Yesterday in India, 90,000 Covid-19 positive cases were recorded. That makes India the country with the 2nd highest number of cases in the world. We read the stat counter for Active Cases, Recovered, and Deceased, on a daily basis. All these numbers, figures, and statistics seem to be just ‘distant news’ for us till the time you hear about someone close enough that you realize the gravity of the situation.
Continue reading “No Words, really!”Author Archives: Abhinav Bhatt
Work From Home Woes
In today’s episode of World Famous Program: Work From Home Woes, we will discuss the arrangement of our Work Desk.
I am pretty good at directions (I think). If someone asks me the directions, I can quickly take out my phone and open Google Maps and tell them. While working from home for 6 months now, directions have become quite a distraction. Where to direct attention and how for how long has been a particularly painful problem!
Continue reading “Work From Home Woes”Seeing Things Live
Sanjay Mishra’s character Rajesh Bauji in the movie Aankhon Dekhi has an epiphany one day. He declares that he will believe in only those things which he would see himself. If he has not seen something, he won’t trust anyone else telling him about it. He has to see it himself to believe it.
Now, that’s one way of looking at things. Another way is to see things Live on TV and believe them to be true like we all do. (WWE can be excused! Undertaker did die and returned 7 times.)
Continue reading “Seeing Things Live”Sorry and Thank you!
No sorry, no thank you in friendship
– Prem
The golden lines were said by Salman Khan in the movie ‘Maine Pyar Kiya’ to Bhagyashree whom he fancied as his girlfriend and then his wife (important because of Rajshri!). That ruined the basic courtesy people had got left in them till that point and since then it has only declined further.
Call me a mood-spoiler but I am not necessarily a big fan of special days for special things. Today for instance is ‘Michchhāmi Dukkaḍaṃ (मिच्छामि दुक्कडम्)’, a Jainism related day on which people ask for forgiveness for any kind of unintentional or intentional misdeeds they might or might not have committed. Same way, there’s Thanksgiving in the US. It is intended to be thankful and shows gratitude to others.
As we know, people are mightly clever as they may think that saying sorry for one day gives them the right to be a nuisance on other days. (As they say after partaking 1000 rats, the cat went on pilgrimage.) Anyways nowadays Sneezing is capital punishment but if I sneeze and then say sorry to the other person, who is currently busy in sanitizing herself or himself (and reporting me to authorities), will my sorry even matter?
Or saying Thank you for trivial things like keeping the door open for the person coming behind you (which is considered a big deal). That’s so basic that if not done, that should itself call for name-calling bluntly. The other day, kids were playing Badminton outside my apartment and the shuttlecock fell into my balcony. I gave it back to them instantly but then they went on with their business without Thank You. For an instant, I was almost about to thank then instead for not shouting “Uncle, can you please throw the cock back?”. Then there’s money involved too. The gravity of thanks for gifts received also depends on how heavy the gift is and how big the box is. But where will this confusing monstrosity end? Till we have special days for special things, this won’t change.
That’s all! Thank you for reading. Sorry for making you read.
Create Something Daily
I don’t want to brag but I might. There was a time when I used to ship one item daily of anything, be it a blog post, or a photoshopped collage, or a minimalist poster, or just something visually appealing (to me i.e.). That leads to mostly positive results.
One: when you do anything creative, you feel productive, you imagine vividly, you sleep better, and the next day you are charged up to create more.
Two: You have absolutely no idea where will your creativity reach thanks to the Internet (and it might inspire someone to take it and do wonders with it). If done with positive intent, it might end up bringing smiles to an unknown quarter. And, after years when you realize that your creativity brought some joy to someone else, even if it is minuscule, it fills your chest with pride.
I was just going through ‘Rasode mein kaun tha’s creator Yashraj Mukhate’s Instagram. There I noticed this:
For the uninitiated, it’s from: https://minimalmovieposters.in/post/23555118591/gangs-of-wasseypur-2012-by-ab-ps-based-on
Similarly, I found this one day. It had published one Photograph I had taken:
Bottom line is, no matter you get credit or not, if you create something daily, it will be good in long run. As they say:
Perfection is the enemy of good.
p.s.: This book.
So I recently watched: The Big Bang Theory
That’s my spot!
You might say, so what’s the big deal in that? But the only deal is that I had stopped watching it after its 5th or 6th season because of forced laughter track and not so funny jokes, and had moved over to grittier shows involving 4 even nerdier and crazier boys (i.e. South Park).
But I resumed it after a gap of over 5 years and finally finished watching all the remaining seasons of the 12 seasons show.
I returned to TBBT as it was still the good old sitcom and it revolved around somethings I find interesting as a fellow nerd;
- Science (mostly physics because other sciences are boring)
- Comics / Superheroes
- A little eccentricity or awkwardness which comes out either like arrogance or creepiness, relatable right!
- The intrinsic desire to Mansplain things
- Creating such lists
TBBT was the first English TV show I watched which opened a box of so much other consumable content I used to find off-putting. It had many factors which most Engineering graduates would find relatable.
Despite all the tropes, if you stick with the show, it turns out to be the good old TV comedy which you can go back to.
Are Bangalore Days Over?
