Category: life

Love is Enough

“You need power only when you want to do something harmful. Otherwise love is enough to get everything done.” ~Charlie Chaplin

Judah (JP) sent me that quote in response to a question that I had posed JP. The question was something like this: “You need power to do things and attain change. But power is the root cause of all the wrong that you’re trying to change. How do we reconcile between these?”

In hindsight, it is the conceptualization of power that was the problem. I was thinking about hard power earlier. It is perhaps enough to have soft power. Power to “shape the preferences of others through appeal and attraction“.

Love is an excellent framework. There are many contradictions that the power framework gives rise to. Love makes those contradictions disappear.

Take redistribution of power, for example. When we try to gain power, we have to grab power from someone else. Sharing power weakens power. Yet if our aim is to redistribute power for a more equal society, we can’t keep on grabbing power forever. When do we start redistributing power? That’s a contradiction which the power framework cannot solve.

Another issue is that of collaboration. The power framework forces you to think of others as your competitors. Every meeting becomes a negotiation. The stress of holding on to power forces one to sabotage collaborations. Only equal powers can collaborate without fear.

A third contradiction is with respect to “the means to an end”. Using power to change the world feels like using an illegitimate force to pressurize the world into change. It doesn’t feel like the change will sustain.

And what are the practical ways to gain power in today’s world? It seems to me like the path to power is riddled with compromises far greater than an altruistic pragmatist would be willing to make.

In all, power is riddled with contradictions. And love makes them disappear.

Sharing is built into love. Love doesn’t shrink when shared. There’s enough to give everyone love.

Collaboration is how love operates. Love encourages sincere engagement. Love assumes good faith.

Love is a lovely means to a lovely end. Love does not feel illegitimate.

When you operate through love, you can remain rooted in your principles. There is no compromise required because you have nothing to gain by making compromises. You love your enemies just as you love your friends. And you stand by your values while you explain to them with love why they should embrace those values.

There are several advantages that the love framework has.

It is low on emotional overhead. Because you respond to hate with love, you turn anger into love, you tackle resistance with love, you push inertia with love, you find energy in love. Everything becomes love. Simple. Of course, all the other emotions are valid too. That’s where self-love comes in 😀

It sets up opportunities for engagement. Because you don’t have enemies anymore, the number of people you can work with becomes very very high and the number of things you can do becomes uncountable. (Of course, that’s what I wrote in “giving up ideological purism” too. Seems like love is a framework to regain the certainty of ideological purity).

When it comes to changing individuals, love has a pretty disarming charm. Love makes calculations easier in making complex decisions. It is overall more productive.

There could be disadvantages too. I’ll probably come across them when I’ve explored this path more. I’ll write about those then.

August 5, 2022
Finding Direction When Being Pragmatic

You remember how I embraced pragmatism and started chasing power? There was one problem. When you start chasing power with the idea of wielding it for social justice, when and where do you stop chasing power and start wielding it?

Take Praveen’s comment for example

One possible answer can be that you start wielding power while you start chasing power – and you chase less and wield more as you go forward.

But going by this, today I should spend lesser effort in chasing power than I spent yesterday. And tomorrow, even lesser than today. That doesn’t quite fit with the idea of chasing power first. Perhaps there is a threshold of power which I should reach before I start using power. Perhaps the graph is more like:

Perhaps that threshold is what is called “the line”. The line that determines when you stop (or decrease effort in) chasing power and start using that power to reach ideals. Drawing the line becomes important once again.

Let us then try drawing that line.

How much power is enough power? Is a PhD enough academic power? Is a 20 person company that operates in profit enough entrepreneurial power?

Read my poem (?) about career advice. Any goal you accomplish will be dwarfed by a bigger goal. No matter how much power you gain, there will be someone more powerful than you.

Which means that there is no clear way to draw the line on when to stop chasing power.

But there maybe an alternative that requires us to not draw a line. One in which we can chase power and use power simultaneously with the same effort. That alternative requires us to reconcile pragmatism and idealism.

You find a hack to chase power through your ideals.

That is extremely slow though. Slow and excruciatingly boring.

Which is why it has to be extremely personal. You have to be very selfish in what you are doing and craft the journey to your likes and desires. Only that can sustain the boredom of that chase.

