Basket Case

एक दिन गणतंत्र चला जाएगा  और रह जाएगा  सिर्फ झंडा। हम मगन रहेंगे झंडे के रंगों के मायने सुलझाने में और हमारे पैरों के नीचे पथरा जायेगी प्यासी जमीन। सिकुड़ते दिलों में जगह पड़ेगी कम तो एक एक कर के सब घुसपैठिये निकाल बाहर किये जाएंगे और देवताओं को रख दिया जायेगा उनके पत्थरों के घरों में। एक दिन प्रेम चला जायेगा और रह जाएगा सिर्फ देश।

The revolution has started. The long awaited change is upon us. No office is ever going to be the same again as the employees, long oppressed under the yoke of having to wear pants and going to office, march into the glorious future of sitting in their beds with their laptops and asking their friends, children and significant others to keep it down. But no matter how much fun we make of it, the world has definitely shifted. Large companies like Twitter have announced permanent WFH for employees who want it. There are already predictions of suburban price boom in real estate as employees start moving out of overpriced and overcrowded cities in US. Back home, it is not only the startups but even companies like TCS that are looking to have a large chunk of their workforce working from home even when situation returns to normal. Amidst all this, there is little discussion on the implications of WFH in context of India. How will different kind of employees affected by this? Is is...

छूटे कोई दीन दुखी ना, सबको करो शुमार लिखो, दबी हुई चीखों को बुन कर, कर्कश इक ललकार लिखो। धरम जो पूछे शरणागत का, जात जो पूछे साधो की, हिंदुस्तानी दिल ऐसा भी हुआ नहीं लाचार लिखो। लिखने दो उनको BSE, NSE और GDP, तुम आम आदमी की जेबों में बची चवन्नी चार लिखो। इस शोर शराबे में सहमा सा सच जो तुमको मिल जाए, एक बार लिखो, दस बार लिखो, तुम उसको बारम्बार लिखो। है वक़्त अभी कुछ कहने का, है वक़्त नहीं चुप रहने का, नफरत के तूफानों में घिरते, इंसानों को प्यार लिखो। सुनो अभागा बदल गए हैं यहाँ मायने शब्दों के, देशभक्त ऐसे हैं गर तो, खुद को तुम गद्दार लिखो।

Like fashion, even scientific research is subjected to cyclical fads. Topics, techniques come into limelight and then fall out of favor when the gains plateau.  In machine learning, NNs were in vogue in early 90s when SVM came onto the scene and blew them out of water on almost every problem and then got superseded in turn by the log-linear models, CRFs and others. Then in beginning of this decade, NNs have made a tremendous come back, this time becoming the tool of choice for NLP as well. Due to their name and a very crude similarity to how the biological brain is organized, NNs tend to invite comparisons with human brain and every improvement achieved with their help tends to be seen as an step towards Artificial General Intelligence, at least in popular media and common people.  Now, what would happen if tomorrow a different method, a different paradigm of Machine Learning were start performing better than NNs? There is no reason why it could not happen AFAIK. W...

बचपन में पढ़ा था कि काठ की हांडी दोबारा नहीं चढ़ती और दूध का जला छाछ भी फूंक फूंक कर पीता है। लेकिन काठ मारे हुए समाज की हांडी को नफरत की कलई लगा कर भावनाओं की आंच पर बार बार चढ़ाया जा सकता है। बेकारी के दूध में धर्म की अफीम मिला कर कुंठित आशाओं के चावलों से उन्माद की जहरीली खीर बार बार बनायी जा सकती है। क्योंकि दूध का जला छाछ भी फूंक फूंक कर पीना जल्दी ही भूल जाता है।

Waste of taxpayers' money is not a new refrain. It comes up in contexts ranging from big cars for legislators to foreign jaunts on flimsy grounds for MPs. From memorial parks to IITians doing MBA. It is present with extraordinary force in the ongoing JNU row as well. Commentator after commentator have chided JNU students for wasting government money by engaging in politics. Having myself availed of significant government subsidy for my undergraduate education and also having been accused of engaging in politics in campus (poli-poli as it was called derisively), this made me think. First let's not confuse income taxpayers with taxpayers. While about 3% of the Indian citizens pay income tax, everyone pays the indirect taxes like VAT, service tax etc. So JNU students are also taxpayers. Also worth keeping in mind that constitutional rights are not dependent on how much tax you pay. Waste of taxpayers' money can mean one of the two things. It may mean that while governme...