In February this year, I sent out a mail to my team in office which was somewhat on these lines:
We are all allowed to work from home once in a while but it is getting out of hands. I suggest that we get disciplined and work from home, at max, for 2 days in a Month and not more than once a week. That too, only if it is really necessary.
me, trying to act bossy
Heh, where are the days gone when you could actually feel embarrassed in public?
Most of the people whom I call as Friends or Colleagues or Relatives who used to live (in rented houses) in Bangalore have now left the city and have returned to their home towns. They all plan to stay there and work remotely till the pandemic gets over and their employers allow work from home. Some say that this would be allowed at least till December 2020. Some say it would go on till July 2021. Some even say that Bangalore Days are over as now the Internet is good enough all over the country that it is not really important to stay and work in the same city. The traffic and the hustle bustle in the city is not the same anymore. Office spaces on everyday are as vacant as the office spaces on Weekends. Most Restaurants have shut down. Food Delivery guys, who used to drive as fast as the F1 Cars, now just stroll their way to deliver food to a lone introvert stranger who is oblivious to the pandemic or may be understands that food is not the primary source of infection. The number of cases are breaking records every day and the overall morale of the place is duller than mood on pre-covid Monday mornings.
James Altucher, a famous blogger and entrepreneur, wrote something similar about New York City. He gave detailed stats of rent coming down, people actually moving permanently to other cities, and remote working is going to be the norm.
There won’t be business opportunities for years. Businesses move on. People move on. It will be cheaper for businesses to function more remotely and bandwidth is only getting faster.
Wait for events and conferences and even meetings and maybe even office spaces to start happening in virtual realities once everyone is spread out from midtown Manhattan to all over the country.
NYC IS DEAD FOREVER. HERE’S WHY
His views have some weight and it is not all wrong. However, he got a strong rebuttal from someone who is a New Yorker and takes pride in it. In fact, he is someone who usually won’t really speak out on each and every public related issue. But, this NYC Dead thingy hit him hard.
World Famous Comedian Jerry Seinfeld wrote,
Energy, attitude and personality cannot be “remoted” through even the best fiber optic lines. That’s the whole reason many of us moved to New York in the first place.
You ever wonder why Silicon Valley even exists? I have always wondered, why do these people all live and work in that location? They have all this insane technology; why don’t they all just spread out wherever they want to be and connect with their devices? Because it doesn’t work, that’s why.
Real, live, inspiring human energy exists when we coagulate together in crazy places like New York City. Feeling sorry for yourself because you can’t go to the theater for a while is not the essential element of character that made New York the brilliant diamond of activity it will one day be again.
Jerry Seinfeld: So You Think New York Is ‘Dead’
(It’s not.)
I had myself left the city on 14th July and went to my home town. I thought may be I would also stay there for a long time. Return to the city where my friends and colleagues aren’t there is not really fruitful, in fact, dangerous if you know what I mean.
But I returned back on August 16th, 2020 for several reasons, including my wife working in Bangalore at a place where work from home isn’t really allowed. Here is my opinion on whether the Silicon Valley of India is now a thing of the past:
No, Bangalore days are not over. Working from Home is not same as Working in Office. In fact, working from home, even from your hometown is not the same as working from your home in Bangalore. The feel is not there. Like Jerry Seinfeld said, some places stand out because of the Energy. I am not in a die-hard fan of Bangalore the city as such because it can certainly do better in a lot of aspects but I absolutely love working here. I really miss working in office, meeting people, discussing ideas, talking about weather and traffic even when there is always a love-hate relationship, having tea road-side, and in generally sitting at my desk in office. I have no qualms in saying that whoever, I know, has moved out of Bangalore has always complained about how the Bangalore work culture is perhaps the best there is and other cities are not the same. Since I have not really worked elsewhere in last decade (except small stints in Hyderabad and Jaipur), I don’t know that. But there is certainly something which makes a place worth living. Of course, without people, the soul is not there. Even if some politicians and their stooges do drama by Hindi-Hate-Mongering every few months, but there are still many sane people around care about better things and solve problems and not create them. There might be 1000 wrong things here but which place doesn’t? I have spent 10 years here and it has shaped my personality, I think, in a positive way. It has made me more accepting, more open and more optimistic. I want to stay an optimist, even if I am missing out on spending a long time with my family unlike many other folks. I’ve just stated about Bangalore but every city in the world is special for its own reason and you might have some reasons about it yourself.
I feel that once this is over, and this will be over soon, it would take just a week or so for normalcy to return. And not just Bangalore, every city around the world will rise up again. There might still be some people who will have FOGO (Fear of Going Out, h/t: Mark Manson) and might not return to office. May be, masks wearing will stay for another year. But I am sure, most people who really want to work and are ambitious, will return to the cities, and the offices will be swarming with people again. Humans are stubborn. These viruses and all might scare us for sometime. But, we will return to work and crib about how bad the traffic is and why can’t the government do something about it. We will return to work and go to the cafeteria and eat the tasteless food. Your favorite restaurants will be back serving your favorite overpriced meal. We will still use Zoom and all, but we will also meet people in person. The dullness in the air will transform back to the energetic vibe which makes us believe that tomorrow is going to be better.