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This is a poem I wrote sometime back. I was inspired by the way Gulzar writes, and was trying his style. Ofcourse there is no comparison, but listen to it on its own merit :)

Vacuuming the house

Finally the weekend came when I thought I should get around vacuuming the house. Mine is a carpeted apartment. Grey colored... And you know what they say about grey right? That there are many shades of it. And every shade says something, shows something and hides something...

In fact, if you vacuum long enough, it will take you to forgotten stains and patches. Patches that you had at some time so painstakingly put into place. Just so that the carpet remains intact. Coz you see, replacing the carpet is a very difficult job, and usually it happens only when you move out of the apartment. Long after you are gone, and before the next incumbent steps in, the realtor takes care of that...

Back to the vacuuming. I began with my living room. This is the room I use the most, and naturally had a lot of dust around. As the vacuum moved around, sucking up the dust, the original color of carpet came out. And with it came a nice smell of the fragrance that I has sprayed on it long time back, but it had been suppressed by the dust that kept all the fragrance somewhere deep inside. And overtime I had pretty much forgotten about it too. within a few minutes, all the dust was gone and I had a neat smile on my face. As if I had regained my lost glory...

Excited now, I moved to my bedroom. I don't let many people in there, so its much more of a private place. The room itself is an absolute replica of what I am. Sort of untidy, but very functional. You will find anything you need on a daily basis. Not luxurious though; my bed is a very modest attempt at keeping me at 3 ft height from the ground, but there is a coffee machine, an over-the-bed table lamp, a study table, extension chord for power supply, wireless headphones, a small home exercise machine which can be tucked under the bed, full size mirror behind the door, etc etc. Basically everything to make you feel equipped.

I begin vacuuming there, and slowly slowly some stains begin to show up. These were not normal living room stains. They had some very special characteristics. Firstly, they were not normal dust colored. Some were slight transparent yellowish, some were sort of red, and some looked as if I had at some time tried very very hard to remove, but never succeeded, despite my sincerest efforts. Even the carpet showed signs of wearing off with my relentless rubbing, but the stain had stuck on... The dust had kinda hidden it from my daily notice. But now, here it was right there staring right back at me.

A little to the right of this stain was another thing. I didn't quite figure out what that was, but as the vacuum sucked away the covering on it, it too came out clear. It was a patch work. It had happened some time back when I had accidentally spilled coffee on it. And knowing that my mom would yell at me, I had tried beyond measure to remove that stain. But what a branded coffee that was! Not only the after taste remained on my taste buds for a while, but the stain it had caused never budged from its place.

And it was then that I decided to cut that piece of carpet off, and throw it away. Sad moment though, It was my bedroom's carpet! And I do like my bedroom! But be that as it may, I cut that piece off, and got another, rather unmatched piece of cloth to replace that. The carpet didn't quite look the same after that, but I guess it was worth it. I hated the patchwork. It looked ugly! it looked like some forced insertion of stuff that kinda didn't belong there. But as time passed, dust settled in, and gradually made the whole carpet look the same.

But that changed today. Vacuum cleaner made sure that all the stains and all the patchwork that had sort of faded away in my carpet, come back to life. And I was jolted back to the times when I had felt awful about putting those stains, and then tried to remove them from there.

And then I kinda thought, maybe it isn't the best thing to vacuum. Maybe I should have just let it be...

She

A naughty smile and pursed lips

in between the nibbles and the tiny sips

One white hair that clearly shows

A little out of shape, and this she knows

Forever wanting me to be there

and then plundering me with no stone to spare

Gifts costing her a fortune, or her priceless looks

or even when she is lost in between her books

Where ever I go where ever I roam

When I get back, she feels like home...

911 vs 100

Yes. I plan to compare the two numbers. There are many factors to look at, and I will try to sum them up as precisely as possible...

Ask any American, or watch enough Hollywood movies and you will see that 911 is something that Americans use very frequently, for things as small as sticking your hand to something very embarrassing (in American Pie) to something much bigger as in Die Hard... But you get the picture... as soon as there is any situation of any kind and severity, 911 is one of the first things they will think of. Efficiency of this system is so good that you are almost assured a response in minutes wherever you are in the country. There is proper research done while making roads, to ensure that any part of a city is reachable in 2-10 minutes from the nearest Police patrol ( my ex roommate was working for a firm that did this research)

100 on the other hand usually has a fleeting reference in the heads of Indians. Should something go wrong, the first set of people we think about are our neighbors, or friends. In some cases, we probably don't even want to get involved with the police. Like Hollywood in previous case, if you watch enough Bollywood movies, you will see that people do not usually want the police to get involved, or the police any how comes only when the hero has beaten the crap out of the villain, despite the absence of police. what I imply from this is that police is at least considered inept, or inconsiderate, or untrustworthy.

