The Game is Rigged

The game is always rigged.

My father’s disdain for the arts far exceeded his indifference toward my dyslexia, forcing me, a numerically uncabled person, to study commerce—a subject I quickly developed an equal disdain for. What college didn’t teach me, despite being about trade and commerce, was that the game is rigged and the dice is always loaded.

My first proper job selling cars in Kolkata seemed like a dream for an idealistic auto lover, till it quickly fell apart. I learned that most of the gruff, uncouth buyers who booked ₹6 lakh cars did so only to sell the allocations at a premium. Concurrently, my seeing how a nonchalant young plain-Jane at the bus stand, hopped into a van full of sleazy guys after a brief chat, catapulted the rest of my innocence to oblivion. We learned that our rival dealer outsold us five to one because he was a well-heeled Marwari businessman who was related to, or knew all the who's who in town, and that the car manufacturer's regional office chaps were on his donation roll. They also expected dealership staff to bow low to them, despite knowing practically nothing about the cars or the customers.

Later, as an auto journalist writing a magazine bike column, the outgoing editor boasted about running the rag for over a year without anyone having a driver’s license. His replacement was a borderline psychotic bike enthusiast who broke every journalistic norm, sent out drunken rants by email, and seemed determined to prove he was a reckless asshole. He succeeded, crashed a few test cars, and soon drove the magazine into the ground. By then, I was unpaid for months. Despite having a decent readership and a flair for writing, I could never find another gig —aside from the occasional dangling carrot to get free work done. Why? Because most editors were moonlighting as consultants for manufacturers or riding the gravy train of freebies: the business class flight to Stuttgart, the bullet train to Nagoya. Sometimes, a few crumbs fell to the senior staff too. So, who needed rogue truth speakers, writing skills be damned.

Now, in the world of startups, the scene is no different. I don’t know the exact ratio, but the number of incubators mushrooming everywhere certainly isn't about promoting the Supreme Leader's vision of empowering Indian startups or Atmanirbhar Bharat. 

These are the new NGOs, the "Dukan" variety!

A few years in this space, and nothing surprises me any more.
And believe me, the inept seminar even managers and webinar organizers parroting startup mantras—people who’ve never built anything themselves— may actually be the best of the lot. The most benign ones are in it for their salaries, which are quite often much higher than what bootstrapping founders can afford to pay themselves.

Otherwise, it starts with incubator staff skimming cuts from disbursed grants—government and CSR funds, mind you—and goes all the way up to their bosses siphoning money through shell startups. Many saddle their incubatees with rent and incubation fees hidden behind classic bait-and-switch tactics. Some offer one-sided contracts that startup founders either don't understand or are too desperate—or broke—to have vetted by a competent lawyer. Not that most lawyers even grasp the nuances of startup contracts themselves.

Then there are the idea thieves—those who harvest concepts from ideation-stage applicants. Not to build anything themselves, of course. No, they peddle those ideas to wealthier businessmen as consultants. Others act as scouts for land sharks—VCs—always looking to carve out their pound of flesh.
 

There are more games being played than I can even claim to know. The deeper you go, the murkier it gets.

As I said at the beginning: the game is always rigged.

Free, Free , Free

A friend took his teenage son to the GNR concert in Mumbai. His neighbour asked him if he managed to get free tickets. I’ve never been much of a concert-goer—even in my younger days, the thought of thousands of crazed, doped, smelly minions crammed into a stadium still makes me gag. But I get asked a similar question whenever I’m invited to speak at an overseas conference:
“So, you managed to bag yourself a free foreign trip, heh heh,”—always with a tinge of envy.
When I tell them it’s an online event, or that I’m paying my own way, their expressions relax into a strange mix of relief and mockery.

A few days ago, my morning began with me telling a wheeler-dealer friend to buzz off. He wanted intel on a niche tech—something I only have peripheral knowledge of—and was trying to coax me into researching and sourcing it. As usual, he was pitching the “huge opportunity” angle.

I told him straight: no pay, no work. And reminded him why I gave up consulting in the first place—freeloaders.
First, they flatter. Then comes the pitch about what could be—never what will be, least of all payment. Then they trivialize it:
“It’s all online anyway.”
Refusal is sometimes met with arrogance:
“We’re wasting our time—just say you can’t deliver.”
More often, it’s the sheepish:
“Heh… heh.”

“Heh… heh,” he said too. I hung up, saying I had to go. I wasn’t lying.

What really got under my skin wasn’t just the déjà vu. It was a call from the day before—someone overseas wanting to source construction labour from India and asking about the going rates. Turns out even skilled labourers are doing better than us bootstrapping startup innovators.

