2011: Looking back, Looking Forward

I survived 2011 and am very much alive and kicking :)

Company progressed to full commercial level with a 5MT/month plant.

We became a multi-million dollar market cap company, which got a lot of media this year.

Became a lot fitter at 80 kg.

Learnt about my BP and heart condition and had some events throughout the year.

Have become more self-aware and learnt to manage my condition. :)

Quit smoking completely and cut down on drinking :)

In all adopted very healthy lifestyle.

Found time for myself, managed my time, energy and efforts better.

Learnt to be more patient, lively and less worried.

Became calmer, more thoughtful and mindful.

More content with what i have with less focus on possessions. Could get away without buying a car. ;)

Attracted a lot of women and realized that i could talk to really attractive women at will.

Read some great books and blogs: Zen Habits, Prize, Managing for results, 4 Hour work week, Ascent of Money, Epictetus.

Traveled a lot: Chandigarh, Bangalore, Pune, Thailand, Barreilly, Rohtak and Bombay

Wore some good clothes, visited coffee shops often, and lived a good life.

Met my friends often, sometimes flew to meet them. Had an awesome time in Bangalore.

Enjoyed Rishi's, Cheti's, Rishabh's, GG's and DJ's wedding.

Had some great one-on-one conversations with Khera, Sharma, DJ, Sareen, GG, Rishi, Mishra, Bhatia and Don. And equally great ones with Bhabhis.

Learnt some great lessons:

• 'tell it as it is',
• 'live in day tight compartments',
• 'Wealthy is a person who has time and money'
• 'Act without expectations'
• 'Breathe, smile and go slow'

Spent good time with parents. Helped them transition to a post retirement life.

Met interesting people, helped the underprivileged and became generous.

& finally,

Found someone to spend my life with. :)

Quite an year!!!

My method of Expression

Every artist has a tool for expressing his art. A painter has the brush, a guitarist has his guitar. Similarly all great executives have their tools for performance. Some perform by writing, some by speaking, some by presenting etc.

What is my method of expression? I am decent in writing (though verbose), decent in spoken English (again verbose) and also in presenting. How to achieve greatness in one of them. I have an answer: clarity of thought. All my problems stem from a lack of it.

Steve Jobs RIP

You lived life on your own terms and showed the world how to live before you die. Plato said: Practice Dying. You pulled it off in a way that only you could do.

Hope people learn it from you: death is the destination we all share.Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

Your loss feels personal.

Romance - 'Mausam' and Tiger Pataudi

Being a piscean, I naturally have an inclination towards all things romantic. In & out of romance quite some times, I always pine for it. And there are triggers which make me feel romance and go nostalgic: like the movies (Mausam, which released recently) and the love-affair of 'Tiger Pataudi and Sharmila Tagore'.

Romance for me is nostalgia, drama, melancholy evenings, wintry mornings, misty nights, mountains, waiting for your lover, doing something dramatic for her, holding hands, feeling butterflies in your stomach....

When i look back on my life, I want it to have romance. In heavy doses. And want to die a romantic.

Steve Jobs, Narayan Murthy and Legacy

Two giants of men retired/resigned from their positions of contributions this month.

Steve Jobs is probably the best combination of an artist, a showman and a product visionary in the history of business. He shaped industries, culture and media many times over through his products and the company he founded.

Narayan Murthy is the iconic entrepreneur who exemplified wealth-creation and institution-building to a country where profit and business were dirty words. He set highest standards of business ethics, corporate governance and competence and started the information technology revolution in India.

What will be my legacy? Should one even think about legacy?

Or is life all about finding those few things in your personality which repeated again and with intent, 'change the world'

Corruption, Anna Hazare etc.

My take on the whole thing: Totally inconsequential though. I am observing and not partisan:

I think the whole issue of corruption originates from three problems: misaligned incentives, outdated processes and having wrong people in wrong jobs. The only way to solve it is by getting into the election process, win elections with a majority, form a government and change the system from inside.

But most leaders loose the focus on the way, because power corrupts. It is a temptation, the biggest of all. And we are all human. Anna Hazare is also falling in the trap of media, power, even after being a Gandhian. Everyone loves their '15 minutes of fame'.

Its great that he is concerned and protesting. But long term change will be slow, boring and will come as the winds, not as a storm. Does Anna and his team have the stomach for that or as Van Goethe said:

"Reason becomes Nonsense, boons afflictions'

On Drinking - I

Have been thinking of giving up drinking. Have given up on binge drinking for a long time now.

I think it is really bad if drinking becomes a habit. In my case the consequences are milder: going to home late (which becomes an issue, if you are living with parents), overeating (interferes with my weight-loss) and i do not feel really good the next morning.

I typically drink once a fortnight. And always with friends. I like couple of other things about drinking: it gives a feeling of excitement, and that one had a nice social interaction.

