A few hours without my smart phone!

I forgot to carry along my mobile phone today to office. The last time this happened was in 2011. And on both occasions, nothing much was missed on the mobile phone when I came back to it. The difficulty for the most part was psychological. However, a lot has changed in these 6 years. And this time, I felt my life depended more on my phone than it did in 2011. How? -

1. I was not able to tell (text) my wife that I reached office. Nor was I able to be in touch with her.
2. I was not able to view my official email on-the-go, which created uneasiness and stress in my mind.
3. I was not able to carry out any digital transactions of small value that I usually did through my mobile wallet - thanks to demonetization, I now use digital means even to pay extremely small amounts, wherever possible. And therefore I keep very little cash. So I didn't have breakfast - the banana I had at home was sufficient, I told myself - and just had tea by giving away 10 rupees. Well, another reason I skipped breakfast was to not lose any more time and to reach my desk and get connected ASAP. But there were more challenges...
4. This one has more to do with the crappy way my company's apps work and my bad day - I reached office and connected to the LAN, but couldn't open Outlook or Skype. And for any internal site of the company, including email, to be accessed through the browser, these days every time you have to enter a One-Time-Password which is sent on your mobile number registered with the company. So.... I was totally cut off from connecting with anything inside the company, despite being inside the office, despite using the company laptop and being logged in using my corporate ID. To be fair, this OTP thing wasn't supposed to be every time earlier but just for the first time and the system remembered thereafter... but some fuck-up in the network has led to the system needing it every time now. I took my laptop to the tech-support guys in the office, and they helped me get the OTP through a voice message on a landline phone at office - I was not aware of this option before, and I guess it's rarely used. (They couldn't fix the Outlook and Skype problems though. Repairing MS Office didn't help. I just lost 2 hours staring at the monitor.)
5. The sub-conscious scrolling of news and facebook apps looking at random things that never register in the mind at all... I missed this only a little bit, coz the mind was totally occupied and stressed by the stuff above. The phone I have now is much more smart than the one in 2011, but it seems most of the smartness of phones generally gets utilized in feeding us junk information better or helping us buy more easily.
6. The near-complete digitization of my job, and even our lives to a large extent, resulted in me feeling totally useless and meaningless when not connected and online. I could usually sit alone all day in a room and work while mentally being part of various situations involving lot of individuals - who are all just IDs, names and voices in a way, and so am I in that model - when am connected and constantly exchanging information through various digital means; but when all connections were lost today, it was just me in the room, and I was alone, and the comfortable illusion of being part of the various herds was gone. I was really alone.

Common with 2011

1. Not that I get a lot of calls, but the fact that I could miss some was creating stress in my mind. Thankfully most calls (even 1-1) in my company are over Skype (internet), and so I was less likely to get any official call on the phone, unless of course I couldn't be reached online - which turned out to be the case today. But when I came back home today and checked my phone, there was not a single missed call. Nor was there any in 2011.
2. While the phone was away, I was reminded of all the calls I needed to make, and everything seemed like long overdue, that had to be done without losing more time.
3. I didn't miss social media at all.
4. Not being accessible to anyone meant nobody could contact me even in an emergency. While this level of being inaccessible was more than normal 10-15 years back, it was screwing with my mind now, making me quite uncomfortable. This was normal life before we had mobile phones, but clearly my habits have changed, and so has my mind and its definition of normal.

As I realized the inseparability of phones in our lives, for a few brief moments thoughts about the future of these gadgets crossed my mind. Perhaps chips embedded inside and connected directly to brains would be very convenient - you won't forget, your hands will be free, and data will flow more freely. But it may lead to such seamless shit that your mind may be full of junk in no time - not that it isn't now, and we are mostly adopting it by making that choice through exposing ourselves to all such media and letting them drain our mental resources. But the scarier consequence would be the potential differences in capabilities between humans based on technology that they can afford, and thereby have many more ways of screwing each other. May be it is happening already, while you and I are busy entertaining ourselves with all this junk! And getting increasingly dependent on it!

superstition, religion, agnosticism

We're in 2017! The digits of the number add up to 10. When this happens - 10 or a multiple of 10 - I consider it lucky. I don't have a reason for that, besides plain superstition I picked up and practiced as a kid, and want to do now out of vestiges of the habit still remaining, and me carrying it further just for the heck of it. The phenomenon also happened way too often for me to not give any importance to. Here are a few year-numbers and roll-numbers which followed the pattern and strengthened my belief over the years:

Year Numbers:

• Year of Birth: 1982 (sum of digits: 20)
• Year of passing out of school: 2000 (number itself is a multiple of 10)
• Year of joining MBA: 2008 (sum of digits: 10)
• Year of passing out of MBA: 2010 (number itself is a multiple of 10)

Roll Numbers:

• 10th Board Exam: 1117992 (sum of digits: 30)
• 12th Board Exam: 1215362 (sum of digits: 20)
• NTSE: 823205 (sum of digits: 20)
• BTech: 00004006 (sum of digits: 10)
• MBA: 24116 (24+116=140, well that's bit of a workaround!)

