The Big Picture

There was a frog that lived in a well. It lived its entire life in the well. It had never gone out of the well. One day another frog from the sea came to the well.

The frog from the well asked, “Where are you from?” “I’m from the sea”, replied the other frog.
“The sea! How big is that? Is it as big as my well?”

The frog of the sea, "The sea  is much bigger than your tiny well.”

The frog took a leap and asked, "Is your sea this big?"

“No, sea is much bigger”

Then the frog took a leap from one side of the well to the other. "Is your sea so big?"

“You cannot compare sea with your little well”.

The frog of the well did not believe the other frog. It said, "Nothing can be bigger than my well.  This fellow is a liar."

Many of us live within similar well and fail to look beyond its narrow boundary.

Let’s look at our own work life. In our  EDA industry,  we develop and maintain software which is used in design and manufacture of electronic chips. These are very complex software products. There is algorithmic complexity, complexity due to lots of legacy code and above all, we support too many special customer flows.  Many a times, I have seen that while fixing a customer bug or developing a new feature, we do fix the immediate issue in hand. But at the same time, we break something else.  We break it in our own tool or we break the flow in some other downstream tool.  It happens because we lack the big picture.

From my experience so far, I feel that a critical customer issue has 3 parts: what, where and why. What part is the description of the problem. Why part is the most difficult part. An experienced person with the big picture can easily answer the why. For most of us, we spend a lot of time trying to locate the source of the bug. Most of the times, finding the location of the bug helps us find the reason of the bug.

In our profession, it takes some time to get the complete big picture. The big picture comes along with experience. But at the same time, we should also do due perseverance to understand the big picture. 

There are two advantages of understanding the big picture at work. First is clarity and second is self-fulfillment. You know why you are doing a certain work, how it fits into the overall flow, how your work will help the business etc. At the end of the day, your work will give you a sense of accomplishment.

In our personal life too, many times we fail to see the big picture.  We are limited by our own narrow interpretation, our own ego, and our own blind beliefs. We lack compassion, humility and brotherhood.  Brothers fight so badly over property disputes. Spouses fight endlessly.  Besides, there are so many fights, conflicts and even killings over issues like religion, language, caste, our skin color, our food habits and what not. Are these really worth it? Are we not living inside our own little wells like the frog?

Who are we actually? To know this, let us revisit Set Theory from Mathematics. Most of us in this room have studied Set Theory during our school or college days. In set theory, there is something called Universal Set denoted by uppercase letter U. A universal set is the collection of all objects in a particular context or theory.  To know who we are, it is important to know our Universal Set. That is nothing but our Universe.

We are inhabitants of an average size planet called earth in the solar system. Our star Sun is an average sized star in Milky Way Galaxy. Number of stars in Milky Way is about 200 to 400 billion. The diameter of our galaxy is about 100,000 light years! To understand the sheer size of our galaxy, if the solar system is considered to be equal to a US quarter coin, then Milky Way would approximately be the size of USA.

Milky Way is just one galaxy. There are 100 to 200 billion such galaxies in the Universe. The universe is about 14 billion year old.

Now, let us look at who we are relative to our universe. We are actually nothing.  We live for an average 70 years. It is such a short period! We should not waste our stay here in doing all negative and destructive work.  Rather we should live in harmony, peace, and love.

Whenever you feel you are too big, whenever you fight with your brother over some property, whenever you feel hatred for someone, please look at the vast sky above you. You will get the big picture.

Our ancient Upanishad teaches us Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam. It teaches us universal brotherhood. We will realize it from the bottom of our heart when we come out of the narrow boundaries of our well and understand the Big Picture.

Inspiration

From my childhood days, I remember one of our teachers telling us that success is ninety-nine percent perspiration and one percent inspiration.  No doubt, hard work is essential in any field to become successful. But I feel the role played by inspiration is under-rated in this statement.

A few days back I attended the annual event 2013 of IEEE Bangalore Section. In that event, Prof Jayant Haritsa of Computer Science & Automation Department of IISc Bangalore was felicitated for being elevated to IEEE Fellow. Prof Jayant Haritsa gave a brief speech while accepting the felicitation. He attributed the honor to his team at IISc and some of his professors. He also touched upon how he was inspired by two other famous persons named Jayant right from his under-graduate days in IIT Madras.

When Prof Jayant Haritsa was doing his B.Tech in IIT Madras in the early 1980s, there were two famous engineers by the same name - Jayant - in US. Both of them are professors in US universities and they published influential research papers. Both of them were famous in the academic community because of their work. Their works inspired young Jayant Haritsa and he always wanted to be like them when he grew up. Both of the famous Jayant were from Karnataka. Jayant Haritsa too was from Karnataka. One of them is Prof Jayant Baliga of ECE Department of North Carolina State University. (In 2010 he was awarded National Medal of Technology and Innovation, the highest award for an engineer in USA by US President Barack Obama. Amongst many other accolades of Prof Jayant Baliga, he became IEEE Fellow at the age of 35!).

Today Prof Jayant Haritsa is very well in the area of Database Systems. He is an IEEE Fellow, Distinguished Scientist of the ACM, Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award winner (2009) etc.