To give up on bad habit, one should try to replace it with a good habit. Also the good habit should satisfy the basic needs of "excitement and social interaction". Lets see where we go from here.....

Habits

In business world, we make plans and set goals. After all you 'set goals to get goals'. But in business as in life, things never happen according to plan. Missed targets lead to low morale and disappointment. We are told to learn from failures and move forward. But question is what to learn?

In one word: Habits.

Some behaviors and practices work, like laws of physics and others do not. Focus on the practices and behaviors that work and make them habits. Try learning good practices from others and make them habits. Habits lead to predictable results.

As Aristotle said: We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

Finding My Calling

I am not great at most of the things that I do during my work, just good enough. This sort of work i call good work. This has been filling a large part of my work lately. That's part of the CEO's job. Build a company.

I am really great at one thing: visualizing where the next technology breakthrough will happen in energy and environment sectors and coming up with a plan to exploit that. The thing called VISION!! This is great work.

I want to be able to do Good Work for 50-70% of the time and great work 20-30% of the time. So I want to build EnNatura into a Company which can let me be the resident 'visionary entrepreneur'. That's what EnNatura will always need and that's what I can contribute most effectively.

The Year It Was - 2010

The year when our little start-up transitioned out of IIT D.

The year when we got our fair share of media lime-light.

The year when our whole gang started getting married.. one by one.. for good :)

The year when i started reading a lot about management, marketing and sales (and not technology)

The year when i really started to think and sometimes think a lot... (became over-analytical, Khera didn't like it!!)

The year when i prepared myself for multiple transitions in work life and personal life and that had a lot to do with the thinking part...

The year when i met an amazing woman....

The year when i lost quite some weight and tried to become healthy...

The year when i quit smoking..yes!!!!

The year when i realized that i can have a way with women ;)

The year when i started wearing glasses and started wearing formals to work ;)

The year when i felt the pressure of leading a funded and thankfully growing start-up :)

The year of marriages and rokas..Sareen, Bhatia, Don, Shekhar, Mishra, Rishi .. very happy for all of them..

The year when a woman actually became so important that i re-started the whole ritual of getting drunk and calling her ;)

The year when i started taking a salary!!!! :)

The year when i started thinking about marriage ;)

The year when Blogging made a comeback!!

The year when we all friends made efforts to meet more often and drink more often ;)

The year when i actually acted very funny, local, bakait and filmy - like kissing a girl's hand on a railway platform ;)

The year when we as start-up started dreaming big, multi-million dollar fundings, star studded BOD, a professional CEO, BOD meetings in five-star hotels, the works..

The year when i sometimes went on a date, bang in the middle of workday.... that was really cool :)

The year when i started drinking coffee at overpriced coffee shops a lot.. and actually liked it a lot!!

The year when i went to some really awesome places in Delhi..

The year when i started smsing a lot.. more that a thousand ;)

The year when i started selling...enterprise sales, consumer sales .. blah blah blah.. bus baich hi raha hoon ;)

The year when i used the word 'love', 'pyaar'.. quite often and quite abundantly..

The year when i proposed marriage to someone and the proposal got shot down :D, :(

The year when i started loosing hair :(

The year when i started managing my time... sometimes fanatically so :(

The year when i went on frequent long walks with my dad and had some great conversations with my mom..

The year when my bank balance went above 1 lac.. in quite some time..

The year when i traveled quite a lot.. by my standards

The year when i really became comfortable with the idea of death.. and yes, started living!! :)

Ladies and Gentlemen, the year was 2010!!!

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2011!!!!!!! :)

On Passion

Greeks did not write obituaries. They always asked the question - Whether the guy had passion?

When i die, i want the answer to be a resounding yes.

Passion, a strong sense of emotion.

The emotion you feel when you see your vision being realized in front of your eyes.

The emotion you feel when you do unimaginable things for someone special.

The emotion which makes you sing a soulful song.

The emotion which makes you run the last hundred metres extra fast, even though your body has no energy left.

The emotion which makes you speak your heart out to a million people, sometimes against all odds.

The emotion you feel when you puff out the smoke, thinking you finally get it.

.....

We in the course of our lives, give up on 'passion' and opt for a staid existence. Which is understandable as passion is the driving force of creative destruction. It is the anti-thesis of an organized life. But whats a life which does not get excited.

There should be things about which one should be passionate ... love, family, friends, work..

And it is not momentary flash in the pan passion i am talking about. People who were passionate for long periods were responsible for the forward surge of mankind.

Gekko said - 'Greed, for lack of a better word, is good'.. He missed 'passion'.

As part of human race, we owe it to ourselves to live a life of passion!!

Meeting a Journalist III - When Waiting is Futile!!

(There comes a time in life when you should not wait for something to happen, you go out and make it happen)

I am an impatient being and willing to be patient for things which are very close to my heart. (Two PhDs could not survive my impatience, had to drop out twice :), the company has, so you get the idea!!). Anything less than extraordinary is a waste of my lifetime.

