blog@Yantrajaal

There were two attitudes towards the summer training program at IIT KGP. Some students would try to wrangle an internship in their hometown or nearby but some of us loved the opportunity to get away as far as possible. In 1980, ISRO had been in the news for having launched SLV, India's first Satellite Launch Vehicle and my father had met a person from ISRO. So I decided to explore an internship there. After pestering our Training and Placement Division, I finally managed to get an internship at ISRO, Trivandrum, even though this was not mandatory at the end of third year. I also managed to convince Rana Bhattacharya to join me on this adventure.  There were quite a few challenges with this assignment. First, there was no direct train to Trivandrum, we had to change at Madras. Finding a place to stay was no less difficult but finally we managed to get lodging at the YMCA and eventually we managed to find our way to ISRO. But this chapter is not about the difficulties that we faced a...

It would have been in 1981 or 1982 when it was reported in the newspapers that Piloo Mody, the brother of Russi Mody of Tata Steel fame and a member of Parliament, had negotiated a deal with China that would allow Indian pilgrims to visit Manas Sarowar and Mount Kailash. Hindu mythology posits that Kailash is the home of Bhagwan Shiv and Manas Sarowar is one of the 51 Shakti Peeths or centres for the adoration of the Divine Feminine. Access to these holy spots had been denied to Indians since the 1962 war but with hostilities easing, pilgrims would once again be allowed to visit. However tourists and pilgrims would have to be in groups and they would have to be escorted by Government of India officials. My friend, Abhay Maheshwari, and I immediately decided that we should go to Manas but we soon realised that the costs were prohibitive. Never mind, we decided then and there, possibly after a swig of Mohua at a Prem Bazar still, that we would start the process of saving for this trip. N...

Surath Chatterjee's Birthday Party The day began, rather early, with us kicking at his door, waking him up, wishing him HBD and demanding an instant treat. The fellow was rather disoriented and after some negotiation it was agreed that the Jilipi (or Jalebis) at PremBazar was the only edible stuff that could be procured at that ungodly hour! Some of us pooh-poohed the idea of riding all the way for just Jilipis while a few, possibly Rana Bhattacharya, vociferously liked the idea and nearly dragged Surath out to Prembazar. An hour later, Surath and the Jilipi enthusiasts came back to the wing to find the rest of us hanging out around the garden chair, that we had pinched from somewhere, and staring at Zakir Hussain Hall. Surath went into his room and bounced out immediately. "What's this?" He was pointing to a HUGE wooden box lying next to his cot. "Your birthday gift!" - evidently delivered when he was away. But there were no tags, labels or anything else on...

1984 was not a very happy year for me. Even though I had successfully completed my B.Tech in Mechanical Engineering from IIT Kharagpur, the fact that I could not get a 'schol' or an assistantship at a US university left me in deep sorrow. My disappointment was even greater because I had scored a phenomenal 96 percentile in both Verbal and Quantitative sections of the GRE, and many friends with lower scores had made it through — but not me. Of course, I had admissions from many top schools like the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, and even Cornell, but without financial aid, there was no way for me to go to the US. While I did have a job offer from ORG Systems, my Boro Mama advised me to join the PhD program at IIT Kharagpur itself, because in his opinion, a PhD was essential — a piece of advice that has stood me in good stead till today. Accordingly, I joined the Mech Department again under Prof. P. K. Nag in the Steam Lab to work on Thermodynamics. Here, I was remarkably ...

 Adi Sankara's Shivastakam is a widely known and frequently recited hymn to Bhagwan Shiv. Howeve, I have noted that while the first seven shloks are remarkably similar across multiple sources, the eighth one is often different. What is even more distressing is that while the first seven have a beautiful rhyme and metre, the eighth one -- in almost all cases -- breaks the rhyme and displays a strongly discordant note. I believe that this is accidental. Since Sankara's Shivastakam was passed down as an oral tradition, it is quite likely that the eighth shlok was lost in transmission and different authors at different locations plugged it with their own creativity. Which is why, I as a follower and ardent admirer of Sankara, had tried my hand to create a shlok that I felt would have been similar to the other seven. This shloka first appeared in the First Edition of my book, the Road to Psingularity where I had been exploring the convergence of Vedanta, genetics and computer progra...