Explosion of Malls in Whitefield and Mahadevapura area

Whitefield and Mahadevapura are two localities in the eastern side of Bangalore. We live in Hoodi which is in between Mahadevapura and Whitefield. These places are famous for one of the largest concentration of IT companies in Bangalore. These companies are located in ITPL (now called ITPB: International Tech Park Bangalore), EPIP (Export Promotion Industrial Parks), Sigma Tech Park, HP's Campus, EMC Corporation's campus etc. Several lakhs (hundreds of thousands) of people work in these IT companies located in Whitefield and Mahadevapura.

I first went to ITPL in October 2002. At that time, these places were considered outside of Bangalore City limit. At that time, we considered Marathahalli in one side and Indira Nagar in the other side (at most extended to CV Raman Nagar) as the end of the city. ITPL was in the middle of nowhere! At that time, it was not even in my wildest dreams that one day I would start living in those areas.

In five years time, so much have changed in and around ITPL. ITPL became the symbol of this area. People started calling this place as ITPL. It reminds me of those days in 1990s when  Colgate and Surf became synonymous to toothpaste and detergents. The city expanded much beyond Marathahalli and Indira Nagar/C V Raman Nagar. We bought an apartment in late 2008 in Hoodi and moved there in early 2009.


When we moved there, there were only two small malls - Cosmos Mall at Brookefield and Big Bazaar near ITPL. Not sure if I can call Big Bazaar as a mall. Nowadays I consider Big Bazaar as a poor cousin of the new trendy malls. Perhaps it was ok to call Big Bazaar as a mall in 2007 or 2008. Both Cosmos Mall and Big Bazaar were owned by Future Group. There was no multiplexes. We had to go to the crammed Garuda Mall in Magrath Road or Forum Mall in Koramangala for a cinema.

Things have again changed so much in next three or four years from 2008. As I write this post, there are total 7 malls in Whitefield and Mahadevapura. There are 4 more upcoming malls. Then there are 2 more malls in the vicinity. I think this area has the largest concentration of malls in Bangalore.

1. Forum Value Mall: Located in Whitefield, its USP is that it has all Factory Stores. Ample Parking space. Fame cinemas multiplex.Food court, McDonald, KFC, MTR, Toscano, Rajdhani restaurants etc.  Rs 20 parking fees (non-refundable) for 3 hours.
2. Phoenix Market City: One of the newest mall that opened in late 2011. Huge mall, one of the biggest in Bangalore. Located in Mahadevapura on ITPL Road. Many Reliance stores - Digital, Time-Out, Trends, Footprints etc. Many brands from value range (Maxx) to high-end stores. PVR coming here.  Parking fees Rs 20 (non-refundable) every two hours!
3. Hyper City: Located at Kundalahalli. Very good grocery, vegetable, non-veg market. Parking fees Rs 20 (non-refundable  from last two weeks)
4.  Park-Square Mall: Located at ITPL (yes, at ITPL, facing the road). The latest mall to open here. Opened in December 2011. Huge Reliance Mart store. Big Reliance Trends too. Multiplexes coming soon. Stiff Parking charge of Rs 30 for two hours.
5. Cosmos Mall: One of the older malls. I visit there for Pantaloon, Liliput, Chef Bakers and Modhuloka. Parking is 15 (refundable).
6. More Mega Mart: Located in Outer Ring Road Mahadevapura.Cheapest place to buy groceries, vegetables. fruits, chicken etc. Modhuloka too is there. No parking fee. Because of the new flyover that came up, the entry through the service road is a bit chaotic.
7. Big Bazaar: Located very near to ITPL. Parking is difficult. Visited only two times in last 3 years.

Upcoming Malls

1. Forum Mall: Coming up inside Prestige Shantiniketan near Hoodi
2. Inorbit Mall:  Located near Sathya Saya Baba Hospital and SJR Tech Park in EPIP area, behind ITPL (Inorbit Hyderbad is the largest mall in South India as per the company website. I've seen the H'bad mall and it is really huge)
3. Total Mall opposite to Forum Value Mall: Somehow I don't like the Total Malls. All very crammed.
4. VR Mall: Just next to Phoenix Market City. (I may be wrong in the name)

Malls in the vicinity

1. Total Mall in the Outer Ring Road opposite EMC office.
2. Gopalan Signature Mall: Will open in Benniganahalli, Old Madras Road, just across my office. Some of  the major attractions here are going to be Spar, Shoppers Stop, Lifestyle . (Other Shoppers Stop, LifeStyle and Spar are in Koramangala or near MG Road).

You may ask: do you really buy in malls? Yes, we do buy at malls. We buy monthly grocery, weekly non-veg (fish, chicken and sometime mutton), cloths, baby care, shoes - all in malls. Here also, the perception of malls have changed a lot in last decade. First time I saw a mall in my life  named (Rave3) was way back in 2001 in Kanpur.  (I watched Mansoon Wedding with some of my friends from IIT Kanpur in the multiplex there). I now think it was a small mall (perhaps smaller than Cosmos Mall); but at that time, it was big enough for me. But the mall that caught me awestruck was the Centrestage mall in Noida which I visited in 2004. It was really a big mall at that time. At those times, malls were a place only to hang around - watch movie, eat at McDonalds, KFCs and sometime accompany your girl-friend or spouse; but not a shopping destination as things were considered expensive in malls. The stores at malls didn't give any sale or any discounts. So we used to go to Commercial Street in Bangalore or Sector-18 market, Sunehri Market, Indira Market etc in Noida or Lajpat Nagar, Sarojini Market, Chandni Chowk market etc in Delhi. The perception as Malls as expensive place to buy has changed later. The stores at Malls have started giving large discounts. Then we realized that malls have become a one-stop-solution for many of our needs. There is ample parking space (unlike traditional places like Commercial Streets) in the malls. When your wife purchases her cloths or shoes, you can buy groceries or vegetables of non-veg or buy liquour at MRP (e.g., Madhuloka stores). Your kid can play with various toys. After all these shoppings, you can have a lunch or dinner in a food-court at value prices or you can go to a restaurant too (which may be a bit expensive compared to the food-court).