Coming back to the journalist 'mohtarma', I was getting impatient, as i had a perfect excuse to ask her out (the confusion about dating/meeting will be cleared in future posts, so hang in there!) but she appeared to be busy all the time. (Actually being busy is a part of her Geminian charm, the mind is continuously occupied, not necessarily she is ;))

Started stalking her when she was online, chatting and fixing meetings (Dude, i should get some balls and ask a woman out, but i have my own list of excuses :() After some false starts, could actually convince her to meet for coffee. So that was it, our first meeting without work being the focus, but could not term it a date, as it was not explicitly spelled out (Professionals, can clarify the intricacies of dating to me, please, through comments)

So it was a Meeting at Barista, South Ex-II (socha ki hum bhi in coffee bars ki sale badha de, abtak to panch rupaye wali chai hi peeta tha, jia sarai ki ;) ) I was very confident that i can reach south ex in twenty minutes flat from IIT D, but thanks to my khatara car and the notorious Delhi traffic, took me cool 35 minutes to be there. To be honest, i started late. When would i stop doing that. She was already waiting and slightly angry also (by then my impression of being a late lateef has been set, which stands till date!), I was slightly nervous but that's cool. I realized then that this woman is not as fair as i am (i know i am sounding very vain, but i have this deep rooted complex that i am very fair looking guy ;)). Again a misconception, but surely she looked tired and distraught (like a damsel in distress :)). May be its the Delhi heat, her travelling, her constantly working Gemini mind or some other stuff... God knows, i didn't know it then.

This meeting again was centred around technology and her story. Its good to have intelligent conversations but I wanted to add personal dimensions and whats better way of extending conversations than 'observing and talking'. I could not stop noticing one thing.. Yaar kitna khaati hai!! Unlike girls, ek poori club sandwich ki plate chat kar gayi!! :0

On a serious note, this woman was all about observation. You can spend hours with her talking, as she has a viewpoint on all issues. She is well read, intelligent and 'deceptively attentive'... Her nonchalant independence is also heart warming. There are women who are independent but make a big issue of it, other are simply too traditional... she is somewhere at the intersection :)

One note worthy incident was when i took her hand to flaunt my astro knowlegde ( i know , this is a cliched trick, to touch a girl ;))...well very soft hands. I tried to get some information whether she is single or seeing someone.. but only got the feeling that she is having some trouble in her relationship or there is some disturbing past.. well who does not have one.. :-|

There was an incident centred around water. Out of something inconsequential, i drank water from her glass. Pat came a smart comment: "tumhe AIDS to nahin" (which was by design, as i later found out, to catch people off-guard) but in a split second i replied: AIDS happens through a different sort of fluid exchange. She was startled..(Rani, isse kehte hain nehle pe delha:D, ;))

After talking some sense and quite a lot non-sense, it was time to leave. And i offered to drop her home, which was actually a PG, in a my old and dilapidated car (I should stop fretting about it and buy a new one!!). She was very direct in complementing me that i observe and say things. She comes across as someone who is very sure of herself, the way she carries herself with dignity and does not make opinions, unlike me. I think i am quick to make opinions, draw conclusions, and sometimes over-analyze things!!!

I smoked in her company (which is very close to smoking nirvana, sharing a cigarette is actually smoking nirvana!!! :)), drove her back.. and left with a smile on my face, feeling content that i have met some one with whom i can connect across a wide spectrum of ideas...and that made me expectant... :) Parting wisdom.. beware of expectations, expectations reduce the joy of living..... :)

Meeting a Journalist II

(This is getting interesting now, and I am actually enjoying writing about these meetings.. future posts may not be in the chronological order and the title would depend upon the memorable incidents :))

After that first interaction, we exchanged some story related emails and then she wanted to pay visit to the scientific co-founder of our company, our Professor. She arrived early and asked whether i would be available. Ofcourse, I was !! (Anil Kapoor said in tezaab: Waqt hota nahin hai, nikalana padta hai :D)

After some customary small talk, the conversation went towards her hometown and the naxalism that was happening there (the Dantewada incident happened just then, though i was not really listening, just looking at her ;)). She had her hairs tied up and the her purple streak was not visible. She was wearing a kurta and trousers (which she vehemently denies today saying that she has no black trousers, though i believe my memory always, its kind of photographic B-))

So accompanied her to the Professor's office and then asked her to get back to me once she is done, as i was looking for an opportunity to extend our conversations further (Some guys look good, some guys sing,.. well i just talk (thats what i do for a living also i guess, just talk).. ab aur kuch kar bhi to nahin sakte :P)

