On the geographic timeline, Earth was born 4.6 bya (billion years ago). Earth did not cool down and the first rock forms did not appear until 3.95 bya.  The first sign of life (single celled organisms, etc) up until 537 mya. The mighty dinosaurs not until 249 mya. They ruled and utterly dominated earth for about 160 my and suddenly inexplicably go extinct around 63 mya. The baap to the current humans the homo-sapiens came in at around 190,000 years ago. On a geographic time scale of 24 hours, the dinos ruled the earth for a fill 1 hour and we have been here only for the last 8 minutes. We are already talking about devastating dangers to our existence. (Hat-tip : NatGeo)

And I yet cannot understand for the love of it, that none of the texts of god even talk about a past filled with dinosaurs. The stories never even talk of mighty beasts and yet they seem to be a commandment of higher all knowing beings. Were the all knowing beings ignorant or just plain absent-minded and forgot to tell about the dinos. Anyways, the question will keep raging for a few more decades anyways. I for one have to seem to have found my own small cubic millimeter of peace. I for one have found my answer. An answer that just talks about the limits of human imagination, the power of social media and society, the complete power held by beliefs rather than of rationality.

This is something I am going to send out to my minions and their minions to work with one another. Tee hee!

• I prefer to work fast, minimize bullshit, get to the point.
• You will sometimes have bad news for me. I want it immediately. I can usually show you how to fix it. And I never blame the messenger.
• Bring pen and paper to every meeting with me. Pay attention to what I say; I’ll try to speak with care. If I frequently must repeat instructions, or remind you of something I’ve already told you, you will not work with me again.
• If I’ve scheduled a weekly meeting with you, don’t assume that this meeting is the only time to raise issues with me; Interrupt me for time critical issues.
• If you have a meeting with me at an assigned time, and I am in another meeting with my door closed, interrupt me. I stack meetings, and each meeting leads into the next.
• I like “micro-meetings”. Get in quick, bring only the necessary parties to the table, make a decision, get out. Five minutes or less. Make these effective by knowing what decision needs to be made before you start, and presenting the decision criteria ahead of time to all participants.
• Stand during micro-meetings.
• I don’t like email, particularly for discussing complex topics. If a decision needs to be made, do a micro-meeting. If a problem needs to be discussed, ask the person with the most depth to prepare something, an agenda, have a whiteboard, and work through it quickly.
• One exception to the above: I like “micro-updates”: Quick emails confirming time critical commitments and mutual understanding. These are especially useful after we hold a meeting and I give you a set of directives: I always like to hear our agreed-upon commitments echoed back to me. I may not respond, but I will read it. Keep these emails short: Spare me the greetings, thank yous, regards.
• Be consistent in your communication. Use words consistently. Use email headers consistently. Strive to make your work immediately comprehensible.
• If you disagree with me, voice your differences. I welcome and invite dissent. If this makes you uncomfortable, feel free to prepare your thoughts after the meeting and then later return to make your case.
• Ego-driven debates annoy me. Check your ego at the door: I’m only interested in reaching the best, most elegant solution —I don’t care if it’s your idea or mine.
• Don’t be afraid to ask questions if you’re not clear. I have more patience for explaining and clarifying my position before you start than I do patience for fixing a wasteful, incorrect approach after the fact.
• Don’t tell me something is in the process of being done without telling me when it will be done. I’m more interested in the time commitment than the fact that an effort exists.
• Always give me options, informed by an economic analysis where possible (if there are dollars involved, an analysis is mandatory), and then make your recommendation. Don’t tell me there’s a problem without offering a solution. Don’t offer me multiple solutions without giving me your best and final recommendation.
• If you must prepare reports for me, review spreadsheets I’ve created. Copy the style and format.
• Don’t send me long documents. I like precision and concision. Say it on one page (or less).