But if I think deeper about this, the differences don't just stay as mere facts and jokes as above... They begin to show the vast difference that exists between the two countries.

To implement a system like 911, a few basic things are needed. First it needs to be such a dependable system, that time and again, anywhere, anyhow, should there be an emergency, some help should be able to reach the victim. It is only then that a person will trust this 3 digit number so much to remember, and call, this number when their life is in danger. In addition, this number should be able to give you the warmth that you would have no inhibitions in trusting them for any situation of any sort. Third, the versatility of this number should be such that any kind and severity of situation can be handled by this number.

These are just a few components that go into making this system work. Any person in Process Management would tell you that this calls for operational efficiency, and that too of a very very high standard. Coz it deals with lives of people. Implementing this, even in a small society of 200 apartments is such a huge pain. I can tell you this by my experience in getting an electrician to fix a power cut in my apartment in Delhi.

Now imagine implementing this at the level of a nation. One of the world's biggest nations by land size and population. But this has been implemented here in the US. And everytime I think of this system, and dare to compare it to 100, I first get awestruck, and then get upset.

Why can't India implement a system like that? What's stopping us? Don't we deserve to have such a system to help us lead a better life? Must our loved ones die waiting for help to arrive? Or worse still. die waiting coz the PM is visiting the Hospital?

It needs will. Easy to say, much much more difficult to implement. Political, bureaucratic or whatever. Will. But all these are dependent on how strongly people ask for this, and make this (instead of speaking marathi in maharashtra) a political issue. And that comes from social awareness. That is VERY different from education, which is again VERY different from literacy... A nation of 1 billion, with most people not even knowing the significance/value of such a system. And I think the most critical role here is to be played by the middle class in India. I belong to it, and by having studied in US now, I know what we lack. There are many more middle class students who have been lucky enough to see and understand the difference between the two systems. Now that we are 'aware' we must pass this on, and strive to make everyone aware of this.

It is only when people are aware of this that leaders will rise, and take this issue further, and even take it on to them to implement this. And then we will have someone to vote for. Then we could also look at appointment of competent officers in implementing this system, and much more importantly, sustaining it.

The best way to resolve our issues is to move bottom up. And for that we need to be aware...

Indian Software Industry's pangs

If you throw a random stone in bangalore, it will either hit a dog or a software engineer...

This is what I was told in 2000 when I began my software engineering. It was a weirdly funny joke, coz I did laugh at it, but I certainly did not like our comparison with dogs. Not only because it is derogatory (similar to the lines of objections on slum'dog' millionare) but also because engineers are by the very definition of the term, very well educated.

umm well educated? but as soon as I say this, I see my head screaming out against it. So something has to be wrong somewhere...

Some engineers are downright called 'unemployable' by the multinationals. But lets face it, passing 4 years in an engineering college would atleast have taught them basic levels of coding. Although this was not quite true in my case ( I probably wrote my first respectable software program only at my first job, but that taught me a lot, and hence this post...), but I would say that most of the software engineers would at least know how to code.

So whats the problem? its like a student who knows the alphabets well, but has no clue about how to form sentences with them. On top of it, forming understandable sentences from it is mostly just a dream. As more and more Indian software companies claim to provide 'best in the industry solutions' to the world outside (through getafreelancer.com, rentacoder.com and what not), particularly the western economies, their cracks begin to show. For they claim to know how to make software, but they actually just know how to code. And the bubble bursts...

Bigger companies like Infosys, TCS etc charge the western world enough money to send these new s/w engineering grads to almost a year of training, which makes them at least employable. But people who don't/couldn't make it into these are basically 'let loose' out in the big bad world, having nothing more than a vague imprint of 'Let's C,C++ by Yashwant Kanitkar)...

The point being, there is a lot more to software engineering than just code.

