The Flip Side of Getting Back to Normal

Bombay has been praised in the past for its quick return to normality after being the victim of blasts and natural calamities. Is this really a great characteristic we think to ourselves? Should we really be getting back to "life as normal" after these calamities which are really due to our own failure. Failure to build good systems, civic infrastructure, failure to build good governance, failure to put a decent judiciary in place? Shouldn't we be spending some time doing something about all this?

Perhaps we are too busy surviving to care. From the harassed commuter who struggles through a soul-numbing commute for 6 hours of her life everyday to the office executive who struggles to protect her job from the ever growing competition from younger and keener hands. We have no time  to fix the system. Or we are resigned to our fate. Either way this "resilience" appears to be a bit of a cop-out indicative of a callous state of mind.

We have this debate going on in amongst colleagues whether it is our job to be looking at "societal" problems or getting on with our job to be good teachers and technologists. But can't we also argue that by being amongst the privileged few of society, that it is our job to use our voices and our minds to create a better reality for the community that sustains us? 

The bottom line is what Mahatma Gandhi once said - "be the change that you wish to see!" This says it all. Lead by example. The responsibility for the lives we wish to lead are simply contained in this powerful, terribly empowering statement. The choice is ours whether to coninue to be victims of "life" or to guide our present to a better future. Be the change you wish to see...

Terror Blasts of Mumbai 28 Nov.08

This has made one think! Been talking with friends and encountering many views. Hardpressed to give a simple answer to my daughter's simple question: "why are they killing people like this - Papa?" Mostly we appear to be dealing with symptoms - usually suppressing them - while letting the disease rage on. Like Deepak Chopra said on CNN today, "follow the money and explore the vested interests. It is not one individual State's battle - it is everybody's battle". He questions Bush's "war on terror" carried out by dropping bombs from 35,000 feet high and resulting in many innocent deaths and collateral damage. This "war on terror" is an oxymoron and just serves to turn more moderates into terrorists.

How else can one explain the audacity of youngsters who look barely 25 yrs and appear to have been militarily trained, coming to storm a city and perhaps knowing that they're coming to their deaths. This can only be the work of a jihadi coming to avenge the perpetration of terror on his own people or to their spiritually connected Islamic community.

This shows us how exposed our metropolises are to the scourge of terror. How does one implement security in the humongous rush of a Victoria Terminus that has over a million harried souls fleeting past its portals in their crushing daily commute? How does one patrol streets with an already stretched police force who are ill equipped to deal with armed and highly motivated terrorists?

These are some of the questions one is faced with as we are holed up in our apartments all through this terrible Thursday with the siege continuing and looking like it going to extend into Friday. My daughter's crisis mother from school called up yesterday and announced there's going to be no school today. Today we got another sms announcing no school tomorrow.

How many billions are going to go up in smoke in lost traffic to the country of investment and people? This is perhaps the real goal of the terrorists. Not hostages and the wretched millions that one gets from that, but the instant fear that reverberates in real-time around the globe through the hungry media with its 24x7 media coverage, covering the ultimate reality show. T prize is billiions of dollars worth collateral damage to the country's economy. Mission accomplished! That is - unless we use this opportunity to put aside partisan differences and get the whole country on one platform to unite and resolve the thorny issues that beget such problems. This, it is said today, is going to be the modern, future theatre of war. This is what we need to learn to survive in future. Somewhere we need to make the connection between the technology skills that are typically used in the service of the West to now be put to use in the service of our own country.

Return of the Pilgrim (Saturday Times 1994)

"You are returning to India? You must be crazy!! Out of your mind!!! Simply barmy!!" This is the general reaction when the pilgrim looks homeward. Yet many do! Are they crazy, are they very rich - or do they know something that we don't. The reasons for returning are as many as the people who return. What is it that makes the native return? Is it because suddenly pau-bhaji has greater appeal than potato pancakes, or paan has greater appeal than polo-mints? That the comforting camaraderie of one's tribe holds greater appeal than the cautious cavorting of alien manners? Or is it simply that far away from the fiercely racing masses of the West, one desires time to gaze vacantly out of the homely window till the proverbial cows come home - or friends knock at the door?

