an uncomfortable dream ... part 2.

...yes i know the problem but let me convince you why i dont see
any straightforward answer to it.

unlike iit-ians i am a discrete island. now suppose i want to start
my tech-venture. my major concern is where and how would i get
sufficient quality man-power here [even for inception] ? for a
knowledge driven start-up that does not boast of deep pockets
this is a big problem in this part of the world. with jobs and
safe jobs aplenty and a natural genetic trait of risk aversion
most of the guys, particularly in Calcutta, stay satiated with
that end-of-the-month pay.

another problem and a serious one is finding co-founder. am not
great when it comes to going out and striking a deal. i can work
on product, can even strategize on selling channels and process,
but am not a smooth seller myself. either i personally will have
to improve on that or i will have to connect to someone who can
complement me well and play that role. now on this one again,
for most of the us start-ups the co-founders met each other
while in school [think gates, balmer off harvard, think page,
bryne off google, think cisco that's a husband-wife pair and
think more :) ]. maybe we took ju a little too casually and
thereby missed out on a lot of thrills it had on offer to us :)

Not that I am thinking about all these off late. It's been bugging
me for quite sometime now.

More ...

on such ideas in the next post.

an uncomfortable dream ...

had a weird dream last night - saw myself entangled in arguements,
trying to push my point on how it's fiorentina we should support
in the upcoming match. others seemed stubborn and did not agree
to this, to which i rammed how gianluca viali is an excellent
striker. there was an uncomfortable silence from all. and i
realized in a quasi-sleep-woken-up state of mind that it's been
almost two decades from when he used to play for the club;
and also a time from when i left following the sports. two
decades !

yesterday, i was brushing through some start-up profiles from
people I know. I was looking at 'imocontroller', a new venture
from delhi by minekey guys, that fetched instant glory for best
presentation from techcrunch50 [a highly respected consortium
of start-up and vcs. that google was once techcrunch50 finalist
would tell you something about it]. the other by yet another
minekey guy won the india round of qualcomm entrepreneurial
competition, something that saw them a 100000usd as seed fund
and is headed for the world league now with their kolkata based
venture capillary technologies. it provides mobile crm
solutions to retailers. number of people working on these
companies are just 3 and 7.

there also while flipping through forbes oct issue, i read yet
another case on robin li [of baidu fame, a search engine that
still sees 63% of market share in chinese search engine arena,
with google clicking abysmal 33 there], a from SUNY buffalo,
and a strong motivation for me to head for my MS from there.

no wonder then that i had to wake up to the sudden and
uncomfortable dream indicating how much time has quietly flown
down the don waiting for the dawn. let me see if i can list
the exact problems down in my upcoming post on what is it that's
making me wait and wait a little longer ....

Pankhudi take 2.

Not many words would justify today's experience that we gathered at the flag hoisting ceremony, this being the independence day of India. As I already mentioned in my previous post, they had a cultural event coming up for the occasion. Few of us decided to be there in the audience.

It was heartening to see that besides us quite a few like Rotary Club, who were behind today's event, had been there by the kids for a while now. The cultural event was rather modest and there were some small runtime infrastructural glitches as we all had to move inside the corridor due to rain. At the same time rehearsing for months for an audience less than the number of performers is not encouragement enough. That's just about alright :). Now that we know what it is like we can get a bigger show with a bigger audience filling up the auditorium next time.

Stay tuned ...

signing off,
JCL.

Pankhudi Kolkata takes off

Chaos is new in town of Kolkata. So are many of his friends studying mostly at iimcal. He was telling me on
and off about how they are trying to put up a real good show, trying to set up Kolkata chapter of Pankhudi, an NGO
that tries to reach out to visually impaired children. Dreamer had been a member of Bangalore chapter since inception and it's now in full swing reaching
out quite a few. I also gathered that they're facing slight hump on the road with language issue. I had been
sitting for a while as always and finally i recalled the words of Halmos on how one who sharpened his pencil was
never a researcher, and jumped the gun to get my bengali language skills [who would have thought !] :-s used
for a good cause.

