Start-up, not a Screw-up

I graduated from IIIT Delhi in April, 2014. I did not join a corporate job straight away after graduating, as I wanted to explore further avenues. I instead joined my professor back at IIIT Delhi to push for an education start-up.

Needless, to say, like most people with start-ups often do, I grew disenchanted with lack of development after the first 3 months, plus the pressure that I was not making any decent amount of money when compared to my peers who were establishing themselves in the industry.

With my inner self in conflict, I decided to quit whatever-it-was and began to work for a data analytics start-up in Delhi NCR. I converted my probation of 3 months to a permanent job offer within a month, and completed the initial learning phase which took an average of lets say 2 months within the first month itself- the work was over-hyped anyways.

I was restless. I was bored. Any job grows monotonous after some time.

I somehow still got through exactly 5 months of job- till the day I quit.

I went back to school to my professor, and we decided to push for Machine Learning and Optimisation driven start-up where we simply approach other people to work on their problems and make money in the process. Sounds cool, and I am having fun.

I work 10-12 hours a day, (not counting the commute.) and still don't feel tired. It's exciting, it's fresh. It has been so for the past 6 months. Exactly, so.

There are a lot of groups on social media networks based for start-ups and entrepreneurs.

A lot of people post for possible freelance work, internships etc.

A trend in these postings that I have noticed and also observed first hand at my previous job.

Start-up has become synonymous with screw-up.

Allow me to explain further. People post for possible internships, they put tremendous amount of workload and push the interns through every possible hell while they pay them a pittance- so much so that interns actually spend more than what they are getting just to get by. And, in some cases nothing- nada, zilch, zero.

Start-up has become an excuse for not paying people good decent salaries, or making them work for hours that do not exist.

Start-ups usually meant doing awesome work with limited resources. It was a way of doing things the way you wanted on your terms with the risk of going bust the next day. Of course, long term plans are there, but look at Taxi For Sure vs Ola. Ola Cabs wiped the floor with TFS within a span of 3 months.

Start-ups were meant to break the monotony of the daily corporate grind, and not become a grind itself. It meant putting a few extra hours, working your ass off every now and then. But the core philosophy was having fun on the way. The journey, not the destination. Look at any entrepreneur who has gone big, as soon as they reach a peak, they start investing in other ventures by turning Angel. It's an addiction.

Start-ups instead have today started exploiting talent, and youth by dishing out meager salaries, with extended working hours without providing their employees any resources(because they are a start-up). This is nothing but sheer exploitation.

The oft-repeated argument here is that nobody forced you to work. Yes, precisely. There are a lot of people doing a lot of things in the world, which they are not forced to do, but they still do and when you sit back, pause and reflect for a tiniest of a second you will say that it was bad and people should not treat other people like that, nor should they do what they were doing- forcibly or by will.

In India, you can find people anywhere. I mean literally. You can not find a moment and place alone where you wished there were just random strangers around because they are already there. In a country where Engineers are pulling rickshaws and appearing for government job for a peon, imagine what it is to be like. Post a job offer where you do not pay anything but hope after 3 months, people are ready to donate a kidney. You are God.

But being God should make you rise above pettiness, and look up. Sadly, people sink below the level where hell ends.

Reading: Going Digital

Being an avid reader, I more often than not have to make conscious decisions when I pick books to read. People often remark, that as and when they grow up they find less and less time to devote to their hobbies. I often thought how it could be so, but to my utter disappointment I found it to be true for some reason. My attention span has deteriorated and I find myself unable to sit for long marathon reading sessions like I once did.

Moreover, I had stopped buying books altogether because of lack of closet space to store them. I am very particular about how I keep my books, and when there isn't enough space, I won't compromise by stuffing them.

Buying books also acted as a deterrent, as it meant that I have only so much choice for experimenting. If a book isn't worth it, I feel cheated out of both money and storage space.

Last year, I finally decided to take the plunge and went digital. I really am the old school type- them people who love the smell of a new book, and the act of taking out the book and turning over its pages. But then, I really did consider the one aspect of buying a Amazon Kindle- the ease.

To put it frankly, I have never enjoyed reading so much as on my Kindle Paperwhite. As of now, I am reading a short stories collection, Hercule Poirot series by Agatha Christie and a couple of other books.