These malls have have generated lots of jobs and many thousands of people are employed here. But at the same time, some people say that it may affect the livelihood of small shop owners. I'm not sure about this.

Now we don't go to Commercial Street or Marathahalli to buy clothes or shoes. We don't go to HAL market to buy fish or vegetables. We just go to these malls. Happy shopping :-)

319CT on January 30th

I didn't take the Volvo this morning. I have to go some place from work. So I drove to office.

I saw two 319CT Volvo bus going to Whitefield from Majestic. The first one, to my surprise, was numbered 335E (which usually takes a different route through) Old Airport Road. I saw this one near K.R.Puram. Then again, I saw one319CT near Old Madras Road Big Bazaar. The first one was almost half-occupied. But the second one was fully occupied. I saw some people standing too in the bus. Happy to see people using this.

I'll monitor the timing of the bus in the evening for a few days. Once I'm sure of its time, then I will start using it. I hate to wait a long time at the bus station.

If you want to know the timing of 319CT, see one of my old posts.

My first day's experience with 319CT Volvo bus

I decided to try out the new Volvo 319CT bus on Friday (27th January). Friday is a good day to start this kind of an experiment; and I won't prefer the same experiment on a Monday.

While going to office, I wanted to catch the first bus that leaves Whitefield station at 8:35AM. I expected the bus to reach Hoodi by 8:45AM. I waited at the Hoodi bus stop from 8:35AM. I carry three bags to office - my laptop bag, lunch box and gym bag (I work out at the Gold Gym in RMZ Infinity). While waiting at Hoodi bus stop, I was wondering what if a fully loaded bus comes and how would it be to go there with these three bags.

The bus came sharp in time: at 8:45AM. Two persons, including me, got into the bus at Hoodi. There were four passengers including the two of us who just got into! The other person who caught the bus at Hoodi is Padmanabha Reddy who lives in Golden Star Apartment. He works in TCS at its Majestic office.

The fare to Benniganahalli (where my office is located) is Rs 25/-. I was earlier thinking of a buying a monthly BMTC pass. Someone told me that it costs Rs 1500. When I came to know that the fare to my office is Rs 25/-, then I knew that I won't require the monthly pass. Daily I would need Rs 50/-. Considering the fact that there are about 20 working days, so monthly fare will be Rs 1000. I was happy. I spend more than Rs 3000/- worth petrol every month in my car.

The bus reached K.R. Puram very soon. There were lots of passengers waiting for bus; but hardly one or two passengers got into the Volvo. Same scenario at Tin Factory. So many passengers waiting there; but only five persons got into our bus. It is quite contrary to 335E or 500C routes where most people just wait for the Volvo. I was wondering if this 319C would be commercially viable and if not, BMTC may stop it!

While I was tweeting and updating my Facebook status about the bus journey, the bus reached Benniganahalli at 9:05AM. I enjoyed this journey. But I was a bit apprehensive about the return journey.

For the return journey, I reached Benniganahalli bus stop at 5:30PM. I was expecting the bus that leaves Majestic at 4:50PM to reach RMZ Infinity at around 5:45PM. I waited till about 6PM; but the bus didn't come. Then I asked a person waiting at the bus stop about the Volvo. (He works in HP and belongs to a town in Andhra which is about 120km from Bangalore. He is waiting for a bus to go to his home-town.) He told me that I missed the bus by a few minutes. The bus left at around 5:25PM! Since I already waited for 30 minutes, I thought that I could catch the next bus which should come in 45 minutes duration from the previous one.

I was wondering if there is GPS system in the Volvo bus. I could then just send an SMS and find out the location of the bus. (We do it for my son's school bus)

There were lots of non-AC BMTC buses (blue-colored ordinary buses and brown colored Pushpak buses) going to Whitefield as I was waiting for the Volvo bus . The ordinary blue colored buses were full of passengers. The pushpak buses looked good. I was thinking of getting into one of these. But then I thought that since I'm doing an experiment, why not wait for the Volvo.

But the 319CT Volvo bus didn't come till 6:30PM. My eyes, head and neck started paining looking for the bus. It was slowly getting dark. There were mosquitos flying around. Finally I took an auto-rickshraw back home paying Rs 100!

Well, I am not going to do this experiment once again. With two kids at home, the last thing I would do is to spend an hour in a bus stop.

Piripiri

Came to know from a colleague that there is a word in Konkani called piripiri which is synonymous to the Assamese word beberibang.

I like this word: piripiri :-)

New BMTC Volvo Route 319CT

I live in Hoodi near ITPL, Bangalore and work in Synopsys which is in RMZ Infinity, Old Madras Road. There are lots of buses in this route; but there is not a single Volvo bus. There is a good news coming from BMTC today that a new Volvo bus route has been launched from Whitefield (near Sathya Saya Baba Hospital) to KBS, Majestic via RMZ Infinity. This route is named 319CT. (KBS is Kempegowda Bus Station, also known as Majestic Bus Station opposite to Bangalore Central railway station).

