English names and white models

While going past the new airport road flyover the other day, I noticed an ad for a daycare center. The children in it were white! Increasingly, clothing ads in the print media too are featuring white models. I see the same thing in the film songs that come on TV- white models thrown in again, for variety. Also, its mostly white women, not men!

A year or so ago, I was on a conference call with a Asian American developer in Nashua, NH, and he wanted to know which building I was calling from. It has an Engligh name-like the rest of the high end apratment projects in Bangalore do. He asked, "Do you people always have all these English names ? "
Perhaps the color of your skin is instantly correlated with higher education, culture and class, making it an effective advertising tool. We have always been obsessed with our social status anyways. But deep down, it is driven by an awareness that we need to be more global, to fit in with the rest of the world.

A week in India : what is different

A friend in the US wanted to know if anything feels different on my return to India. After a week this is what I have seen:
1) Bangalore, like all Indian cities, is much more noisy and crowded (-)
2) Public transport: auto drivers are most unreliable. (-)
3) Warmth: At the Foss.IN conference, there was a free lunch. I dont remember free lunches at SIGGAPH (+)
4) Economic disparity:Outside the "Centre for Robotics and Artificial Intelligence", a man,possibly drug addict, was lying on the sidewalk shivering, with froth coming out of his mouth. (-)
5) Talent: Many bright computer science people at FOSS.IN., mostly students. In contrast, the software developer community in the US appears mostly older, and smaller in number. (+)
6) Indiscipline: On arrival, the fellow in front of me at the airport bends to write something, the line ahead of him moves on... and immediately other people from the side jump in to take up the spot. People have an infantile awareness of themselves and do not think beyond that (-)
7) Youth: Mostly young people, everywhere you see. Means a young workforce, and increased consumer spending the next few decades. (+)
Whats promising is the immense latent talent and individual initiative, whats missing is the lack of thought for the community as a whole. Point (2) being unique to Bangalore , I would say the score overall is 3-3.

Western vs Indian Materialism

I find that in India we (upper middle class) aspire for money as a symbol of status, of possession... in the West, materialism is a means of ending the drugery of work...the car, washing machine, the printing press are all attempts to reduce work. Thus materialism there is a force behind innovation, but here it is a goal in itself. A result is that most IT workers are are going towards fat salaries that lets them buy houses and spend in Shopping malls....but not focusing on innovation or doing new stuff.
I say this after seeing the Foss. IN conference schedule. I feel I sold my soul to Application software for money. What challenges and makes you grow is not always what pays more. Going faster in the wrong direction eventually takes your career to a dead end.

My forigen visit

I am visiting the US. For a bank transaction in my US bank account, I showed my passport as ID. On the form, the bank employee wrote: "forigen passport".

I was more happy during this visit than I ever was when I actually lived there. Partly it had to do with California, which because of the weather and the higher proportions of Asians and Latinos, feels like home. Partly its because I did not have to worry about my H1B visa status.

Bangalore coder , or programmer ?

Developers are happy in Bangalore these days. Its raining jobs. Its common for people leaving our company to have multiple offers. Developers I know are busy building apartments on Outer Ring Road and buying new cars. People with two years of experience have been asking for ten lakh salaries and in some cases, says one proj manager in our floor, actually getting it.
Companies from the US are opening new offices or expanding operations.

But compared to the quality of work in Chip design/VLSI that is happening in the hardware domain, I think for software, Bangalore is just another code factory. I receive recruiter emails at times asking for "J2EE","struts" ,"EJB' skills. This seems to be the most in demand. I am told that most of the revenue of Indian IT comes from taking maintainence contracts. Even for product companies,though far better than consulting (in my view), apart from a few like Veritas or HP that do kernel level work, most I think have come to India as they need to scale up quickly for large projects, not for innovative work. Just compare these jobs, one listed in the US another in India:

Research engineer, Bosch
Research staff position in graphics and interaction technologies. This person will be responsible for researching and developing tools and system prototypes for the next generation of intelligent information systems in the Bosch product areas. A specific short to mid-term focus will be in the area of driver information systems.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities:

• Research, develop and implement algorithms, methods, and tools towards innovative prototype systems.
• Prototypical realization of research ideas on Bosch product platforms.
• Establish close contact with internal customers and external partners/universities.
• International travel is possible.

