Earthquake Nepal 2015 and my personal confession

Many years from now if someone would ask me what was it like experiencing the Earthquake of 2015 then I would not narrate them where I was and what I did and I would not explain how it felt. Instead I would tell them one thing and that one thing is -  "it changed me". Yes, this natural calamity changed me to my inner core. What changed me  wasn't the nerve wrecking  low humming sound of striking shock-wave which still rings my ear  nor  was it the terrifying experience of watching people running for their life and of course it wasn't the sight of death and destruction that ensued(which sounds cruel indeed. I guess I have become numbed with violence we witness everywhere ). But instead it was something more personal , something more to my heart.

All my life there is one thing that I have ever been proud of and that one thing is my devotion towards my family. Ever since my mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer's over ten years ago , I had forgone many  opportunities  and prospects just to be beside her. Over the course of time , that feeling of humbleness of taking care of her despite all the odds outgrew within me into something very  vile and  something very dark, a  feeling of moral superiority  .  In recent times I used to wear that smugness of self-righteousness on my sleeve, unabashedly like the selfie generation posing with victory symbol while doing charitable deeds.   But in one single jolt the earthquake wiped that  entire smugness off my face.

I was seating in front my laptop doing some busy work (yes, I work on Saturday as well . Isn't that pathetic?). And all of sudden I felt as if my feet were bobbing up on surface of water and not firm on ground. The tremor came with such a force that for instant you lose your entire faculty. And I knew that earthquake has struck. For a moment I thought of my mother in her bed . I couldn't decide whether to go and protect her and ensure her safety or try to run for my own life. And then I ran. I ran like a chicken that I was. And within a few seconds I was down to the ground.  After abandoning her  in third storey ,from the safety of my garden where the jasmine and rose were blooming with mellow sweetness I watched with horror how my house swayed with the tremor. And in that dreadful moment that lasted for few minutes I realized how hollow and how weak my resolve was. I felt empty, mute and impotent. It felt like eternity. Finally when it stopped I ran to top and into her room. And as usual my mother was smiling care free.  And when I saw myself in mirror I didn't see myself, but what I saw was a shell of arrogant guy struck by nature's whiplash.  I saw a broken man who abandoned someone he loved dearly in face of natural calamity. I was a just a sucker, a chickenshit who was taught  a hard lesson by nature that in this world there is no guarantees and damn there is no such thing as unwavering resolve. These crisis certainly  brings forth true color of people and sadly mine was yellow.

Now my personal lamentation in face of such crisis that has befallen over our nation is certainly  minuscule and it doesn't mean a diddly-squat. Many people have lost their lives, family, friends ,fortune and everything. This earthquake has certainly shown that it doesn't matter whether you are rich, poor, religious, agnostic, self-righteous or depraved; nature is always a great equalizer. The wound that this disaster has inflicted might heal with time but undoubtedly the scar will always remain. And this scar is a painful reminder to all of us that in life never take anything for granted. Live life right here and right now because this very moment you have can be usurped at any instant. Never think that your  job and your career  is important, what is important is how you make difference with your work and your job. Never think that earning money is important, what is more important is you didn't earned it on other's expense. Never make  your deadlines and your personal goals as your priority, they can always take back seat , what  really is important is telling your loved one how much you care. Because this moment might be lost in an instant. And for all those who survived this disaster lets extend our helping hand because our motherland really needs one.

Before this write-up bloviates into a self-loathing , boring preachy  monologue. I just want to say one thing at the end in lighter note, No matter how much advancement we have made in technology. Radio still rules.  