BMTC has also launched two more new Volvo buses through my place Hoodi:

• 335 ET: From Whitefield, Hoodi to KBS Majestic via Graphite India, Marathahalli
• 504: From Hoodi to Domlur

The details of these buses and their timings are available in this excel-sheet that we have received from BMTC.

I am more interested in 319CT as it covers my office route. However I found that BMTC's spread-sheet for 319CT is a bit confusing. So I've created a new view of the 319CT timing here. See my view of 319CT here in PDF format or Excel format.

There will be three buses plying in this route. I have used three color codes (yellow, blue and white) for these three buses in my table. A bus start from KBS and then goes to Whitefield. It takes 5 minutes break in Whitefield and then returns to KBS. See the following two tables.

Let us start using these buses. We can help in reducing Bangalore's traffic condition by using public transportation and contribute to a greener earth.

Asian Test Symposium 2011: Part II

We reached the venue called Hotel Crowne Plaza in Okhla. The place looked a bit odd. Okhla is an industrial area and polluted. You get the smell of industries as soon as you enter Okhla. I wish it was a hotel somewhere near Connaught Place in New Delhi. Perhaps those places were too expensive f or the organizers. I was not too impressed with Crowne Plaza and Okhla.

I met Janusz Rajski at the registration desk. He is Chief Scientist and Director of Engineering at Mentor's ATPG and EDT division. I work with Synopsys which is a competitor of Mentor. But I must confess that I'm a great fan of Janusz because of his singular contribution to Test. Pramod and I introduced ourselves to Janusz. I told him that I met him last time during ITC 2008 when Rohit (my manager Rohit Kapur) introduced me to him. Janusz exactly remembered the place where we met in ITC 2008. He told me that it was during the poster-session of ITC 2008 when Rohit introduced me! I was completely taken aback by his strong memory.

Inside the conference hall, I met many of my old friends from Cadence there. Exchanged pleasantries with all of them.

The Organizing Committee co-Chairs Prof Patra from IITKgp started ATS with his welcome note. It was followed by two keynote speeches. The first keynote speech was by Prof Giovanni De Micheli  of EPFL and the second keynote speaker was Janusz Rajski from Mentor.

Prof Giovanni is a renowned Synthesis expert, His book on Synthesis is considered as the most important text book on Synthesis.  I was very happy to see him in person.  But as he started his speech and moved towards the middle of the speech, I realized that perhaps he is not best fit as a keynote speaker on Test. He would be perfectly good on DAC; but perhaps a bit misfit for the keynote role in ATS.

Janusz started his keynote on Future of Test from EDA and Design perspetive. The topic was very interesting. Janusz is one of the renowned Test gurus in the world. I wanted him to take an industry  visonary role today and was hoping that he would not be just trying to Mentor's Test. Janusz started with a difference. He asked most of the lights in the hall to be switched off. He said people who are jet-lagged could take some rest also.  He used a background which he said resembled like nano-tubes. First he showed all pictures of himself and his family on some mountaineering trips. It was kinda irrevelant. But you know he is a big guy and you need to appreciate anything good or bad from people like him. After multiple pictures, he went to the outline of his presentation.

Janusz emphasized the importance of Scan Compression. He showed some of the most influential papers published in Compression till now. He chose to ignore Adaptive Scan (Synopsys DFTMAX) in that list of papers. He showed his own EDT paper of ITC 2001, Survey of Compression by Nur Touba, and one more paper from Cadence folks on OPMISR.  I was surprised to see DFTMAX being ignored here. Mentor and Synopsys almost dominate Test; Cadence is a relatively minor player in Test. I was a bit skeptical at that point if Janus was wearing the cap of a visionary in Test or just the cap of Mentor! He then mentioned something important which kinda gave a reason for exclusion of DFTMAX.  He said any (compression) technology that has endured for 10 years is worth a technology to be mentioned as path-breaking in that slide. I may be wrong in th exact words that he used for this sentence; but this was the essence of his statement!

Janusz also mentioned one very important thing about Scan Compression. He said that any Compression solution which does not work like the pure Scan is not useful. He showed some of his slides from his keynote speech in ATS 2001 in Kyoto and ATS 2005 in Calcutta where predicted that the future of Test was Scan Compression. He said now he felt proud that he could foresee the future. At this point, I had a question for him which I asked him later during Q&A.

Janusz told about two technologies that he believed would be the future of Test going forward. One was hierarchical based DFT and the other was a hyrid of Scan Compression and BIST. The first is definitely true and no one in Test can deny that. I am a bit doubtful about the second. Mentor bought LogicVision sometime back and got the BIST technology. BIST is an old technology and it preceds Scan Compression.But BIST was never completely adopted by the design community in the way Compression found the widespread acceptance. Then will a hybrid of Scan Compression and BIST will be useful and successful? Janusz emphasized this point again when he concluded his speech.