Education/Training/Work Experience Required:

PhD or Master's degree in Electrical Engineering or Computer Science required. Experience in industrial R&D settings is a plus. .......

AND

We have excellent opening with our Bangalore based client Realsoft for Sr. J2ee/Struts Developer for following requirement-
Position- Sr. J2ee/Struts Developer
Exp.- 5+ to 10 years
Job location- Bangalore
Must have skills-
*5+ years hands on development and some design exp. will be good in core java, JDBC, j2ee(EJB, Servlets, JSP,java_script etc.)
*Struts frame work.
*Application servers are Jboss & Tomcat
*Web service is a plus but highly desired.
*Who is intersted to be hands in design/development (Looking for the j2ee development GURU)
Worked through all phases of SDLC (Software Development Life Cycle), eager to learn latest technologies,
Can communicate directly with senior management in USA related to project functions
Must be able to work independently, research problems (analytical skills is very important)
Previous experience working with onsite clients is highly desiered

That should give the general idea.

IIT students working at our place say that no one among them bothers to go do an MS at the US anymore- you no longer get aid, and there's no perceived career advantage, like for an MBA . Besides, salaries have gone up tempting many to work. As such Indian society is obsessed with status and titles. Thus friends I know who moved on to do management degrees, frown when they hear somebody is 'still coding'.

Dogs and Cats

"In Italy, they dont have children- they just have dogs and cats. "NYT Article on falling population in Italy.

Computer Graphics

The wild poem is a substitute,
for the woman one loves or ought to love.
One wild rhapsody
a fake for another.-Wallace Stevens

I fell in love with Computer graphics after I saw Titanic. At that point I had no interest in Computer science,I detested coding. This started to change in 2000, when I started working in Boston. Walking back though Harvard yard from the train stop every day,watching all the bright people around you, probably had something to do with it. Computer graphics was the wild poem that kept me alive though the years in America. It was like chasing a woman giving up everything else in your life, but never catching up with her.But it lured me into getting an MS.
Guy Kawasaki says, "Pursue joy, not happiness." (Hindsight #9)
In declining 4 job offers over the past one year, I've been doing exactly that. Time will tell.

Essential skills of a supervisor

(Summarized from: Harvard business review guide to developing, managing your career)
1) Technical skills :Matters most at the lower levels.
2) People skills : Matters at ALL levels.
3) Conceptual thinking :Matters most at high levels.

People skills , as per an experienced manager :
-Everyone is different- treat them differently. Some people need attention and supervision and will feel ignored if not spoken to. Others detest attention and will feel micromanaged.
-Dont be arrogant , but be firm .They should not take you lightly, work should get done.
-People should respect you for your skills. positional respect goes only to a certain point.

How to make Decisions

Summarized From: Decision Making by John Adair.
Nice book. Says that decision making involves using the following skills:

1) Analysis : You need this to evaluate the best possible outcome, or to define the problem itself.

2)Holistic thinking : Thinking about the whole problem and not in parts. (Getting a good deal on a 5 AM flight ? Have you wondered how you will reach the airport at 4 AM , and that you have to get up at 2:30 AM to be there ? )

3) Imagination

4) Valuing: This is about getting priorities right. If you know technology is more important to you than money, then its an easy choice between the mainframe company job and the modestly paying but high tech Java work. Valuing is important in choosing the possible options, and is an important step in understanding a problem, before you take an action

5)Intuition :Some people arrive at an answer without an analytical approach. However, this is susectible to our moods at the moment. Intutive conclusions reached under stress/fear (or even extreme pleasure/joy) are likely to be proved wrong. Under emotionally loaded circumstances, intutive solutions are best avoided.

6)Using your depth mind: Listen to the subconscious self. Sometimes you make a decision but its not commited yet: perhaps a job offer in a field that you have coveted for years. But after you accept , you realize that the 6 and half day weeks and low pay are completly mismatched with your personal life at the moment. you listen to your heart and decline the offer.

