Fueling Thoughts

   Someone wrote a long LinkedIn post about the importance of a good educational record for furthering a corporate career.   I won't delve into the pros and cons of that view, as I chose to respect the current results, competence and the ability to take a challenge headlong, and not for what someone mugged up a decade or more back or the grades received.   I have repaired, rectified and corrected  Fuck-Ups ( for lack of a more genteel expression) of enough pompous and incompetent professionals (from Structural and Combustion Engineers to Marine Engineers and Naval Architects) who never fail to remind others of their prestigious Alma Mater, to have any respect for alumni of high ranking educational institution. Nonetheless, experience has taught me that there is another side of the coin as well.   Recently, in a (nowadays) rare episode, I had a massive flare-up with a client whose IIT Rubber stamp Naval Architect conveniently overlooked drawing an...

    Jobless, I was in the garage working on my bikes, having quit my last profession as a travel and automotive writer in disgust after not being paid for my published work for over six months. A neighbourhood PCO owner (private phone booths that were everywhere in the '90s and early 2000s) called to say that two men claiming to be from the newly built IIT Guwahati were looking for me. He added that they were very disrespectful and advised me to send them packing. The duo turned out to be from India’s National Innovation Foundation—a government organization promoting grassroots innovators—looking for the “Bullet Innovator.” If they seemed rude, it was probably because a school classmate had referred them to me, saying, “Just ask anyone in that locality for the bike-mad fellow; they’ll show you his house.” The PCO owner was apparently not amused. They had come to see my twin-spark plug Bullet, which I had converted in the mid-’90s—about a decade before Bajaj Auto, and y...

Every week, I receive at least three emails from different Incubators and Accelerators, Indian and foreign regarding contests and programs, most of them paid, each invariably offering the same menu of mentoring, hand-holding and government and industry connections as a service. All have little appeal to us as most mentors I have come across or who were forced upon me, had zero idea or domain knowledge about what we are doing, with personalities ranging from simply inept to domineering know-alls. The same applies to hand-holding as it can be interpreted in any way one chooses as there is neither assurance of the quality of the help rendered nor accountability. The promise of government and industry connections is an equal farce because most decision-making level  Sarkari Babus   even  after granting a meeting, have little or no incentive to follow through on their commitments.  Industry connections are usually worse, as the best one can hope for is a m...

A noted intellectual from Assam, Dr Hiren Gohain, wrote a long glowing eulogy about my recently departed father, Dr Pranav Jyoti Deka. Though trained as a geologist and a teacher of the subject for most of his life, my father shall be remembered for his literary work, from compiling the largest, 40,000-word English-Assamese dictionary for 17 years, to becoming a Sahitya Akademi awardee for his short stories in his deathbed.   My father Dr. Pranav Jyoti Deka, at about the time  when he decided to dig a well in Shillong.  In his article, Dr Gohain mentioned a long-forgotten fact that my father dug the first well in the NE-Indian Hill Station Shillong, then the capital of Assam, now of Meghalaya. When he started this project, it was just a matter of calculation for him as a geologist, as our house was in a depression amidst two hills. For the rest of town, he was a laughingstock, with people gossiping, "Even British engineers couldn't do it," till he struck the w...

  Try as much as I like to stay away from social media, no matter how it's called except for the bare essentials, in order not to be engulfed by the forced positivity, political propaganda, or the desire to rant, but couldn't resit making a post ...the last type. A move prompted by a series of WhatsApp messages by a Butt Hurt millennial who lost a very small deal due to his competitor offering a better product at a lower price. Where instead of working on his prices and calling up or emailing a better offer, he decided to bombard me with WhatsApp messages trying to guilt-trip me about how disappointed he was. He screwed up my thought process and the work I was doing, and eventually got blocked and along with it lost a much larger order for another product which he was poised to receive.     Which brings me to making a list of things where I have serious issues with this generation: 1. Insane levels of entitlement. 2. Inability to hear a No. 3. Jumping to first...