Then time came for Q&A. The program was running about 15 minutes late. So Ravi Srivaths, one of the co-chairs of the organizing committee told that only two questions be permitted. I stood first and luckily there was a girl from Crowne Plaza hotel standing with a mic near me. So I got the opportnity to ask Janus  aquestion. Janus showed some slides from his ATS 2001 presentation today. On that context, I asked him which one or two slides from his today's presentation that he thought he could present in ATS 2021 if he is invited to give a keynote in ten years from now. He first didn't understsand my question. I think Ravi explained him my question. Janusz said that he ddn't want to feel accountable for something; but it was a good question. He went on explaining the virtues of hiearchical DFT and hybrid solution of Compression and BIST. He said he hoped these two woulo be the future.

Then the paper presentation session started. I attended the session on Timing and Clock which my colleague Pramod was moderating. All the four papers in this session was presented by four professors and three of them are quite renowned. First one was a profesor from Japan on Testing Transition delay faults in Clock. The next three papers were presented by Prof Krishnenu Chakrabarty of Duke, Prof Jacob Abraham of Texas, Austin and Prof Abhijit Chatterjee of Georgia Tech. It was very good to see these people presenting. Prof Krish Chakrabarty was the PhD advisor of my colleague Anshuman Chandra. Later I had a good conversation with Prof Chakrabarty. Pramod did an excellent job of charing the session. He was very planned and neat. He collected the bios of the all the presenters beforehand and introduced them well. He also collected the abstract of their papers in case he had to ask some questions to them.

Lunch was good; but I ate a light one because I had to present a paper immediately after lunch. My session was to be chaired by a professor from Japan. He didn't collect my bio or anything. He just took my business card and introduced me from the card.

As I went to the podium, I was a bit nervous on the title slide. But very soon I regained my confidence and was able to explain the stuffs pretty well. In the audience, there were many familiar faces - Rohit, Pramod and many of my ex-colleagues from Cadence.

Asian Test Symposium 2011: Part I

It all started with an email that Prof Abhijit Chatterjee from Georgia Tech sent to my manager Rohit Kapur in the first week of February stating that he wanted to meet with the Test people in Synopsys Bangalore. Prof Chatterjee was going to be the General Chair of ATS 2011 to be held in Delhi in November. He was trying to meet the people from academic and industry in India in order to drum up support for the conference.

There are four  Test conferences that happen annually - ITC, VTS, ETS and ATS. International Test Conference (ITC) is the most premier conference of all these. I think next comes VLSI Test Symposium (VTS). Both ITC and VTS happen in US. European Test Symposium (ETS) and Asian Test Symposium (ATS) rotate amongst countries in Europe and Asia respectively. ATS usually comes to India once in every decade. ATS 2011 would be 20th ATS.

Prof Chatterjee came to meet us on February 10th in our Synopsys Bangalore office. He was accompanied by Prof Viren Singh of IISc. My friend and colleague Parthajit and I met them for some time where they explained us about the Test Oddysey theme for this ATS. We then took them to lunch at Indijoes at RMZ Infinity.

We submitted two papers to the conference. Both of these were already filed as US patents in USPTO. One was on the concept of Predicting Test Compression QoR and the other one was on something called Cyclical Adaptive Scan (CAS). Both the papers were accepted. So I got the opportunity to travel.I'd be presenting the Compression Maximizer paper. My colleague Pramod was invited to be a moderator for one of the sessions. So both of us would travel from Synopsys Bangalore to attend ATS in Delhi.

But there was a bit of a problem. We were expecting our second baby and Gitika's expected date of delivery (EDD) was Dec 14th. We had some buffers so that I could go and present the paper in ATS. I was still a bit hesitant. As usual, Gitika is one of the brave ladies I've ever met. If I would have been in her place, I would have never let my spouse to travel in such a crucial time.But Gitika was exactly opposite. She was encouraging me to attend ATS and present the paper. One day Rohit called me and spoke to Gitika about my travel. She told Rohit also that I should travel.

Gitika's sugar level was high. So her gynecologist told us that we won't wait till EDD. Finally we planned Novemver 25th as her day for c-sec. I'd come back to Bangalore after the end of the last day of ATS on Nov 23rd and get her admitted on Nov 24th night.

But something different was waiting for me..

I landed in Delhi on Nov 20th, Sunday, one day ahead of ATS in order to meet my old friends in Noida. I visited Utpal da's family and had lunch there. After that, I went to meet my ex-colleague and friend Subhasish. He has newly constructed a beautiful house in Noida. Utpal da dropped us at our C.R. Park hotel later in the evening.

Where are you from?

Many times we ask this question when we meet new people: where are you from? Many times we are asked: where are we from? This is very casually asked as part of the introduction. Yet, the answer to this question is not so simple - it is a very context sensitive answer. We give different answers depening on the location where the question was asked; who is the person asking the question etc.

The answer to this question can be very wide - from a very big geographical region to a small locality of a town or a village (coarse grained vs finer grained as a Computer Science guy would say). At the highest level of granularity, I can think of  a diplomat negotiating in North-South dialogue who can answer the question saying that he is from Northern Hemisphere or some other diplomat replying that he is from Southern hemisphere. At next lower level, one may mention the name of the continent, saying she is from Asia, or Europe etc. But these are rare occasions. For most practical purpose, the highest level of answer is the name of the country. When I am traveling outside of India and someone asks me the question, my simple answer is: I am from India. There is no confusion in higher level of answers. (When traveling outside of India, if some other Indian asks me the question, my answer will be different.)

