just a passing thought...

Life is a mad bitch cut loose on a biting spree. 

     If you don't keep your feet kickin', 

     you never know when it's gonna be bitin'. 

[9/5/2019]

Cleanliness doesn't mean avoiding or artfully hiding or "othering" of or stigmatizing the dirt. It quite simply means cleaning up the dirt. [25/6/2018]

Lok Adalats definitely have a good intention of making justice accessible to the weak at their doorsteps. Also to reduce the burden of higher courts. But to say that Lok Adalats are the ultimate answer is to create a separate class of secondary/sub-citizens who are only eligible for a justice system that shoves down his throat, a speedy and binding judgement with no recourse to appeal to higher courts. After all, if the rich still make use of and trust the District Courts, HC and SC, then why do we talk of an informal system such as LA's for the poor? Are they free from social prejudices? Are they not opaque? Are they not prone to be dominated by the same social hierarchy that was the cause for litigation in the first place? [29/4/2018]

For any law to not just become an Act but to see success in implementation, it should pander to the most basic human traits. It should not only be sound in conventions of law but should be designed such that any implementing human is expected nothing more to be, but be a human. If humans are basically selfish, the law should be designed such that the implementer's very selfishness will see the law to success. His human need for appreciation, his thirst for incentives, his penchant for security of his own livelihood and his family - only these can make a law successful. The moment a law expects implementor to be more than a human - altruistic, selfless, it sows the seeds of its own death. For, selflessness is a socially created nicety in societies, which can be thrown out of the window the moment the implementor exits the society and enters his own self. [3/4/2018]

India has the tradition of creating a new institution, body, agency or a scheme whenever an issue arises, rather than trying to address the issue itself. If CBSE paper leaks, remedy is creation of National Testing Agency. If MCI is corrupt, create NMC. If banks have huge NPA's, create PARA. But after a few year, these new institutions get riddled with corruption, so much so that the body itself becomes an issue and to resolve it, the government dissolves the body and freshly creates a new body. This has led to multiplication of institutions - 10 each dealing with the same aspect of the governance, further leading to confusion and diffusion of funds with each institution suffering with the same problems of lack of transparency, corruption, lack of sufficient funds and inefficiency. No one knows one-to-one correspondence about which issue is exactly dealt with by which body. If a citizen approaches an office, he is told off to visit another office as it comes under the domain of another body. This disables citizens in accessing the government services. The day we dare to directly address the "issue" rather than beating around the "bodies", we will become an efficient country. [30/3/2018]

We can compensate for the lack powerful computation hardware with efficient algorithms-based software as long as the application doesn't demand both powerful h/w + efficient s/w. Same applies to human brain (by utilizing the time sincerely and more efficiently). There are very few who have great h/w + also put it to efficient use. Hence, someone else with less powerful h/w can out compete someone else with best of brains but slacks off. [29/3/2018]

Except for his biometrics and the biological limitation of there being no possibility of claiming otherwise as far as who his parents are, a human should be able to identify himself every which way he fancies and it should be his fundamental right. It is not for others, not even the parents to decide what his identity would be for the rest of his life. That's the true "personal liberty". [28/3/2018]

Why do we call it "hoarding" when farmers save it for the profitable times? What's wrong with that as long as our country's food security is met? Don't capitalists do the same thing? Saving and investing at the right times to make maximum profits? When there is a fall in private investment in the overall economy, is it not because the capitalists are waiting for the right time and thus are "hoarding" their money at the moment? Why is it that when every class thinks of profit, farmers are the only people who need to make sacrifices to offer their product at the cheaper prices? Well the instant refrain to the argument would be that it is not the actual growers but middle-men who are guarding the APMC gates and are hoarding. But why do you care? Don't act like you care for the farmers more than middle-men. Last time I heard from you, you were the staunchest supporter of Adam Smith. Has the invisible hand that was supposed to assist people in Agriculture sector been chopped off? Only thing you stand for is to protect your own invisible hand. The argument here is not about middle-men or farmers. Yes, middle-men are bad. Get rid of them and enable farmers to have enough capability to hoard. But nevertheless, hoarding is the most "free-market thing" to do. Anti-hoarding measures of the government only aggravate the Cobweb Cycle of low supply + higher prices one year --> followed by supply glut, low-prices and losses the next. [28/3/2018]

As I note down for the the exam, the topic on how India should pass a data protection law and control the access to personal data by the foreign companies, my notes in Microsoft Word gets synced to Google servers, swiftly, silently and graciously. And I write this quote down in Google Blogger! [27/3/2018]

I believe we not only think in images but associate much stronger connection to the memories in those images, the music and the fragrances which transcend us back in time. A song associated to somewhere in time or the olfactory association to a place can transport us across the time in a moment. [26/3/2018]

We could go back in time by saving it now. [22/3/2018]

Europeans say "what a nice sunny day, let's go out for beer", Indians say "what a pleasant, cool day. Let's have pakode at home!". [16/3/2018]

Every time we Indians don the nationalist cap, some lives are extinguished on the border, and every time some lives are extinguished on the border, we don the nationalist cap. [16/Mar/2018]

"World Economic Forum said the private sector still considers corruption to be the most problematic factor for doing business in India." Does that sound funny to anyone? Corruption always involves two accomplices - one, a government official and the other _____? One cannot be corrupt without the other - it's a chicken-egg problem really. However the question is not how it started. Rather, it is about how it is fueled, greased and perpetuated. [13/Mar/2018]