लम्बा शेर लिखोगे तो पछताओगे, सुनो 'अभागा' ट्वीट नहीं कर पाओगे। तेज़ हवा है, आग भड़कने वाली है, अंदर बाहर कहीं रहो जल जाओगे। पैने शब्दों की फसलों के मौसम में, हर ज़बान से लहू टपकता पाओगे। देशभक्ति के नए बने पैमाने पर, मुंह खोला तो तुम भी तौले जाओगे।

अंधश्रद्धा को बताया प्यार उसने, खेल जादू का दिखाया यार उसने। चाँद को देखा तभी एक कौर निगला, कर लिया यूँ उम्र का व्यापार उसने। साथ में भूखा रहा वो आदमी कल, नारी जाति का किया उद्धार उसने। वो बहू अच्छी रही होगी 'अभागा', सह लिया चुप रूढ़ियों का भार उसने।

Sometime back on Twitter, in the course of a discussion on translations, someone mentioned that translations of foreign authors seem to find more favor with Indian readers as compared to translation of Indian authors from Indian languages. While many love writers like Orhan Pamuk (Turkish), Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Spanish), not the same favor is accorded to Indian writers. There is a certain disinterest towards them. As is the wont of every Twitter discussion, someone soon mentioned "colonized minds" and that was that. I'm not sure about the validity of original assertion, there are too many unverified assumptions here. How popular is Orphan Pamuk in India after all? But this discussion got me thinking about my own experience of reading translations. Do I have such a preference? I think I do. Despite the multitude of languages, there is an underlying cultural continuity across India. Irrespective of the language of the story, if it is set in India, if it is about Ind...

"Old Kannada inscription dated 981 CE in Vindyagiri hill at Shravanabelagola"  Based on my efforts to learn Kannada, I have come to realize that there is a disconnect between the resources available and resources required for learning the language. While there is a steady stream of apps to help Kannada learners, they all seem to be based on the same basic pattern which I believe is not useful. When learning Kannada, a speaker of another Indian language is presented with two difficulties. One is the language and other is the script. In the absence of reading, the sole source of language data being absorbed is spoken. With spoken data, the learner can neither control the speed of the incoming data nor can he reliably repeat it. This severely slows down the vocabulary acquisition process. Without knowing the script, he cannot read the newspaper which is a good cheap source of plenty of reading material. Reading the newspaper in a language also provides a good sense of ...

I am not a registered voter in Bangalore. There. I said it. I am sitting here diddling my thumb as others around me go and elect their government. In the 14 years since I qualified as a voter, I have voted once. As it happens, shortly before I turned 18, I left home and have lived in hostels, other cities, other countries ever since, never remaining in one place for more than 4 years. Being politically aware at the national and state level but mostly feeling as an outsider to the proceedings in immediate vicinity. I voted in the last LS elections because I happened to be in Lucknow on the election day. In 2009, When I looked up the candidates I had to choose between, I was stuck. For me, Lucknow meant Vajpayee, someone I had come to admire. Given that he was a top level leader, his views on variety of issues were well known. But by 2009, he was no longer around. As his nominee, we had Lal ji Tandon from BJP - someone I had never liked. Congress had Rita Bahuguna in fray. Hardl...

पोस्टर छपवाने पड़ते हैं, विज्ञापन देने होते हैं, रैलियां सैकड़ों लगती हैं, गठबंधन करने पड़ते हैं. जनतंत्र के सागर में मित्रों, कुछ लहरें सहसा उठती हैं, बाक़ी उठवानी पड़ती हैं. कुछ बात भूलनी पड़ती हैं, कुछ अजब करिश्मे होते हैं, अपराध मुक्त भारत के लिए, अपराधी चुनने पड़ते हैं. जनतंत्र के मेले में मित्रों, कुछ नाच नचाते बन्दर को, कुछ बन्दर-नाच नचाते हैं. कभी चाय बेचनी पड़ती है, इंटरव्यू देने पड़ते हैं, जब लोग कुर्सियां ना छोड़ें, तो धक्के देने पड़ते हैं. जनतंत्र की होली में मित्रों, कई रंग दिखाने पड़ते हैं, कई रंग बदलने पड़ते हैं.

Almost 10 years ago I started this blog. At 273 posts, it amounts to 1 post every 2 weeks. I can't think of any other habit that survived that long with that consistency. Of course, just like all statistics, this hides more than it reveals. For the past 3 years, I have written 7, 7, and 5 posts respectively. I don't know why I am writing this post. Not here to promise another flurry of activity. This is not the last ditch effort to save a dying relationship. It is not meant to be a epithet for something that has been lost. This is me spending some time with an old friend where the friendship has become such a part of you that gaps in time can be bridged at will. Threads can be picked up wherever they were left. And new yarns can be weaved effortlessly. Welcome 2014. Hope we will have a good time.