There certainly are a lot of reasons. In the words of a colleague who made his choice, "Simply yaar -- I walk the streets and I feel I own the country. Nobody can tell me what to do - I'm home." Then there are yet others. A scientist friend in India, aghast at my desire to return, wrote to me in the U.S., predicting that on my return I'd be doomed to "stand on the balcony of my flat to watch the ruin and desolation of my career" all around me. I was working as a computer scientist with the Animation Systems Group at IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Laboratory in New York, USA. But madness prevailed!

There were other friends though, who, deeply dissatisfied with their lot abroad, were more encouraging and regarded me as One that Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest. These were people, who would have returned, had it not been for commitments such as family that couldn't be transplanted to the alien clime of India. Or who had simply developed specialist skills that didn't have a market in India. There was a colleague from IIT (Kanpur) who did attempt to return, but couldn't stomach the professional environment in India and so returned to the US. His communion with home expressed itself in his weekly visits to the Hindu temple in Jackson Hts. (NY) where his daughter learnt bharatanatyam. They all missed home. Theirs was often the poetic view, sometimes forgivably idealistic, that recognised the importance of the non-material -- the pull of relationships, the feeling of security, of being "home."

But what really pulls us back is the gestalt of India - that is, the entire feeling of being "home". Dr. Ramesh Sinha, an astronomer friend at TIFR who returned after 20 years in the US, put it succinctly. "A man can choose to be successful wherever he pleases - but it's difficult to create a feeling of belonging wherever he chooses".

When we are away, we miss "home" and express this in strange ways. For instance, we take pleasure in watching trashy Hindi films on video that we would never have seen at home. In '85, while doing my post-graduate studies in England, after a trip to India, it became a routine to spend Friday evenings with a couple of Indian films.

We often mixed with strangers just because they happened to be Indian. We got sentimental about Indian culture and gave an inordinate importance to artists and cultural emissaries. The attendance of Indian cultural programmes was almost an affirmation of faith. My large collection of music comprised mainly old Indian film songs and varied classical music. Western classical music was fascinating. Jazz was close to the spirit of our music. Pop, Rock, Soul and Blues were alien but entertaining, and sometimes satisfying. But Indian music got to the deeper recesses that appeared impervious to other sounds. Strangely, ever since my return, my musical taste has experienced a change. No more is it compulsory to see Indian films or to overdose on Indian music. The mind is culturally more adventurous and open to foreign experiences. One feels strangely closer, more accepting and aware of the commonality of foreign culture and experience.

If one chooses to remain abroad, it is important we embrace the host values and treat "abroad" as "home." The only healthy response is to be "in Rome as the Romans do," or to just return home. Living with values that one doesn't believe in, leads to an unfortunate neurosis. But we often wish to have our cake and eat it too - with the result that this fence-sitting causes us much grief. A Pakistani acquaintance in New York, no less than an engineer, kept his eleven year old daughter interned at home for her summer vacations to prevent her being "corrupted" by the neighbourhood children in their picturesque and affluent suburban environs. This is the type of irrational behaviour that has led to untold repression, suffering, suicides, wife-battering and all manner of behavioural disorders wherever our people have settled abroad.

Most people felt that returning earlier was better that later. It's all too easy to fall into the trap of "making enough money," where, unless there is a strong discipline, and an equally strong spouse, any plan to return is doomed to failure. Friends presented me with a variety of theories. A colleague in the U.S. said it will only work if one decides to stay for at least five years - come what may! "Otherwise, at the first few obstacles that you hit, you'll be back like a shot!"

When I came back, I met other people who had returned, like a friend, who came back in '74 and who now runs a successful hi-tech company in Bangalore doing hardware design for foreign clients and employing highly trained staff including B.Techs, M.Techs, and several people with doctorates. His advice was that the only way to stay in India is to decide that you are going to do so. "Otherwise, if not now, maybe 5 or 10 years down the line, you'll hit some problems which might take you away." It's like marriage - open the space for doubt, and problems arise! For those who desire, India has such a variety of feelings and emotions, that we can feel as disgusted or as elevated about this country as we wish - we are limited only by our imagination.