(It was Varsha who told me first about entrepreneurship being a very personal journey. This maps on to that. Life is a very personal journey.)

That also solves a long-running question in my mind. How do you find what direction to go in when you are being pragmatic? What’s the principle with which you make pragmatic decisions?

The answer is to listen to yourself. To do what feels the most right to you. I know that sounds like profound bullshit (something that internet gurus would say). But it is based on neuroscience and philosophy of knowledge.

The brain is a rather complicated organ. We can process many more signals than we are conscious about. Even when we think we make decisions rationally, we make decisions based on very many things that we haven’t consciously considered. Read Scott Young’s Unraveling the Enigma of Reason to read more about how our reasons are always post-facto rationalizations.

And this is tied in the external world to intersectionality. There is no decision on earth that lies on a single dimension. Everything affects everything else and nothing is clear-cut.

And thankfully these are complementary. It is only a decision making machine vastly complicated like our brain that can consider all the thousand factors that intersect on a decision in the human world. (I express similar thoughts in the earlier post on living with opposition)

It also means it is difficult to rationalize some of these decisions and generalize them into principles. Pragmatism is the acceptance of this fundamental difficulty and the decision to live within that framework of uncertainty.

Of course, one has to be widely reading and learning to offset the risks of trusting an uninformed brain. One must be open to unlearning and relearning, criticisms, etc as well. These are the things that will protect the pragmatic person from going in the wrong directions.

tl;dr? Trust your gut.

March 8, 2022
On Leadership

One can be a leader only when one desires something to happen in the world. This something can be called “change”. Leaders want to change the world (or a part of it) in some way.

The change that a leader wants to see in the world – the impact they want to make – that is their vision.

Having a random vision isn’t very helpful. A successful leader has a vision that is borne out of the needs and wants of the humans around them. A vision that is rooted in humanity. One that benefits the human kind.

A leader effectively communicates this vision to others, in an attempt to inspire others to work towards the same vision. The quantity of how much a leader is able to inspire action could be the measure of someone’s leadership.

Such communication can occur in many ways – through talking (sometimes even story-telling), writing, or through setting examples. When a vision is completely new, leaders are forced to communicate more verbally. But when the vision has already been articulated (by other leaders, for example), leaders can inspire by setting examples through their own work.

Change requires work (often hard work). One person can only do so much work. Leaders create coalitions with people to get more work done towards their vision. These coalitions can look like organizations, companies, networks, groups, actual coalitions, etc. We could call them movements. Leaders lead movements.

Movements may have strategies, planning, coordination, structure. And these keep evolving with time, based on the real world position of the movement.

At this point, one may ask, is leadership hierarchical? Should there be one leader (or a hierarchy of leaders) for one movement?

Before we answer that we will have to answer a related question – Is everyone a leader?

The romantic answer to this question is that everyone is a leader. But that’s similar to saying all human beings are equal. Everyone can be a leader given the right circumstances. And everyone should be a leader. But everyone is not a leader. One becomes a leader only when one is able to accomplish a vision through leadership as stated before.

When one looks at leadership with such raw sincerity, we will see that the stronger leaders automatically are able to get more work done and a hierarchy is inevitable no matter how hard we try to avoid it. Saying this hierarchy doesn’t exist is like erasing caste/race/class from our society.

A slightly more romantic way to look at it is by imaging every individual as a leader of their own movement – where movements overlap with each other significantly. Each individual can be thought of as a celestial body with their mass (leadership capacity) determining how much gravitational pull they exert towards their vision on the people around them. The most massive leader will have the strongest pull.

Consequently, if everyone are equal leaders, there would be no hierarchies and vice versa.

There are social, economic, and political determinants for any individual’s leadership mass. Someone born with privileges – of caste, gender, sexuality, class, race, disability, and others – might find that their leadership mass is already greater than someone without those privileges. In many situations, for example, money speaks. And someone with money – or access to money – might have it easier to “lead” others. Social capital is another example.

Leadership mass can increase (and decrease) over time. This can happen through education, scholarship, credentials, affiliations, positions, jobs, work, association, mobilization, agitation, talking, writing, creativity, relationships, etc. Even gaining a follower base on Twitter can increase someone’s leadership mass (through psychology of mass appeal).