And they don’t have to deal with the obnoxious know-it-alls from the Academia on jury panels, the draconian due diligence gatekeepers, or the occasional narcissistic incubator tyrant—those self-glorified event managers and webinar organizers funnelling CSR and government funds, positioning themselves as the saviours of innovation.
Hand-holding, I believe they call it.

The only bright spot? A TV producer who recently interviewed me called up:
“Dada, did you ever act?”
“All the time,” I replied. “Just never on stage or in front of a camera.”
“You’re a natural,” he said. “Great screen presence. I’ll come talk to you about it…”

Well, all the world is a stage. Might just take him up on that offer—if it ever comes. Something tells me that'll be for free as well.

---

Aftermath:

 
I made it a point to post the "wheeler-dealer" episode on LinkedIn—of course without naming him, his location, or the tech involved. I also posted a screenshot on WhatsApp. I know he checks it daily.

What followed was a near-hysterical call in the evening. He was on the verge of tears, accusing me of not appreciating how hard his life had been, and going on about the many companies already lined up for the same tech. Meanwhile, I couldn’t stop laughing—at him and his kind.

He swore he’d never work with me again. I reminded him he never started.
In the end, he started laughing too.

We’re still friends.
But hopefully, after this episode, he’ll stop calling me with grand schemes and miracle projects. I genuinely wish him the best on his path.
It’s just not mine.

Torturing for Freedom

 

 

 

 The first thing I saw upon logging into LinkedIn was an old video of an ISIS operative gloating about the number of people he had killed and the women he had raped, followed by the usual chorus of comments about Muslims being terrorists and the inherent evil of Islam. As an atheist and no apologist for the faith—or any other—I acknowledge that this monster may be real, but could just as easily be another propaganda tool playing a role. What struck me, however, was how none of the commenters seemed remotely interested in digging deeper into the murky origins of ISIS—how it was propped up, armed, and financed as a counterweight to Iraqi Shia militias. No mention of the Western nation and its vassals responsible for the carnage and chaos in the Middle East, their infamous torture school (renamed but still operating), their illegal prison camp in Cuba, or the secret black sites scattered across the world. Moreover,  if we were to stack every Islamic terrorist atrocities against those committed by Christian white nations—their world wars, colonial slaughters, neo-colonial bloodbaths, South East Asian massacres, Middle Eastern invasions, brutal crackdowns on their own citizens—the so-called Islamic terrorists wouldn’t even rank-Babies.

I once knew a man who had his testicles electrocuted for a week—his only crime was being in the wrong place at the wrong time, a village wedding photographer mistaken for an insurgent because he looked "Mongoloid" enough for the army to pick him up. I met another who had cigarette burns covering his back, courtesy of his time in police custody. Then there was the time I got drunk with a Buddhist monk, only to later learn he had spent nearly seven years in solitary confinement in a Tibetan prison. I’ve heard senior police officers boast about how they battered people in custody, and I once drank chai with a BSF sub-inspector who casually used the word “torture” in place of “interrogation.” 

Already aware that most criminals don’t regret their actions in the least—at most, they fear human revenge or divine retribution—I once spent weeks scouring the web for scholarly and general articles on whether torturers employed by government agencies—police, military interrogators, intelligence spooks like those in the CIA or KGB—ever express genuine remorse. What I found was damning. The subject has been virtually untouched in academic research. And from the scarce evidence available—confessions of war criminals, testimonies from ex-operatives—the results were abysmal. The only ones who ever expressed regret—whether for torture, battery, or gang rape, all carried out in service of their nation and to protect our freedom—were those who had been publicly exposed or were hoping for a reduced sentence.
Most simply rationalize their actions, deny or defend them when confronted, and later shove it all into some dark, locked compartment at the back of their minds.

Coming back to the commenters on the ISIS video post—most aren't bothered about the 40,000 dead in Gaza, a million in Ukraine, or the over 1,000 Alawites massacred last week. Well, unless the mass or social media tells them to be. We humans have a way of keeping our biases intact and treating morality as nothing more than an arbitrary principle—weaponized or discarded as deemed convenient.

Disrespect - Thug Life

 

 I woke up to the ding of a WhatsApp message at around 3 AM, only to find a YouTube link sent by a friend in Russia—a former proponent of a laissez-faire economy, a citizen of another country, but now a fervent, born-again Putinist.
It was barely a couple of hours after the White House fiasco involving Trump and Zelensky when I discovered that all of Russia was in the throes of an orgiastic frenzy, rivaling porcine orgasms in duration.

