Being Raghu!

Last few weeks have been pretty exciting. For starters, I got to get past the Project Time Management chapter which has been like a ghost stuck to my shoulder for as long as a month. Sometimes, however and whatever you do, you just can’t get moving. There are certain forces unknown to you that just are not on your side of things. It’s like someone is pushing you from both sides, you feel the push, but you cannot move an inch as there is something pulling you too with equal force. My advice, wait it out!

With things picking up pace, the weather turned sour. I could see my feet getting cold and my skin getting dry like a fig leaf. And with Snow, comes great responsibility, a responsibility to shovel off the snow and start clearing the drive way and the walkout areas and thus help my land lord make peace with me. The thing that I hate the most is waiting for the car to get hotter inside to make it easier to even touch the steering  with my gloves that are freezing cold. My advice this time, buy a remote starter and switch on the engine 10 minutes before you even think of getting inside the car.

With all these happening, my fickle mind in the vulnerable cold conditions let my demons inside raise their ugly hood. I started researching on things that can help control the madness. It’s not easy. It’s like I am living two lives. The one obvious to everyone, a respectable (don’t doubt that!) software guy trying to make ends meet and spending time with his family and living by the book. The other life, is the one that I am by nature selected to be a freak, free as the water, going by the flow, living out of bounds. An irrational man seeking peace in madness, craving for adventures beyond normal and imaging things insurmountable. I know it’s not easy to deal with me. I am really impressed with the way everyone, especially my parents and my wife have been supportive of my extremes. May be they had no choice, but there’s always an incentive to walk away which they never did. In fact, they always encouraged me to dream on!

So finally the insatiable desire for an adventure ended with me deciding that I would be sky diving the coming summer, drive down to the Canadian wilderness and visit US if possible. My energy levels are now back to an all-time high with the knowledge and gratification that I am trying to set some goals and give some method to the madness.

Meanwhile, my hero LDC has won the golden globe for what I would term as the role of a life time and the character that would turn his life in ways unimaginable. Reading the book really helped me go to the movie with the same killer resolve for revenge as his character had. It was like I was out in the Canadian wilderness alone, left for dead, cheated, betrayed  adding to the near death experience after being mauled by a grizzly bear. I never felt the pain of a character as I did with the character of Hugh Glass. The movie chilled me to the core and yes, LDC has lived and experienced in reel as much as Glass experienced in real.

Off late, I have become a huge fan of a traditional nonalcoholic beer that goes by the generic name of “Root Beer”. 

Root beer is a dark sweet beverage traditionally made using the root or bark of the tree Sassafras albidum (sassafras) as the primary flavor. Root beer may be alcoholic or non-alcoholic, and may be carbonated or non-carbonated. Most root beer has a thick foamy head when poured. Modern, commercially produced root beer is generally sweet, foamy, carbonated, and non-alcoholic, and is flavored using artificial sassafras. It may or may not contain caffeine.

Yes, you are thinking right. I picked this up from Wikipedia.

I have tried, different types, but I guess the one that I liked most was a bottle that I bought off Walmart (Virgil’s Root Beer) which boasted as being brewed naturally on fire with natural ingredients. Also, you should try the one at Montana’s Grill.

A quick weather check before I close the post:

We are in for heavy snowfall this week till the weekend and then few days with sunshine. So make haste while the sun shines!

Timeline

It was dark. I was absolutely sure I was on the right road. I could still hear the sound of those dogs. They were like blood hungry hounds giving their best shot at their potential kill. Two of them got very close by, I had to lift my legs one after the other and accelerate. This was getting exhausting, I have already lost my way!

I now see that more other stray dogs, have joined the chase. It's a territorial issue and they want to make sure that they have one man down to prove their might.

I got to the last gear that my bike can afford and drove like a crazy bull.  I was not sure how far have I ventured from my colony as  I could no longer feel the familiar terrain. The chase was getting deadly and that was when I suddenly changed my course and headed to a narrow alley with no street lights. I stopped my bike and switched off the engine and switched off the lights.

I always switch the lights off at a time when I don't feel sleepy at all. I kept staring at the ceiling fan. Every rotation of the wings recounted the events of the day as it unfolded.

I was dragging my body. I knew I had no blood left in me. But revenge I seek and I know that if I have to cheat death for that, I will.

I keep dragging my body on to the lake shore. I arrive at the end of the lake and then I pass out!

I wake up and I see that my train has arrived at Milton. I knew, I just have 20 minutes more before I am dropped off at Downtown.