This leadership mass is called “power” in the formal language. While vision determines the direction a leader pulls people in, power determines how strong the pull will be. It is impossible to be a leader without power (of some or the other kind).

This is where things get intensely human and psychological. Power works through human emotions. Fear, love, hatred, joy, laziness, anger, sorrow, confidence, trust, aggression, etc. But not every human has the same emotion when confronted with the same stimulus. An anti-establishmentarian will look at you with scorn when you tell them that you’re from the ministry (of whatever) whereas someone who is awed by such positions will be psychologically receptive to what you want to say. It is safe to say that most people will be pulled by mainstream sources of power (because majority acceptance is what makes these sources mainstream).

Effective leadership thereby also becomes a performance. Like doctors need to be chameleons and be the doctor that each patient needs, leaders will have to be the leader that each individual needs. If someone is motivated by solving complex challenges, the leader can get them excited by presenting their vision as a complex challenge. If someone is interested in creative expression, leader can find avenues for creative expression that advances their vision.

At this point, the conscientious reader will ask whether leadership is emotional manipulation.

Manipulation has negative connotations. Perhaps “emotional guidance” captures the nuance of what leadership does with emotions. Leadership is about emotionally guiding people. There can be effective leaders with selfish motives and they can turn this into manipulation and abuse. But you can’t blame any individual for being too sincere towards their own vision, albeit a bad one.

Also, the human mind is trapped such that it can never be free of influences. Everything that happens, every interaction, every thought, every idea – everything changes the mind. And therefore, the only way someone can never “manipulate” your thoughts is by never coming in contact with you.

The same reader will also ask whether this view of leadership considers people (followers) as lacking agency (autonomy).

In this world, nobody has complete agency. Every human is delicately dependent on other human beings in this society. Complete independence is not possible for any human. And therefore, a transactional view of individual relationships where every relationship is that of giving and taking models the society in a better way.

Considering the sensitive nature of the relationship that a leader has with others, it is very important that leaders are empathetic and emotionally intelligent. Leaders must be quick to identify an emotion, to label it, and to address it. That includes self-awareness and awareness of one’s own emotions. They need to think of things from the perspective of multiple others and bring those perspectives together in their vision.

This empathy also gives leaders humility. That they do not know all the answers, and that their answers have to include all the perspectives from people around them. That if the answers did not entrench empathy this way, they wouldn’t be able to achieve their vision. That it is unlikely that one human being’s vision is greater than everyone else’s.

An intense desire to create more and more powerful leaders around them arises in leaders from this humility. They see that the world is better served by a multitude of visions and that for each vision to succeed there must be leaders taking those visions forward. They strive to turn people around them into leaders who can pull weight. That’s how the best leadership is scalable – by being infectious.

When enough leaders pull weight in the same direction, no vision is too far to achieve.

Why does the world need leaders to pull though? Can’t well articulated vision statements automatically attract people?

Inertia is the problem. Human beings are resistant to change – individually and as a society. It might be explained by evolutionary psychology. Human beings have evolved past the stage where they need to be held hostage by biology, yet we are biological beings. And we are not rational beings by design.

If we were rational we wouldn’t have problems like global warming, poverty, and war in our world.

Leaders appeal to both the irrational and the rational sides of human beings at once. That’s how they pull people out of their inertia. Once people are moving, systems move too. Especially if you pull the heavier people.

Leaders, hence, are balancing-artists. They have to handle conflicts all the time and find balance. There is strategy, but there is vision. There is rationality and irrationality. There is movement and there is stasis. There are tensions and counter-tensions. There is pressure to lead and pressure to follow. Leaders make judgement calls all the time. They can go wrong many times. And over time the number of right calls decide whether they become effective leaders or not.

Is leadership a teachable/learnable skill?

Leadership requires a lot of practice. But it is also important to know what to practice. That is where the learning/teaching part of leadership lies. There are plenty of books written about leadership. Plenty of stories to read and learn from. Concepts like “ownership”, “thinking big”, “delivering”. Almost every major (successful) organization has leadership principles which have been documented. Exposure to leadership philosophies can accelerate someone’s growth as a leader. Consuming content about leadership helps think in different ways and gain new perspectives.