Pighlae neelam sa behtaa hua yeh sama

Neeli neeli si khaamoshiyaan

Na kahiin hai zameen

Na kahiin aasmaan

Sar saraati hui tehniyaan… pattiyaan

Keh rahi hai ki bas ek tum ho yahaan

Sirf main hoon

Meri saansen hai aur meri dhadkanen

Aisi gehraayiyaan

Aisi tanhaayiyaan

Aur main

Sirf main

Apne honae pae mujhko yakeen aa gaya

2 – After meeting Imran’s biological dad

Jab jab dard ka baadal chaaya

Jab hum ka saayaan lehraaya

Jab aansoon palkon tak aayaa

Jab yeh tanha dil ghabraaya

Humne dil ko yeh samjhaaya

Dil aakhir tu kyuun rota hai

Duniya mein yuun hi hota hai

Yeh jo gehren sannaatae hain

Waqt ne sab ko hi baantae hain

Thoda gham hai sabka kissa

Thodi dhoop hai sabka hissa

Aankh teri bekaar hi nam hai

Har pal ek nayaa mausam hai

Kyun tu aisae pal khota hai

Dil aakhir tu kyuun rota hai

3 – Bull run

Dilon mein tum apni betaabiyaan laekae chal rahe ho

toh zinda ho tum

Nazar mein khwaabon ke bijliyaan laekae chal rahe ho

toh zinda ho tum

Hawa kae jhonkon ke jaise aazaad rehnaa seekho

Tum ek dariyaa ke jaise lehron mein behna seekho

Har ek lamhe se tum milo kholae apni baahein

Har ek pal ek naya sama dekhe yeh nigaahen

Jo apni aankhon mein hairaaniyaan laekae chal rahe ho

toh zinda ho tum

Dilon mein tum apni betaabiyaan laekae chal rahe ho

toh zinda ho tum

By Javed Akhtar Saab

And just then I had my Eureka moment! How much as a society do we underrate consistency!!! I can only hark back to the roots in ‘slow and steady wins the race’ proverb, from that fable of the hare and the tortoise. Sadly, then and now the lesson has been lost on all of us – even the teachers that taught us I guess. I don’t think as young students we ever considered that the tortoise won the race because it had a steady pace towards reaching its destination; it was always the fact that the hare slept in the middle and that is why it lost the race. Had the loser hare not slept it would definitely have won the race. And this is precisely where the whole of our life got screwed up splendidly. The significance of the tortoise winning the race because of its slow and steady pace always lost out in the grand scheme of things.

It just doesn’t make sense – that such a significant lesson was never repeated over and over again to us during our years. The fact that we would be much better students, persons and even physical bodies because of this simple fact screws all of us even now. We could have been so much better had this been drilled into us more rigorously.

Our exams would not have consisted of having to study in the last one day prior to the exam. Bills paid in the last minute. Tax planning would not have consisted of losing almost all of the last month’s salary.

Warren Buffet isn’t him because he had one big hit all his life and then just slept through it. It was just a measly 20% year on year for the last few decades. Had this been the case of 1 hit wonders all this wealth would never have been made. The significance of compound interest is just lost. In fact, the point of regimen is about compound interest. The skills, work and all benefits are just amassed on top of the assets already made. Its about working through inch by inch.

This just means that to achieve all the goals that we ever wanted to achieve – it all boils down to a single mantra – Inch by Inch, Day by Day – that is all it takes – a simple disciplined regimen. And the biggest lesson of all it just works. The grand canyons or the valleys – never happened over our lifetime – so that lesson never existed in the first place. But the other lessons need not be lost on us – smoking and nicotine accumulating in lungs over the years – systematically – that’s how rust happens; systematically, slow and steady, precisely what we as humans with limited memory and power of recall should be very worried about.

My last 1 week of experimenting on my ‘Do nothing’ vacation has yielded significant results for me personally. That a simple regimen of working out daily, reading for an hour, having an hour of silence, indulging in conversations with all I hold dear – all this seem to make significant impact in the quality of my everyday life. Every day is a lesson in understanding the impact of Regimen.

Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hours really seems to be true.

Teenmaar opens with a very powerful and of course completely irrelevant premise – that it being the story of 2 senadhipatis and about ‘Art of War’. Positively flummoxed it was a very interesting start to an already known love story which was supposed to have zero talk about politics, battles or even arguments.

