blog@Yantrajaal

 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...