What now?

Think about whether you have a vision for the world. Think about how effective you are as a leader in taking the world towards that vision. Talk to people around you about leadership. Read. Find avenues for your own growth as a leader. Find people with similar values and vision. Grow each other. Grow yourself. And change the world.

October 10, 2021
Giving up Ideological Purism

I used to be a purist. I would think that socialism is better than capitalism and therefore I should myself shun everything to do about capitalism. I would think that free software is better than proprietary software and use only free software everywhere. And so many other “principled” positions. Then a couple of things happened.

First, life became unlivable. There was nothing worth doing because everything broke some or the other ideology I had. I can’t start a business because it is not socialism. I can’t put tweets and try to get followers because I am against the concept of popularity and getting more followers. I wouldn’t make videos to upload to YouTube because Google owns YouTube. I can’t build an app because it wouldn’t solve a pressing real world problem. I wouldn’t get a vaccine till all people would get it. I can’t do this, I can’t do that. I couldn’t do anything.

It is not that I didn’t see contradictions then. I am living in a comfortable house in Bangalore. Where’s the equity in that? By my logic I had to give up all my savings and live like the poorest person. But I wouldn’t do that.

In some way or the other I was thinking pragmatically. I realized that free software puts software above humans and rethought it. Even came up with feminist software. I had been thinking about putting privilege to use. I had just about figured out that good capitalism and good socialism are almost indistinguishable.

But the straw that broke the camel’s back is the vaccine issue. There were many reasons I was against getting myself vaccinated – the undemocratic institution of CoWIN, the lack of transparency in approving vaccine for usage, and most important of all the fact that lots of people were not getting vaccine. There were many compelling reasons to get vaccinated too – that there is good science for vaccines in general and these vaccines specifically, that I could be putting others’ life in danger, that I would be of no use to anyone if I’m dead.

But ideological purism works in mysterious ways. I had chosen that the morally right way was to avoid the vaccine. And my brain would come up with various reasons on why I was right.

But on one fine day it clicked in my head. I was indeed being stupid. I told Swathi that I’ll start looking for places where vaccine was available. And by the purest of coincidence, a friend from a private company asked me the next day whether I needed a jab in their company’s private drive.

That’s when it all came together for me. Ideological purism is an unsustainable and self-contradicting position. The only way human beings can live life in the real world is through pragmatism. And pragmatism doesn’t have to be lazy and directionless. Pragmatism is the way of figuring out the good and bad of capitalism, the good and bad of socialism, and the good and bad of all the ways to organize economic activity and to figure out a way to work it out in your life towards your goals of a better world. Pragmatism is the way of figuring out how to use proprietary software, free software, and all kinds of software for making things happen.

I also figured out I was being lazy. By doing all of these fights against twitter, CoWIN, proprietary software, health inequity, authoritarianism, meritocracy, and so on in my small world, I was not doing anything. I was just sitting in a corner of the world complaining about all this. Sure I was a member of Indian Pirates, Free Software Community of India, etc. I was doing things like organizing calls and camps. I was mentoring people, etc. But all this felt like running away. I was not engaging in a powerful way.

One of the reasons was the idea that lasting change requires converting people this way from the outside. That we can’t live in the existing systems and change them.

I still don’t have an answer to that. I don’t have an answer to how I can change the system from within.

But I’m tired of being outside the dominant systems in all fields. I’m tired of swimming the other way. Let me try swimming this way.

It is selfish. But hey, we are all stardust anyhow. Let’s see what happens?

June 1, 2021
Don’t Cook Your Meals

Thanks to The Great Indian Kitchen a lot of discussions are happening on cooking. I wanted to note down a few of my thoughts in relation to cooking, etc.

I find cooking boring

There might be people who find cooking interesting. I am not one of those persons. I find food boring too. Anything healthy and tasty is good food for me. Probably that’s why I find cooking boring. Because cooking is about food.

Cooking regularly for oneself is a massive waste of time, money, and energy

This is especially true for people who have other engaging work to do – people like programmers, teachers, etc. Cooking regularly takes away a large amount of time from your daily life which you could have spent on reading, learning, etc.

In the video above (in Malayalam), around 15 minutes, Maithreyan also tells something to this effect. On the economics of cooking.