7) Generating options : This is the key step where all the skills mentioned before are used together. First, you must discover the options available-sometimes we mistakenly think we have only one choice. Imagination is useful here. At the other extreme, choose feasible options when many possiblities are available. Attempt to narrow down options to two choices by elimination alternatives. Its easier to eliminate an option based on a certain criteria rather than prove that the other ones will work. Valuing, analysis , using your depth mind are all skills that help in this process.

At times, no action is also a valid option. When all options seem equal, one that provides maximum flexibility/freedom is the best choice.

That summer in Paris

I finished this book in one day and three evenings. The reviews for it in Amazon are good. I dont know if its my harsh third world point of observation, thats making it seem shallow and superficial. Sometimes a lot of my lifestyle in Boston seems superficial when viewed from here, but was not back there. I am intrigued by the amorality of the characters. Is this again my traditional upbringing ? Literary value aside, this writer is challenging my rules about what is moral and immoral, and I must evolve.

This book is about an old writer, whose past is a wasteland of multiple relationships and casual encounters that went nowhere, who finds love one last time.
Like its protagonist's life, much of the books pages are wasted on detailing the lives of a set of superficial characters that contribute little to its intensity. An aspiring writer Maya meets the celebrated Prem Rustum,a Nobel prize winner, on an internet dating site. He pursues her to
Paris where she is supposed to spend the summer on a writing fellowship. She's not getting much writing done- most of her time is spent obsessing about Prem and in banal Sex and the City like talk with her apartment neighbour. Prem divides his time between Maya and a great writer friend Pascal,a stereotype who conversations show no signs of greatness. The characters are all blessed with an acute sense of amorality,self indulgency and a keen ability for transient sexual encounters. After all they are great writers,aren't they ?

The book is filled with literary and artistic references in the middle which makes it feel like downloading a large file from the internet on a slow modem connection. While the author's initial attempts to adorn the characters feels like throwing color on the canvas and hoping some will stick, in its dying moments the novel picks up its threads to reach a passing grade. Somehow Prem Rustum comes across more real in death than when he was alive. To the author's credit, another technique that does work is the slow blending in of flashbacks. Its the lack of real feeling and depth that keeps this from getting a better grade. 2 and 1/2

A cold man and a loving woman

In August when it pours in Mulund,
a lush green moss covers the walls
on the way to the station.
I had walked that road with you.
An hour of synthetically sweetened iced tea later,
you grew like moss around my heart-
a soft,gentle velvet embrace.
Your words danced like raindrops,
But I still remained confined,
in the plastic glass
of my synthetically sweetened mind

I dont know if these recent short poems that come to me are good or trash. But I know in order to get original work I must allow the writing to develop and not control it. Hence I beg any uinfortunate reader going through this to bear with me.

Unusual ways to meet a partner

1. A guy calls up a radio show related to Indian idol and leaves his phone number. A girl in a town far away responds asking if he has a contact number for the Indian idol. They start talking and one thing leads to another....
2. A co worker narrates how he was working in a software company in Delhi, and he liked a girl at work. One day he walked up to her and point blank asked if she would marry him. She said nothing. They never talked after that. A few months later she approached him and said whether he would like to meet her parents.
3. I love U: Two people of different communities meet at work in Delhi and start liking each other. But the guys parents prefers he select a girl from the south. Eventually he finds another job, moves away, and they stop talking, the emails die out. A year later, there is the I love u virus outbreak. The woman receives an 'I love U' message from the guy that he did not send. She writes back, and now they are married and living in Bangalore.

4. You stole my money: A girl is on the way to Modi nagar from Delhi on a project. She is a student, and has the last 100 Rs. in her bag for the trip. She sees a guy next to her who has a 100 rupee note in his hand. She checks her purse and it is empty. Her note must have fallen and he picked it up ! She asks him to return her money. He insists that the note is his.

Dubai

hello world

"Trans Vaginal route to the US"

An Indian doctor holding a US green card posts a matrimonial ad in a USMLE prep website.


He starts with: "well I thought so many of you want to move to usa. ....One way is to marry. no harm done."
But he soon reverses his stand: "why do you guys and girls want to come to US? Its not that great. " He rants on his racism experiences, how whites treat others like second class, and how Sep 11 changed everything...all the while not stating why he is still there.