Startups and Survivor Bias

Startups are sexy. There is no doubt about it. Just take a sneak peek into any of national or international business magazines and you'll see  a blurb or story about new startups  which seems to be ubiquitously mushrooming every  right and left. Everywhere you see the glossy magazines cover where smiling faces shows the new cool kids in town with their new shiny product with promise of changing the world that we live in. Just talk to your neighbors, your childhood friend or your office colleagues and you'll find each one is currently  being involved in one way or the other in  some form of startup ideas that ranges from new App that helps you to get rid of your dog fleas or an aerosol to clean your toilet. Or social entrepreneurship venture that promise to sale grandmother's chutney online or an environmental initiative to explore adventure agriculture (growing weeds). The list goes on and on. Who knows your idea might become next big thing akin to Wello or  Barefoot power or even bigger Uber someday. Who knows perhaps Peter Theil himself is watching your every move and may surprise you with lucrative Term Sheet during your next venture round.

So  the question is are these start ups really a new phenomena. Of course not.  On the contrary it is just a term representing different flavor of entrepreneurship which fueled by promising engineering graduates and smart fresh MBAs  have recently entered into what Carl Jung defines as our Collective Unconscious.   Borrowing word from Nicolas Nassim Taleb startups are indeed a black swan or a form of Schumpeterian creative destruction that drives the wedge on status quo. They put innovation into driving seat and is a leading barometer of changing products and taste

However, this startup culture whether good or bad has undoubtedly done one thing and that is create a dilemma, something right out of Shakespearian soliloquy "To be or not to be" . A question that seem to plague everyone - should they give up everything they are doing right now and jump into startup bandwagon? Will it be more fun and more productive? Will they make more money and have bigger impact on society?    Honestly there is no clear cut answer to this. Everyone has their one view. Meanwhile, having been involved in three startups during past ten years under different capacity from software developer to solution architect to CTO,   I personally would say   "Good Luck" (Aside Note : All three had been utter failure otherwise you would have been reading my success story in Quora rather than my own lamentation in my personal blog page).  And yes luck is the huge factor. For any startup to succeed you should have right product, at right time at right place. Otherwise no matter how smart or innovative your product is at the end of the day  you will be swimming in a cesspool of misery.

Now you might ask why don't we hear about this? Why aren't  any broadsheets and  magazines covering these stories of failures? Why success story only make front news?  Well the answer is  because our judgment is simply clouded by a phenomenon well known in statistics called Survivor Bias. In terms of pure math it is blandly defined as the difference between  average risk associated with  success rate  and the average risk of all ventures.  And as usual, my dear readers, math again fails miserably to put things into a lucid  human perspective. So let me explain it by paraphrasing one famous anecdote. The story goes like this:

" During the time of second world war, a certain Navy general was worried about the bombers getting hit by an anti-aircraft artillery gun. So he convened a study for proper armoring of all aircraft. The Center of Naval Analysis then summoned statistician Abraham Wald to inspect all the carriers that returned from mission with bullet holes and asked for his expert opinion.  Most of the planes were hit in the propellers and wings and very few in body. Apparently navy was planning to armor the wings and propellers and overlook the body part. But to everyone's utter surprise Mr. Wald recommended that body be  better armored than the wings and propellers. And his explanation was this, since they were simply inspecting only the planes that had returned safely meaning those planes that were hit on body were likely have never returned and lost in Atlantic. This means the planes had more likelihood to withstand the shots to  wings and propellers while their body was highly vulnerable Therefore upon Mr wald 's recommendation, which though sounded counter intuitive, Navy decided to reinforce the armor on those part of plane which were unscathed upon the return from their mission."

This anecdote thud describe what survivor bias does to our world view. We have this cognitive dissonance of looking at only success side or surviving side and not the failure side at all. And this rule applies for startup as well. For every Facebook there will be hi5 and For every What's app there will be Kincast. So before you take a leap of faith on any startup don't forget to learn lesson from the previous failures. Because believe me when your startup fails it is as painful as losing your own child.