Mass production of cheap and healthy food should be a reality

In VMH, I used to eat from the canteen three times a day. I was never starving and even though I missed chicken and beef, I was eating okay. I lost the 4 kgs I gained during internship eating Biriyanis all day. But once I moved to Bangalore, I couldn’t find a replacement for this canteen.

Zomato/Swiggy etc are a problem because of two reasons

1) The amount of plastic.
2) The cost because someone has to burn petrol and drive a motorcycle all the way from the restaurant.

The hotels were all catering to the occasional outside diner and would cook expensive and often unhealthy dishes.

Hiring the service of a maid is good for many reasons

For a long time I used to feel icky about hiring the service of a maid. Perhaps I didn’t think a lot about it. I used to feel that it is wrong to rely on someone else for one’s basic needs like food, cleaning house, etc.

But during COVID when people were all losing jobs and we were literally asked by someone at the local bajji shop whether we needed house help, Swathi and I decided it is time we hire someone’s service.

And then I figured out how by redistributing money through such hiring is actually good for everyone. It frees my time and mind. It gives someone who would otherwise be unemployed a chance to do work.

Cooking can do with a lot of innovation

Here’s a recent talk I enjoyed watching.

It talks about how bras have remained the same for over a century. Perhaps cooking is like that. At least home based cooking. Nobody has thought about revolutionizing cooking. Sure there are innovations like mixers, grinders, and my all time favorite – rice cookers. (Fun fact, did you know the rice cooker works by the principle that water when still boiling cannot exceed temperature of 100°C? The thermostat of a rice cooker cuts power off when the temperature exceeds that because by then there wouldn’t be any water left as liquid).

But we haven’t redefined cooking the way cloud computing has redefined servers or the way ebooks have replaced libraries. Maybe some day we will find food pills and that will be it.

January 28, 2021
How Can I Be Useful For You?
I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. I haven’t still figured out how to execute this. But here’s the idea. I’m very privileged, purely by the accident of birth. There are millions of people less privileged than me in many ways. I think the right use of my privileges would be to help bridge the inequities in our society. And for that, I have to start somewhere. I’m doing various things, but I think I’m not doing all I can.

Here’s the deal. I’ll list down a list of things that I think I can effectively help others in. I’ll also list down many of my privileges here. If you aren’t as privileged as I am in any one of these, you can feel free to reach out to me on any topic on the first list, and we can work out a way for you to take my time for your own benefit/growth/advantage.

List of things I can work with you on
1. Learning medicine, learning basic sciences.
2. Learning programming, learning GNU/Linux system administration.
3. Learning to use the internet.
4. Contributing to free software projects.
5. Writing essays/articles in English, learning English
6. Conceptualizing research studies in health, academic writing, and publication.
7. Public speech.
I’m going to be a bit selfish and not list down everything that I can actually do for others. I’m sorry for that. But if you think there’s something related to the above but not exactly in the list, we can talk about it.

List of my privileges you can use to compare

By listing something down here, I don’t mean to imply that one is better than the other in any way. I just feel certain things have made things easier for me in my life, and I’ve listed those as privileges.
1. Being male
2. Being cisgender
3. Being heterosexual
4. Being born in a privileged caste
5. Being born in an economically stable family
6. Having my parents alive well into my adulthood
7. Having young parents
8. Being born to a doctor
9. Being born to a teacher
10. Being born to parents who are in government service
11. Not having to support family
12. Being the grandchild of three teachers
13. Being born in a majority religion
14. Having access to books from early childhood
15. Having access to internet by 8th standard
16. Having been to an English medium school
17. Not having suffered psychological or physical trauma in childhood
18. Not having physical disabilities
19. Being tall
20. Being fair skinned
21. Having a lean body-nature
22. Not having congenital or acquired illnesses that require medical care
This is by no means a complete list. I haven’t added all the privileges that I accrued thanks to the above privileges. So have I not added the privileges that I am not aware of. Anyhow, if you think I am more privileged than you in any way, you should not hesitate to take this deal.

You can find my contact details here.