My experience in the US and on returning to India tells that happiness is not in the place, its in what you want to pursue in your life. The work you do, the people in your personal life and your aspirations are what decide your level of happiness. It could be in India or the US... it just depends on which place better fits with your life goals.

Punjabi Century

This book is a rare gem, a mix of Russel Bakers 'Growing Up' and Ahmed Ali's 'Twilight in Delhi'. I picked it up for Rs. 40 at a sale. It remained on the bookshelf for 6 months before I took a look at it-but it only took me half a day and one night to finish it.
Prakash Tandon, founder of IIM A, was born in 1911. He traces the history of his ancestors from 1847, about the time the rule of the Sikhs (Sikha Shahi)ended, to 1947. Unlike the rest of India (apart from Hyderabad),Punjab was never ruled by the East India company. When the British took over, many welcomed the change and stability. The Khatris amongst the Punjabis were the first to embrace formal British education. By 1911,as Tandon notes, the engineering services in some districts were managed entirely by Indian staff.
As a child Mr. Tandon grows up in small towns and villages, moving with his father who works as an engineer managing the canal system. He describes a Baisakhi festival on the banks of a river in one such village in photographic detail. Later, he completes his education in a small town called Gujrat, at the foothills of what today would be Pakistani occupied Kashmir. Vividly described, the way of life of this small town, and the ups and downs of Mr. Tandon's family forms the core of this book.
Pran Nevile attempts a copy of this with his poorly written 'Lahore' but fails to get that emotional touch.
Much of this books success is precisely that- a story of a whole community told through the life of one family with a personal touch. The book ends with the parition and the family's crossing over to India at the wagah border.

Jugdish Sheths talk

Jug Seth, an entertaining speaker and Emory professor,spoke about India's integration with the Global markets this week. It appears that the major areas of emerging opportunities in India will be in retail, Healthcare and wellness (gyms/salsa instructors?), Education and design. He also predicted that in ten years the Bangalore -Hyderabad corridor would be the aeronautics hub of the country with majors like Lockheed and Northrop Grumman. He pointed out how the fall of communism,aging population in the west, and economic pragmatism were forcing the developed countries to depend more on India , China and other BRIC countries. There are some interesting factoids on his website-
>The average net worth of a US factory worker is $250000 ! That means a programmer in Bangalore averaging 7 lakhs in wages(after taxes) would have to work for ten years to reach that economic level (assuming the remaining 100K is from interest).

>One in 4 first time births in the US results in a miscarriage. It appears that for years people do not want to have children, so when they finally want it the body cannot adapt.
>Italy and Spain have the lowest birthrate in Europe, Italy being 1.2 children per woman.
>Average age of a woman is 39 years in Sweden (?not sure about the country)

I checked another interesting statistic when looking at the Swedish population site- in 1950 there were 50,000 marriages and 9500 divorces. In 2005, there were 44000 marriages and 20,000 divorces. The sudden jump seems to have happened between 1970 and 1980 (from 12,000 to present levels). Thats the time when women started working in the West... so my prediction is that we will see the same change happen in India in this decade(2005-2015) - and this will happen more in the software,BPO professions which have larger number of women working.

Build to last: The dull life of long lived companies

I am reading this Jim Collins book at the moment. Its not a perfect book but it raises a good point. It says the company is more important than a particular idea or technology. If we get stuck to an idea then we cannot change and react to the market.

I've looked at how I come up with ideas and notice that these ideas are things that I like doing- for me its graphics. Some of us want to start something because we would feel happy in pursuing a field we like and creating something good in that area.

But this same belief also restricts us from doing something that would be profitable. Many people won't probably start a real estate firm even if that pays more, or even a mainframe coding one ? At least I need a feeling of creativity in what I do- but this same belief goes against conventional business wisdom, where you have to do whatever work comes , and adapt to survive.

