Drive from Bombay to Delhi

I was planning to fly from Bombay to Delhi on friday, oct 24, to be home for Diwali the following week when i got a shock of my life. The cheapest airfare was at least 3x the regular air fare. I know, because I fly between Delhi and Bombay every week.

Now, it makes me pretty mad to think that airlines (or anybody for that matter) charge high prices just because they can. Sure, it might make business sense but it’s also pretty under-handed. So, I decided to drive down.

I left from my apartment in Bombay on Saturday, oct 25, at 6:30 am, and reached home in Delhi on Sunday, the 26t, at 9:30 am, covering a distance of approximately 1500 km. I spent 27 hours on the road, of which I was driving for 23. Caught a couple of hours sleep on Friday night, somewhere outside of Udaipur and took a few breaks here and there — 30 mins every 3 or 4 hours. It’s not like I was in a mad rush to get home, but subconsciously, I think the thought of getting home for Diwali, seeing extended family and expecting a week of festivities had me pretty wired.

I took NH8 from Bombay all the way up to Udaipur, and then NH 76/79 from Udaipur to Jaipur (via Chittorgarh), before ending up on NH8 again from Jaipur to Delhi. The drive was pretty good except for the first 6-7 hours which were slightly painful because of lots of new highway construction from Bombay up to Vadodara. The scenery for an hour, leading up to Udaipur, was beautiful.

Komli’s 2nd anniversary party photos

Komli celebrated its second anniversary on 5 Oct. To celebrate, we threw a party for employees at Kino’s Cottage in Bombay. Photos are here.

Christ I’m having a slow afternoon.

Ad:tech San Francisco

I’m back in Bombay after attending ad:tech San Francisco last week. I also took a minor detour via Shanghai on the way back. It’s good to be back except that it’s so fricking hot in Bombay. I think the average temperature has increased at least 5 C in the 10 day time span that I was gone.

Ad:tech was awesome. Some great meetings with clients and partners and a visit to SF thrown in as a bonus. I got to see a couple of friends I hadn’t seen in ages.

The trip to Shanghai was rushed. I flew in one day and flew out the next, canceling vacation in the process. Just a bit too much going on at work to be able to get away for more than 10 days. I hope to take some time off next month, or maybe the month after.

Hanging out with my man J-Liu in Hong Kong

How many Indians does it take to install a fan?

Nine, by my count. I snapped this picture at the Kingfisher Open tennis tournament in Sept 07. These nine guys spent some 15 minutes standing around the fan and gesticulating before they got it started — I’m not kidding.

Back from another trip

I’ve had a really hectic month. I just returned from a 10 day work trip that took me to New York (for adtech) and London. I feel quite exhausted from all the flying and the running around but I will say, it was fun. Aside from work, I got to hang out with close college friends in New York and with my brother in London.

Coming back to India, it’s all about work. Yeah, that’s the way I like it anyway.

Here are some pictures. The date stamp setting on my camera stays on by default and it always takes me a while to realize that and turn it off. So even though some of the pictures say they are from 2004, they are not.

China trip

I finally made it back to China in Oct. I was there for 10 days from Oct 14 to 24, first to attend ad tech in Beijing, and then to see friends in Shanghai, Nanjing and Kunming.

I loved every moment of it — it was exhilarating to be back in a place I find so exciting, and meeting up with old friends was the best therapy I could have asked for after some pretty stressful months.

I gave talks on entrepreneurship to MBA students at CEIBS in Shanghai and at Beijing University in, well, Beijing. They were well received, but I came away with the feeling that while the students were curious about entrepreneurship, there wasn’t much desire beyond that. I could be wrong — what would I know from meeting them for a few hours?

Some photos from the trip are here.

Delhi Half-Marathon 28 Oct

I did it. Yes sir!

21 km in 2 hours and 5 mins.

It got painful around the 16 km mark. The last 5 km was pure adrenalin and will power.

Democracy comes with duties

On my flight from Kunming to Bangkok on Oct 24, I sat next to an elderly Australian lady. We got chatting. She had been a public sector specialist with the World Bank and had worked in several eastern European countries in the early 90s.

She made an interesting comment with respect to those countries’ transition to democracy. I say interesting because it summed up my own frustration with the state of affairs in India.  “Democracy is not just the right to discuss and debate. With it also comes the duty to make a decision and be responsible for it.”

I can’t blame those countries for not understanding this. In India, despite 60 years of democracy, we still don’t understand it.

Are Indians brainy (brainier than others)?

Not really. They just work harder at academics and professional work. They do little else with their lives. Another way to think about it is, second for second, Indians are no smarter than anyone else, but day for day, they probably are, yes.

Aid to Africa does more harm than good

Thought-provoking interview conducted by Der Spiegel with Kenyan economist James Shikwati.

SPIEGEL: Stop? The industrialized nations of the West want to eliminate hunger and poverty.

Shikwati: Such intentions have been damaging our continent for the past 40 years. If the industrial nations really want to help the Africans, they should finally terminate this awful aid. The countries that have collected the most development aid are also the ones that are in the worst shape. Despite the billions that have poured in to Africa, the continent remains poor.

SPIEGEL: Do you have an explanation for this paradox?

Shikwati: Huge bureaucracies are financed (with the aid money), corruption and complacency are promoted, Africans are taught to be beggars and not to be independent. In addition, development aid weakens the local markets everywhere and dampens the spirit of entrepreneurship that we so desperately need. As absurd as it may sound: Development aid is one of the reasons for Africa’s problems. If the West were to cancel these payments, normal Africans wouldn’t even notice. Only the functionaries would be hard hit. Which is why they maintain that the world would stop turning without this development aid.