Incredible India

Just today, I got a passbook and ATM debit card for my newly opened NRE account in my local SBI branch. I certainly do qualify as an NRI now, don't I. I have been in USA as a F1 student for nearly a year and a half now and with my job awaiting me in California once I graduate, I am certainly going to be there for three-four years to come.

As an aside, it is despairing to hear that most Indian parents of the post-2008-recession era are now wary of handing over their daughter to an MS qualified boy like me. Our market capitalization has really gone down in this aspect. :)

The question I have been asked by a great many of my relatives, friends and even strangers is how does it feel to be back from the US even if for a short vacation. Does India repel you now? Is the mind-numbing Bangalore traffic appalling to you now? My answer to that is, has Bangalore traffic ever been appealing to even non-NRI citizens? Although, I think the question has a truth in it. People's perception is that the US is generally a far more comfortable place to live in and has better designed cities. While that is generally true, the sum of your life cannot be immeasurably better just because you live in a better designed city and can afford a better standard of living than previously afforded. More on this in a minute...

A friend from college has been in the US for nearly 5 years now. He went straight for an MS after his B. Tech and has been there since. Incidentally, he is also currently in Bangalore on a short vacation and to get his work VISA stamping done. I can clearly see his distaste of living in India from his comments. He believes that the kind of salary he could command with his qualification here in India, he would be unable to afford the kind of lifestyle that he aspires what with the sky-rocketing inflation. Moreover, he is a very activity oriented person like me and likes to run, rock-climb, swim, hike, play tennis etc on a regular basis. All of these facilities are easily available to him at his doorstep at his place in Sunnyvale, but are nearly impossible to come by here in Bangalore. Clearly, he regards these as basic necessities and is riled that they are not available to the common man here. To that extent, I have to agree with him, India as a developing nation is only slowly starting to place importance to leisure and recreation and still comes at a premium.

I have always been a person who likes to explore new territories and get exposure different cultures, and perspectives. To that end, my MS program so far has been a huge success. I have learnt ice-skating, racquetball, surfing and ball room dancing all in a short span of less than two years, a feat that would have been impossible here in Bangalore. I have also tasted so many more cuisines and micro-brews than I would have had a chance to here. But I believe, that with time, all this excitement that surrounds the exotic will fade away. There was a phase in my life that I used to enjoy hiking, that I used to want to visit as many new places as possible. But nowadays, I enjoy kicking back with a glass of beer or cup of coffee with my school friends or preparing a meal for my mom for my birthday (which she really appreciated) more than anything else. Maybe its because, a chance to spend time with my school friends or my family is a very valuable entity given the limited time of my vacation. But I suspect that this is more a mental shift in my values and what I hold important in my life. The realization that it is not material pleasures ultimately, but the people you are surrounded with that matters for your long term happiness. Just the other day, I was mentioning to another friend that it is not so much the thrill of exciting new place but the company you are with that makes the trip/vacation memorable. A few years ago, I would jump at the opportunity to go to a new place even if my best friends couldn't make it to the trip.

Maybe once I get married, I will once again enjoy exploring new places and things with my partner for a few years, but after the magic of a new romantic relationship subsides, these things will again take a back seat.

I have come to strongly believe that home is always where your people are, and to me that is and will always be, Incredible India.

Re-inventing the wheel?

This is a fallacy that almost everyone accepts. Talk to anyone who has worked for 3 or more years after an undergraduate degree and ask him about the merits of doing a discontinuing work to pursue a Masters in the same field. He will almost certainly scoff at you and talk you down. Typical responses will include, 'What can Masters teach you now that work hasn't already taught you?' or 'You never end up using anything you studied at work anyway, so whats the point' or 'There is no monetary benefit of discontinuing work at this stage. In fact, it will probably be detrimental to your career at this point.' Although I often tell myself that I make my decisions and cannot be swayed by other people's opinions, I must admit that I myself was mostly of the above mentioned myself and somewhat skeptical of voluntarily giving up a comfortable paying job after 3 years to enter unchartered territory for my Masters at University of Wisconsin-Madison. Most of all was the discomfort involved in temporarily dislodging myself from the comfortable groove that I was settled in back home. However, having made up my mind at the time of graduating from NITK in 2007 to pursue a Masters in 3 years time, I decided that this decision still carried weight and change was a good thing if only to get a new perspective of work and my career.

I am now approaching nearly one year in my Master's program and coming to the close of an internship at Qualcomm Headquarters at San Diego. Looking back, I am happy that I made the decision that I did in-spite of popular opinion. What made me arrive at this conclusion? Its related to the title of this piece. One can never under-estimate the importance of knowing one's fundamentals right. While work will throw many challenges at you, you are often wasting time grappling for solutions to issues that already have known solutions. The saying, Ignorance is Bliss couldn't be more wrong in this context. One thing that my Masters so far has helped me learn is that you need to recognize the problem at hand correctly. Once you have done that, you most likely have a solution at hand that can be arrived at simply by applying fundamental principles. Perhaps this is more true in my field of Computer Architecture where design and decisions are driven primarily by logical reasoning more than anything else.