We took time to reconnect as it was tough for her to find her way through the labyrinth which is IIT Delhi. Another coffee and a walk, conversing about her interests in reading, travelling etc. and then asked her about whether she would be interested in going to a play ( 'Run for my Wife' : fellow dude Ashish Goel was acting in it, though plays are not much up my alley, i thought intellectual women dig plays ;)). She didn't seem very enthusiastic and suggested that one of her friends would be very interested in attending. (that was unacceptable for me, as i was looking for some face time alone ;) (don't misinterpret face time now ;), I sometimes wonder how much of a loser i am, hahaha :))

Something happened then which is memorable to me, and I respect her for it. As we were departing, we started talking about TR, EmTech 2009 ( I was a speaker there ;)), when in a bout of self-deprecation, i belittled my work. She said that 'Ink is an important chemical, it is used everywhere and what you are doing will impact the printing industry worldwide.' (my memory might have exaggerated it, but the essence is the same ;)). I guess journalists treat all their stories with respect, but for me it meant a lot. Seriously. (:))

So that was the second meeting, again based on professional grounds, but I had established the 'communication beachhead' (management , hhhhuuh !!) on FaceBook and her mobile number was handy.

Smses and babbar shers are great ice-breakers which i used abundantly. Also got a lot of dope to interact by stalking her facebook profile (cheapster!) and was amazed to find that she is a Sherlock Holmes fan. A woman who reads Sherlock Holmes is very attractive. Tried to trick her into meeting over exchanging Sherlock Holmes novellas but she is smart enough to see through it.

Next came unabashed hitting on her through smses ( damn i was very quick, by own standards :), impatience is a virtue, but not with women i guess :)). One noteworthy incident centered around her 'kissing prowess' which didnt go down too well with her. She blasted me saying 'is it right to hit on a woman you just met like this'.. though i felt defensive, but being dramatic i am , i responded: 'DIl to Bachcha hai ji'... (well i thought that was very clever :))

Meeting was no where in sight and she was busy completing the story, which was very important for us also. So tried to lay low and wait till the story got over. Nonetheless, dispatched her the Sherlock Holmes DVD, which was kind of well received. (somehow i feel i can make women happy ;))

Had to wait for nearly a month and we were looking at April end. Then came the TR story and the worldwide acclaim it brought. It was bigger than the TechCrunch coverage (again re-inforcing that am not much of a loser professionally, getting covered in TC is huge for Indian start-ups and we are in the mundane business of making eco-friendly printing inks.. oops green chemicals is a better positioning :)) I couldn't be happier and thought she deserved a treat for doing a fabulous job!

I sensed that now is the time to ask her out on a date ..errrrrr!! I was horribly mistaken.... To be continued!!

Meeting a Journalist I

There have been many unpublished posts from my end in the blog, but this one needs to be sent out.

I realized around Dec 2009 that my life had become quite unidimensional, with Company being the sole focus of my being for past 3 years. Having raised venture capital, I was assured the Company wont die (though growth is still a struggle :( ) and wanted some distraction before immersing myself into work. Being an entrepreneur you only meet three Fs: Family, Friends and Fools (like yourself ;)). After constant prodding from Mr. Ritesh Khera, I thought of replacing the third F with one of the most distracting and interesting species - 'Females'.

Though the avenues were limited (time is a scarce resource, and money was also), i thought of interacting with any female i came in contact with, pretty much in line with the marketing strategy of 'creating customers in uncertain markets' (damn, i hate throwing management jargon all the time, seriously i need a life ;)). Being part of an all guy gang (rapidly shrinking one too!) didnt help either. All the contacts were professional - Designers, customers and ... journalists (this shows that I am not much of a loser, and EnNatura is a media worthy startup;))

So one day in March i received a call from the Technology Review (MIT's Magazine on Innovation). One the other end was a 'fidgety, though confident' female voice seeking appointment. Ofcourse, when someone from TR calls, you give appointment (as if i had a choice ;)) as the coverage would worth millions in advertising spend (million Rs., not $ :)). There was some strangeness in that voice, a mixture of old world comfort and modern chirp, and i was intrigued enough to check out the FaceBook profile of the caller. Again an intriguing 'profile' pic in sepia shade.

I was in anticipation for this meeting, both as it was from the TR and also because of the intrigue of the person. Have also asked her to email me the list of questions, so that i come across prepared (this tactic though came in handy later, for a different purpose ;))

So she arrived on time and I was in the TBIU (IIT D's Incubator) parking to receive her. All jazzed up with sunglasses, red top and black jeans. But it was her gait that caught my eye. She apparently put much effort in walking ( may be she was exhausted, physically or may be mentally ;)). She instantly came across as someone warm and friendly and we started talking, while climbing stairs.

I talked about her educational background (is there any better conversation starter!) and she replied something related to IT ( i was like yawn!!, you are here to write about my high tech, advanced chemistry based printing inks :), yeah right, inks and high tech, dude get real ;)). Then how come she is a journalist and pat came the reply, that she made a career choice late when she switched from IT to journalism ( I was impressed, that this person is doing stuff by choice and willing to take chances, that resonated with me).