There must be a few more which I can't recall right now. Perhaps having sets like this with specific properties is common for all people, but I wouldn't worry about that. Like religion, this is something to hold on to when it is convenient.

I was extremely superstitious as a kid. I cooked up long prayers with certain requests repeated specific number of times, like asking to be 1st in the next exam, and then saying those a few extra times so that God could never blame me of falling short. I had a list of shlokas I narrated every morning in my mind standing in front of God's photo before I started for school, with a mandatory orange Hanuman ji ka teeka on my forehead. I learnt those shlokas at Bal Vikas - a center run by bhakts of Puttaparti Sai Baba. They liked all Hindu Gods and not just their Baba.

Traces of agnosticism in me had started emerging then itself, but I often suppressed it as coming first in class was too important for me, and anything that could jeopardize my track record of coming first every year was not worth the risk. This included doubting God, talking to gals, having a crush, talking dirty stuff, etc. But still I once dared to write a letter to Puttaparti Sai Baba questioning him. (All kids at Bal Vikas were given an opportunity to send a letter to Him with someone who was traveling to Puttaparti). I wrote to him point blank that I didn't believe in him, and asked him to do something so that I could believe in his Godly stature. I was told by the Bal Vikas instructors that if the Baba liked someone, he'd even reply to that kid's letter. I never got any reply. I can't tell whether my letter reached him or whether he read it. I got disappointed. But still there were other Gods I could continue with for some more time - they didn't accept letters, so imagination worked and belief could be chosen as long as my mind allowed me.

I used to stare at Gods' pics sometimes and imagine their facial expressions turning from serious to smiling, and believe it really happened coz God blessed me. During pujas which we did as a family on occasions like Ganesh Chaturthi or Saraswati Puja, when we all sat down in the puja room around God and threw flowers, or whatever my mother asked us to throw on God while she read out the mantras, occasionally if a flower bounced back or fell down from the God on to the floor, I gladly took that as a blessing from the God. I was definitely going to come first that year!

Coming first was so important to me that every year the night before the results day, I would hardly sleep and would instead keep praying all night. The trick never failed as long as I did it.

My prayers and everything I did to please God was only driven by my selfishness. Besides doing other necessary things, I didn't want to leave out the God part in ensuring I got what I wanted. Can't afford to make the boss angry. I guess that's the primary driver for most believers as well.

Things started turning in my mind after I completed my 10th standard. I started losing my hair, suddenly - so much that I started looking bald. It was too much for a 16 year old to bear, especially when he was least expecting it. It was unnatural for someone that young to start going bald, and it screwed with my mental state. I had phases of depression. I couldn't focus on studies. If I saw anyone laughing at a distance looking in my direction, I would imagine he was laughing at me for losing hair, and I'd get sad for hours after that. I didn't talk about it with anybody, as nobody seemed to understand what I was going through even when I tried. May be I was just stupid and hair or no hair made no difference in life, and it definitely didn't define who I was. But it took me some time and age to understand that.

Somewhere during this period, my religious beliefs started taking shape. I began to see the meaninglessness of all the God stuff around. Perhaps I also felt betrayed by God for making me go through the painful phase. I somehow cleared IIT JEE without studying as much as I could have if I were my normal self. My rank got screwed though, which I didn't mind. I convinced myself that I was now set for a life decent enough to build on and make big myself, and that I should not bother God with more requests from then on. I should let God focus on the more needy. I stopped asking for stuff when I prayed, and I prayed very little too.

