Fueling Thoughts

        My two cents on the Crow-Strike episode. Like a crow shit bombing your head, events of this magnitude rarely take place by fluke, but after meticulous planning. Compare it with the Stuxnet attack for perspective. Considering that a worldwide media hysteria has not been racked up for blaming Russians and Chinese, without any evidence of course, what are the alternative scenarios? Remember, it's the same company that claimed that Putin hacked the DNC servers, again without providing a shred of evidence. A claim weaponized by team Hillary and taken to a point of frenzy by the pro-Democrat US mass media. The current cybersecurity event is most likely a result of the infighting in the Democrat Camp and the US Deep State. Whether a coincidence or not, it took place just days after a Manchurian Candidate failed to assassinate Trump. While Biden withdrew his Presidential candidature the very next day. Whether as a show of strength or an-arm twisting maneuver, it cos...

   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...