As we settled down and started the interview, my preparation came in handy, as i was able to take her very easily through all the presentations and answer her queries, while my mind was busy observing and taking notes:

• A ring on her hand, some sort of astro-related stone
• The purple streak in her hairs
• She was kind of itchy and restless :)
• She had a limited attention span (though this should not be mistaken with lack of smarts, it was all getting registered, even though she comes across as someone lost with that contemplative look in her eyes)

I talked about the stone and she said that her parents are concerned about her career choices and based on some jyotishi's recommendation, have asked her to wear it. An amusing story though i sensed some discomfort which i thought would probe about later.

Then as we finished, i switched to my typical UP bhaiya language and aksed her about her 'purple rangbaazi', she was a sport there and she responded in same lingo, which was very appealing to the UP heartland in me (people say this about biharis and punjabis, but u can also take a bhaiya out of UP but not the UP out of a bhaiya :D). Here was a techie journo talking in 'khadi boli'... 'are rajja!!'

I took her for a stroll around our 'garage operation' which she admired (more brownie points to her) and then for a coffee below IIT D's library. We were talking about her college in Noida, her friends among UP wallas, IIT campus life etc. as we walked. But there was a moment of embarrassment in store for me. As we reached the coffee shop, i realized that i have only 22 bucks in my wallet (!!!, reminiscent of the days when i was broke, though not any longer, my company was paying me a handsome CEO salary now ;), though i think this comes from the my parsimonious habits of the past ;))

She ordered for an Iced tea (Rs. 12) and that left me a cool 10 bucks to order a 'Ditto mango' (my all time favorite at IIT D library). Oooohh! what a close shave.

I changed the topic around where she stays and what she does on the weekends. I was very happy knowing that she stayed in Lajpat Nagar, very close from my place and stayed at a PG (meaning that would be available for dating probably, ;)).

So I said goodbyes to her, ending the meeting with some small talk about story and all. We parted with the customary, 'be in touch' and 'nice meeting you'. Though i realized that it was very easy to strike a conversation with this woman. May she was just plain warm and friendly.

Little did I know that this episode is gonna turn into something so dramatic :)............

My broken heart (;) broken poem)

Here are some unrelated lines I was trying compose into a poem, but unsuccessful in this attempt:

It hurts, and it would only hurt.


Tears have no value, are they given only to realize the helpness in the boundries of equation.
Lesson they teach everytime they flow, but why is heart so desperate.
Has that been created to play with the lessons I learned.
Brain exists to guide, why it stops at a logic which is so simplistic to derive.

O my holy soul !, diminished and killed innumerable times,
A hope from the ashes of other, is it how we have to come up together.


It hurts! :(
Its me who hurts, no one other can.

Story of Innovation - Early years I

India is currently seeing a wave of entrepreneurship. Young entreprenuers are chucking the comforts of their daily jobs to start a venture. These efforts are being supported by the rich entrepreneurs who had themselves struck it big sometime back. This continuing cycle of riches is called Venture funding and it is not every one's cup of tea to dance to the tunes of these VCs. But nonetheless these VCs and some Private equity firms are supporting the intrepid entrepreneurs in realizing their dreams.
So the question is whats so new i am talking about here. First of all is that i have also founded a startup (Yawwwwnn!!) and would like to develop my start-up into a hi-tech company (Yawwwwwnnnnnnn!!). Well and there ends the similarity.

We are not a very VC friendly startup, as we are operating in the area of environment friendly printing inks (thats so boring... no IT, no m-commerce, no web based application,, if a VC is reading.. i know you have already left.. and if not.. dude do gimme a call.) and would like to venture into sustainable energy in the short term and alternative energy in the long term. Technically we are not a startup. We would like to call ourselves a innovation driven company as the typical high growth rates seen in some of these Internet and mobile application startups are not really present in our company.

As we are not a VC friendly company, so the financial constraints are constant companions. Actually thinking about giving salaries to the employees by the month end sends chill down my spine..dude actually we are not able generate any revenues till now and thats why we are a company and cannot be classified as the start up as defined in oxford dictionary.

But then finding solace in the history is somethng i am very good at. Looking at the example:

A company was started in 1907, their founders bought a mine so that they could get stuff out and sell. But the mine was a failed mine as in place of carborundum (silicon carbide), they found it was full of anthrosite (some cheap shit, spare me the use of scientifc terms, as i am trying to prove in here that i am a good chemtechie) and was of no use. The comapny had a difficult time marketing the anthrosite. The company didnt make any profits till 1914 when top management decided to give up mining and rather focus on innovation. The employees developed company's first product - a sandpaper, which used the same anthrosite as was found in the mine. This innovative spirit kept the company alive and today this company produces 55000 products and is rated the most innovative company of all times... my personal favorite -- 3M.