From whatever I gathered ahead of my first session is we are going to lighthouse blind school, affiliated to
west bengal school of secondary education for a brief ice breaking session. and i would not be ashamed admitting
that it was goosebumps all the way for me ahead of it. am known to be master of faux pas. and i was scared to
extreme this being a new yet very sensitive domain. but .. it was all fun all the way :) the school is doing
real good work all in itself is what i took home. we were promised a session on saturday 3-5. but on our arrival
we found that kids are busy rehearsing for their upcoming cultural show for 15th august. probably the first
time in my life i did not mind being refused an already scheduled appointment and much to my own surprise was
happy for the cause it's cancelled for.

anyways we did at last have a chance to meet the tiny taughts after a small wait. and well it was fascinating.
addressing kids from several parts of bengal [most i saw is from malda, one from urban kolkata, one from
shantiniketan] with ambitions as varied as becoming a matron to an airhostess, while some played low key and
wanted to become bengali teachers. one girl was all serious when she wanted to become a cricketer. there was
this girl moonmoon who really kept us spellbound with her brilliant rendition of a tagore song 'asha jawa r
pother dhaare' - am a song freak. very rarely have i come across such purity of voice is what i can say. we
also had a chat on what is going right what more could they ask for. lalit who otherwise was keeping silent
most of the time volunteered to tell us that it takes him 3-5 minutes to write in braille, while it takes
him [he actually computed these !] 2-3 minutes to type on a braille computer. so he perceived more hands on
he can get with computer for his daily activity, better off he is. an entrepreneur in the making ? who knows.

but impressive the entire session was. am thankful that they tolerated us and were patient with old haggards like us were trying to act funny and conduct chinese whisper for them. but i hope this start sustains and grows
into the big tree with time.


now, yes we need more hands, better if you know how to speak bengali, as the students at this point are too shy to interact in any other language, and have a calling for this. get in touch.

East side story ..

I have been watching a lot of woody allen flicks recently.I was
introduced then to this old man from Russia in 'Love and Death', who
walks around the village, vehemently opposing any buying offer that
comes his way for the 'piece of land' ['chunk of earth' in his hands]
that he loitered around with; not to mention the indirect reference
to the short story from Tolstoy, 'How Much Land does a Man Need ?'


I remember a friend, on the verge of earning his Phd from a
prestigious school in the US, going frantic over how cost of living
in India has splurged over the years and how he needs a lotttt of
cash before hitting back. That I know he is not hitting back is
another story. But I was disturbed as I intended to hit back
myself for sure and pinched myself for not waking up earlier...

I was relaxed after reaching home to see that not much [sometimes
some things to your anxiety] has changed here.


...Just the other day, as I was moving around the city along a
friend from the US for a long planned photo shoot, we happened to
pass South City by [For the uninitiated, it's been the talk of the
town for years now on Kolkata real estate landscape] and gathered
that two of my college mates have been or have bought properties in
the highrise. Sounded pretty cool. Really. A photographer's mind
was lured as the prospect of a great vantage point to capture the
southern horizon.


But a cynic always steps back end of the day and gets into some
weird computation. Here then I look at the profile of both of my
friends who have bought it for themselves and realize that both are
well settled abroad and do not see in the distant horizon when is
it that they can hit the city. But they bought one all the same.
Let's get into the grinding details and one will find that equation
is simple. With socio-political scenario of Kolkata becoming
hostile again, industry giants turning deaf ears to ministerial
invites, the so-called new economy giants being overcrowded to the
point of suffocation, and the city gloriously topping the charts
of various surveys as the destination choice of the enterprises,
only read bottom up, there is hardly anyone making money in the city
that can afford south city luxury, save the business community
perhaps. But then look at the sprawling campuses boasting of
sauna and spa and shopping malls and rooftop air-taxis and what
not, that are bombarding you down every morning as you start your
day with front page of a newspaper.