The key enlightment of this issue came to me in a flash concerning an incident at my company where I am currently interning. There was a billion dollar question on how to best use the excess chip area to arrive at the best solution performance wise. They had 8 different configurations considering the area available. However, analysing the data showed there was a possible 9th configuration that was not even been thought of. A quick analysis showed that this 9th configuration was indeed a elegant solution in terms of return on engineering effort and produced the performance gains needed. As an intern at a company, I arrived at this solution after two months of spending time to understand their design while the solution was not even in their initial 8 configurations. I arrived at this idea by applying the principles of Amdahl's law which is really computer architecture 101. I am not saying that my solution was out of the world, I am simply saying that managers with 10+ years of experience could not come up with this idea though it was staring them in the face. In fact, the proposal gained little traction with the chip's project manager until a model's results proved my hypothesis.

This example only seeks to highlight the fact that people spend a lot of time trying to rethink solutions to problems for which the cure is known if only you knew your fundamentals well and applying it to the situation at hand.

Even though it may be true that the short term monetary gains from doing a post graduate program may be in fact contradictory, the long term learnings are definitely worth the while and will stand you well in good stead. Never say no to an experience or opportunity that can teach you something new. I read only a couple of days back on Yelp that a student who learned how to free herself from an overturned kayak taught her life skills of working patiently and calmly and that she can now apply to every sphere in her life.

Coming to the US, I have learned ice skating, surfing, communicating to people from diverse nationalities, that patience, perseverance and thoroughness pays off, and made new friends apart from just becoming a better architect in just one short year. Change in perspective and direction is good and it has made me a better person overall. I continue to embrace change, and accept any lessons that life throws at me and grow from them as I tread this wonderful journey that is life.

Piggybacking on brand Success

If you talk to almost any average 'educated' person of this generation, and ask them if they want to 'succeed' in life, they will reply in the affirmitive. Have you met any person who has vociferously declared that he wants to fail in life? I hope not! The definition of success can take on one or a combination of several dimensions including but not limited to money, fame, power, and recognition. Its another matter that most people tend to confuse success to be synonymous with making money, so much so that they start declaring that their goal in life is not to succeed but to make money in life and lots of it. The first question is a no-brainer.

The second question is more difficult. Ask them how they plan to 'succeed' in life. It is not uncommon then to notice that 9/10 people do not know the answer to that since they have not yet succeeded in defining the meaning of the word 'Success' for themselves. Since many people fail in this first step, they then make the mistake of borrowing their neighbour's definition. And what do you know, that neighbour/peer probably borrowed that definition from his Uncle or whoever was an influential person in his life.

What is the point of the above paragraph. Simply that without discovering what success means to you, you will not be able to decide how to go about achieving it. The next step is predictable. The society at large has set accepted standards of defining success. As a school kid, good grades are synonymous with success. Why? But of course because it allows you to secure admission into a 'prestigious' college. From there, you use the brand name of your college to get into a 'reputed' employer. And the buck doesn't stop there. If this employer is big enough that it employs thousands of people which it usually is if it is already reputed, then the company possibly defines the guidelines to 'succeed' in the company which becomes every incumbent's mantra of success within the company. I call these the piggybacks of Brand success. A college earned its reputation because it possibly did some or many things right. By securing admission into that college, you have already been branded 'successful/or high potential to succeed' even before you start the first day of college. After that its just a rite of passage and onto the next 'successful' institution. The process continues.

Lets face it, why does every potential MBA candidate dream of a seat in the IIMs? I myself am no graduate of the IIMs, but how does 2 years spent in that institution result in such a profound change of the individual that he now qualifies from a 3-4 Lakh pa job to a 25+ Lakh pa job? The answer to that is again a no-brainer. It absolutely does not. It is a classic case of piggybacking on brand Success again.

It cannot be argued that the society approved paths of success more or less guarantee you to the portals of mediocrity and a reasonably good standard of living by assuring you of a good income. Does it open up the true portals of success. I think not. Maybe a guy who passed out of a mediocre MBA institute (or even better, without any MBA) and fought his way up the ladder in a organisation through his hard work and capabilities shows a greater capacity to achieve something big in his life than an equivalent candidate who earned his ticket to the same position by virtue of his Harvard MBA degree and not much else.

How many speakers that feature on TED talks are people who took the proven path? Work out the numbers for yourself.