But it would be interesting to see how we got ourselves into this abject financial mess. So looking at the Genesis of ENNATURA TECHNOLOGY VENTURES (P) LTD. (wow! thats quite a name, thanks to some shitty rules by Registrar of Companies that a small private limited company cannot have a single word name.) I like the name but i would love to just call it ENNATURA.

I was actually really passionate about starting a company in the domain of energy. The thought process developed over my stay at IIT D and was marked by some important developments. I was attending this course in Interfacial Engineering and Prof Bhaskarwar (the course coordinator) invited one of his old students Madhav Acharya (Currently working in Exxon Mobil,..shit i just hate people working for competing firms., today my friend was just praising Shell in front of me.. shell my ass! Dude i sure have gall.. Exxon Mobil is $400-500 Billion energy giant and i am a two bit startup..whuuhaa) as an invited speaker. The guy talked about the future of oil and gas - catalytic conversion of methane to gasoline, hydrogen production, fuel cells and gas hydrates (the emphasis will become clearer in a later setting at RICE University, Houston, Texas... other important thing that i am conveying here is that i have been to USA.. and so not so much of a looser..). And from then on i was hooked.

After the presentation, i just tried to do a back of the envelope calculation of the amount of gas hydrates present along the shoreline of India, and wow! it contained more gas than reuqired to fuel the energy requirement of the country for atleast a couple of centuries.. I just asked Prof. Bhaskarwar that why doesnt India simply develop gas hydrates and start producing tonnes of gas..He said that there is some work which was being done by GAIL and it has been outsourced to a University in Canada (again the empahsis will become clearer at the setting at RICE).

SO i just decied that i will do something in this area of energy.. may be commercialize gas hydrates one day and then laugh my way to the bank like a madman.. (some fine day i will surely, dude india's oil import bill is staggering $ 80 billion..thats quite a money)

Other turning point was my Internship at IOCL Panipat refinery.. it was not a very good internship, at least by IIT standards, but it was surely amazing for me. According to me there are two kinds of people in the world:
1. Those who have not seen a refinery
2. Those who have seen one and just couldnt get enough of it... To me a refinery is the finest piece of engineering any chemical engineer, for that matter any engineer can ever create. It symbolizes the culmination of what is science and what is technology in the purest sense of the word.. To look at it, the science behind refining is what very simple..- just separate the constituents in the crude oil into separate fractions based on the differences in boiling point.. simple.. but to do this shit on a scale of 5 million tonne per annum of crude oil,.. there is where the engineering part comes into play..
May be some numbers might help - Total investment in panipat refinery - 5000 crore ( to my global vision this number is small, only a petty $ 1.25 billion dollar.. when i was doing the intership it was $ 1 billion.. ahahah stronger rupee makes me so happy about my decision to America..)
A refinery.. just cannot define in words.. just have a look.. The biggest rush of adrenaline i got was when i climbed the atmoshpheric distillation unit.. one of the tallest structure in the refinery.. and looked around. It gave me a feeling..as when a king surveys his kingdom from his palace, as when prime minister must have felt when he addresses the nation from the Red Fort.. whu.haa.. I can understand what Henry Ford must have felt looking at his newly completed River Rouge plant..


Another incident which actually did put things in perspective was.. when one of the process operators took me to show around some of the units.. He was very good with the stuff he knew.. He said that all these units have been fabricated and commissioned by the US and european companies and many of the engineers there are indians.. well that was quite a relief.. i thought i must be having a good future working for this big companies.. but then came his punchline.. "You guys studying in IITs are the most brilliant, why cant you guys commission a refinery"
Come on man.. pardon me.. commissioning a refinery.. ahahahah.. we at IIT D are not even taught how to commission a 10 kg reactor ( Our lab scale reactor with a capacity of 10 kg/day gives us some serious pain in the ass).. and here was this guys talking to me to actually commission a refinery..ahahah he must be nuts..
But from then on..may be because of the hubris of topping the chemical department with a GPA of 9.6/10 ( i am writing this to illustrate the point that i was sometime a topper..hahaheven though in only one semester . otherwise i was very comfortable with a GPA of 7.6) in the previous semester or out of the compulsion of my ego.. i just thought that:
SAALA AB TO REFINERY LAGA KE HI RAHOONGA!!!
and from then on.. zindagi mein max lagi hui hai.. saala us process operator ki to.. who the fuck will give the salaries to my 'ink company' employees on 1st August..

Who is madder??!!