Post script: I have thought about how this can be considered virtue signalling. I am open to discuss ways of making this less about me and more about others. I’ve considered the idea of volunteering at NGOs. But I haven’t found a right fit at the moment. Neither is it feasible at the moment due to COVID. Also, I want to somehow be able to scale this idea and figuring out first hand what works and what doesn’t might be useful in that.
October 13, 2020
Bridges, bridges, everywhere

I’m a Bangalorean now. I have a metro card as well. For about a week now, I have been talking to a lot of people and reading (also searching for 1BHKs around IISc). Turns out there are not many secrets in answers to “What to do in life?”

There were a few points that made sense and helped me gain immense clarity. I’ll list them down.

Immanuel Kant: Mark Manson’s post on him is a nice read on the kind of moral philosophy that we can have. It is slightly complicated but boils down to “strive to be the best, if not you’re doing injustice to yourself”.

Remember it was the same idea that propped up earlier with reference to Gita.

In fact, Priyanka Chopra lists down 12 rules in her breaking the glass ceiling talk which sounds similar as well – be fierce, fearless, and flawed.

Stoicism: Talking about fears, Tim Ferris made a really nice TED talk on defining fears and defeating them. He gives an excellent tool to practice stoicism. And stoicism is an absolutely useful “-ism” in times of uncertainty.

Bridges: The place where I have to go to isn’t really somewhere that people frequently go to from my place. Therefore, I have to build a few bridges to that place. The only issue is to differentiate bridges from hangouts.

Money: There are a few important lessons about money.

One is that money saved is indeed money earned. If you can decrease your expense, you won’t need a huge income.

The other is that money created is a measure of value created. If you are building a product and want to know if it really adds value to the world, just count how much money has been generated by the product.

Integrity: When we talk, we need to walk the talk. This doesn’t mean you stop talking about anything that feels important to you. It means that you should keep pushing. Talk, then write, then do, then do more, then do maximum, and then keep doing.

Bed bugs: Bed bugs are really pesky pests. Do not try to adjust with such annoyances. Overcome them.

Failure is not a choice. But success definitely is.

September 3, 2018
What Next?
I am privileged. I was born into a higher middle class family in Kerala. I have not been discriminated against based on my family’s religion/caste/colour/whatever. I am male. My parents are both alive and work in public sector. I even had access to internet at a very early age. I was allowed and assisted to dream.

Precious copy of my life plan (written after 10th standard)

My father is a doctor. I became a doctor. Natural. It was not incredibly difficult. I did not have to fight unfair situations. I had plenty of help.

I think it is because of my excellent background that I am able to even recognize these privileges.

Consciously or not, much of my life’s philosophy is influenced by this. My obsession with free knowledge, is a good example. I may not be able to erase the advantages I already have, but I try to avoid relying on them.

There is no point in beating myself too much either. I am not responsible for my privileges. But I am accountable. Having had all this, if I do not make the best out of them, I am wasting them. When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. But what if life gives you apples?

I have a few straightforward options.
- Become a specialist/super-specialist doctor. Work in one or two hospital(s). Make a lot of money. Help a lot of people.
- Go back to SVYM. Help build a resurgent India.
- Join some other organization/hospital/research project which can benefit from a clinical doctor.
None of these are mutually exclusive options either.

Yesterday I was coincidentally discussing with dad a verse from Gita which has many different interpretations.

karmaṇyēvādhikārastē mā phalēṣu kadācana.
mā karmaphalahēturbhūrmā tē saṅgō.stvakarmaṇi৷৷2.47৷৷

Specifically, it is the last part we concentrated on. “You should not not do your duties.” How do you know what your duties are, though?

Every person plays multiple roles in their lives. They would have multiple roles each inside family, work, society, and any other sphere of their life. There are duties in each of these. Is there any way you can prioritize one above the other?

I have never been good at prioritizing things in the past. I usually get distracted by the most visible task and forget rest of my duties. I sometimes am able to note them down and come back to them. But this is fixable.

24 hours is what everyone has per day, on Earth. There are indeed people who get a lot accomplished in that 24 hours. If they can, so can I. I will have to organize my time well and get disciplined. And more importantly, I will have to choose the right commitments.

That is what we are coming to, aren’t we? Commitments. What are the right commitments for me now? What should I do next?