Life here is in many ways tougher than abroad. True, the roads are poor. One has to use almost ministerial influence or large amounts of money to get a phone. Salaries are wretchedly low. Corruption is rife and every governmental procedure appears to be a strategem to relieve the tired taxpayer of his hard-earned money. In many organisations, governmental and private, mediocrity is rife and creativity, initiative and the making of mistakes that often go with them are punished, if not discouraged. These are all features of a mode that we've got stuck into. It needs a little bit of positive thinking to recognise that in every want lies the seed of an opportunity, and in every failure, the seed of a success. The same software house we mentioned earlier, gives its employees, within three months of joining, a PC with a modem, that they can take home. After three years the machine belongs to them. How many traditional Indian companies would even think of such an incentive for its staff? This is precisely the kind of bold and creative thinking that I feel is going to be the key to our success in future.

There is much to return for. The new liberalisation process has cast the die for a game which is going to make India an even more exciting place to be. If we are to compete with markets abroad, we have to subscribe to a universal notion of quality. And quality can never be a con job. It is only achievable by good systems, which demand capable people of integrity in responsible positions. Perhaps this truth will create a much bigger change in the national psyche, and in our situation than that anticipated by us today.

We have extremes of everything: wealth & poverty; greed & spirituality; ugliness & beauty; metropolitan nightmares & virgin forests; aeroplanes & hand-carts. For every horror story, there are innumerable ennobling stories. This is what makes India exciting. It resembles the rich diversity of a deep and mysterious Amazonian rain forest both in its external life and in its inward mythological life. People who make a success of themselves honestly in this environment can make it anywhere in the world. Judged against this vision, returning to India is an act of selfishness, an indulgence, a will to adventure and a wish to enjoy the good life.

The Yoga of Commuting

Many years ago I remember reading a Readers Digest article on how the car we drive gives away our personality and character. Since then, I've realised that this may be extended - the way a person drives reflects their attitude to life. I've seen people drive impulsively and erratically. I remember one such driver - an eminent lady editor of a Women's magazine known as a go-getting feminist had a driving style that was impulsive, impatient and unpremeditated. She'd accelerate out of a compulsion and then would have to brake severely having come too close to the car in front as we proceeded aggressively to our destination. Others like my my father, amble along at a comfortably easy pace, allowing others to overtake left, right and centre but refusing to be hurried. As a child I remember getting a trifle impatient at his driving which I however admit was really safe. But that's his attitude. Not for him the rat race and keeping up with the Jones - he's his own man and has always driven through life defining the goals he wished to achieve. Goals that once reached, have left him a content man who could never be pushed to race for Mammon or for anybody else. My daughter who has grown up with Grandpa's driving naturally gets a bit alarmed at her own fathers somewhat impatient and speedy progress through the roads of Mumbai.

The kind of driving we're faced with today on the roads of Mumbai is something else. It's a high-tension, never-give-a-quarter kind of driving. A carelessly aggressive style of a person who respects no rule save to go ahead at any cost and fill every gap with a paranoia born of living in a world of scant opportunities.

I suspect my own commute is not much different from that of many other hapless commuter in a city where the public transport system is beyond bursting at the seams. I commute to work from South Mumbai to IIT-Powai - a distance of 31 km - every day. The first 29.5 km takes an hour on the average to complete and the last 1.5 km takes about 30 min to complete. A major part of the last bit ends on the Gandhinagar slope approaching IIT where a hot dusty and growling melee of heavy goods vehicles, cars, rickshaws and motorcyclists vies for every single square inch of road space in their climb uphill to the commanding heights of Powai. It's crazy!!!

I've discovered that Indian drivers, perhaps being used to the notion of an almost useless handbrake of the old Fiat and Ambassador cars that once ruled the country, have yet to discover the utility of the handbrake for hill-starts. They generally slip their clutch up the hill - highly deleterious for the clutch. Naturally this means that most of them have a problem with slipping backwards before they make an onward move. And yes, I have been backed into on a couple of occasions in the last few weeks myself. What to do?