There is usually a follow-up question: where do you live? It carries a straight answer. People usually reply it with the city or village where they currently live.

The lower you go in the level trying to answer the original question (where are you from?), the more is the complexity of the answer. Most of the people, whom I asked this question, do not consider the place where they work as their place. Many of them have been living in Bangalore for more than a decade and have their own homes here. Yet, all of them mention the place where they spent their childhood days as their own place. The sense of belonging (আপোনত্ব, अपनापन) to the place where they have been working for many years is missing. The emotion is all attached with the place where we all spent our childhood days. That is the place from where we are; not the current place of residence.

First example is my father. He came to Morigaon in 1972 when the Sub-Division was created. Morigaon later became a distict. Deuta (father in Assamese) spent most of his work life in Morigaon. He built his house there. He retired from his job in Morigaon. He has been living in Morigaon for almost 40 years. But ask him where is he from. He will tell you that he is from Hatisung in Nagaon district, the village where he was born and spent his childhood days! I was born in Morigaon and spent the first 15 years of my life there. I am out of Morigaon for last almost two decades. I live in Bangalore now and  own an apartment here. I have spent six years in this city. Ask me where I am from. My answer is: I am from Assam. If someone from Assam is asking me this question, I'll tell him that I am from Morigaon. If I meet someone from Morigaon, then I'll tell him the name of my locality in Morigaon.

Ask my son Ekagra where is he from in a few years. I am sure he will reply he is from Bangalore.

The most interesting answer to this question came from one of my colleagues. His father works in the armed forces. The armed force personnels work in different places of the country and keep moving from one place to another within a few years. So my colleague spent his childhood days all across the country. His father's native place is in Orissa; but my colleague never lived in Orissa. He later pursued his engineering in southern state of Kerala. Now he works in Bangalore. He told me: he needs five minutes time in answering the question where he is from. But he said it will be easier to answer the question when he goes outside of India. He can simply say then: "I am from India".

Look at Facebook profile of any of your friends. It has two fields: Lives in for current place of residence and from  for that sweet place where your spent your childhood days. Of course, there are some people for whom both the fields are same.

So where are you from? :-)

Biswakarma Puja

Biswakarma (as pronounced in Eastern part of India - Assam, West Bengal and Orissa) or Vishwakarma (as pronounced in rest of India) is the only engineering god from about 330 million Hindu gods. Vishwa means the universe and Karma means work. Vishwakarma is considered as the architect of the universe. In Assam, West Bengal and Orissa, 17th of September (the Sankranti - last day of Bhada month) is celebrated as Biswakarma puja. People owning cars, motor bikes, factories, government engineering departments like PWD, END, Irrigation etc celebrate this puja.  I remember people owning bicycle and cycle-rickshraws too put garlands around their cycles on this day.

In my childhood days, we didn't have a car or bike or scooter. We owned three bicycles - used by my father, my brother and me. I think we also put some garlands in our bicycles. Deuta (father in Assamese) used to get invited by PWD and END departments for the Vishwakarma puja. Sometime my brother and I would accompany him to these offices in the afternoon. The evening used to be reserved for the big celebrations at Naba Bordoloi khura (uncle)'s residence. Bordoloi khura  was a lecturer of English in Morigaon college and was our neighbour. He was relatively wealthy in our neighbourhood and was the only person who owned an Ambassador car and one Bajaj scooter. (He was also the first person owning a color TV and a telephone connecttion). Bordoloi khura would invite all the families in our neighbourhood for evening snacks at his residence on the day of Vishwakarma puja. It was more like a dinner - prasad, luchi, bhaji, sweets etc.

Although we didn't celebrate Vishwakarma puja at our home, I always waited for the arrival of this festival with much excitement. Can you guess why? No, it is not because of the attraction of attending it in PWD office or at Bordoloi khura's home. But because Biswakarma puja heralded the onset of the festive season that would continue till January. In my small town of Morigaon, vendors would start selling balloons from Vishwakarma puja. In a few days from this, there will be Durga puja and Kati bihu in October. Then there will be Deepavali, Kali Puja, Christmas and New Year in November and December. In January, there would be Magh Bihu and then Na-khuwa (occasion to celebrate the first rice of the season..will write a blog on this sometime).

There was one more reason I liked Vishwakarma puja. It also brings the autumn season (sarat and hemanta ) - used to be my most favorite season. Rains would stop by then. End of summer and onset of winter. The night sky would be amazingly clear with full of stars.

4 years in Synopsys

I completed 4 years in the same job today. I joined Synopsys in September, 2007 and has been working there since then. My previous best was 2 year 10 months at Cadence - from December 2004 to September 2007. In the period before joining Cadence, I worked in three different companies in three years! So considering my previous work history, 4 years in a single company is definitely a record. :-)

Well, I like my current job and hope to play a long innings here.

Gonna be a father again

Let me break the news..we are expecting our second child. We are very happy and excited about it. We hope we are blessed with a baby girl this time. (In India, it is illegal to know the sex of the baby before he or she is born.) But then it is something which is not in our control. So we will be happy with a girl or a boy. It's just that our first child is a boy, we would love to get a girl.

The EDD is on December 10th. That is the end of 40th week. The baby may be born any time around 38th week, which is last week of November or initial days in December. Our son Ekagra too was born in December.

Parenthood brings lots of joy. Of course, it has its challenges too. But the happiness part of it far outweighs the difficulties.