To begin with, there has to be an understanding of the context in which this software is being written. Without this understanding of context (business sense in other words) a software engineer is nothing more than an automated code generator (and they are usually crappy). A lot of this happens purely out of lack of exposure to good business practices and incompetent business acumen. But both of these can be acquired; latter even quicker.

This has to be coupled with acceptable levels of communication skills. And communication skills DO NOT mean using a thesaurus on every word and writing the most impressive word. It is about CLEARLY stating what you want to communicate, and making sure that the reader/listener has understood it well, and then confirm it.

Third is diligence. Remember that your aim is to get the work done. Not to get money to procrastinate the work for as long as possible. The client is not a fool to let this go on forever, more so for smaller project based companies where lock-in is very minimal. If a software company wants to sustain its business for longer than a few years, it has to finish the work ON TIME. if not in time.

The basic point being, a lot of small Indian software companies are coming out as promising something and delivering something much below the acceptable standards.

One of the ways in which the problem can be fixed is by having both business and technical expertise in a company. Only a bunch of engineers running day to day business will be a bad decision. Hiring an employable Technology Management MBA could be a step in the right direction.

Its the system at fault... so what?

we say this every time something goes wrong and we are frustrated about it. Bombay attacks, power cuts, unsafe cities, irregular power cuts, bad roads and all that...

And yes it is the system as a whole that is wrong more than right, and it effects every one of us.

In its own little way, it makes us pay for its shortcomings, and we have to just adjust.

Of course everyone wants to change it, but how? and thats where it all gets stuck, we we take a deep sigh and move on, fighting among each other in a traffic jam, and cursing the govt for horrible roads and reduce our average life time... studies have shown that mumbaikars life is 7 years lesser than India's average.

So what do we do? keep living/dying everyday? maybe if we can start cleaning our own sub modules in the 'system', we could clean it up some day... make sure our sphere of influence is better day by day and we will gradually get out of this mess... after all, its our nation!

Percussions

Percussions... My latest craze...

Just jump into the world of beats.. small taps, kiss of chalk, a faint hiss behind your ear, sudued drums, sounds of tabla..

Just close your eyes and you will feel as if you are in the middle of the first rain of the season, in between woods, alive, fresh.. with eyes closed, you can feel these small drops dancing on your skin, taking it into a trance of its own...

Listen to Tabla Beat Science, Ananda Shankar and State of Bengal, Trilok Gurtu and others you find...

:)

Avial: A must follow band

The one thing that has hit me straight in the face after coming to (and living in) the US since fall 2007 is the emphasis on originality. There are many facets to it, but I will concentrate on the music scene for now.

I am at the University of Illinois. This is a place far in between the happening west coast or the progressive east coast. This is the mid west, as they call it. The point being that there is no sizable influence of any structured institution like Hollywood, or Disneyland or any such thing in between.

Maybe this is the reason that most of the music I hear here is mostly original. This is in stark contrast to what we used to do in our college in Bangalore. A good quality music piece among our friends was usually decided by how close we were to the original. Be it a college fest, where a vastly popular band will dole out well practiced renditions of GNR, Pink Floyd, and Dire Straits, or a quiet gathering of friends where one super guitar player will play any of those songs deftly.

Somehow it was given and accepted that there is no scope (or need) of originality. (You are welcome Anu Malik and Preetam). Not only does this reflect on our inability to think, but also on our appetite of accepting new ideas in general. No wonder we dont have too many inventions coming out of India I guess...

And then I came across Avial. A Mallu band that plays ROCK in something other than English! Not only that, their music is a mix of traditional folk songs in the rock avatar. And its not as if they anglicize the folk songs, they give it the Indian touch on rock music instruments.

Have a look at some of their songs here:

And this..

I think this is a band that somehow resonates with me and I can relate to it.

Lemme know what you think...

Code is poetry

Only a passionate programmer would know what I mean, and how does it feel to say that your code flows like poetry...

I recently found that written on a wordpress plugin page..

So when does code look like poetry? When its logic flows from one case to another in a seamless manner.. like a river, gracefully accepting whats thrown its way, making amends for them and happily moving ahead.

It doesn't happen always though.. I've written enough code to know when my code flowed like a calm river meandering through its path towards the ocean ... much like a poem..