Puzzling. How on earth can a city not earn enough but can afford
more than that.Easy answer to that is the eleventh avatar of lord
Krishna as credits that comes to one's rescue. I had been watching
all my friends who need a shelter in town and those who needs just
one more haggling around for credits for years now. The first
thing that I have seen people do with their first job is book
a car and chase it down in rapid succession with booking an
apartment in XYZ project, that flaunts the best in its kind
accessories, forgetting basic nuances about some fundamental
infrastructural chokepoints otherwise. Look at pre/post south
city traffic influx at Prince Anwar Shah Road or the waterlogged
Rajarhat roads for an answer. Now even the builders who were
not offering swimming pool with jacuzzi can advertise at least
a smooth-cruise experience at stone's throw [just let it rain.
wait for 10 mins and happy sailing ! :)].

Let me once more turn my eyes towards the credits we were talking of.
I was talking to this colleague of mine who is first generation in
town and understandably enough had to go for a shelter. On showing
some interest in these loan patterns, I gathered in reply an
agonized mind who is fretting over why the bank is taking most of
the money he pays for deduction of interests and not principle. I
understand instantly enough that yes there's cause of concern. I
patted his back and asked him to look up at the sun, with a
discomfort in mind. Are we coming a full cycle to serfdom ?



I remembered the excitement that in between my return from UK and
journey to US I witnessed chic malls coming up every corner of my
birthtown and disturbance at listening to an economist friends,
who was back after a semester teaching in Singapore and went on an
extensive backpacking around that region, talk of the ghost towns in
remote Thailand that has seen most of the shutters close down in
just a matter of few years. 'Just wait and watch' he had laughingly
said. He talked of this three years back and you do see 'Next'
closing in there shop in the city.

Is the same fate waiting for the real estate ?

After all, "Six feet from his head to heels was all he needed".

psychedelic ..

..and then there was a pause .. u choked at the utter impotence of ideas or the lack of it ... n u still knew u gotta write. about 'something' - something that never happened - random thoughts - random strokes as u keep penning down a chain of thought - ideas. or the lack of it.

something tells me i should write about avik tossing the cigarette butt off as he pensively gazed out at the incessant rain through the window pane. reluctantly enough, he sipped through the coffee mug in silence, and stared at
himself on the ripples he made on the surface of the coffee. have you read 'identity' ? by kundera ? did you really notice how he kept writing the same chapter - well the same sequence of events seen from two different observer's perspectives ? well if you've read it you know exactly what i feel like NOT writing about. not. at all. why write then ? is it because someone told me u lose shine when u dont write ? well no. i never shone anyways. then why write ? is it because you want someone to hear you. i couldnt care less. you write. cause u gotta write. so. here's to whoever said that the show MUST go on :D - well worth a hearty laughter - to you the oldest haggard of all - 'the' toast.

a sadness grips you .. u realize u r inching back to a non-generative degenerate mode - back from the wilderness - the tamed YOU. there's a struggle. u ask why suddenly ? within yourself. u know not. u suddenly feel like tuning on to the sadness and isolation - 'tristan und isolde' ? wagner ? u feel like picking 'desolation angels'up and try read into the meaning of life or the lack of it. u want to take a closer view of the void. aah quantum dot. heisenberg. uncertainty principle. no. seriously. i gotta recollect it clearly enough. wait a sec. what was it then ? light is not just wave - it could also be considered as particles. and now when you hit subatomic particles with light in order to 'observe' it - what u c is not quite what u want to c. c ? it's perturbed already - it's on a collision course with what we know as light. 'light'. 'light'ness of being. brings you back to kundera. life. they say do come full circle.

a close brush with aila

near itc sonar bangla



towards chingrighaTa



onward strokes ..



near nicco park



sector V