I considered myself an atheist then, but upon further understanding the world we live in, I started turning agnostic, which I am even now. I don't really believe in God as defined by any of the existing religions, as they are too human-centered and unrealistic. However, the presence of a super power, of God, an ultimate creator, is a real possibility perhaps manifested in the extremely intricate yet organized and defined nature of things in the universe. All this could just be out of evolution over billions of years without any intelligent design - neither at the smallest scales, nor at the largest. All this could also have been created, and even designed to evolve, and if that is true, we may also be in a situation where we can never find out who or what created us unless the creator wants us to know. Deterministic framework may be discarded as it's too much detail for someone to bother defining, but there can always be a case made in support of it by saying we are incapable of thinking the way the mind of God works, coz we are only capable of thinking like humans. Even thinking like humans, one can consider the possibility that algorithms are laid out to decide outcomes of events, or some other mechanism for implementing determinism.

So, you see, whatever be our level of scientific achievement, we are still not in a position to tell what's the real deal. Believers only choose to believe. Atheists only contradict them by disproving the myths and then believing in phenomena with some scientific bases which are still not ultimate answers. But nobody really knows the complete story. Why is there something, rather than nothing? So being agnostic is a natural state for a questioning mind which goes by evidence, and never takes a side without 100% proof. I don't discard any possibility which we cannot prove false, and any proof qualifies as proof only if it has no fundamental assumption that cannot be established with 100% certainty. An open mind is the biggest asset of an Agnostic. The downside of such mindset is that such a person is always unsure and fidgety in taking a stand.

Efficiency in the real world is achieved through strong beliefs, gut-feel, focus and being sure. It needs some level of blocking the mind from wandering too much and from being too open or broad in perspective. This is contradictory to the usual leadership gyaan, but as history tells, nobody has really become successful by following gyaan. I believe agnosticism in every sphere of life is not very healthy for material success. But a true agnostic cannot help it. He has to approach material success in an unconventional way. He may choose success of a different kind in the process, or define success his own way. I am yet  to resolve these for myself.

Good Bye 2016

In all likelihood, this post is going to be my last in 2016. With only a day and a few hours left for 1st Jan, 2017 is pretty close. However, I am more worried about the 2nd of Jan which is the first working day of the new year, and which comes with loads of new work, especially in companies like mine which is an IT outsourcing provider and primarily caters to American and European clients who chill too much in this chilling period. Can't help the seasonality of this business. In any case, ever since I've started working, I've learnt that it's best to look at the present and live life one day at a time, as looking too far into an extrapolation of the present is often very stressful in professional context. And even in the most stressful of the days, living the present helps you get a relaxed sleep at night by letting you defocus from work and relax until the next day arrives, which if you fail to do would screw both your today and tomorrow.

I missed the target of completing 250 posts this year; this one's 242nd. Never mind, hope I stay alive to get there... and it's just a number anyway, significant only because we humans have agreed to use the decimal system of numbering. I don't remember having made any serious resolutions at the beginning of 2016. Or if I did, I wasn't serious enough about them so I could remember. But I am told it is very good to have goals in life - goals that totally drive one's thoughts, ideas and actions. Most people are only constantly searching for such goals all their lives. Perhaps it can be said that finding a goal for their life is the goal of most people. The rest are sure of what they want - a property which can also be a psychological aberration, given that it's only manifested in a few people. But such people change the world in bigger ways than normal people do. They are precious.

Even if one is unsure about goals of life, one can set smaller goals and strive to achieve them. It does require a resolve from a person to pursue goals just for the heck of it, or perhaps in search of some meaning of the time spent living. And little random things can often get together and lead to something big. Big enough to make everything look wise in hindsight.

Lemme set some goals for myself and see where I reach. Wish me luck.

No-Tax Economy

A very fundamental question has been lingering in my mind for quite some time now, especially after this demonetization move by the government and RBI - why should there be tax?

I am trying to put forth my point through this post, but please be aware that being technically accurate or complete in coverage and definitions is not the intent here, as I'm sure the relevance of my point is not lost because of that. Please bring forth if this post comes with any obvious or severe misunderstanding of our systems that would make my point meaningless.

The prime rationale for government pushing for a cashless economy is to ensure nobody escapes from paying taxes. All the so called black money became black coz the money went through a transaction that was entitled to certain tax which someone didn't pay, coz the transaction didn't have a record. This may be too simplistic a definition of black money, but let's say it covers some of it.

Technically, Tax is meant for all the government spending, including salaries of all government officials, spend on infrastructure development, all the welfare schemes and incentives, and maintenance of everything the government is responsible for. I am sure there are lots of other areas the money is spent, so let's just be aware of that and move on, without trying to define tax 100%. It is important to add, however, that one of the key goals of tax is income/wealth redistribution - which broadly means making rich less rich and poor less poor.