Generally remakes are very easy bets. All that the director has to do is understand the spirit of the movie. Understand what made it click with the audience and that’s it. The screenplay, the settings, dialogues are all tailor made and available as raw material for the new one. ‘Love Aaj Kal’ had a very simple premise – the way youth from 2 generations looked at love. They had 2 different and probably even valid view points – it was left to the audience – the director only had a story to narrate. And here sadly the director never ‘gets’ it.

Here it becomes a war of old vs new – how the new never appreciates the old. A long winding sermon of a movie showing everything the new does as childish or even immature. That a whole generation gets labelled as selfish and not without a vision or a heart.

Nevertheless, the moment the hero Pavan Kalyan started mouthing Italiano much to the immense pleasure of the heroine – all hell broke lose. If that was Italiano no doubt James Bond never needed them skills to seduce his women. At the top of his game (implying that Pavan Kalyan has already peaked) he was a romantic fast talking enigmatic young warrior, all his movies then were genuine runaway hits. But in this one – the Italian is crap (Im yet to hear a Italian accent that as indecipherable as his), the dialogues so pedestrian, the movie so twisted out of shape – its a shame. Only 2 songs were worth listening and neither of them had any meaningful lyrics to think back upon.

The older one is dressed in kurtas and jeans all the time – I am still having a hard time figuring which part of India he was from – for all I know this might be intentional to keep us guessing about the time period and place he was from. Telugu film directors were never very good at period movies anyways – a british autocrat who would appear in sunglasses in one movie and here the protagonist appears in jeans. Sometimes I wonder if the Indians think of developing countries as lagging the developed countries by 20 – 30 years – so its only a matter of time – we would reach them in couple of years time ‘anyways’.

It must be the pure Indian hypocrisy at play – that Indians have no problem working with or under Americans – they even make their fortunes there – but anytime an Indian decides to deride them in his own mother language – the movie ends up in loud cheers. And sadly that was a biggest saving grace for the film – the only decent bits of comedy.

And I understand its going to be a massive hit.

Another check on the Bucket List. A chance to kayak in the hinterlands on Hyderabad. In a lake in the arid land of Vikarabad – a huge surprise that – let alone finding a pond, there was a frigging lake in the middle of it. An enterprising gentleman, Ram Bhamidipati organized the Adventure sports meet for ‘Meetup.com’ers to row and kayak in the Nagasamudram Lake in Vikarabad.

It was an amazing trip. A small motley team of 13 started off to Vikarabad. We were hoping that we would have at least 6 kayaks to row around – Ram made it clear that there were only 2. We were disappointed but Ram clearly assured us if we could manage 15 minutes of rowing, it would be an achievement. And oh! and how wrong we proved him and ourselves. You see… kayaking is a physically extracting sport – seeing and doing are two very very different things. Sweaty bodies, bruised arms, aching legs, screaming muscles – lots of water around, its one of those few sports where quitting midway is equally tiring. As that old ancient mariner would say … water water all around but not a drop to drink.

Rowing a kayak inspite of lack of friction is no mean task. Pushing your own body through water is an apparent exercise in serendipitous path finding algorithm. The oars have to be held tight pushing against the water left, right and left in tandem with your rowmate and thats when the kayak gives in and starts ahead. And bull headed men can try push all they want, coax and scream at the kayak to go hence, but then if your physics are wrong the kayak is a merry go round. But then reconcile with the fact that your kayak is your worst physics teacher come alive and adhere to his command, and he would listen to yours.

Emotions can run high too. Screaming at the erring boatsmen to come back – them lost in their own world taking in the pleasure of the world it can quickly become a bit tiring for the onlookers goading them to come back – 2 kayaks are not enough for a 1st time experience.