Something just happened which prompted me to write. I was having tea, listening songs on my newly acquired Ipod Nano, when suddenly some old, besepctacled guy came and stood near me and started saying something. I looked at him but was in no mood to remove the earplugs, so i lazily kept of sipping my tea. He took some coins from his pocket and went to get some coffee, and then he started saying something again to me and came and sat near me.
I observed him intently and here is a description of him, as vivid as i can make with my limited observation and literary instincts: wearing slippers, heels of his feet torn and really bleeding, old torn jeans, he was wearing a dirty shirt in this winter, but there was some sign of intellect. He was carrying a newspaper ( but alas it was TOI, sorry i take my words back about the intellect part) and certain books.
He kept of saying something, but his tone was hysterical and manner very weird. I started realizing that i am in some august company.. i saw some guys at a distance looking at both of us in amusement..
"One guy who is speaking something senselessly whereas other one is listening to songs, oblivious to his rantings". But something inside me said to get my earplugs out and listen for a minute what the other person is saying...My inner voice always tells me to remember Kabir's doha - "

"Najaane kis roop main narayan mil jaayen"
So i just thought that i am getting lucky again..hahaha but wehn i listened to him, i realized he was one of the worst breed of people i have seen in this world - the IITian.. though he was reject, atleast some solace and that made that old, madman likeable to me..
He was talking about something.."he was doing his M.Tech from IITD, ..but i couldnot get the degree" or may i couldnot understand. Then he started on a topic ..he started talking about his M. tech thesis topic - it was "application of least squares method in heat conduction"...Oh Shit he was chemical engineer!!
he reiterated that it was heat conduction and not convection - as if i didnt understand the difference between the two.. i am fucking Chemical engineer from IIT D, doing his PhD from the same place (well thats the instance of my madness, albeit very small in impact)
Then he talked baout the course he has don.. dude no sweat he listed five courses, which i am sure many esteemed chemical engineers from IIT D cannot tell, - ranging from heat conduction, convection, heat exchanger design, plant design and applied maths..
But he was very old and i thought if he has done a Mt. tech from this place, then he should be doing good.. but yaar then what happened and why he suddenly went mad and ended up like this..

Then came the blow - he said " Saalon ne Degree nahin di".. this was enought to make me put my earplugs in my ears and move on.. Thinking who is madder - this guy with whom iw as sitting, or the institute which in its strive to make itself an undergraduate factory has lost its way somewhere... or the students who now a days dont care about science and technology and dont understand that they have an oppurtunity which millions in india can only dream of a nd other hundreds of million can even dream of..

or is it me.. who is thinking so much... why the hell.. some goddamn person wanted to study , couldnot get the degree, became a madman..maybe due to some other reasons.. I should be thinking about my own life.. but whenever i will hear something like this - saalon ne degree nahin di.. i will again get mad and think.. isnt there something inherently wrong with our education system...

or may i should ask.. who is madder?!!! -- kindly somebody tell
or is it

To get rid of cliche

Today i met rajesh jain and abhisehk dwivedi. It has been long that i have met both of them together. They are trying to pursue their destinies, abhishek is more focussed, our don is not but he knows what not to do. So in that sense i have high regard for these individuals. And whenever we losers meet, we discuss like critics, the shortcomings of others. Rajesh being the smarter of the lot, lets us blabber and just keeps laughing. I always know there is more to his intellect than i can fathom, he is one of the most worldly wise person i have met.
But , dwivedi and me , cynical towards the ways of the world, have adopted a way of finding faults with the career choices of todays' youngsters. Kindly read abhishek's blog for a greater analysis, http://abhishekdwivedi.blogspot.com.
I just want to be terse here as i am being engulfed by the sleep goddess, cliche is what i see everywhere, in youngsters wearing Nirvana's t-shirt just to fake being one with Kurt Cobain, growing there hairs long, wearing clip-ons etc. ( this all i did too). But when it comes to making choices in life, no body wants to be different. Everybody wants to hop onto the same bandwagon of consulting/MBA/finance jobs which is being fuelled by the aspirations of middle class. The problem with middle class is that it is extremely ambitious, but it extremely cautious. It wants to become super rich but are afraid to fail, to end up in dumps.
To give an analogy, we middle class are at a plateau or a hillock, we see some magnificent mountain (riches) in front of us but we also have deep valley before that mountain (poverty and struggle). Everyone desires to reach the mountain but afraid to tread the valley. So vainly we try to build a bridge from the hillock to the mountain without going through the valley. End result, many of us fail, we end up jus raising the height of the hillock a bit, but still a far cry from the colossus the mountain is.
Where in lies the solution, cries the middle class. To our dismay, it is in the valley where in lies the path to the mountain top. Literally and in an astute business sense also. In india, we have 70% population in villages, 30% peope are living in abject poverty. The next big economic revolution will come in the villages ( in the valley, the new mountain will rise). The irony is, the middle class is to busy trying to become rich the conventional way, the cliched way, and the superrich want to creat one more mountain by tapping the poor. Here is classic dichotomy of our times, which as an entrepreneur, i understand and appreciate and want to exploit. When everyone is running towards a software/IT startup, we are trying to build a barber shop/ a kirana store or maybe to be precise a highly boring eco-friendly inks business.
But again i am back at blowing my own trumpet, i am not successful, nor even a working business, but still being so arrogant to write this in a public forum.
SUCH CONVENTIONAL WAY TO GET RID OF THE CONVENTIONAL!!