Now the fun begins. You have tax. And then you have ways to save tax. And the ways are supposed to help government acquire funds indirectly either through reserves of locked-in funds at individual levels or increased business growth at corporate levels and so on, which will lead to win-win for both parties - the government and the tax payer - in the long term. I don't exactly know the rationale behind offering such options to tax-payers, but I guess it must be to create an illusion of saving partially on what one is giving away and thereby to offer the prospects of additional well-being owing to one's extra application of wisdom in managing one's finances.

Now, the issue here is that people are smart. And those who see loopholes take advantage of them if they can manage to amass a little courage, and if the consequences are not that grave vis-a-vis the rewards. Why pay anything at all when you can not pay anything at all? - this question inevitably comes to everyone's mind when there is a way to escape paying taxes. A government would never like such people, and more importantly such practices. Given that people are what they are, one can only curb the practice - by plugging all the loopholes. Cashlessness is one such measure. But it doesn't guarantee that other creative practices won't emerge, coz still - people are what they are. In any case, especially in the Indian context at the moment, going cashless should be driven by convenience and not by lack of options. It's debatable whether convenience can bring a faster transition or brute force. My observation says the latter may be quick but short lived and temporary.

Doing away with the concept of Tax

Why have taxes at all? Suppose the total income of the economy for a year is x. And the government needs t amount to manage its expenses for the year. In the current model, we take away t from x so that x-t is what remains with all the working and tax-paying entities of the economy. Now imagine a model where the t is allocated by the central bank to the government. With the inflationary, money supply and demand-supply adjustments, the income of the economy will have to adjust to x-t. Or may be it won't, let's say it becomes y. The government spends like it does currently, may be budgeting for slightly more than t. This gap, called the fiscal deficit now, will have to be borrowed from the bank, and returned over time through the profits the government makes from the public sector undertakings, auctions of public property and natural resources, etc. The income redistribution part can be taken care of through direct cash disbursal, which comes from the t amount to be spent. I am sure there would be lot of econometrics involved in calibrating these parameters, including the money supply, to make it work efficiently. And I believe it is workable. It will definitely curb tax-evasion, as there is nothing to be evaded. In a way the government has already reserved its part and would be working with it for whatever it has to do. There still is scope for corruption at various levels, but that has to be modeled and dealt with as required. The needless hassle of creating and the resulting behavior of understanding complicated and funny income structures, benefits and investments would end and people will take what they make. And nobody would have any reason not to declare what they have. The entire money will circulate freely. Getting cashless will be convenient and will be embraced without a sales pitch.

The key challenge would be to transition to a new model like this. The world is so used to working with the tax model over centuries that anything else often seems inconceivable. However, I think there is scope for other models, much more simple and logical. The one I proposed has to be thoroughly modeled with all economic and financial considerations, and piloted very well so as to fine tune. And should definitely be rejected if it is not workable.

Does it have a chance? Please do let me know your views on this.

15-min post: working from home

It is 11.45 PM and I have to post this before 00.00 AM. This would perhaps qualify as my fastest post till date, made in exactly 15 minutes. I am still thinking what the next 14 minutes have to be about. For one, I don't want this post to be crap. I want to still do justice to this post with some genuine content, although it's only 13 mins left now. 12 now - 1 minute lost in typing random stuff and erasing it with backspace.

Working from home is becoming increasingly common in India too these days, particularly in the IT industry. My new job offers complete freedom to do so. For my easily distracted mind, a closed room at home is an ideal setting to concentrate, except for the sleep it induces at the same time, and with an option to crash, it requires tremendous will power to keep going on the table-chair. It's therefore easier to work from home when the work-load is very high and times are very stressful, as then the mind is totally occupied and in such a shitty state that sleep is the last thing crossing it.

8 more mins. In any case, for jobs that can afford, working from home is a really good option, if one can train himself to it. Besides obvious advantages like not having to drive to office and back in extreme traffic nowadays and not occupying office space while most of  the work is done buried in laptops and phones, it also gives an opportunity to an employee to plan his work better in the comfort of the surroundings of his choice, which he can even design the way that suits him (or her... masculine used just for simplicity), and all this can have a less stressful impact on the mind and also generates possibility of more productive employees, thereby offering better outcome for the company.

There are disadvantages of course of people free-riding and not really engaging well. So the companies have to rethink employee engagement and ways of working that suit work-from-home better, as that's the need of the hour.

It's 00.00 AM. I've to post this thing now.

Bass yoon hi...

