entrepreneurship | Technology | Innovation | Collaboration

So many people are starting companies these days that I am beginning to feel some sort of global peer pressure about starting up. May be there is too much money floating around through a bunch of crazy billionaires that's fueling these start-ups, and may be this is the right time to get a share of that excess money in the world, and thereby make some fortune by pretending to be building some next-gen super-shit. But still I am not able to clearly figure out (a) whether I should do it, and (b) whether I can do it, and (c) whether it is really what it looks like.

The 3 most abused words of this generation are - Entrepreneurship, Technology and Innovation. This is how they are defined these days:

• Entrepreneurship: Doing any shit that is not a salaried job
• Technology: Anything that has anything to do with smart phones and similar devices
• Innovation: There is so much of it that some people literally innovate every second in whatever crap they do. Perhaps there should be an internationally certified authority appointed by the American President to qualify an activity as innovation. (You cannot trust any other heads of states or organizations you see. The American President is sent by God. Also I cannot mock any Indian leader here, coz in many ways they are Gods themselves, and can torture me if I angry them :P.) In fact the sales and presales teams of most Indian IT services companies have ready-made powerpoint slides on how innovation comes naturally to them and is ingrained in every little thing they do. Doing things without knowing much of what and why they are doing also requires innovation built into each individual in these industries! There are also ideas thrown around on how they generate innovative ideas in large volumes like little products in factories - where the product is in demand and the factory is running.

I hear a lot of these so called technology/eCommerse startups are making huge losses by selling stuff very cheap. They run and survive and compete on funding, so I hear. Therefore, it makes a great sense for me to be diverting all my consumption to be sourced from these, so that I decrease my own spending, by playing a part in increasing their losses and pulling a share of all that money which is getting invested.

This thought often leads me to the conclusion that one is better off as a consumer than someone running a company that all want to consume from. And the present times seem great for a middle-class consumer in India. But then, it doesn't necessarily have to be an either-or situation - i.e., one can be a voracious consumer, and at the same time run a company that everyone wants to consume from. But this makes sense only if the guy is making the kind of money that makes it worth all the effort and also enough to consume like crazy, in spite of the losses the company is making. Perhaps he/she does. I know a lot of people would argue that such things are not always done for money and there are other kinds of achievements - intellectual and other blah - that may be more motivating than the money that may or may not be made. And that the stuff starting-up teaches you is beyond what anything else can ever teach. And I agree with all that. But it still doesn't totally help me make a choice.

On another note - a question - is this life meant for going on learning things? I often hear people say - I hate this job coz I am not learning anything - I am okay with any job as long as I am learning - I want to learn - etc. etc. I think they lie, coz there is always something you will learn. The issue is whether you want to learn it or not. And honestly, I don't think we all want to keep learning all our lives. Too much learning either frustrates or bores or intimidates most people in jobs, and they start looking out for job change or may even quit without one. Learning is a necessity to survive in this ever-changing world, rather than a choice. And we cannot take it beyond a limit. We all have areas where we want to learn more, and areas where we don't enjoy learning anything at all. We lie either to motivate ourselves or to fake looking motivated. What do you think?

Of course, there are exceptions coz the world is full of them. My point of view may be biased by who I am and may apply only to people like me - that's how all points of view are, and are therefore not correct representations of reality. And so, share your views and let the reality be built through collaboration (another highly abused word) :). But then, collaboration here is limited to the number and kind of people who read this post! So, reality, as stated, will always be skewed. Share your thoughts, in any case...