The need for women!!

It has been atleast six months that i have been officially single, unofficially fo how long even i dont know. Things happen for good or bad, it is just the perspective. Then life moves on. It was not something that was particularly desirable fo me, but in the hindsight it appears that may be for the other person it was a good decision. My decision was really immaterial for the relationship, it was more so for my own personal and professional growth.

Now time has passed and singledom is apparently boring, especially on saturdays. I know my limitations, that even if i had a girl, i maynot have given her time. All the experienced lovers in the group do agree that a relationship needs time. And time is luxury i just donot posses. With this decision to follow your heart, you get committed to your dream and that takes whole of your time. Remaining is to be prioritized, to be with parents, to be with friends, some occasional social dos and obligations. Where do i fit in a woman. But all said and done female company is what i crave for.. honestly i am desperate right now..
But sexual liberation is only a part, it would be highly unscrupulous on my part to admit otherwise. Nonetheless sexual liberation is still a part, maybe as sareen puts it 'i need to have an even greater emotional liberation', sounds cliched..but yeah it is very much true.

I am not exactly clear as to which emotions need a vent, may be the grief for messing up my previous affair, may be the desire to be heard raw about the my burinng ambition, may be self-contempt of not doing much for my parents, may be the angst against the system for not really doing much for us, what so ever... but it would be really ideal if an evening is spent, may be a few moments with an amazing woman with whom i can share all the feelings, and spare you guys the agony, ahahahh.

This thought does stir things up and so i place bets with people, so that i get close to one goodlooking woman. But alas, she apparently is not what i am looking for. Rest girls in IIT D range from being bimbettes wannabe style icons to sympathy arousing simpletons. One or two sexpots stand out but then thats what they are, sexpots. And something holds me back. I still wonder where that boldness in me vanishes, with which i am pushing my dreams of starting a business.
Seriously so much of a contrast is here... at one extreme i am pushing myself to the limits, physically and mentally to realize my dream while on the other extreme i am enveloping myself in a cocoon. The search should be on, but then again i havent found my answers from the past. This singledom has given me freedom but with its freedom have come its own laws.
May be i need to come to terms with the fact that this inner struggle will end with the realization of my dream. I have issues living alone, may be my makeup is not so. And all this crap talk about becoming a tycoon is all a design to be sought after rather than being the seeker of female companionship. May be hogging the limelight is somewhere in my persona, so it happens that in the vicinity of a woman i act awkwardly as if i am the one she should crave for than otherwise.. and that is precisely my undoing. Why i just cannot be a seeker.. may be my ego, no this is not ego, thats arrogance which holds me back...

So again this boils to down to the classic dichotomy of my nature.. arrogance versus ego and i know this struggle will go on... it has spoilt my past.. it is ruining my present.. should not my future!!!.
So there i am.. officially i am single for six months, unofficially i donot have an answer..somebody should tell!!

Mastkhori - to the hilt - II

Came saturday morning..had to getup at 6 Am to wake up sareen.. Our hero has to go and pick up his lady love from her pace and then drop her to her work place..well quite a love affair..

10 AM - don and me finally get our sleepy bones out of the bed and have a good breakfast..We called up sareen so that he can come and give don some company at my place till the time i go out and get some of my lab work done...well kudos to me..still managing to get stuff done..

well leaving the two of them alone for 4 -5 hours.. i returned at 3 o clock... again sareen has to go and meet Ritu (hone wali bhabhi) and left me with my sweetheart..rajesh jain... ahahah
Don started his famous "time chodna exercise" - came on orkut and wasted three hours.. i slept.. read some of Warren Buffet, some of Liar's Poker.. and did some fantasizing. But by 8 c clock.. it was all over and we were waiting impatiently for sareen to come back and take us too Gurgaon..as in my words.." CHAKH KE DARU PEENE KA MAN HAI AAJ".. we have called Khera..to get ready for the evening as we will be crashing at his pad.

8:30 sareen returned.. me and don were doing some Yoga..ahhahaha..sahi chutiyapa chal raha tha.. but then sareen said he is unable to drive as he is exhausted.. handed over the keys of his car to me. I was a bit skeptical,was not sure whether i wanted to do this, sareen has bestowed his faith in my driving abilities (i am also proud of myself here, want to become a truck driver if nothing works out..but thats along story..some other time) by allowing me to drive his newly acquired second hand Suzuki BALENO.. and i dint want to shake his faith..

With in a couple of kms..i got the hold of the car and then after that it was smooth sailing. We hit the theka in front of IIT D.., sahi chutiyapa hai.. pehle to saala theka khol dete ho aur phir kehta ho ki launde daru pee rahe hain,..packed lots of beer, whisky adha..and adha of vodka..whew..for four people only...

Sahi hai..