This is something, that I would never even consider doing before I had Kindle. I would serially go through the entire book before I would set my sights on a new one. But now literally I have the independence to try out several books at once and read them at my leisure.

I do miss the actual books, but I guess everything has it's perks. As a friend of mine put it once, if you are reading e-books, at worst they can be deleted. No more dodging people who beg you to lend them books! Believe me, when I say that I cringed every time I received a lent book back- I always ended up buying fresh copies which were untouched.

I have crossed several series/books of my reading list since last year. Some of them being:

1. The Inheritance Series by Christopher Paolini
2. Hercule Poirot by Agatha Christie (currently reading The Hollow)
3. The Seventh Tower Series by Garth Nix
4. The Wardstone Chronicles (currently @ I am Grimalkin)
5. Fifty Shades Series (I really am ashamed, but I had to read them before the movies!)
6. The Interpreter of Maladies and The Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri

In all, a tally of 41 books. That is a lot of books. I really am surprised. I am reading on way in Delhi Metro which makes the commute surprisingly bearable.

I am happy because I distinctly remember that during the academic session of my senior high school examinations, I had foregone the Hercule Poirot series, I have always rued the fact that I never read the cult book series when it came to mystery and old school detective cases. Now, I am more than half way through the entire series.

I set myself a reading target of 50 books on Goodreads, hoping that I would shame myself to read at least 20 if not more. But surprises here, I am done with 41 books as of today. I guess I was wrong when I believed in people who said that there never was enough time. There always is!

Good Will Hunting

So, continuing with digging out my old blog posts from those I abandoned and buried deep.

Two or three years back I used to watch a lot of movies. Then, I just gave up on movies, altogether. They simply didn't make them good anymore, and I switched to watching television shows. Since, then I have watched some of the best content which is out there on television, which beats the shit out of movies- House MD, Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, Hannibal, Boston Legal to name a few.

I do however keep a lookout on the new releases. Sometimes, downloading a few which even IMDB has rated 6 point something, or 7 at best. My personal rule of thumb being download only those movies which have over 10000 ratings, and the rating being at least 7.

I have over the years of watching movies have developed a tremendous amount of intolerance and disdain for anything remotely stupid. I though depend on IMDB ratings, which unfortunately also rate some of the worst Bollywood movies very highly, I like to believe that the ratings normalise after a certain threshold of reviews have been reached. More, than the ratings, I usually prefer reading some of the user reviews. They offer quite a personalised insight into the movie, sometimes against the rating trend.

So, I recently watched these 2 movies- At Middleton and In Lieu of Flowers. Another movie that I watched almost a year ago and is worth mentioning in this post is Any Questions for Ben. The common factor in these movies are that they all have reviews which range from less than hundred to less than 3000. And the fact that the average rating is either 5 or 6.
My own personal criteria of rating any movie depends on the following factor:

1. Story/Script (Inherently, different as you can still make a good script out of nothing) 
2. Acting talent
3. Action  

Now, I will watch a movie and rate it highly if any two are available.

So, when I watched these movies I was presently surprised by the acting talent and the script. I had to write a review for all three movies.

At Middleton- The movie revolves around two parents who fall in love while they pull a bunk on their children's college tour. This is what the whole story is which unfolds in a timeline of maybe 4 hours compressed to fit 90 minutes of pure viewing pleasure. Andy Garcia and Vera Farmiga are at their very best. And I have never been more impressed by the acting in any of the movies than this one. They both played their part to perfection. Reading up on movie trivia, I found that the movie was obviously a small budget one, but it was shot from beginning to end in a matter of 20 days! This movie is something that you must watch, to actually see what acting talent is. Vera Farmiga looks as beautiful as ever.

In Lieu of Flowers- Another gem I found, and I literally mean a gem. Why? Check out the IMDB ratings- 6.2 and this only has 234 reviews as of now when I write this post. How can it be? This movie in my opinion deserves more. The story revolves around two people- Eric and Rachel. Eric is shown to be grieving for the loss of his girlfriend who he was about to propose for marriage, while Rachel is shown to have lost her husband two years ago in a accident. Both of them meet in a anonymous club, trying to cope up with the lose, and somehow trying to fill the void in their lives which they believe nothing can fill.