"How do you manage?" my friends ask. "but you must be going against the traffic!" exclaim others. But friends, in today's Mumbai, with almost a 1000 cars coming onto the roads every day and new business districts sprouting up all over the city, there's almost no "against the traffic" any more. We can start out at 7.30am in the morning though and try to beat the rush - but it barely makes a difference.

How does one cope? My own answer is inspired by an uncle with a (hyperactive and reactive) "Type A" personality who described how he places himself in "the zone" when he travels. In "the Zone" he switches off all in his brain circuitry that "reacts to stimuli" and cruises somewhat unconsciously to his destination. Perhaps like how animals hibernate through a hostile winter. How else must commuters cope - I wonder. I too now place myself in "the Zone". I drive automatically - or perhaps "It" drives. Now we don't react to idiots pumping their horn, or to mindless pedestrians who choose that very moment to step in front of our car, or those motorcyclists who threaten to scratch our new paint as they whizz by sparing only fractions of an inch. We eventually get to our destination and are able to do a full day of work too.

As for rules most people believe there are none on Indian roads. But I remember a colleague once telling me in Pune how he hosted a delegation of Japanese scientists at his
research centre. He was apologetic about the chaotic traffic in Pune (this was 20 years ago when Pune had mainly bicycles but now Pune is 10 times worse). The Japanese visitor was unfazed. "No - there is a logic to it all" the inscrutable visitor affirmed. "people in your country drive as though they are pedestrians on the pavement!!" Aha - that is true - isn't it.

Witness how our rustic compatriot comes untutored to a big city and then after a modest job as a watchman in a housing society, starts by washing cars on his trek upwards to taking driving lessons in his friend's vehicle. His friend being a driver and the said car belonging to some hapless owner. A few lessons later he ends up at the hands of a tout outside the local RTO. Some hundred rupees change hands and voila - no test - no interview - and a fresh newly minted driving licence in his hands. Yet another pedestrian turns driver. No wonder he doesn't to know what those silly broken lines down the centre of the road are - the so-called lane dividers. It's not that he doesn't mean well - its just that the poor devil doesn't know the road vocabulary that we have perhaps painstakingly acquired in our stint abroad - or if we were lucky - even locally.

I gingerly reflected upon my commuting cowardice to my colleagues from IIT - especially those who commute the same distance as me from the southermost tip of South Mumbai, the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) in Navy Nagar to IIT-Bombay daily. I, like them, used to take the train at one time. It was not too bad. I used to take the taxi from home to CST station, some 2 km and 5-7 minutes. Then take a train, empty in its reverse commute to Kanjur Marg (45min), and then take a rickshaw to IIT - another 10-15min. A 75min trip -not bad by Mumbai standards. Then found that as the traffic increased year after year, the route from Kanjur Marg to IIT required our rickshaw to cross the busy Gandhinagar juntion which would take a long time. It was faster to get off at Vikhroli station - 3 km earlier - and to take a rickshaw to IIT - taking almost the same time. Then came the train blasts a couple of years ago and a really jumpy "partner" who convinced me to take a car with driver. This was expensive and also meant that sustainability went out of the window as yet another vehicle entered the commuting universe. I've since stuck to that. A nice feature of my sabbatical last year in industry was the short 20min commute to the Mahindra and Mahindra corporate office in Worli. Having now returned to my IIT commute I find to my surprise that my friends don't regard my commute as ostentatious any more. The situation has got so bad that they actually now get off at a yet earlier station - Ghatkopar and take a rickshaw - the roads have become yet more congested and the rickshaw drivers are unwilling to take them from Vikhroli or Kanjur Marg stations to the campus.

This is the situation of a commuter in Mumbai. The story is repeated across many households. Typically, as a friend with her own business complained, "we can't move the office (in Worli) nearer to our house in New Mumbai (in Eastern Mumbai) since we'll then lose all our Western Mumbai staff. And we can't afford to move our home nearer to the office since the real estate is unaffordable. So what do we do?

