My last post was written on August 31st, 2007 and it’s April 10th today - so it’s been almost 7.5 months since I blogged. I did contribute a few articles in the press / magazines in the meanwhile but didn’t write here and I honestly don’t know if I have readers left (I haven’t checked the web stats in over 6 months).

So, what really happened? Did I get too busy? Did I get bored of blogging? Did I find some other way to unwind and share my thoughts? The answer is a combination of all this, however the real fact is that too many things happened in my life in these last few months - both professionally and personally. The words may not do justice to all that happened, so I will take the help of pictures in the interest of writing less.

Tekriti has a new website and now we do talk publicly about the different businesses we are in and different things we have been building over the last few years. We also moved into a new office where the entire building is occupied by us - it’s a good feeling to have a personal cabin which is bigger than our entire first office meant for 7 of the initial Tekriti employees.

It’s worth a look if you haven’t visited the site in a while.

The 2nd update is much bigger, actually much much bigger. I GOT MARRIED. Paavani and I, after a courtship of almost 3 years, finally got married on 13th March and had a good vacation after that. I came back to work only late last week and, I guess, still am not very attentive at work. Life is good, so far  

Let me begin with thanking everybody who wrote to me while I was not blogging and encouraged me to come back and blog. This probably has been the biggest break I took from blogging and for the right reasons. I have definitely gotten a lot of work done in the last couple of months, have got time to think about my priorities (other than work), and even took 4 days off to go out of Delhi and travel to Belgaum on the Maharashtra-Karnataka border to meet my sister and brother-in-law.

Now that I am reaching back Delhi tomorrow, I am all geared up again for work, blogging and all the other activities that I indulge in while at Delhi. Funny that even a one day of official leave is so refreshing at times. So - before you start reading more posts from me - I just wanted to thank you for writing to me, leaving comments and keeping me in your blog reader list.

Now - just make sure that you start visiting this blog more frequently than you have done over the past few weeks

Let me start with wishing everybody a very Happy and Prosperous New Year ahead. I have been very inconsistent with blogging over the last 1 month and I feel bad about that. But the reality is that I have been busy with more than a few things on the professional front (that my company board doesn’t allow me to talk about yet). Once we make sufficient progress and get the product in the ‘talkable’ state, I will write about the entire experience but, for now, I will just write my random thoughts here.

Random Thought 1: Tekriti had further expansion and rented out another office in the same building. There was a week when I didn’t have an official seat in the previous office because the new office was still getting furnished - so I kept moving from one conference room to the other with my laptop. And I used to get happy if somebody was on leave - I had a seat that way. Anyways, the new office has got a lot more corporate look - and I guess I got to change that with putting up posters and other funky things. 

Random Thought 2: I am losing interest in blogging. Seriously! I hate to be doing things that I don’t want and I have realized that I am pretty bad at things that I dont like. So, even though I was very busy, I didn’t miss blogging that much - and I did notice a little decline in my blog page views over this period (and that bothered me a bit). I also think that I have received lesser number of emails through my blog in the last 1 month. At the same time, I do think that this is just a passing phase and I will get back to my same old frequency. My blog has been fruitful in more than many ways, but I am reserving those comments for the 2 year anniversary.

Random Thought 3: I need to get more involved in the Delhi’s business circle. One disadvantage of doing a business only with overseas companies is that you don’t develop a lot of business contacts in your country. You do have mentors, appreciators, friends but business-contacts are someone that you don’t have. I believe that I need to be a little more active there. We have started to do some work in the Indian Business space (though pretty selectively) - so I do see that changing a bit over time.

Random Thought 4: I need to get more involved in the Delhi’s social circle. This is actually a continuation of Thought 3, and a more important one. Quite frankly, I think that the nature of my work is making me really boring. And I have started to get scared because of that. There are actually times when I get a little uncomfortable when I am in a place where I need to talk something apart from business, technology. That has never been my style of living and I got to maintain it that way. Oh - and if you are one of the readers who is deep into the Delhi social circle - I will appreciate you contacting me. I promise I will try not to bore you

More later…

In the first quarter of 2005, after I had just returned from the US to India for good, I was making my first air trip out of Delhi and was flying Jet Airways when I met a friend of mine who had chosen to be an entrepreneur immediately after the engineering school. He was flying Air Deccan and made a statement that “Now that you will be an entrepreneur, Low Cost Carriers are going to be your friend.” I had smiled at his statement and continue to do so as I realize the experience behind what he said then. In the past 20 odd months, LCC airlines have indeed been a good company for me. Almost 75% of my domestic trips (personal and business) have been on the so called No-frills airlines - primarily on Air Deccan and Spicejet. 