Does this imply the obvious? Be a radical, revolutionary, or maverick who does not follow the norms and conventions of society. A corny example of the protagonist of Avatar comes to my mind at this juncture. When questioned by the Na'avi chief, he replies - 'Believe me, my plate is completely empty. ' Guess who went on to win the war for the Na'avis. Sometimes, an empty plate helps to pile on surprisingly fresh and enlightening perspectives rather than a plate filled with 'proven' second hand perspectives.

Disclaimer - As the author of this post, I don't claim to be a maverick myself but simply ask the questions that might help lead to the right answers.

The 'green stuff' cycle

I knew about this thing called Mutual Funds that existed all along, but I didn't know what exactly what it was. My friend introduced me to it and I have to say that it did impress me quite a bit. By collecting and managing the funds of a large number of people and investing the funds in the growing Indian stock market, they provide very good returns on your money. Although, you are never assured of the returns, assuming that you do some research and invest in the top performing fund houses, you can more than triple your money invested in about three years time. But it of course entails having to put away your money for three years time.

And what happens when you get the money three years later? The temptation is very great to invest this money once again and triple that three years from then. And you are caught in the vicious cycle of making more money and seeing it multiply forever. While it is prudent to save for the rainy day, don't make it a habit of going like a rabid dog with your salivating tongue hanging down behind the green stuff.

And for those of you with a little bit of patriotism left in you, remember that India will prosper as an economy only when the purchasing power of its citizens increases or if we buy more with our money. So don't just grow a money plant in your compound, enjoy its fruits too before the plant finally withers and dies.

Star Power

Just came back after watching the movie Shivaji, The Boss. And for the life of me, I couldn't remeber why I had assented to accompany my friends to see that movie in the first place. They just seem to reach a new level of stupidity in the name of performing 'stunts' and 'comedy' and 'style'. I have to say that Shriya Saran's exquisitely crafted body and the suggestive sway of her hips in the dance sequences were the only things that kept me from pulling out my hair from my head. After a while, even that got monotonous. Just because Rajni 'sir' is the hero doesn't mean they can get away with showing anything on the screen. And yet going by the collections, they seem to have achieved just that. It goes to show that a vast majority of the Indian Population are just dumb or have insipid tastes. My guess is that they haven't seen anything better.

One has to commend the Director's efforts for once again trying to expose the fallacies of corruption and trying to inspire people to give up corruption. But time and again, one gets the feeling that beating up guys and seducing hot actresses is the main fare in the movie and tackling corruption just the side dish. I have to admit that I did not expect much from the movie and tagged along just to quench my curiosity.

Anyway for those of you who read this post and are open to trying out a good movie, how about 'The Big Lebowski' for starters and 'Kiss Kiss Bang Bang' for main course. And if you are still hungry for more, try 'The Pursuit of Happiness' for dessert.

Yeah its hot!

I have started this article in the usual eye catching papparazzi style to catch the attention of your eyes and to make you skim through this blog. I know you will stop and go through this blog the moment you set your eyes on the title.

Now what can the word 'hot!' in the line aver to:
a. Hot coffee
b. Global Warming
c. A furnace
d. AMD Athon FX 74

A survey taken showed that 79% of the respondents associated the word furnace with the phrase 'hot!' Ahem... do you think I have a jasmine on my left ear? The article we guys think about first is not even on the list.

Anyway, this article is not about that word-of-whom-we-do-not-openly-write-about but about Global Warming. Finally, the world is waking up to the effects of Global Warming. Although what I don't understand is why we as Indians don't realize the issue and start doing something about it first? Why do we have to wait for USA and Europe and Japan and China to wake up before we go -

'Huh, Global Warming... What's that? Should we do something about it? Lets wait another five years, the rest of the world is only started to do something about it now, its too early for us. '

And this from a nation that boasts about its brain power and talent exporting capability. We may have the number crunching capability, but when it comes to thinking on our own and making bold decisions, we draw nothing short of a negative infinity.

Meanwhile, our government make take years to respond to the crisis, they won't take notice until they find the hair on their head singed due to the rising heat. But in the meantime, it is your time to act. Do what you can in TOI's word to reduce your carbon signature by following these simple tidbits:

1. Switch off lights and appliances you are not using. Even devices in Standby draw power.
2. Use only the amount water you need. Plug leaking taps and faucets immediately.
3. Its never beneath your dignity to walk or cycle when you can to save fuel.
4. Install a water heater at home. Shaves off valuable power consumption everyday.
5. Dispose garbage safely.

If you guys aren't inspired enough, I urge you to watch 'An Inconvenient Truth', a commendable effort by Al Gore. I'm sure that if you have an IQ above 90, you will understand and start acting accordingly.

Let us save Gaya
Background Score as credits begin to roll : Captain Planet! You're the Hero! Gonna take pollution down to zero...