Did we hear "tele-commute" there? Perhaps! Inspite of Urban Planning not being my area we've been compelled recently to turn activist and even worked on a proposal to the Ministry of Urban Development to set up a Centre of Excellence in "Sustainable Urban Planning and Transportation Research." There must be a way to end this suffering. We believe that the biggest threat or alternative to the automobile is not public transportation - it is actually telecommunication. If we look at travel as a mode of communication where we move our body from point A to point B in order to communicate, the phone permits us to do it at a much cheaper cost. Today with broadband so pervasive, and high bandwidth video around the corner we could just build virtual communities where one wall of our the "office" room in our house might be a window into a virtual neighbouring office where we might interact with our colleagues "through a window" as it were. Wouldn't it be nice? Science fiction we hear you say? Wouldn't you have said the same if we had suggested that your driver and cook would be sporting mobile phones as recently as 10 years ago? Given the challenges of sustainability and reducing carbon dioxide levels by reducing the use of energy, reducing travel appears to be a great way to save energy. Imagine how much more efficient we'd be - living in distributed cities with plenty of access to nature and open spaces but with an office just a hop-skip and jump away. Utopia? Maybe! We'll just have to wait and see what surprises the coming decade has in store for us. Then, perhaps we won't be discussing the Yoga of commuting - we'd be seeking the nirvana of a tele-commute - a state where the body remains still but the soul wanders to do what it must. Perhaps our ancients had got it right after all.

IIT's robots chip in engineering education

My colleague, Krithi Ramamritham, and I teach a postgraduate course at IIT-Bombay entitled "Embedded Systems (software)" denoting the technology of embedding computers where we don't usually see a computer - this refers to modern devices such as mobile phones, iPods, washing machines, automobiles and such like. The challenge of building these systems is distinct from those in building conventional systems such as banking software, spreadsheets, wordprocessors and so on.

For instance, these systems are typically "reactive" - a technical term referring to "real-time" reactions to stimuli in an environment. The systems are usually "safety-critical" (but not always) such as pacemakers, reactor control systems, avionics systems, etc. where a failure in meeting a deadline for processing might result in a disaster. Whereas conventional systems tolerate delay - such as in our spreadsheet calculations. Realtime systems can't afford to miss deadlines. However, there are other constraints such as size, power consumption, cost and so on. Our course deals with the challenges of building such systems.

When we taught this course through IIT's Distance Education Program we found the absence of a lab made it difficult to teach the material to our remote students. When students can't play and experiment with devices to make lights flash and devices move, it's difficult to spark their imagination enough to appreciate the material being taught. The remote centres, being hosted in engineering colleges typically didn't have lab facilities or the staff to help teach such material.

We thought it would be great if a student could teach herself with just a "virtual mini lab" and a PC connected to the internet? This lead us to the "lab-in-a-box" idea and and then we came up with a "mini-robot" idea. With a little robot, essentially a "microcontroller development kit on wheels" we could give the right kind of experience. However, most educational robots on the market were imported and cost anything upwards of Rs.25,000. We felt a keen need for a low-cost robot for educational purposes. We then set to work on what became known as the Firebird series of low-cost educational robots.

With the help of an inspired colleague, and gifted robotist, Sachitanand Malewar, winner of several domestic and international Robocon contests, we designed from scratch a low-cost educational robot for teaching embedded systems. Having tried generations of robots on several generations of students we plan to deploy these widely this year in teaching our embedded systems course through IIT's CDEEP (Centre for Distant Engineering Education Program). This is now a network of some 65 remote centres (RCs) spread through the length and breadth of India.

We anticipate that some 500-1000 students might take the course this time and we are in the process of gearing up for this super challenge. The DNA newspaper recently did a story on us entitled "IIT's robots chip in engineering education" which gave their readership an idea of what's we're doing in this space. This should be an exciting year for us - so watch this space and get yourself a robot from a dynamic little startup called "Nex Robotics".

Why I blog - finally!

I returned to India from the US in '91 on a spontaneous decision. When I returned, people had a lot of advice to offer as to how long I should try it out for before I finally decided. Some well-meaning friends said I should try it out for one year, some said for 5 years some even recommended longer. But the person who made most sense was a friend, Vinay Deshpande, a prolific serial entrepreneur in Bangalore, India's Silicon Valley, who said, "Kavi - it's like marriage (we presume he meant an old-fashioned Indian marriage with no sense of the modern concept of divorce) ... you just have to decide and stick to it through thick of thin. Else even 10 years down the line you'll be looking for excuses to return abroad and will be unhappy." I didn't realise the import of what he meant - but better understand it now. This blog is our way of exploring what he meant.