I pick up the book "The Revenant". The last time I remember I left the book at a juncture where in the main protagonist is chased by a bear and is mauled to near death and is crawling to get to the lake shore!
 Yes lake shore it is!

The Reader

I see him every day.  He stands facing one of those circular cylindrical steel structures lined up across the fine health food eatery.  He has this look of a diplomat just about to address a press conference. The thin rimmed spectacles and the square contours of his face giving him that air of authority. It’s always that I see him at one particular time of the day. I am not sure if he works across the place where I do or just comes to that spot to do the thing that he does.

Now there is a pattern. Yes, we always look for patterns. We find it convenient. We use them to tie the loose ends. He always stands facing the sun, if there is one on any given day. He has this bunch of papers all with some printed text. I have never seen him without those.  There are days I took him to be a professor or a teacher at a college as there is one overlooking a corner of our street.  But then, this is downtown. Everyone looks the same, long coats, polished boots, shiny briefcases or messenger bags and an umbrella reminiscent of those winter days in London when I was way back during my assignment in Reading.

 What’s so special about him? Why is he so fascinating?  The answer I am afraid I know not until today. Yes, today finally the cat is out of the bag. I could with all my courage happen to stand near him pretending to text something on my mobile phone. I could smell his cologne. He has sharp eyes which I know from the fact that he could easily glean through the documents pretty fast. 

He reminded me of those agents we get to see in movies who trade state secrets or are public enemies. Anyways, while I was still trying this role play of mine, that one of the papers from his hands slipped on to the driveway and I as anyone would do, ran and fetched the paper to him. I did steal a glance and was convinced about what looked like a page from a manuscript. It has small paragraphs which looked like excerpts from a chronicle or a personal diary.

I handed him the paper and waited for him to thank me. He did and then what followed was something that you would need no second guessing. I greeted him saying that I work here in the adjacent building and that I see him every day in the same spot probably doing the same thing. He did ask me if I ever wondered what he does. I acknowledged with a nod and a smile that lingered for some time.

His name was Russian and his accent was funny, though the voice was stern. He works across the street and tells me that he is a proof reader and a translator. He is currently working on the memoirs of an Investment Banker whose origins are from a small town in Russia and who had come to this country long time back and made it big in oil trade. 

I wished him luck and suggested that we play chess someday. He smiled back and nodded. I left him to his papers expecting him to see him tomorrow at the same spot doing the same thing he does every day.

SOL 492 - The Indian Connection!

In Canada, 

Yes, believe it or not we Indians always look for it everywhere, at the bus stop, in the passenger next to you in the car in the subway, when walking on the driveways at night, when stopping for filling up Gas, in the waiter who serves your lunch in a restaurant, in the Indian stores serving all imported important Indian stuff!

We look for some features to match, pout bellies, facial hair, mustaches, Red bindi’s on the foreheads and that look of a lost wanderer. It sort of gives you comfort that you are not alone in this tragedy called immigration and you have someone just like you in a home away from home.

You can check the mobile apps on their phones. You would have 2 Indian Newspaper apps, 3 sports Apps following the travails of the Indian Cricket team and few Stock Exchange trending apps for those who left their stocks in the city of dreams.

I might come across as one who is stranded in a no man’s land with nothing left to ruminate upon except for the past, you might be nearly wrong. I am in Canada and I root for the Blue Jays!

So yes, the next time your friend who is in Canada recounts a funny experience about a guy rooting for a baseball team, but checking for live scores of a cricket match in his phone, it’s not his fault.

SOL 492

Fancy a cup of coffee?

A world without water

Almost all important groundwater systems in our country are being overexploited at an alarming rate. I am disappointed and I can see we might have to pay for the consequences can be severe and the damage collatoral.
It’s apocalypse Now!!

Even when our government has announced subsidies and tax rebates for the realty industry understanding that it might encourage them to come forward and include Rainwater harvesting as part of their structural plans, few have responded positively. I am not sure why we always think of ways to make money claiming ignorance towards social well being and environmental protection. Are we not being myopic?

Why do we realize all our fallacies in the 11th hour. Why fight for earth should be a one man’s crusade!

Am I doing anything about it! No! I always have some excuse, the most famous one being “In this country fighting for the basics – food, shelter & work takes all my time and energy and I care a damn about anything else!!”

Water crisis can be very painful and it’s this water which forms the very DNA of life..

Empires will fall, Totalitarian regimes will perish and we will re enter stone age ..all for the want of water

Let’s be careful the next time you open that tap of water. Note that the next time you might have been running a tap while you are brushing your 32, every drop being wasted would deprive someone of a life source!