Without doubt, LCC Airlines have been a tremendous boon to the Indian Aviation industry. Not only these have made the air travel a lot more affordable but have also provided much better air-connection between various cities. Just a week back, I took Indigo Airlines - yet another low cost airline. Following were the good things about the same:

1. The return ticket to Chennai was 2/3rd the cost of any other full-fare airlines, and I bought the ticket 3 days in advance.
2. The planes were pretty new - which is very different from how it is with Air Deccan. Spicejet also has pretty good planes.
3. The flights were all on time - contrary to how other full-fare carriers (Sahara / Jet) operate.
4. The air-hostesses were, I must say, pretty cute (Kingfisher will probably be the only competition - with the balance tilting heavily in the favor of Kingfisher). I heard that the group behind Indigo Airlines also has a modeling school. I haven’t verified that but if that is true, I will only say that they have taken good care of supply-demand equation.

However, there are still certain things left to be desired in these low cost airlines. And that is the availability of decent food item that can be bought. Indigo had nothing other than cookies and cold-drinks to sell - that’s pretty lame in my opinion. Why can’t they sell some more packaged, non-perishable snacks along with tea / coffee - I am willing to pay and so were others in the flight who demanded the same.

What’s up airlines guys - am I missing something? I love you guys but yeh dil maange more. It can’t be because of the human resources - the flight did have a decent number of air hostesses for the service.

“I think this is extremely difficult to be done. It’s a very hard problem and it’s better to spend your energy into other things.“

How many times have you heard people saying this? And what is your reaction to the same?

Your reaction to the above statement tells a lot about you AND the person who made the statement. The 3 possible reactions are:

1. Yeah, you are right, let’s scrap the idea and focus on something else.
2. Just because somebody else hasn’t done it doesn’t mean that I will not do this. Let me show you that this can be done.
3. Ok - you have a point. But are you sure that nothing has been done there? Have you done proper research on that or just expecting me to research a little more? Even if nothing has been done - does that really make it unsolvable?

I regularly come across all 3 kinds of reactions - whether it’s in the interviews, general discussions with the team at Tekriti, discussions with partners or discussions with others outside work. And at the same time, I also get to hear the “It’s a hard problem; let’s not do this” statement at least a few times a month. My ego always makes me lean towards “Heh… I will show you that it can be done” approach (We all hate to say this but don’t we feel most satisfied in doing something that people don’t give us a chance for?). But the entrepreneur in me mellows it down and react in a 3rd way (as stated above) - which, in most cases, is the most practical.

What is annoying is that there are a set of people who make a habit out of asking the “It’s a hard problem; let’s not do this” question. And when you ask them the reason for the same - they will either have no answer or will relate to a scenario where it is not applicable at all or the more intelligent ones will point to a study that was published 5 years back.

But why am I writing all this? Oh well… I don’t know. Beyond the fact that I am being a bit sarcastic (sorry!), I am also just reminding myself that “Filtering the good feedback and criticism from the irrelevant ones is very important. The filtering is not always done at the content (feedback) level but at the critique level too.”

Someone told me once that there are 3 types of critiques:

1. Your well-wishers, whose criticism carries a lot of weight. They really want you to be successful and will question you for the sake of reality-check. Listen to them. They will, most often, go above and beyond even if they don’t have a business to do so. Their feedback will almost always be priceless.
2. Criticism is a fashion / necessity / hobby for them. Ignore them. There are chances that they might make a good point - but “kissing 100 frogs before the prince appears” might not always be worth it.
3. Who are more neutral and want to make good points but their reputation is more important to them than whether it benefits you or not. Listen to them, but cross-question to know where exactly are they coming from. You need to be more thoughtful on what to accept and what not to.

Ah.. well! Agree? Trivial?

Diwali, the festival of light, is one of the most popular and awaited festivals of India (read more here). Like last year, there is a celebration at Tekriti where people are preparing skits and other performances.

But what was funny was when Sachin informed me that my blog came up in the 1st page of Google search results when he and Manish were looking online for ‘Diwali party food’ (don’t ask why).

Besides amusing everybody, this became a topic of discussion with people coming up with stories like “Next time I am looking to buy sandals - I will look for Ashish’s blog first”. Google search comes with funny results at times but this one takes the cake - for today.

But what an idea? LatestInIndia: one-stop shop for all your online needs. Now, that’s a business proposition

Direct Google Search link: http://www.google.co.in/search?q=Diwali+party+food

I have some weird habits. For example - I start counting the number of tiles while seated in a waiting area OR that I don’t throw away empty jars easily and instead arrange them in the kitchen to form a shape. Another such weird habit that I have is that I try to connect with a character in any movie that I watch. But I think the last habit is not really unique and it happens with most other people. Most of us either relate to a character in a movie or have a secret fantasy of being able to play the ‘reel-life’ in the ‘real-life’. I am one of them - though the intensity dies down with every birthday that I celebrate.

That was the reason why ‘Dil Chahta Hai‘ became immensely popular amongst the youths as one could relate their life with one (or more) of Akash, Sameer or Siddhartha. ‘Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jaayenge‘ is one of the most liked movie for teenage girls (boys also but I think it’s liked much more by girls) because of the extreme sugar-coated romantic setup. Superman is liked by the kids because they see a character who is powerful, grown-up and yet is more like their ‘friend’ than just another powerful character.