It's been some 17 years since my return from my position as a research scientist at IBM's TJ Watson Research Centre (NY/USA) to some "creative drifting" in India before joining an Indian industrial research lab ('92-'94), then in interlude to help revive an ailing family business (Chetana) to finally going back to my roots as a Computer Scientist as a professor at IIT-Bombay - a haven for souls such as us.

But the "creative tension" to which Vinay referred still runs strong. There are distinct tensions we face in our lives in modern India today. We realise with time that tension isn't someting "out there" that we "contract" like a disease. Neither is it good or bad - a training in Indian philosophy and in Vipassana (the subject of future blogs) teaches us that. We realise that "reality" is how we choose to perceive or interpret life.

Then there's a "compensation tension." The value of a life or perhaps a skilled person in India is distinct from that abroad. We treat intellectual property very lightly here - why? This is another discussion. Here, unlike abroad where the industry/academia difference in compensation moderate, the difference is in multiples and more extreme. A result really of our economic history where most IP was imported. As we switch over to a new order where liberalisation has given rise to a vibrant new economy and a new life in India this reality is fast changing.

We have "infrastructure tension" this is perceived especially by commuters such as myself who commutes 31km daily from South Bombay to IIT in Powai. It takes us 45-60min to traverse the first 30km and it takes 20-30min to traverse the last km upto the gates of IIT-Bombay. But this is nothing compared to what our commuting brethren endure - those who commute by public transport from far-flung suburbs to their workplaces - often living alternate lives on the move - so to speak. More about this too later.

Then there is "administrative tension" or the lack of systems and systems thinking in our administrative agencies. Here's an example. An early part of my drive to work comprises of a fast dash over the J.J. flyover in South Bombay. This wonderful 2.5km flyover snaking over a once congested Mohammed Ali Rd. has reduced a 45min drive to 3-5min. Often in the morning I see wretched municipal sweepers manually sweeping the road without fluorescent gear and mindless of the high-speed traffic whizzing past them. My fears turned to reality when, a couple of days ago I saw a broom lying unusually vacant in the centre of the road. And a few metres down was the body of a sweeper sprawled on the central divider of the road. What a waste of a life? So avoidable!! What a callous attitude on the part of an affluent municipal corporation? What stupidity on the part of a worker not taking care. But who does one blame?

If this incident was unique I wouldn't have mentioned it. I've seen this happen again and again on the Eastern Highway I use to go to IIT. There are few pedestrian overpasses so people are compelled to cross this high-speed road randomly at various points. I've seen at least 2 casualties with my own eyes over the past year. There must be many others. What a waste? I've seen this also with track workers when I used to take the train. This is what turns us into a civic activist - to be able to contribute our mite to the correction of a gross situation. "But its not my job!!" I often hear a faint echo to myself. Whose job is it?

The point of our conversation is that there's a "creative tension" to living in India that people with an"option" often consider. But I have often asked myself whether I would like to trade places with successful friends and relatives abroad - in London, in California and other places. The answer has always been a resounding NO!! Why? What makes this intrepid traveller wish to resolutely stick to a life of trials and tribulations? This is where the spiritual bit starts and where our future journeys together will take us. This also prompted an early essay in a piece written for Saturday Times way back in '94 which I feel is still relevant today. The interested the reader is referred to the piece on "Return of the Pilgrim." Why "pilgrim"? Because my grandfather, very particular about language, insisted that I meant "native" - "Return of the Native" he asserted. My response was that I was a seeker and that I had come to India to find something - to seek - and that I felt certain that it was to be found here.

This is the long and short of why I'm compelled to write, friends. Like you, this intrepid traveller has taken a stand. And in the coming weeks we'll explore this bounty called life in all its crazy hues. The "Mystic Musings of a Techliterate Soul" is our way of doing this. God bless you all!