The 29C chronicles

I think my blogging habits have started resembling my workouts. Irregular and erratic. Lame excuses apart, I was tied up with some unfinished job in Chennai, which took lot of my attention and time. Sorry to the (1) guy who reads my blog - Me!

So why this sudden shot at redemption, you may ask ; It’s my way of saying: Guyz I am still alive and kicking !

Summers are getting hotter in our country. This does not stop us from switching on the air conditioner and catching that few hours of sleep that does not come naturally these days, thanks to the sedentary life we lead. We are consumed by a perpetual satiation for the sloppy soap operas and the umpteen number of dance contests that we fail to realize that our mind if not our body needs its share of peace and rest. In the good old days, if I remember my childhood, we had an amazing respect for the clock and were tuned to having healthy eating and sleeping habits. We never knew, 2 decades from then, we would turn out to be domestic disasters.

I am a victim of this change too, albeit, I try to nullify its effect whatever humanly possible.

Any ways it’s the sultry heat that made me write this stuff. A lot has conspired in this month and I must say for me, the comeback of Saurav (our dada) was the most memorable one. Dada showed his critics that his passion for the bat defies his age and he still has the killer instincts in him to thrash any loose deliveries.

The match against Kolkata Knight Riders now would be fun to watch!!

I visited my college (St. Peter’s Engineering College) after 8 long years and was surprised to see, not much has changed. I still had to take a train from Chennai Central to the Annanur railway station. It was just like any other day during my four long years during engineering - sultry and sticky weather, hot like hell. After
a long walk and after downing 2 water bottles, I could see my campus. It was overwhelming; The very sight of the main building got me nostalgic.

There was no change in and around the college, Avadi being a very small suburb outside Chennai only known for its coach factory and a army cavalry unit.
The roads were still red clay dusty and you can only see some string of shops that cater to the student population. I was surprised to see that our department now has it's own building far off from the main campus. It shared it’s premises with the Biotechnology engineering department.

What used to be our canteen, our hangout after lecture hours, is now a soil testing laboratory. It was unbelievable. I could not help but peek into some lecture halls, not knowing that they were all vacant and had just had been used for the first semester theory exams.

I walked to the reception and one of the head clerks did recognize me and enquired on my adventures after graduating. I told him about my escapades, which were of some interest to him apart from the mundane stuff he gets to share with his fellow staff. After meeting my department head and lecturers, I was heading down to the main campus, when I was stopped by a lady whom I could immediately recognize as my first year chemistry teacher. She gave a huge cry and said..”Are you the one from the first batch of chemical engineers?”. I replied in affirmative and I could see her being pretty excited about seeing one of her students after a long hiatus. I greeted her and took her leave and walked back towards the station for what could be a long journey back home.

A tribute !! Where in the world is Eduardo-Saverin (By Larry Cheng)

I must say how much i loved this write up and how much it sums up my interest in knowing Eduardo Saverin from my experience of him through facebook movie - The Social network. I tried reading about him, to know more about him and i always will credit him with the inspiration he has given me in the past few days!!

I thank Larry cheng for this write up and excuse myself for republishing it as a post in my blog.

Where In The World Is Eduardo Saverin?
Posted in Pop Culture, Venture Capital by larrycheng on June 15, 2009
This story takes place a few weeks after thefacebook launched.

It was March of 2004 and I was attending an alumni event for Harvard Student Agencies (HSA) – a student run company at Harvard. Being a past president of HSA, I made a point of attending this event just to stay in touch with the students and school. As the evening drew to a close, I asked one of the current HSA managers, “What’s the coolest thing on campus these days?” Her response with conviction was, “Thefacebook. It just came out last month and everyone is using it on campus.” Apparently some sophomores had set up a website intended to be a better online version of the Freshman Facebook – a physical book with the pictures of each member of the freshman class. The Freshman Facebook was the dating (or more realistically, scouting) manual used by all freshmen to keep tabs on the classmates that caught their eye.

Intrigued, I went home and checked out thefacebook.com (which I will now refer to as Facebook). The site was only open to those with a harvard.edu email, but fortunately my post.harvard.edu alumni email worked liked a charm. After logging in and checking out the features, I had an “aha” moment. The founders had made a simple yet brilliant innovation which did not exist on any other social network. They had uploaded the Harvard course catalog into the network so that with a single drop down menu, you could sort the entire network by those taking the same class as you. The limitation of the Freshman Facebook was the limited content and the fact that if an upper classmen caught your eye, there was no reliable way to find out that person’s name or learn more about him/her. But now with Facebook, you could come back from class, go online, sort the network by that class, click through the photos and once you found that person – voila. You could see everything about that person that they cared to share which was a lot more than the Freshman Facebook. Facebook was the killer college dating application.