Lage Raho Munnabhai is beautiful because of the same. I, finally, got a chance to watch the movie this long weekend (when everybody else in the world have watched it weeks back) and without doubt it’s a wonderful movie, to say the least. Though I don’t exactly idolize Gandhi, but this movie showed how is it still applicable in today’s scenario and did what other movies on Gandhi could not do. The movie exploits, positively, many sentiments of the movie-goers but there are two that I will want to single out here:

1. People, in general, are genuine and will do the ‘right things’ unless it forces them to go too much out of the way. So - if there are 2 paths, one right and the other wrong, people will choose the right one. No surprises but ‘Lage Raho…’ tried to show that choosing the right path is, even though, difficult but there are other practical ways which are still better than the ‘wrong’ path.
2. People connect with the characters of a movie, unless it is out and out fiction. As noted above, many people can connect with MunnaBhai of ‘Lage Raho …’ because most of us have gone through a phase where we have lied and have also acknowledged it later only to find out that speaking truth was the much easier option than spending our energies in hiding that one lie.

Lage Raho Munnabhai helped me make that connection. It showed how Gandhi’s principles can be applied in today’s scenario. It showed, to everybody, that Gandhi was not a ‘boring’ character who was visible only in his Khadi Dhoti, Stick or a Spinning Wheel. It showed that it’s still not un-fashionable to follow Gandhi’s principles. It reinstated our faith in truth. It symbolized hope.

On a related note, there was a poll today in the Times of India asking that given the success of the 2 recent bollywood movies - Rang De Basanti and Lage Raho Munnabhai - who do you idolize more ‘Bhagat Singh’ or ‘Mahatma Gandhi’? Now, that’s a tough choice now. Idolizing Bhagat Singh seems easier as ‘tit for tat’ gives the faster satisfaction, though not the desired end result; while on the other hand, idolizing Gandhi needs one to be that much more patient but higher chances of the desired result. I can’t decide - my heart leans towards Gandhi but my brain says that there are many cases where that won’t work.

The photographs above shows my office-desk. I, myself, am surprised to see that it’s not as dirty as it is normally - for the fact that I spent half an hour cleaning it up.

I grew old by 1 more year today - and got 27 roses as my most precious gift - 1 for each year. For the celebration part - I was in the office till 3 in the night on that very day - again not something normal.

Life isn’t as bad - so what if I had to spend mid-night in the office, the roses sent by a friend more than made it up for that. Of course, there were a few more people in the office then who came to wish me at mid-night and found me on the phone for sometime.

:-)

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I have been doing a bit of driving these days in the Bay Area - going from one corner to another, meeting with clients and friends. Here are some links to share - I will write in details about few of these.

Attended BloggerCon and BarCamp, San Francisco: Verdict - Not impressed! BarCamp was particularly unimpressive - there hardly was any direction and the sessions got over by the time there was a potential of those getting interesting. 1st day at BloggerCon had some boring sessions - the 2nd half was much better though. It’s amazing to see so many ‘thinkers’ in one room. Meeting and listening to those people - I feel more and more that I am more of an executioner than a thinker. You just need to be in a different mode to cross the line and be qualified to call yourself a ‘thinker’. For BloggerCon audio, click here.

GoingOn sponsored 25th June breakfast at BarCamp. There were more than 10 sponsors for BarCamp but nobody sponsored T-Shirts. That is weird - we at BarCamp, Delhi were one of the sponsors for the T-Shirts and it was free for anybody who was there.

PeopleAggregator release announcement will happen at Gnomedex - I will also get a chance to be at the conference in Seattle.

My cousin, Siddhartha, have also started a blog. He has just gone through a few engineering exams and will be joining an engineering school in a couple of months. He talks about his experiences while preparing for the exams and the life during it and plans to talk about the life during engineering. Siddhartha - keep it up and continue blogging. You write much better than I had imagined.

Paavani had written a post on Tops a while back - I wanted to link this earlier but just forgot. Girl - it’s time to write another post - I love your posts. You write about things that not many people write about.

One of my close friend from IIT got married last week - I regret missing the ceremony. Animesh captures the mood there. Congrats Ajit and congrats Vijeta! One line that I really liked is: ‘Ajit’ means somebody who can’t be won and Vijeta means somebody who won. So, looks like ‘Vijeta’ won ‘Ajit’ - nice! I look forward to see you guys sometime soon.

I badly want to go visit Las Vegas again - I know that I won’t be able to go there this time. May be next time - or probably a client will invite me over for a conference there sometime soon Making a pleasure trip doesn’t seem to happen - anytime in the future.

Very old question but some incidents over the weekend makes me write this post.

“Why don’t you ask for the directions?” - is the question most guys get asked and I am nobody special there. My answer is mostly “Hmm..”.

I had another such discussion this weekend and all I have to say now (not then): Pretty girl - the guys do ask for directions but only when they are horribly lost or are with their other guy friends. And we don’t ask because, yes, it makes us feel that we are not in control. And at the same time we do want to make sure that we know the directions the next time - so we like to explore the area a bit.

Another way to look at the same is - we are liking your company and don’t mind spending some extra time alone with you in the car, with music playing - so take it as a compliment. And don’t ask this question again