Somewhere in all of this, I decided to help my own brother and his friend to row right. And how do you give face to face advice to the kids in the middle of the lake? Well obviously you swim to them and swim I did. But then the delicious irony of this sport is that coaches and students all need to put in the same effort to stay afloat – no discounts. So when I decided to stand straight look them eye to eye and give my 7 seconds of speech, obviously the lack of land under the feet did not give my chance for oration. All that I could realize was that I felt a few feet short, a shortcoming that never manifested in the off-water world – but here that came to show itself in simple brutality. And my obvious panic helped no one – the onlookers on the shore only watching me in amusement mistaking it for a new style of freestyle. My brother who was much more near and much closer and much aware of my abhorrence for any stunts understood as it was – a simple damn rescue. He jumped in to rescue forgetting the fact that he was not better swimmer equal at best. And so did jump his friend too. So there I was obviously sinking like a rock with hands, him reaching out to me only with a lack of skill to complete the rescue mission and the fact we were world class swimming pool swimmers only helped that much. Only later did he realize with his jacket that was virtually unsinkable. Inspite of my gurgling screams, one of my colleagues got the better of his senses decided to come to rescue. In the meantime, yours truly was able to touch land and swim a bit forth by the time which the colleague caught me and pulled me in. That was it. I was in. A huge hug later or more thankfully a lack of a punch and a slap later, all went fine. It was a stupid act that only got right in the end – to first swim and then panic incessantly and then to arrive at the conclusion that rescue would come but I might be unconscious at the max when pulled ashore. A hundred things could have gone wrong, only they didn’t. Thankful for that. Only the confidence the worst would not happen at all. Crazy yet true.

A brief collection of energies, thoughts and courage later all were back in the water – rowing and getting the muscles torn. Finally we did decide to return home. And then a huge set of memories. Pagadala, Saki, Keerthi and Venu, and that stranger from Wipro – thanks. I would not be here if it were not for you.

• Cost of meetup – 350/-
• Driving 200 kms in your car – 1000/-
• Cost of each kayak – 15000/-
• A small memento from the Siddhi School for Autistic Children – 100/-
• Blowing a kayak and getting in the water – 15 mins
• Rowing the kayak, swimming in the lake, getting almost killed and living to tell the tale over a bottle of beer – priceless

Links to the trip:

• The Instigator – Saikiran’s blog post.
• The photos – Picasa Album
• HAX Sports Meetup Link http://www.meetup.com/hydies/

The 1st trip into the lake

The obligatory wide screen shot

Brother's friend and him

The instigator, The organizer and the Sea Swimmer

Youtube circa 2010. The first ad of ’127 Hours’ rolled in onto the ‘YouTube’. It was about a friendly, crazy young man that would get trapped in the the rocks. That was it. That *was* the story. Interest spiked, of course this was one of those *inspiring* survivor stories. Wikipedia came to the rescue – telling all about the man Aron Ralston who would finally decide to  cut away his arm to escape alive from the Grand Canyon. That was it – that was all that there was to 127 Hours. Many things were not clear then though – the decision to cut away the arm – could he not have escaped any other way, without having to cut his arm away? Its not like it was amputated or was scraped away in an accident… he decide to cut away. And boy am I happy to be proved wrong… so very wrong.

Danny Boyle has a very quirky director. It was apparent from the beginning that the story by itself would be a boring watch. A single man trapped between a rock with no way to escape. How often does this happen in our Indian films, a push, a nudge, a punch and the rock is pulverized. But then Danny Boyle is not your average Indian director – how much we might misconstrue from his work in Slumdog. And what a face is Franco gifted with… my my my. The face that can emote almost everything – a tried sleepless neo generation hippie, seeking his next shot of adrenaline, eager to get his highs running away from his loneliness; a loneliness he himself creates by running away from all that he holds close to his heart… and  then turns more human like as the situation keeps changing from fun to incredulous to pain fear and to hopeless. Its amazing what that man’s face can emote.

Watching a single man for more than 60 minutes of a movie is no mean task. C’mon Franco is no Cupid, that everyone would be lost in his eyes swooning and lost for the complete hour. Danny of all understands this well. And inspite of having the camera place on top of the rock most of the time, the closeups are never too …. how would I put it Close?

The most important aspect of a movie is how the audience gets involved in the story. We go from being the jealous, nerdy nobodys in a high-school watching silently even with a bit of jealousy the hunk of the school getting all the fun, girls and the action. Slowly as we go through the motions, we see that Aron has his own quirks but he is still cool. And then as fate strikes we watch with a bit of amusement as we see him stuck in the rock – a minor accident. The small shards of bone and muscle stuck on the side of the wall though a bit unnerving are the only testimony to the unlucky accident. Its not like Aron is crying his heart out writing in pain. Its probably this absence of any emotional ode to the hand, Danny dehumanizes the hand and only makes it but inconsequential to his harrowing circumstances. It is infact reduced to being the main hindrance to Aron’s escape. The hand is only consequential – for all we could know it could have been a $200 MM byzantium that was stopping one to escape.  Its not only Aron thats surprised to think that he himself got himself in such an accident – the audience is also left surprised. The fact that Danny brings on the accident suddenly makes the event all the more surprising. And its only matter of time that hope turns anger at self virtually kicking oneself in the butt to dreams of being able to come out of it and finally the dreary realization that all is not so well. The killing realization that this is it.