Let me confess something. While it has been years since Pothi.com has been selling ebooks and it has been years since I have been talking and thinking about ebooks, it is only recently that I read a complete book on a dedicated reading device. The book was Lean Analytics published by O'Reilly Media. But this is not a review of that book. This post is about what it felt like reading a fairly long book on an e-reader. I read part of it on Kindle and part of it on Nook touch. The first thing I noticed was that e-readers these days are very good and you don't miss the paper version all that much. I have said this to many people who express doubts about e-readers - Try one out for 1-2 days and do some serious reading on it. I bet a lot of people would change their mind one they try out a device. The key is to not see it as a replacement of paper books - the only way they are represented in most media coverage. Instead take them up as a device on their own and see if you like th...

छोड़ कर शाख क्यों सड़कों पे चले आते हैं, फूल मासूम हैं, नाहक ही सज़ा पाते हैं। स्याह पड़ती हुई इस शहर की बेनूर शकल, रंग दो पल को झलकते हैं, गुज़र जाते हैं। भागते दौड़ते इस शहर के कुछ वाशिंदे, साल भर फरवरी की याद में बिताते हैं। फूल इंसान की उम्मीद के सितारे हैं, आँख उठती है दुआ में, तो नज़र आते हैं। शहर के फूल अभागा बड़ी किस्मत वाले, ठोकरों से नहीं, कारों से कुचले जाते हैं।

One of the mantras of entrepreneurship is to build something that people want. The road to success is lined with geeks who dreamt of beautiful solutions existing in perfect worlds for problems that no one seemed to have. Lean startup formalizes this in terms of customer development. The aim is to identify a customer who is willing to pay you money today for what you can deliver tomorrow. Recently there was an article in NYT about how the American fast food industry  has filled people's plates with more salt, sugar and fats in an effort to sell more junk food. Many of the executives, when confronted with questions about these practices, defended themselves on the pretext that they were only giving people what they wanted. If they do not give it to them, someone else will. Why is it that these executives seem to be doing something wrong (or bad if wrong sounds too strong)? They were merely following the oft repeated advice for building a successful business. In fact, making food...

जब इस बार मिलें हम तुम, कुछ अलग सा मुझको पाओ तो, हाथ पकड़ लूं मैं बढ कर, तुम मुझसे शर्मा जाओ तो? नींद नही आये पर सपनो से बोझिल होकर पलकें, मुंद जाएँ और तुम काँधे पर सर रख कर सो जाओ तो? गर साथ हो बस दो पल का और फिर जीवन भर का इंतज़ार, दो पल न बीतें कभी, समय बस वहीं कहीं रुक जाए तो? जो कहना चाहें दोनो कुछ पर बात जुबां पर ना आये, और देख हमारी दुविधा चन्दा बादल में छुप जाए तो? कभी आँख तेरी गर भर आये और मेघदूत बन कर बादल, तेरी आँखों के मोती मेरे आँगन बिखरा जाए तो?

Over at HSI , Vijay Anand of Startup Centre and Proto.in fame, posted some excellent thoughts about the wannabe entrepreneurs who are looking for technical co-founders: A Trademark Skillset (and I am reiterating) is that one thing you are absolutely known for - it might be people skills; to be able to bring people together around a problem, form a solution and build an enterprise around it, it might be more specific around technology, or design, or fundraising (sic), or sales / business development - but it has to be one quality that you have, that the entire organization (sic) can bet on.  You should read the full post on HSI .

There has been a lot of talk in the Indian media recently about the lack of profitability of major Indian e-commerce players. Many of them are also trying out different strategies to manage finances while maintaining growth. While Flipkart has been tweaking discounts and raising limits for free shipping (a move that was quickly followed by almost everyone), IndiaPlaza has excused itself out of the discount race by saying that they want to be the " only money making e-commerce company " out of the top 3-4 players and not the biggest. However HomeShop18 seems have sensed an opportunity here and has put almost the entire books category on unprecedented discounts! I was hard pressed to find any title that has less then 29-30% discount. Most of the titles are as highly discounted as 35-40%. This includes even the titles which they might be importing from outside. In all my searching, I came across one title which was at 10%. This is insane! And if this was not enough, they have...

Couple of years ago at Pothi.com, we were working on a Hindi poetry book. It was a collection of poetry of the father that the son was publishing.  It was a very big deal for the son. He had organized a family gathering and book launch in his home town. We were working on a tight schedule but the books were shipped with time remaining on the clock. The book launch was on Tuesday and the consignment reached the client on Saturday afternoon. Shortly afterwards, I received a call from them. Getting a call or an email from the clients after they have received the books is not uncommon. There is something about holding your own printed book in your hands that moves people. It is usually a time to celebrate after the long time spent working on the book. However sometimes, things go wrong. When our clients opened the consignment, shiny new books came out. However on leafing through the pages, they realized that while the cover was of their book, the interior was something entirely di...