Although I am tempted to write about demonetization, I will refrain from doing that. One - there is plenty of content and analyses already done on it, most of it claiming things without much of bases. And two - I am not much of a fan of this move, and don't feel the stated motives would be achieved by the move. I can't help being an agnostic in all aspects of life. So, I'll wait until the results start showing up. So far, it's not clear. And I don't want to express reservations as offending the easily offended supporters of Mr. Modi is not worth it at this point.

I am sitting right now in a lake-side restaurant in Kadagwaasla. I got a table right beside the lake, and I am sure it would be a great view in the day time. Right now, I can see the lights far away, and their reflection in the waters. On the other side of the resort, of which this restaurant is a part, my wife's office party is going on. I can hear loud music and cheers. Seems like quite an engaged workforce.

Of all the companies I've worked for, and I've worked for quite a number, the best parties were in Geometric, where I worked from 2004 to 2007, which I guess were the better times for the company. There used to be an annual bash, which was a terrific event with great food and unlimited booze, along with a pick and drop in company buses. The only better parties I had were the insti-parties at IIML, which were more fun and uninhibited, although with plastic disposable cups for booze and onion pakodas for snack, and for food you had to head to the mess. The music was loud and lights were dim, and after a few drinks, I danced like Hritik. And every party ended up with some misadventure by someone - makeouts, fights, etc. etc., and there'd be enough to gossip about until the next party.

It's getting pretty cold here, as I am sitting in the open. One more hour to go, I guess. I've had a cup of tea and cup of soup so far. Tea is drunk and soup is eaten - in linguistic terms. I ordered another soup now. Chalo then. See you later.

let's have panipuri

Trump got elected, Indian Government banned 1000 and 500 Rupee notes and the world that I am a part of became slightly more complex over night - the night of 8th November. But these are minor blips in the time-curve of the world. People move on, life goes on, stuff keeps happening, we live, we die.

I have had to cut down on my regular dose of panipuri since the cash crunch. It's brutal - my denying panipuri to myself. My love for panipuri started in the year 2000, when I moved to Mumbai for studies. Before that, i.e, during all my life before, which was in Bilaspur, I never liked the concept of the thing - it was called gupchup there. (I was more a chaat and samosa lover.) I did try a few times, but never liked it. But when I tasted the Mumbai version, I became a fan. During my 4 years at IIT Bombay, one of my favorite time-killers was to walk to the Main Gate, get on and cross the road outside, walk towards the Y-Point Gate, and eat a plate at every panipuri wala. There were various varieties, each good in its own way. There was a chaat shop right opposite Y-Point Gate that had a particularly exquisite variety and that used to be my last plate. After that I entered back into the campus from the Y-Point Gate and walked back to my hostel or any other of my time-killer hotspots. I did that every 1-2 days. As anyone can tell, this is not the kind of activity for which you can expect to get company very often. Jeetu, Ravi, Anshu - they came along at times. On most times, I went alone.

My love for panipuri continued even after I left Mumbai in 2004. It even grew - so much that I used to search for it and eat strange varieties in Chennai during my 6 months there. Then I moved to Pune, where it's different from the Mumbai versions, not as good even, but still one of the better versions in India. I have lived and traveled to a lot of places in India since then, across its length and breadth, and I make it a point to try panipuri or whatever it's called there. I still find the Mumbai version the best.

A lot of people passionately claim chaat and samosa are the best in their hometowns. I too do that. So lemme tell you Bilaspur has the best chaat and samosa. Period.

There have been lots of interesting experiences around having panipuri. Conversations with the guys making them turn quite interesting; quite similar to talking to cab drivers - you get a picture of what's going on and what really matters - and it sometimes shakes you up. Although I'm shy and not much of a chatter, I do try to gossip sometimes, starting with some funny comment, but only when I am the only one being served.

My love for the thing has intrigued many. My friend Manis often used to wonder how it is even possible someone like me exists. But in fact, a lot of guys are in awe of me as this is how they also want to be, but they are in some kind of a closet. And many ladies find this amusing too, and perhaps think the same as Manis. Some call it a girly trait, but I am convinced it is not from the fact that majority or all in the crowd eating with me on any occasion are usually guys. Girls probably eat in nicer hygienic places, and not so often. I prefer roadside. It tastes best. And every day... or so.

I would have written more, but I must go now - it's evening and I can stop no more. More on this some other time. I have to rush... Some decisions to be made - ragada or aalu? 'Medium' - of course. Kaanda along would be good. And masala-puri in the end, obviously!