For us movie watchers from Telugu and Tamil have always had their mind filled with scene where Kamal Hassan hacks away at his arm in ‘MahaNadi’ in the climax – a chilling climax. In that sense we have been desensitized to violence of arms, legs getting hacked away. But the scene where in a bout of sleepless hysteria, Aron stabs his own hand was a forebearing of the things to come. Not the speak of the fact that early on in the movie, the hand does a awful lot many things, taking in the beauty of the rock in, holding his hand when he has a accident. But nothing prepared us for the loud thwack of the bone, the crushing and the loud break of the bone at the end. Most particularly the arm got reduced to a cord that was stuck around him, a clearly non-humanlike appendage that was stopping Aron from his sure death, probably thats the moment Aron decided that the arm was all gone and he would have to let it go, if he did not go with it.

Its one of the most gruesome scenes but Danny and Franco pulled it off – we cheered his run to his freedom. He earned it but sacrificing his arm – a story of true grit, logic and the testimony that human race has got staying power, much better than any of the other species – and at the risk of annoying the DinoGods, much better than the dinosaurs.

Must be the coldest goodbye mail ever. Almost ‘talk-to-my-hand’ esque rebuttal. Bad open source contribution in spite of using the FOSS mantra for the few initial months – helped massively in the coverage against WebEx. I hope this FOSS misuse will stop.

Nevertheless, this is great news for the Indian product ecosystem. I hope the early employees too had some good exit in addition to the founders. Still remember their first appearance at Barcamp Hyderabad 1 in IIIT-H pitching their first ideas.

Congrats to all at DimDim.

–

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Fresher than ever.

Crunchy numbers

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 4,300 times in 2010. That’s about 10 full 747s.

In 2010, there were 2 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 377 posts.

The busiest day of the year was September 30th with 59 views. The most popular post that day was The Skipper – episodic short story.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were google.co.in, search.conduit.com, linkedin.com, mindwarrior.blogspot.com, and in.linkedin.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for waqt aane de bata denge, bingo ads, bingo advertisement, rang de basanti meaning, and valentine wallpaper.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

The Skipper – episodic short story February 2007
7 comments

bingo – best ads April 2007
18 comments

Sarfaroshi Ki Tamanna August 2006
51 comments

Rang De Basanti : Par Excellence January 2006
24 comments

Valentine Wallpaper/Collage. February 2006
2 comments

The constables came on their rounds and talked to the owner. We were pretty much done too. However then came the Rakshak vehicles and mercilessly start lathi-charging the silently eating customers. We managed to escape but by the time we came back to retrieve the vehicles, we were presented with a not so pleasant sight.

The ramshackle kitchen was a mess. The policemen managed to uprooting everything destroying a push cart on the side. The stove was broken. Men were absent. Women were cleaning up the mess. The story started to unfold… When the police were lathicharging the eating men, some of them mutinied and hit them back. This pissed off the police real bad and the scene turned pretty nasty pretty soon. Most of the things were destroyed and most of the men taken in the jeeps to the police station.

This begs some questions
- Why would a 11 o clock shutdown exist and still night shift employment permitted or atleast rules not made clear that the employees had to arrange their own food
- What was the need to lathicharge a peaceful silent group of people eating their late dinner?
- Why not simply ask them to leave? If a shop is serving food, why hit the customers?
- What was the rationale where the constable doesn’t put the word sternly to close the shop? No kickbacks are being hinted at here, but given the scenario, why not
- Why in the hell though that some other places its still open after 11. I personally know of atleast 2 other places that the business goes on till the wee hours in the morning

Or as I would ask … What breaks?