I'm waiting eagerly for the arrival of the new one.

DRDA: Mother of all corruption in Assam

Government of India has numerous schemes for development of our rural areas and for poverty alleviation.
District Rural Development Agency (DRDA) serves as the nodal agency for managing these various programs at the district levels. A complete definition of DRDA, its roles and structures etc are available at Ministry of Rural Development website. Some of these schemes are: MGNREGA, PMGSY, IAY, Bharat Nirman, SGSY etc. These are conceptually very good schemes and should help transforming the rural landscape of India. More than half of India still live in villages. Unless our rural areas are developed and poverty removed, any slogan of India Shining is meaningless. I strongly believe in the theory and implementation of inclusive growth.

So you can see that DRDAs have a great role to play in India's development. They are the people who can really make India a developed country. It is indeed a great job. They can create history. They can uplift the lives of aam-aadmi, the common men.

But are our DRDAs doing their job honestly? I know one Junior Engineer working in DRDA in Assam who is worth multiples of crores (a US $ millionaire) of rupees. His annual salary would be around Rs 1,50,000/- (about US $3300)!  Let us call him Mr T.

Let us look at Mr T from a closer look. He possesses three big houses in the heart of Guwahati city worth more than one crore rupees, all of which he bought by paying cash. He bought some 80 bighas  (1 bigha in Assam = 14,400 sq feet) of  land near the airport. He also possesses a few bighas of land in Sonapur area in the outskirts of Guwahati. He owns three cars. Recently, he has opened a General Motors car showroom. He also has a rice shop where he sells rice that was intended for daily labourers working in Government jobs!

Mr T is a very junior level official in the DRDA setup. He has engineers, executive engineers, Project Directors, and many other officials, elected representatives on top of him. Again, DRDAs work very closely with Zilla Parishad (District Level Panchayat). Unfortunately, most of them are involved in this great loot. Mr T is just one of them.

What is the source of their money? It is all my money, your money that we pay through various direct and indirect taxes to the government. I am very proud that I am able to contribute some amount to the nation-building. But the bitter truth is that most of our hard-earned money is not going for the development of our country; rather going to the pockets of Mr T and his co-looters.

You cannot complain against Mr T under the current draft of Government Lokpal bill (the Jokepal as it has been called by Anna hazare). He is a junior officer; but important one as he works in the actual implementation of Bharat Nirman.

My grandpa's neighbor and Anna's opponents

I remember my grand-father telling me the story of his neighbor. My grandpa was a freedom fighter and went to jail for supporting the freedom movement. His neighbor didn't support the freedom movement led by Mahatma Gandhi. His neighbor believed that British rule was better and he always doubted if at all Gandhi's movement would lead to India being free. He used to scoff at the idea of India being free.

I asked my grand-pa: what happened after that. Grand-pa told me that on the day India became Independence, his neighbor was one of the first to burst crackers in celebrations. Later that person somehow managed to get freedom-fighter-pension also! That person towards the later half of his life used to tell untrue stories of his involvement in freedom struggle to his grand-children.

I see some similarities between my grand-father's neighbor and opponents of Anna Hazare led struggle against corruption. I'm pretty sure that when we enter the new corruption-free India, these very people will also celebrate and later tell untrue stories of their support for the movement to their grand-children.

If you really want to proudly and honestly tell your stories about your involvement in this struggle against corruption to your children and grand-children, come and join the movement. We are definitely at the dawn  of a new India. 

Let's cure the disease; not just the symptoms

When we feel severe pain in some part of our body, we usually have two options:

1. Investigate the cause of the pain and fix it.
2. Continue to take pain-killer tablets.

Some people have been complaining that why Anna has not raised crusades against issues like hunger, poverty, lack of healthcare & education etc. Let me tell you what I think on this.

Yes, these are indeed big issues suffered by a large chunk of population of India. But these are symptoms of a disease and the root cause of all is corruption. Late Rajiv Gandhi, India's former Prime Minister, said that out of every rupee spent on development projects, only 17 paise reaches the common people (aam-aadmi) and rest 83 paise end up being sucked by corruption. We need to make sure that the remaining 83 paise reaches the intended target. 


What is the source of Government money? We pay various taxes, direct and indirect, at various times to Government. We feel very proud to contribute to nation-building. But we expect that this money is properly used and not become part of someone's Swiss bank account.


I sincerely believe that all our severe pains like hunger, poverty, lack of healthcare & education etc will go away in a corruption-free India. It's high time that we issue a Quit India notice to corruption right now.

CAGR of 527% ! What business is this?

I was reading a Times of India news article this morning on Jaganmohan Reddy. He is the son of former Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh late YSR Reddy. As per the news, Jagan's wealth rose from Rs 11 lakh in 2002 to Rs 42,000 crore in 2009 in a span of 7 years.

I used a CAGR (Compounded Annual Growth Rate) calculator to find out what is his CAGR for this phenomenal growth rate. The result is an astoundingly high CAGR of 527.2% !!!

How big is 527.2% CAGR? If you would have invested Rs 100/- with Jagan in 2002, this investment would  have turned into Rs 3.8 crore in 2009! This is unbelievable. What magic is this?

Well, the magic here is nothing but corruption. No business can give you this growth. This money well-spent could have been used in healthcare, education, infrastructure growth etc of my country.

