All Essays

The complete archive

9 essays

The Ball After the Taunt

On what Venkatesh Prasad taught me about the one thing a room full of doubt cannot take from you — if you refuse to hand it over.

▶ Symphony of Destruction — Megadeth◈ Hope. Held tightly against voices specifically designed to loosen it.7 min read

Checks & BalancesCarsFirst Principles

I Never Went to Driving School

On gear ratios, a bicycle, a ₹20,000 Maruti Suzuki, and what first principles thinking actually costs you in practice.

▶ Ennai Konjam Mazhaiyaai — Kaakha Kaakha. Harris Jayaraj. The kind of music that makes you believe you are already the person you are trying to become.◈ Fear overtaken by excitement. The specific excitement of someone who has done the theory and is now committed to the practical, regardless of consequences.7 min read

First LightCookingCulinary Arts

The First Time I Made Something Worth Eating

On soy sauce, a restaurant in Koramangala, and the discovery that cooking was never really about the food.

▶ Beat It — Michael Jackson. Not the celebration version. The proving-something version.◈ Triumphant. The particular triumph of someone who made something from nothing and watched the room notice.7 min read

Checks & BalancesTechnologyArt of Creating

The Bar That Was a Boardroom

On assembling a computer from borrowed parts, closing deals in a cabin inside a Hubli bar, and the first time I understood that a business is simply a problem you decided to solve before anyone else did.

▶ Maari Kannu — from the film A, starring Upendra. Kannada cinema at its most atmospheric. A song that understood something about longing and arrival simultaneously — which is exactly the mood of a college student in Hubli who could see something coming that his city hadn't noticed yet.◈ Hungry. Quietly certain. The particular energy of someone operating slightly ahead of the world around them and finding it more natural than strange.7 min read

ChecksTechnologyIdeas

The First and the Fastest

On building India's first online tenders portal, watching a publishing giant absorb it, and the lesson I wish someone had taught me before I needed to learn it.

▶ Money for Nothing — Dire Straits. Not ironically. Literally. That's what it felt like — something had moved, money had gone somewhere, and none of it had come in our direction.◈ Complicated. Not bitter — complicated. The feeling of someone who was right about the idea and wrong about what being right would protect.6 min read

WeightTechnologyIdentity

The Best Days, Measured Correctly

On walking into a spaceship in Whitefield, selling credit cards to Americans at midnight, six years of excellent salaries, and the morning a Save the Tiger campaign told me exactly who I was.

▶ Summer of '69 — Bryan Adams. Not ironically. Genuinely. Those were, in their particular way, some of the best days. The trick is knowing when the summer is over.◈ Warm in retrospect. Clear-eyed about what the warmth was costing. The specific feeling of someone who loved where he was and knew, with equal certainty, that it wasn't where he was supposed to stay.8 min read

SignalTechnologyPhilosophy

Breaking the Shackles

On the loop that every life runs — signal, noise, comfort, breakout, repeat — and the specific moment when the signal becomes stronger than everything designed to drown it out.

▶ Nothing. Deliberately nothing. This is one of those thoughts that arrives in silence — not because silence is peaceful, but because you finally turned everything else down long enough to hear it.*◈ Clear. Not arrived — clear. There is a difference. Arrived suggests the journey is over. Clear means you can finally see the road.8 min read

LongarcTechnologyIdentity

The Visiting Card

On screen printing in Hubli, dial-up connections in Bangalore, a company sold without my knowledge, eight years in a call center, and the discovery that I have been building the same thing my entire life.

▶ The silence of someone who has stopped working for others long enough to build something entirely his own. And somewhere underneath it, the ambient sound of a Karnataka city in the early 1990s that had not yet been told what it was about to become.◈ Retrospective. Not nostalgic — retrospective. There is a difference. Nostalgia looks back with longing. This is looking back with recognition.9 min read

LongarcTechnologyFirst Principles

The Boy Who Published the Records

On dial-up connections, a school backed by a Swamiji, parents in Dubai who didn't know what they were about to see, and the first time I understood that being early to something is both a gift and a negotiation.

▶ Another Brick in the Wall — Pink Floyd. Not as rebellion against education. As the sound of someone who walked into an institution without being awed by it — who had something they needed and knew it, and wasn't pretending otherwise while he waited in their corridor.◈ Defiant in the best sense. Certain. The particular energy of someone who has something an institution needs and knows it — and isn't performing humility while waiting to prove it.7 min read