I feel uncomfortable about this conclusion of the book- it makes out business to be a dull numbers game , rather than a "big idea" story like Google. Yet this may be true- and we may have to look into ourselves to see that what draws us to business are ideas that are good for the business, however dull, as compared to what pleases our personal interest.

desert song

Wandering the desert of my longing,
I somehow forgot to forget you.
I have lived a lifetime in your eyes-
beginning and inevitable end. Yet-
like a mirage stretched on the horizon
you haunt me in my dreams.
Like a fistful of sand I hold you
but you slip through my fingers
and are lost in the wind.
There is no oasis in this desert,
no minarets of towns from the tales I've told,
And the only water you will here find my love,
will be the tears in my eyes.

Cat on Strike

Our cat has disappeared for the past two days. He usually comes in in the morning (perhaps after finishing a call center job) at 7. Recently he developed a habbit of sleeping on my bed after he gets in, something I've discouraged. Two days ago he came back from a fight beaten up , and there was a bit of blood and fur on the sheets. Enough was enough. I locked him out of the room and he kept crying to get back in. I encouraged him to sit on the sofa- but no luck. How can animals get so choosy? Finally he disappeared.

Now he is on strike.

Rainy Summer afternoon

Like a river flowing into the sea,
I give myself away to you.
like sparkling fireworks on a Diwali night,
I shall ascend and errupt in brilliant glow,
to watch my burning reflection in your eyes.
The summer thunderstorm came unannounced,
Unlatched windows rattled and smashed by the joyous wind,
The neatly laid clothes on the line in disarray
now kiss and smell the wet earth.

A day in Mumbai

"These are the new trains," the middle aged passenger opposite to me said. "They say its like an airbus...we will never have the fortune of boarding an airplane, but this is good enough."

I got down in Dadar. Walked past the flower market and took a cab to go see the mills in lower Parel. I stepped into a lane off the main street and time moved back 80 years. Old buildings, black and grey, paint in disrepair, a colorful patchwork of clothing hanging from the iron grilles. Some were dated 1922. It was hard to imagine that someone still lived there.

A bunch of kids playing cricket on the street surrounded me on seeing my camera. I have to take a picture of them batting. Finally, the whole team posed. Somebody hurriedly scribbled and address for me in Hindi when I said I could post the pictures. A kid pointed to a run down room on the ground floor. "That's my house.Send it there."

Later I found my way out from another street, lined with slums on both sides. Radios were playing, phones ringing. This was a city within a city.

Kaagaz ke Phool and Pyaasa

Over the past few months, I've been reading up a lot on Guru Dutt's life. Its a phase I go through- a fixation with something. At one point it was the gypsies and their history, at another time, the 1857 Indian Mutiny. When this happens I read all I can find on a subject.
What stands out in these films is their originality. The opening shot of Kaagaz ke phool, with the protagonist picturized below from the feet of a statue, reminded me of Ozymandias :
Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies,
....
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The half shrunken visage in this case is the once famous Suresh Sinha, who is visiting the studio where he once used to work. It is not told to us if this is something he does often...to watch the crew at work below, while he sits far above and reminiscences of past glory, but it seems plausible.

The rest of the film is a flashback of his successes and eventual downfall. As Sinha climbs the stairs of the studio to where the light boys work, he looks down at the sets and perhaps for the first time realizes the set to be a world of make believe, removed from outside reality,profit being the only connection between the two.

In the 'waqt ne kiya' sequence, a beam of light lights up an empty studio as Sinha and Shanti show up for work early. Amitaba Bagchi in a nicely written review of the film, calls this beam 'the space for transgressive desire'. But the beam also stands for the limelight of the film world, which comes in between their relationship.

The film apart from depicting downfall of an icon, also mirrors the rigid social mindsets of the time. Sinha is a man trapped between doing what society considers immoral, and by his own so called 'Khuddari' (self respect) which prevents him from bowing down to anyone for help. One can either be a stoic figure, suffering in silence, or a labelled womanizer like Rocky, but not the 'half gentleman' that Sinha declares himself to be when he first meets Shanti.

This is a more ambitious story than Pyaasa, but in the latter the execution is smoother and consistent throughout. Paper Flowers starts breaking up a bit predictabily towards the end.

I can't believe that this film was a flop.

Sahir Ludhianvi's work is here:
http://www.urdupoetry.com/sahir04.html

VK Murthy, the cinematographer, talks of his beginnings and work with Guru Dutt here