This is just one example. There are hundreds of thousands of other Jagans in our country. The time has come for us to say: enough is enough.

The Selfish Life

Recently I was reading about Arvind Kejriwal, one of the leading social activists leading the fight against corruption. Arvind Kejriwal was one of the leading guys behind the Right to Information (RTI) Act too.

Arvind is an IIT Kharagpur B.Tech and then he joined civil services in 1992 as Indian Revenue Services (IRS) officer. While working with the Income Tax department, he saw the widespread corruption prevalent there. He started Parivartan, an NGO for bringing in transparency in Government.

I am also an engineer and went to one of the IITs (for my masters). But our similarities end there. After reading about Arvin Kejriwal, I have realized what a selfish life that I am living! Our lives are too materialistic nowadays. We are busy buying a house, a car and then paying mortgages (EMI) for these in remaining of our lives. We are busy thinking how to get the next salary hike and how good will be this year's bonus. We are busy replacing the our old (CRT) TVs with a LCD/LED ones. We are just busy with ourselves and no time to think about the society. We feel we live a comfortable and happy (?) life. One day we will die and no one will remember us.

Arvind Kejriwal could have led a life like ours. He was an IRS officer and could have accumulated tons of wealth like other IRS folks. But he opted for a different path. He left his own comforts so that he can make  the lives of millions of his fellow country men less miserable.

Do you also lead a selfish life? Are you happy with it?

The Great Awakening

I was born during the Emergency Period of 25th June 1975 to 21st March 1977. I never saw what emergency was; only heard about it later from others. On the morning of August 16th, we experienced some emergency like situation in India when Delhi police arrested Anna Hazare from his apartment. He wanted to go on a fast against the widespread corruption prevalent in our country. The government didn't want him to go on the fast. So they came up with numerous restrictions against his agitation.


How widespread is the corruption? Let me summarize it in one sentence. In every step from our birth to death, we face corruption. We need to bribe government officials to get the birth certificate. I heard the same is true when we try to get the death certificate!

I am an engineer working with a multi-national IT company and belong to the so-called middle class. Usually, the middle class in India have a general apathy to the direct involvement in affairs of the state.

Corruption affects everyone - middle-class or economically lower class. The poor class suffers more as corruption affects them directly in their day-to-day life.Government of India has lots of development schemes for the economically downtrodden class. But thanks to the leakage in these schemes, the real benefits never reach them! Public Distribution System (PDS) supplies subsidized food items to the poor; but it is diverted and sold in black market. NREGA gives some employment guarantee scheme to the poor; but fake identities are created who suck the benefits. (The examples of pilferage are just too many and I don't want to list them all here). On the other hand, middle class have some economic cushion that probably don't affect them so harshly like the poor people.

Let me give you my recent experience with corruption. I paid Rs 30,000/- to register my property at sub-registrar office in Bangalore. Then I again paid Rs 7,000/- to get the Khata (property ownership document) in BBMP office. I heard that there is a big nexus of builder, sub-registrar and politicians in these. (I'll write a separate blogs on these later). I knew paying bribe is bad. But then why did I choose to pay bribe? Because I knew that if I don't pay bribe, I have to make several rounds to the offices, argue with officials, my inability to speak the local language Kannada etc. I thought that time is also money. If I spend too much time visiting these offices, it will put stress on my work-life. I believe I represent the mentality of many of middle-class. We all felt bad and agitated about it; but we felt helpless.

In 2011, we have seen some big corruption cases - like CWG, 2G etc. Then came Anna Hazare, Arvind Kejriwal and their India Against Corruption campaign. Anna Hazare has awakened the sleeping middle class. Middle class is on the street these days. I have already seen that the agitation is gradually percolating down to the poorer classes. (Yesterday the Delhi auto-rickshraws joined the protest.)

I'm joining the protest for a better India, a corruption free India. Are you?

No registered trademark? Then be ready to say "We don't have any branches"

Last weekend we visited Hyderabad to meet my cousin and his wife and also to attend ACM India 2011 meet.  One of the major attractions of Hyderabad is its biriyani. We wanted to taste the authentic biriyani of Hyderabad. We heard that Bawarchi at RTC Cross Road (X road) serves very good biriyani. From my cousin's place to Bawarchi, the distance is about 30km. On way to Bawarchi, we saw many other restaurants named Bawarchi. Our cab driver Abdulla told us that these were all new Bawarchi and the original one is at Cross Road. I remember seeing one Bawarchi restaurant opened in Banaswadi main road in Bangalore also two years back. I assumed that this must be one chain of restaurants like Mainland China, Oh Calcutta etc.

After reaching Bawarchi at RTC Cross Road, the first thing that attracted my attention was the big  hoarding they put up announcing that they don't have any branches!  They had similar banner inside the restaurant too.

I've seen the we-don't-have-any-branches message in all Agarwal Sweets, Evergreen Sweets etc Delhi/Noida in and I posted it in my blog a few years back. But those are small shops compared to Bawarchi. This is the problem if we don't register our trademarks. I remember Infosys giving advertisements in  leading newspapers/magazines a few years back that the word Infosys was their trademark and it was illegal to use that word. Probably some companies started using the name Infosys and that's why Infosys was concerned. Without a trademark, imagine every other company with the name Infosys putting up a banner that they don't have any branches! It would have been a disaster with the original Infosys.