Dot

Look towards  the horizon

there you'll see a dot

where our vision meets

reminding us that

someday
despite our prejudices
despite our differences
despite our indifference
we will be together

someday
despite our  aspirations
despite our  frailties
despite our faith
we will join the hand

someday
despite our fear
despite our  frustrations
despite our disappointments
we will claim the paradise

hope to see you
at the dot

4 'T' of marketing. A musing on Four letters

I am not a marketing guy. For me it is purely a voodoo science like an ancient alchemy trying to convert Philosopher stone into a gold. Sight of customer scares me. To explain to them all the nitty gritty things about product or getting their feedback is a nightmare. In my almost ten years of experience in software development I hardly entertained  a call with client. If I had to, I would always make an alibi to somehow put it off. And believe me those few instance that simply couldn't be obviated,  had been so bad its even hard to put  it into words. Trying to balance two contradictory forces of maintaining good veneer  all the while temper rising underneath is akin to unstoppable force hitting immovable object. In the hindsight I am glad that I kept that zen mystic going throughout otherwise the entire meeting might have dissolved into a brawl for all.

 My first foray into the subject was much maligned. During my  MBA course the portion of 4P- Price Product , Place and Promotion as the fundamental tenet for entire marketing  was pedantic and boring, that I was completely sure that I would flunk it. The only thing I knew about marketing then was advertisement. Like Marlboro man lighting the cigarette or in Mad Men episode Don Draper giving that demo of wheel and using all that nostalgia as theme. You can check it out on Youtube, the best marketing pitch you'll ever see.

But coming back to marketing before even digesting the topic I was thrown into another curve ball with 4C- Customer, Cost, Convenience and Communication. Though seemingly same thing they have subtle difference with 4C main emphasis on Customer rather than market. Then I remembered the age old adage- "Customer is God". That made lot of sense. But what if God is an idiot. How is one going to market that situation? Something puzzling. Perhaps one should ask late Steve Jobs. Apparently his turtle neck sweater sure did know how to create that itch in the back of customer for them to be lured into a honey trap.  

And of course as I was wading through 4C all the while scouring the net, with grim countenance I learned that some wise marketing  guru has come up with 4V - Validity, Value, Venue and Vogue. The whole idea was to put what customer actually values as center  of focus rather than product or services. Pretty smart. Why didn't anyone think about it before. Seems apparent enough. And as I was pondering and going through reddit forum suddenly my eyes fail upon 4E of marketing - namely Experience, Exchange, Evangelism and Everyplace. Something that propped up from teaching of Jerome McCarthy (Note no connection what so ever with Joseph  McCarthy) regarding inbound marketing. Believe me at this point I seriously wanted to imitate that protagonist of Edward Munch "Scream" and made wailing cry on top of bridge. But alas I was sitting in my room in front of my laptop and that would certainly wake up my dog, which was the last thing I wanted to do.

Then all of sudden a epiphany like jolt of thunder hit me. Hey why don't coin your own 4 alphabet that describes marketing. Sounds cool enough. But is there anything left that Michael Porter and et hasn't unearthed yet. But still it was an adventure right. So there I was sitting in front of my laptop and juxtaposing some invalid thoughts and like waving Magic Wanda came 4T which goes like this -Trust, Traction, Technology and Trend.

a) Trust: If people trust your service or product then they will buy it no matter what. It's the best bait and nothing can beat it

b) Traction: You don't want a onetime customer. You want your customer to be a milk cow that you can milk every day. Success of your business certainly depends on returning customer. If you don't have that traction then you are nothing but a street peddler.

c) Technology: Do I need to say more about this? It is a buzz word. Attach technology to anything and it becomes cool. I wonder why they haven't come up with the word called Political Technology yet. Anyway use technology to innovate your product. It does not need to be big but simply out of box and you'll discover that sales are up and costs are down

d) Trend: You don't have to be Karl Lagerfeld to define trend. Trend is something hip. It's like selling same old garbage in shiny new wrapper. Only trick is making people think it's something out of this world that they simply can't ignore it.  I remember few years back I told a offshore developer to contact me in hotmail and she said that is so 2000.  You don't want to be that. Key is your product should be something that people talk about. At the end it is all show business.

Anyway this disquisition is getting kind of long. Who knows 4T might also catch up and become more trendy.  Believe me that's my own marketing ploy.