We are not what and how much we've read or seen. We are what we have owned up as our own and are able to express and write from that. [13/Mar/2018]

There are two ways to look at it, this thing called life: either everything matters and crib about it until the end or simply, nothing matters. In the end, we all split into atoms to be part of a rock, a tomato, a bird or a star. [1/Sep/2013]

Every second u r at the best moment of ur life as u r the youngest u can be. [9/Mar/2010]

Starbucks - The Third Kind

Couple of months ago I was reading a book on start-ups named "Art of the Start" by Guy Kawasaki. He was an "evangelist" (a term coined by him) of Macintosh operating system back in 1980's and later went on to become a successful Silicon valley venture capitalist. His book was so riveting due to his unique way of explaining things that I got this tendency to respect his experience and believe in everything he had to teach in his book about start-up companies. As a way of explaining many concepts, he used to so often quote Apple or Starbucks. Since I am from India, I wasn't aware of the fact that Starbucks is such an omnipresent brand around the world; thanks to Cafe Coffee Day. Once I read this book, I started realizing that Starbucks was everywhere (at least in Munich). This might seem strange to the westerners that in India, we can be so oblivious of some of the world famous brands but the fact is, there is an entirely different kind of market in India. It was only in 2011[1] that TATA (Asia's largest coffee plantations company) wanted to bring Starbucks to India in what it envisaged as a strategic alliance.


And I wanted to know what made Starbucks so successful. To me, there are two kinds of coffee - the kind of Bru/Nescafe Sunrise and the rest. And I never had a good feeling about any coffee in Germany being that good - Nescafe Classic, Nescafe Gold, Senseo, everything was pretty much the shit. Later on I found out that it was the composition that made Bru so different from the rest. Nescafe Gold is mostly  roasted coffee beans while Bru coffee is  roasted coffee beans (70-80%) and chicory (30-20%)[2]. But I am usually an unbeliever of brands though I buy the products from them for the sake of "social status", which is the only additional feature you get from a branded product like Tommy Hilfiger jean-pants as compared to the pants you can buy from one of those stalls on the footpaths in Hyderabad's old basti.


However, I wanted to try this branded coffee once. So I went with a friend who had coffee at Starbucks a few times before. It was in Munich's Hauptbahnhof (the central train station). We had ordered for cheese cakes to go along with "filter coffee" which we chose because it sounded more like "Bru filter coffee" than Cappuccino and Cafe Latte. Each of us paid around 5 Euros (that's approx. 430 Indian rupees (INR) as per the current times of all time low currency exchange rate for INR against USD). In Chennai, you would get a tasty (according to my tongue) Bru Coffee in any roadside tiffin stalls for 5 INR. Anyhow, we had ordered for large filter coffee instead of a small one, to know where those additional 425 INR went. Usually in India, we add lot of milk and a teaspoon full of sugar to coffee. But here, we got pitch black coffee filled almost to the rim of the large paper cup. Without even tasting it, we added as much of condensed milk as we could accommodate in the little room left in the cup, and a bit of sugar.


The first sip I had from the cup, I knew that from now on there's gonna be a third kind of coffee  - "the Starbucks filter coffee". It was quite strong and even difficult to drink it to the dregs. But however, we took about half-an-hour to finish it while discussing the great (you can chose to take it with a grain of salt) ideas for a start-up. The actual story of this blog did not start until now.


After we left Starbucks, we were high, indeed very high on coffee. It was around 8 pm on a Sunday. I have never felt this anxious in my life after having a coffee. It gave this feeling of "something is about to happen" but you do not know what it is. We had dinner at my friend's place and I left for my house at around 11 pm. My regular bed time being 11:30 in the night, I could not sleep until 2 am. One thing for sure, it was the Starbucks filter coffee. I was feeling delirious the whole night, cold and anxious. My heart kept beating faster and my breath was swollen. I stay in a 100 year old yet well maintained, spacious flat in an apartment in Munich. Apart from me, there are only two other living things in the apartment. One of them is the 85 year old landlord who owns the house and a black cat named Jacobina. This flat is on the fourth floor and there is an earthquake every time the subway train passes beneath the building. There is this bird view of the main road from my window.


The coffee made me think a lot of things I must do in life. It made me anxious and made me think that something is missing in life - may be some achievement, any achievement and that I have to take an immediate action to do something about it. May be film making, may be starting up a company, didn't exactly know what. Got some weird thoughts that I might jump from the fourth floor (though I didn't intend to) straight on to the road. Was so high that I was feeling insecure, unsafe for no reason - thoughts that someone might mutilate or maim an arm off my body. Or as if someone was conspiring behind the door to attempt a murder. After rolling on bed for about 3 hours, finally fell asleep but never completely. Got up some 5 times the whole night, kept drinking water and peeing. Once I was a bit deep in to sleep and all of a sudden, woke up to notice that I did not have my right arm. Wait! I did not feel my right arm. I turned on the bed lamp with left palm to realize that I had placed my right arm under the pillow and my head over the pillow and the arm went numb. That's it, no big deal. Woke up in the morning at around 9 am. Already late for the university (these are the times when I am doing Master's thesis at TUM, Germany on Computer Vision for Self Driving Cars).


Got up, got ready, got to the college and wrote this blog (well blogging at the uni is a rare thing for me. So don't mistake me for a guy who wastes time at work :P). It is still the worst hangover of all time. Thanks to Starbucks! It was definitely the third kind of coffee.