 Hi Leana (LinkedIn Executive),  I will assume that you are a person and not a mindless (AI) bot, the same kind that had been flagging my posts as abusive. If you bothered to read through the three posts sent to me where apparently I didn't live up to your cryptic community standards, whatever they may be, then you would realize that the only thing I am guilty of is satire, quoting a famous song by John Lennon, and for stating a verifiable truth, which I agree was in an albeit flippant language.  The first post parodied the recent mass hysteria over balloons created by the US media, where I shall assume my horrendous crime was writing that COVID was caused by Aliens, but, well the context was that it was a suggestion for making a sequel of the Sci-Fi serial "Dark Skies" which already shown that everything from John Kennedy's assassination to Charles Manson's cult was work of Aliens unless the Bot was offended about me referring to lesbian sex(or homosexuality whic...

  It has been a consistent trend in all US foreign interventions not to give a damn about what happens after they are gone, except for installing a puppet regime or dictator who gets deposed in no time. In the US occupation of Iraq after the ouster of Saddam Hussain as much as $ 9 billion of their gold reserve vanished, just like $6 billion of the Iraq reconstruction fund, all paid for by Iraqi oil. All under the watchful eye of the US Presidential envoy Paul Bremmer. The more far-reaching and deadlier consequence was the rise of Islamists in a hitherto secular country with armed and fanatical Shia and Sunni militias, culminating with the formation of Daesh or ISIS. Laos, which had never been at war with the US is the most heavily bombed country in the world, again courtesy of the US Air Force, only due to being a neighbour of Vietnam where the latter was fighting a losing war. Cambodia is a close runner up, having the largest number of landmines, with even deadlier long-term conse...

  It is a matter of vexation that the word Startup these days is associated solely with raising money and not what that concern is trying to do and which problem statement it is trying to solve. It was during a recent expo where I participated, that I had an otherwise well-meaning young chap with his own budding enterprise, constantly asking me the same question in one way or another "Heh, heh, so how much investment have you been able to raise??" Finally fed up, I made him sit down and told him," Zero"! But I have had over 20 outright rejections to my pitches( I stopped counting after 20) as my work of building safe, sustainable and affordable riverboats and nautical equipment is seen as very limited in size and scalability. I was also told that I was too old to start a Startup, was mocked for not having a formal technical education, that my designs were pinched from the internet, that I lacked a team, traction and that it is a matter of doubt whether my perenniall...

I first wanted to post a cartoon of a bare human arse as my solemn message to all online Trolls but decided that in these trying times it may be misinterpreted: As pornography, sexism and insulting to a woman's dignity if female, or an invitation to be sodomized or solidarity with Gay pride if male.  One of the primary reasons I gave up on Facebook (never to regret) were the Trolls that seemed to come out of the woodwork at every step wearing the widest assortment of masks, but quite unitary in their task: to argue, demean and intimidate people little known to them or even complete strangers.  These comprise all manner of Desh Bhakts(Indian Hindu Patriots) or zombified Modi cultists, many of them NRIs( Indian origin emigrants) or those who will scoot abroad at the first opportunity, but always up in arms to defend Hinduism and Mother India's Honour and Virginity. Not to forget the innumerable Muslim bigots who try to first pose as liberals (often hiding behind Hindu and Christ...

The 1st time I was seriously asked if I was an Alcoholic was at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in Chiang Mai, then held in a large colonial-styled bungalow not far from the McCormick Hospital, which I also later learned was a hotbed of ex-pat politics. I was dragged there by a friend who religiously attended their meets, and partly by my curiosity. What I didn't know was that it was expected from everyone to introduce themselves and say that they are Alcoholics and next whether they are still partaking or proudly declare that they haven't touched the devil's brew for "n" number of years. So when it was my turn to introduce myself, I only stated my name and country, as I didn't consider myself either then or now to be an alcohol abuser. Immediately a stout bald gentleman in a Pink Hawaiian shirt, a thick gold chain and a young Thai girl on his side, with the demeanour of an ex-US Special Forces guy (but might have been a retired Xerox salesman for all I know)...