I won’t delve into global politics or take sides here but will focus on two key elements: Zelensky’s two big mistakes and the keyword—“disrespect.”
It is apparent that the American side had set the stage earlier to create a media circus, though not at Zelensky’s expense. Possibly taking a cue from his Indian friend who blames Nehru for all the world’s ills, “Do-lund Trumph” and his team sought to use the opportunity for some crass Biden-bashing aimed at domestic audiences.

Here was Zelensky’s first mistake: he should have known better than to interfere when Trump and Pence were engaging in their thug talk on domestic politics. He should have simply stayed silent. But call it the stress of his job or the habit of lecturing the world for the past three years on how Ukraine wasn’t getting enough support—Zelensky seemed to have lost the ability to keep quiet.

His second mistake? In an attempt to appeal to the western masses and possibly endear himself to his sponsors, he spoke in English—a language in which he can barely structure a sentence correctly. As a result, he failed to understand when a conversation wasn’t meant for him to respond to and ended up getting bullied by two boorish individuals for whom English (or their version of it) is a first language. Incidentally a regular American trait, never saw or heard of a Britisher engaging in such behaviour.

Lastly, the word “disrespect”—a term that still triggers me, taking me back to my childhood and teenage years in Assam. There, getting picked on by elders—be it older teenagers, adults, or teachers—was a part of life. Any time you stood your ground against bullying or mistreatment, the statute of “disrespect” was invariably thrown at you. You were disrespectful to those older than you, and that was the final verdict—they were the judge, jury, and executioners. It’s plain thug talk, used whenever someone wants to pick a fight. Corporate managers use it for intimidation, street hoodlums use it, gang members use it, and prison inmates use it. A one-sided, irrefutable declaration—regardless of whether the accused actually did anything to warrant it or not.

J.D.Wance, the self-styled hillbilly thug, and Trump, the maverick, just put on a TV show at the White House—representing the U.S. exactly as most of the world sees them. Well, with the possible exception of legal and illegal Indian and Latin American migrants, along with those aspiring to join their ranks.

A New Year, but will it be Happy

The first day of the year brings symbolic "new beginnings," but in reality, it's just another date on the calendar. Unlike the winter solstice, January 1st lacks any astronomical or religious significance. Across major cultures, there are at least five different New Year dates. This one owes its existence to a Roman-era calendar, later corrected in 1582 by Pope Gregory XIII after the Julian calendar had accumulated ten extra days.

Interestingly, the Orthodox New Year, celebrated by believers of the Orthodox Church in Greece, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, the Balkans, and Ethiopia, is also known as the Old New Year. According to the Julian calendar, it falls on January 14 in the Gregorian calendar. This festival coincides with the Hindu Makar Sankranti festival in North India, Pongal in the South, and Bihu in Assam, in India's northeast.

Astrologically and astronomically, this is the day the Sun moves from Sagittarius to Capricorn, heralding midwinter and the approach of spring—essentially, a true New Year. The Romans celebrated it as the festival of Janus, the two-faced god, and Christians later adopted the same date as the start of the new year. So, Pope Gregory XIII was not only poor at math but also bereft of any astronomical knowledge.

For most startups, January 1st is business as usual—or rather, no business, as usual. Aggregators might see some revenue, but burn rates far exceed it. Brick-and-mortar businesses that call themselves startups fare slightly better, but tech developers have it the worst: no clients, no investors, and no income. Most founders spend their time scrounging for grants and attending training programs at various incubators, hoping for tips to break the stalemate and win clients—or an investor’s ear (with an elevator pitch first perfected in their local language).

Not surprisingly, in India—with its Gordian knot of red tape and bottomless pit of graft—the fiscal New Year aptly starts on April Fool’s Day.

The only people with relatively secure jobs seem to be incubator staff—organizing workshops, hand-holding startups, and recruiting "success stories" faster than a cult leader gains followers. While some programs offer value, many are repetitive or led by individuals with little entrepreneurial or sector-relevant experience. Real-life issues are rarely addressed, such as: how founders can cope with or assist aging and often sick parents in other towns, deal with pompous and ignorant jury members in pitching sessions, or handle potential investors who treat them like dirt. Then there are shameless friends and relatives asking for loans the moment a grant comes through, chartered accountants who bungle compliance and saddle you with hefty fines—or worse, demand higher fees than agreed upon and surprise you with extra bills the moment any funds trickle into your account. And let’s not even get started on predatory existing businesses eager to tear newcomers to shreds, or the outright antipathy of the government machinery.

For most startups, January 1st is just another day of struggle. The only difference? The hangover makes it worse.