Musing on Shadows

As the sun hung low in west, my shadow lurked along the walls. The sky totally crimson, thanks to Doppler shift towards red zone of visible spectrum with lessening frequency to the perceptible eyes.It still didn’t seemed to have any effect on diluting the umbral section of projection. Owing to the canvas it fell on, the silhouette manifested itself into polymorphic form. Sometime it moved swiftly and later it stood still like dark permanent patch. Shadows are indeed mystery. It is dimensionless, mass less has no density but yet it is present. No form of matter can represent it.

I remember reading a story about how sun god and his wife got into rift because of constant heat he emanated. Finally she had had enough and left him by leaving her shadow in her place. Later on when sun god learned about it he went on a quest to find his wife, and finally found her in form of horse without a shadow. Not only that, even it is said in Ramayan, that Devi Sita was switched with her shadow before Ravan abducted her. Coming to think of it if that was the case, then whole incident of war that ensued was big much ado for nothing. Shadow has prominent place in mythology, especially Shadow beings is mentioned both in folklore and popular culture. There is one line of thinking calling shadow being as the Grey aliens a two dimensional creature. This idea of two dimensional creature though sound very absurd is equally plausible. Because as we humans are three dimensional creatures, we can’t therefore fathom the world which is sandwiched between two three dimensional cubes and its entire essence is within the bounds of that plane. So let’s give shadow beings a benefit of doubt.
Talking about shadow, Wayang Kulit comes first in my mind. It is a form of shadow Puppet Theater that is popular in Indonesia. With compelling story in form of shadow art the entire amalgam is real feast. Meanwhile according to Choctaw mythology, a native American tribe, there are two forms of shadows “shilup” and “shilombish”. Shilup is inside shadow while one that wanders with us is shilombish. When we die shilombish simply wander around as eternal damnation. How morbid.
Besides, there are shadow deals, shadow meeting and shadow relationship, which as being a citizen of poor and corrupt nation we all are well aware of. Also there is shadow pricing, which is actually a physical representation of Lagrangian multiplier in optimization problem, and is a foundation of entire aspiration for welfare state. 
As I was musing suddenly the shadow disappeared into thin air with looming darkness. All of sudden I wondered perhaps during night we reciprocate shadow people as there shadow and it is day there in shadow land.

Preface of Tryst with Inner Guilt (My short story collection published)

We are always told that the world is made of two sides - a good and bad. But do we really know which one is good and which one is bad? In constant struggle for proving ourselves good and others bad unbeknownst we inadvertently all  turn ugly. And this ugliness is what keeping the world from becoming beautiful. So at the end  it's not about becoming good or bad it's about not turning ugly.

I wrote these stories during one of the darkest period of my life. Rudderless. Without any Direction. Why I wrote I simply don't know. I guess I was just trying to discover my inner self. At this moment I would like to take time to thank my publisher for bringing this as a book. I would like to convey my regards to the editors of The Kathmandu Post who without any deliberation without any interaction what's so ever published some of these stories in their paper. Their kindness encouraged me to write more. And I would like to thank my esteemed teacher Mr. Subash Dhungel for time and again pushing me to get this published. Also I would like to extend my gratitude to Prof. Dr. D.P Bhandari for his kind foreword and Prof. Dr. B. D. Chataut who gave me his invaluable advise.

Finally this book is dedicated to my family especially to my father who had always been my rock and my mother who has been fighting with Alzheimer for so long. Oh how I really wish she could read it just for once.

Mundane March

In the streets

Garbage trucks move

Spilling trash on sideways

Where you stand

For lights to turn green

All the while cars splash

Mud from the ditch

Where frogs croak loudest

Looking at clouds

Fearing from thunder

That billow sooty grime

That chokes you

Chokes you till your

Face turns red

But oblivious to your plight

Indifferent crowd marches

A slow death march towards

Daily mundane routine

Work and office work and office and

You take cue and do the same

Like puppet in string followed

By gesture of master

Chasing a mirage of oasis

And after everything is

Said and done finally

you reach home

where Light bulb turns on

And you forget

Forget everything