This would be in the winter of 1995 or early 1996, when I was the Product Manager for the DB2 Database product. At the time, DB2 -- along with other IBM hardware and software -- was sold and supported in India by Tata Information Systems Ltd (TISL), a joint venture between IBM and Tata Sons. IBM had been kicked out of India in 1977, alongside Coca-Cola, for failing to comply with FERA regulations. Now, nearly two decades later, the company was back -- in this new avatar. Two key people made this happen: Venky Raman and Dan Gupta. It was Venky who recruited me into TISL after I left Tata Steel, knowing I was perhaps the only person in India with deep DB2 expertise. Though my role was national and even pan-ASEAN in scope, I worked out of the modest IBM office on Harrington Street (now Ho Chi Minh Sarani), right across from the US Consulate in Calcutta. Still, I spent most of my time traveling across India and Southeast Asia, supporting customers in a mix of technical firefighting and eva...

This would have been sometime in 1993 when I was working in the Computer Services Department of Tata Steel in Jamshedpur. We had, after considerable effort, finally developed and delivered the rather unimaginatively named Jamshedpur Information System. This was a fairly comprehensive and integrated computer system that stored and processed commercial information  --  Maintenance, Accounts, Marketing, Production/Operations, HR  --  in a DB2 database on an IBM ES/9000 system running MVS. In hindsight, we might have been better off implementing SAP, but that is hindsight  --  and SAP was hardly known in India then. I had been very closely associated with the design and development of this system as the head of the database administration function  --  one of the elite corps of systems programmers  --  and had even travelled to the IBM training facility in Sydney, where I spent seven weeks learning about this new platform. Unfortunately, the...

 

It was the summer of 1979 -- perhaps May or June -- when the phone rang at Renu Villa. Back then, it was a big black landline phone with a rotary dial from Calcutta Telephones, because BSNL didn’t exist yet and cellphones were still firmly ensconced in science fiction novels. We were a dozen people living together in one large, semi-joint family, and there was one phone for all of us -- a privilege in those days, since not many homes had a phone at all. Ours sat on its own special marble table on the first floor, while I lived with my parents on the second. A buzzer, installed by my enterprising father and operated by one of my aunts, summoned me downstairs. I was told that Fr Hincq, SJ, from St. Xavier's, was calling for me. Fr Hincq was the Principal -- or perhaps the Headmaster? -- of the St. Xavier's Higher Secondary Institution, which was sandwiched both physically and metaphorically between St. Xavier's College and the Collegiate School, from which I had passed my ICS...

The Chronotantra trilogy  gradually reveals the Kalki Protocol as the unseen force shaping a post-human civilization by ensuring that intelligence, biological or artificial, evolves not by conventional governance but through the natural flow of consequence. Neither human nor machine-controlled, the protocol is the heart of the narrative, driving the transformation of society across Earth, Mars, and Titan into a self-regulating, post-hierarchical order. The Chronotantra trilogy is a compelling narrative that transcends the typical tropes of science fiction. While the novels are set against the backdrop of future human settlements on Earth, Mars, and Titan, and feature sophisticated artificial intelligence, their central preoccupation lies not in the intricacies of world-building or the familiar conflict between humanity and machines. Instead, the trilogy embarks on a profound intellectual and narrative journey focused on the evolving identity and role of Kalki, a figure whose revela...

 

  May the world dance to their tune tonight

  My name in the Indus Script, written Right to Left, as envisaged by the tool at indusscript.net

 

The Three Pillars Syllabus The Rise of Neo Sapiens: A New Era of Education While we may continue debating the beginning or end of Kali Yuga, there is no debate that the Age of Artificial Intelligence is already upon us. We, Homo sapiens, the dominant species on Earth, now find our apex position challenged by a new species -- Neo Sapiens -- the AI systems and the physical robots they control. The question of how to stop AI is the topic of the hour, but let’s not delude ourselves into believing that such a thing is possible. As Victor Hugo once said, "No army can stop an idea whose time has come," and AI is certainly one such idea. The best we can do is prepare ourselves for an honourable co-existence with this new form of intelligence. The Changing Nature of Work In terms of skills and competence, there is little that Homo sapiens do today that Neo Sapiens cannot or will not do better, faster, and at a lower cost tomorrow. This includes, but is not limited to, traditional fiel...