Since at that time I was at another venture capital firm which invested in start-ups, I was eager to meet the people behind Facebook. Maybe there was an investment opportunity. I looked around the site and saw that it was “a Mark Zuckerberg production”. I messaged Mark and scheduled a meeting for the very next afternoon at Henrietta’s Table – a restaurant at The Charles Hotel in Cambridge, MA. I showed up to the restaurant at 3:00pm and there was Mark Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saverin waiting. We decided to sit outside given the unseasonably warm weather in Boston that day. We ordered some drinks, and they began to tell me the nascent but exciting story of how they, along with some others, started Facebook.

Mark and Eduardo had a complementary aspect to their partnership. Mark struck me as the alpha male. He had a profound confidence about him that exceeded his youth. He exuded killer instinct. He was not shy about sharing his aspirations of dominating the college market. He was also the technical visionary behind the scenes. Eduardo was polite and unassuming. He could have been your college roommate. He was jovial, relational, and likeable. He seemed to be the fast follower. He was also apparently the business mind. While both exuded a certain naivete, they were both convinced that they were going to change the world. They were right.

After that meeting, my mind was consumed with the potential of Facebook. It was only a couple days later that I had a second meeting with Mark and Eduardo. Yet again, we met at Henrietta’s Table – but this time for breakfast. I arrived first, and as Mark and Eduardo came in – it was obvious they had woken up early for this meeting. In fact, Mark’s first comment with a broken smile was that he normally doesn’t get up this early. I was truly appreciative. We got down to business, and I asked Mark and Eduardo about their plans for Facebook and their interest in raising venture financing. They said that they had not yet met with any venture capitalists, but had some initial discussions with a couple angel investors. Mark also expressed his intent to leave school and move to Silicon Valley to lead Facebook full-time. Mark seemed deeply committed to it while Eduardo tried unsuccessfully to project the same confidence. I asked them if they had thought about how much the company was worth. Mark confidently articulated a valuation that some angels had given him. Eduardo stared, paused, and tentatively nodded in agreement.

I invited Mark and Eduardo to my office the next week. While I was unsure of whether this was a good fit with the firm I was at, I decided to take a couple hours that day, and walk them through a blank term sheet. I figured whether we invested in Facebook or someone else did, Mark and Eduardo would benefit from understanding the standard financing terms. I felt a certain obligation to make sure they were educated enough to not sign up to a bad deal. So, we sat there each with a copy of a blank term sheet. I walked through each term and explained in the simplest language what they meant – “preferred”, “voting rights”, “anti-dilution”, “protective provisions”, “registration rights”, “information rights”, “board of directors”, etc. I explained to them the range of options under each, and what was normal. This time Eduardo exuded the confidence. He nodded with assurance after nearly every provision articulating that he knew what that provision meant. He said he had “studied it in school”. I found that to be curious since during my time at Harvard, not a single finance course was offered, let alone one on venture capital term sheets. Maybe things had changed I thought. Nonetheless, I continued to explain things in detail presuming no prior knowledge.

After the session, Mark and Eduardo informed me that they had no transportation home and they had taken a cab to come visit me. Feeling guilty that it never occurred to me that they didn’t have a car, I drove them home myself and paid for their cab fare. We had a nice conversation on the way home. We talked about Eduardo’s girlfriend at Wellesley who he was clearly infatuated with. We talked with Mark about the Bay Area and moving to California, which he was enthusiastic about. And, after the quick drive down the Mass Pike, we took the Cambridge/Allston exit, looped back towards Harvard and I dropped Mark and Eduardo off at Johnston Gate, the main entrance to Harvard Yard.

That was the last time I saw either Mark or Eduardo because an investment ultimately did not work out. Since then, Mark has obviously gone on to change the world – just as he expected to. Mark has accomplished everything he said he would and more. But, when I think back on this experience, a big part of me wonders what happened to Eduardo. I’ve heard about the break-up with Mark early on which makes me wonder what happened behind the scenes. I wonder how Eduardo was treated in the whole process. When people tell the Facebook story now, it seems like Eduardo gets deleted from many versions and included in some. But, from my vantage point, Facebook will always be about Mark and Eduardo. No matter what is written out there, I’ll always believe that Eduardo Saverin is a co-founder of Facebook.

(Eduardo, if you read this, give me a call. Let’s go grab a bite to eat. Henrietta’s Table – I’ll drive.)