The story revolves around not how they find comfort in each other or fall in love. But what people actually go through when they lose a loved one. Oh, and there is also a beautiful climax. You will never expect what hits you at the end.

Any Questions for Ben- Another good movie, that I happened to stumble across almost an year ago. The story is boring but the script is excellent. The acting even more so. And I was eyeing Rachael Taylor the whole time. The movie is about a guy who suffers a mid-life existential crisis in his early thirties when he is super successful at his career, and it seems that the girls can't pin him down for more than 3 months at best. He goes to a reunion and meets Rachael Taylor whom he had a crush on, and finds that all his success is rather boring as nobody is interested in what he does, even though he makes a killing amount of money out of it. He and Rachael are drawn to each other, and they then eventually break up. The movie is not a love story, but rather more of a coming of age story only with a twist- Ben came of age in his early thirties. My review, though not inspiring, I would still recommend this movie, as the acting was superb as was the climax at the end.

So, I know there are very few readers who actually suffer through my blog, but if you happen to take me on my recommendation, I would like to hear your take on these movies!

Procrastination, Writers Block and some Californication

I have written atleast half a dozen blog posts over the past 12 months and sadly none of them made past the draft stage/ “blog probable” folder on my laptop. And so my blog lays neglected ever since. I myself can not fathom to explain why I sat down to write something, gave a lot of thought over it and then simply abondoned it for lack of inspiration. Being the most lazy ass'ed person who accepts the fact in his own blog- too long have I blamed it on writer's block. Too long. I have always realised it time and again. You are the master of your own destiny, no one else makes you, nothing else matters. If I want to write something which I want to see getting published, I bloody have to keep writing till it actually gets so. Someday. Sometime.

I also began writing a short story for the first time ever- which has also stayed neglected for almost a year. More on that later.

So, here goes the piece which I began writing a year ago, and posting here without any edits. I am my biggest critique- and a very harsh one at that. I abandoned this post as I didnt like it without realising that this is the perfect way I would have liked it.

What actually inspired me to write this blog post is that Californication ended- for the uninitiated, it is a TV series. I have watched several TV shows from beginning to end. Some of the best and most thought provoking(in your face) being House MD, and Hannibal. But none of them enthralled me as much as Californication did.

Talking to a friend of mine about the show, and here's what she said, “Hank Moody is a commitment phobe, a drunken fool who thinks that he is above all, and fucks pretty much everything that moves.” I find that this is pretty much the common idea that most people have about the show. I concur that the theme is mainly sex, drug abuse, and rock n roll, but what most people miss out on is that all these are not central to the character. The central theme is love- always. Hank Moody has his faults, he is selfish, and an addict(well, almost), but he also is a romantic- a hopeless one for that matter.

The character of Hank Moody with constant references to (and inspiration from) Charles Bukowski, is that of a novelist/writer who made it big in Hollywood. He has the perfect girlfriend Karen, with whom in his own words he “lives in sin” and has a daughter Becca. The success and the pressure(read fame) which came with the job, somehow went to his head and takes a toll at his relationship with Karen.

It's not like Hank stopped loving Karen. But somehow, love got lost on the way. This is something which makes Hank realise that he did truly love Karen and keeps returning back to her. I found Karen amazing, she is portrayed as someone who plays this beautiful bohemian chick yet with a sense of responsibility and maturity which is inexplicable. The only character flaw I could possibly find is how she could always forgive Hank given his chronic fuck-up history with her.

The hedonistic lifestyle of Hank is what adds glamour to the show. “Bitch, thy name is temptation” is a filler for most of the plot. Temptation presents itself to Hank -far too often it seems, and tempts him, teases him till he actually strays off the beaten path. After having led him astray, it then comes back to bite him in the ass. He has no sense of grandeur about himself. He knows what he is, and loathes himself for being himself- something he admits to Karen way too often, sometimes even as an excuse.

I am here trying to convey- a mix of emotions trying to use as few words as possible, for there are too few that I can find. I empathise with the character, that is of course obvious if not already.

There might be several scenes which may be described as best in the show, but personally the one I really liked was the one where Hank blew a million dollar paycheck on an engagement ring, carrying it for months on end like a talisman waiting for the one perfect moment when everything just feels right, and then after a much predicted fight with Karen one day giving it away to a homeless person out of sadness.