Wit Wisdom and Whoop

In 1993 or 1994 or so I was working as the Branch Manager of Alfa Laval. We had a brilliant infotech manager called Mahesh Deshmukh who was looking for an office which could be the test case in his computerisation plans for the company. Wipro the contractor was in Bangalore and given my interest he chose my branch. The company planned to set up a local area network system with about 5 or 6 desktop units and a gentleman with a similar name – Vashishta – was the Manager from Wipro. As they executed the job, I discussed with him that the LAN would be of no use if we still had to call up/ go meet colleagues when all we had to do was leave a message. Could he have a system wherein we could send messages to each other and when the person logged in, it would pop up. They did it and we soon had a very effective communication system where we didn’t forget messages and even instructions/ feedback were typed off and sent instantly.  This effort gave me immense satisfaction at a personal lev...

  For whatever reasons, call it a lack of focus, ambition, my career, and life has often taken a direction by default than design. This 2-part blog is a small story of my life as related to the field of Infotech. Sometime in 1981-82 as I was finishing engineering, we didn’t have campus recruitments and were left to our own efforts to find jobs. I have no clue why but felt would like to explore opportunities in the Computer field. It wasn’t called Infotech, but we said – I want to do Computers – whatever that meant. When I broached this subject the unanimous feedback, I got was this was a field where career aspiration at best would be to become stenographer to the CEO/MD of a company because computers meant highly glorified typewriters.    The main names those days were Wipro, Microland, Hindustan Computers Ltd (HCL) and I was thrilled to receive a call from HCL to attend a selection process. Savera hotel in Chennai was the location and we assembled in the morning. T...

Life is often a mystery in the way things happen and when we have an experience which shows us how a divine hand – call it God – plays on us like a master, it makes us ponder, even if we don’t have answers. I share one such divine experience which reached a closure today with good news. An experience that I felt compelled to share. My wife goes to a nearby Raghavendra Swamy mutt every day early in the morning for a short while. She returned from one such visit very disturbed. She had seen a young girl at the mutt circle perambulating the sanctum sanctorum 108 times and she was obviously in great personal distress. She used to literally clutch at anybody she saw and begged them to pray to save her child. Apparently her 4-year-old lovely talented daughter had come down with a virus infection and soon the child’s condition deteriorated resulting in a stroke, followed by the child going into a coma. The single mother had taken the child to different big hospitals in the city with no lu...

Any talk of a Post Ukraine Russia war would be incomplete without a step back in time to understand History and the Geography of Economics. History: Post-World War 2, though USA and Russia fought jointly, they divided the European conquests between them resulting in the creation of NATO by USA and the Warsaw Pact by Russia. Within 36 years after the Warsaw pact, the Russian empire crumbled and large areas aligned themselves with Europe culturally, religiously and as whites. NATO created in 1949 primarily had the objective of providing protection against any external threat – meaning Russia. The ONLY time in history where this pact in original has been invoked is after the September 11 attacks in USA. When the Warsaw pact crumbled in 1991, the intent and agreement was NATO would also lose relevance. Substantial arms reductions were made, and Russia was not a “war” threat anymore. The joint space programs between USA/Russia, the end of the cold war, creation of G20, BRICS, energy p...

This is a spoof, meant to be funny, not to be misunderstood as a insult or whatever.  It was already 8 in the morning and Putin was still sleeping. He had been up till 5 AM and finally drifted off to an exhausted sleep. But then the news coming in from Ukraine didn’t look good and finally Anton woke him up, arranged some strong coffee by the time Putin walked into the situation room in a foul mood. The briefing didn’t look good. He was irritable and snapping at everybody and the only one who could stand up to him was Brychyova affectionately called Brychy. She could give him all the bad news and make him listen. She now told him. “President, you need to get some rest and be fresh so you can give us all the right direction. You must talk to Baba Ramdev and restart those meditation and breathing exercises he has taught you. Your public image is becoming an issue here. The people of Russia thought we would just walk over all over Ukraine in a week and here we are even after months s...