Like my ex boss's car sticker said, mocking at the big bad world, "I'd rather code" ...

eBay's "Shop directly from USA" campaign

Have a look at this campaign from eBay:

Now isn't this a smart way of doing the following:

1. get rid of your redundant, superfluous inventory in one country
2. increase sales in another part of the world that is still growing at a great pace
3. use your resources (in terms of presence and supply chain infrastructure) to optimize profits

Maybe these guys made a new global warehouse somewhere in eastern europe or something that can service more countries etc..

what ever the case maybe, I think this idea of selling stuff from one country in to another totally rocks!

what do you think?

Tragedy of being the bridge between two worlds

I've realized lately that I have officially crossed in to the land of No Man's Land..

Well, is it a bird? is it a plane? hehe no its MsBA in Technology Management. And this is the tale of two lands.. Technology and Management and the narrow No Man's Land in between them

I have never been a purist. In fact ever since I learnt that Nature loves entropy, I never got around liking the idea of being a pure anything. No pure cricketer, No pure artist, No pure singer, No pure Guitar player ... and the list goes on till I came to this: No Pure Technologist, and No pure Manager.

So far so good. There are many types of me around in the world. Yes yes, I know what you are mostly thinking about. But keeping perverse sexual connotations apart, its good to be jack of all trades and master of being just that! Or so I thought till I visited the countries around my narrow strip of land.

Country: Technologasia

The citizens here usually looked just straight ahead. For them everything around them was an element of a list (or array, or set, or Class, or Struct) of equations, or data members, or neurons or digital signals. I visited the capital of this country called sillicity (pun intended). I walked up to the first person I saw the town hall, and here is the discussion I had:

me: Excuse me, do you know any good restaurants around here?
Sillicity citizen: I don't know. I am just follow this path to get to my place of work, and use my super brain to find the quickest route to my work place. So I don't have time to look around for restaurants.
me: Oh so you don't eat out at all?
Sillicity citizen: You silly man, I am a technologist. I eat drink sleep equations, gadgets, numbers, and circuits. (angrily) Where are you from?
me: (taken aback a little): umm... I am from Technology Managementsia.
Sillicity citizen: I've never heard of that school. I am sure its not ranked anywhere, and therefore I am sure you are a much lesser human being than I am. Why do you even need food! Your quota of food should be used to feed fish; which we eat to sharpen our brains!

And then he walks away.. on his Segway...

Saddened by this sudden indignation, I go to the next iPhone store, buy an iPhone and look up good restaurants. Enjoyed the food, and walked south (in some context, south of quad), and reach

Managementistan...

There were many people walking around, and they WERE looking everywhere. Dressed very nicely and had a fixed 8 cm x 5 cm smile on their faces. I walk up to a pretty looking citizen.

me: Hello, could you please direct me to a restaurant around here?
Manageristanian: (sizing me up) hmm. I know there is one somewhere here, but I don't know how to get there. It's a pretty nice place. They charge 5 times the price they do in Technologasia, and have exactly the same food! I love their standardized processes which they use to make the same food everywhere.
me: Oh but why would I pay 5 times the price for the same food?
Manageristanian: That's because they serve it in a very fashionable bright red plate. Thats very today you know... But since you ask such a dumb question, where are you from?
me: umm I am from Technology Managementasia you know, the... (She cuts me abruptly)
Manageristanian: oh yah nevermind, you coders. Never get the big picture of anything. Just find some food round the corner and satisfy ur hunger and try to learn from our existence... We live by example.
me: oh I am sorry to have bothered you..

I walk away, open my laptop, hack into a nearby store's server and get some free coupon codes and use them to get me a good suit for free. I similarly get a free coupon for the restaurant have the food for free, and ride my segway home...

The rot beneath the shining surface

I've always believed that India is moving ahead. I always believed that things are changing for good.

But when a friend of yours says that she doesn't want a girl child, coz the environment is not conducive to rear a girl child, you know something is fundamentally wrong. Thats what happened recently. One of my friends is about to become a mom, and she doesn't want a girl child.

The reasons are a plenty, two of them given to me are:

1) Indian society is any how aggressive to a girl child. I thought it was changing, but it seems the northern belt is not.
2) Delhi in particular seems to be the worst place to rear a girl child. because most parent dont want to have a head ache 24x7 about whether their daughter is being molested on the roads somewhere, or someone is following her..


I had no words to this.. do you really resign to this state? or do you fight this..?
India shining... India's new future and all such encomiums pretty much sound shallow.

maybe we need to remove the upper shiny crust to see the rot beneath ....