I keep reading “A Guide for Young People: What to Do With Your Life By Leo Babauta” now and then. The gist is this:

The idea behind all of this is that you can’t know what you’re going to do with your life right now, because you don’t know who you’re going to be, what you’ll be able to do, what you’ll be passionate about, who you’ll meet, what opportunities will come up, or what the world will be like. But you do know this: if you are prepared, you can do anything you want.

Prepare yourself by learning about your mind, becoming trustworthy, building things, overcoming procrastination, getting good at discomfort and uncertainty.

You can put all this off and live a life of safety and boringness. Or you can start today, and see what life has to offer you.

Lastly, what do you do when your parents and teachers pressure you to figure things out? Tell them you’re going to be an entrepreneur, start your own business, and take over the world. If you prepare for that, you’ll actually be prepared for any career.

Is this advice for me? Am I already at that point where I should be knowing what I’ll be doing and who I am? At the end of my final MBBS, I thought the one year of internship will be the time when I finally understand what I will do with my life. But I was wrong. During FHM, I got a few ideas on the kind of life I do want to pursue. I am sure I will not be going back to a university in a few years. And then there are a few preferences.

I sort of want to do things that create massive impact. That is why I got bored of clinical work. It was the same thing happening every day. Sick patients, some diagnosis, some treatment, some outcome. At the end of the day, not much has changed in the way things are.

I want to do creative things as well. I do not want to be remembered for things I did. I want to be remembered when people use things I built.

I love internet. It is a technology that has immense potential. I want to utilize it.

I love computers. Computers (including the small ones called smartphones) are all over the world. Sooner or later they will take over the world. I definitely want to be a part of this take-over.

I love teaching and learning. I want to help people learn all they want to. Knowledge should not become monopolized.

I believe I am good at a few different skills – programming, writing, clinical care, teaching. I want to do things that utilize all my skills. If I do not utilize all the skills I have, I am wasting those skills. That would be running away from “duty”.

In fact, I have a few ideas in my mind which are aligned with all these preferences. I want to build free software (free as in freedom) that bring the power of internet and data science to healthcare. I want to enable people (especially the ones in healthcare) to achieve more through the use of technology. I want to make sure this immense power (of technology) does not get accumulated in a few hands. And I want more people like me – I want to ensure there are hundreds of thousands of people with me who do things like me (or better!).

These can’t happen if I am alone. I need to connect with people. I need to build on collective strength. I already know a few people I would love to work with. Almost all of them are in the Silicon Valley of India. What makes perfect sense for me to do next is – move to Bangalore and start talking to people. That’s what I am going to do as well.
August 14, 2018
Rekindling Ambitions

On the eve of independence day in 2013, I wrote this post
which was about keeping ourselves safe from getting involved
in situations where doing good might be bad. I grew more and more
pessimistic about life and people around me since then. Going through
the comments section of any news item would put me in a state of teeth
clenching aversion towards fellow country men.

I was not like this. I was patriotic. I called myself ASD of India. I believed in people like Dr APJ Abdul Kalam when they said that it’s possible to do anything if we have a desire strong enough. Swami Vivekananda’s words “Arise, awake, and stop not till the goal is reached!” would make me determined to succeed.

My schools were the best. They never taught me the meaning of impossible. Everything seemed possible. Everything seemed interesting. Everyone was involved with the same spirit.

But college was something entirely different. Suddenly, I was exposed to the bad, and sad sides of humanity. Not just in the immediate surrounding. Newspapers suddenly became sources of bad news. In fact, I quit reading newspapers entirely. They were becoming too negative for me. Or was it that I was too weak to face the reality? Maybe. But I could imagine alternate realities (or fantasies) in which people are far less corrupt and far more content. I could imagine spirited colleagues. I could imagine living in a better society.

For some reason, I assumed that those were just fantasies. I grew too pessimistic. I assumed that honesty will never win and that as time goes on, things will get only worse. I figured that we were doomed. I knew that there was no future for humanity.

This negativity has contributed more than a little to my decision not to run behind a post graduate seat. I had already grown sick of the education system much before I grew sick of the entire system. I was not going to spend any more time in that toxic environment that’s called “college”. Any college.

I was clueless on what to do when I joined Vivekananda Memorial Hospital. It took me more than a month, but now I’m finally beginning to understand.

Yesterday, there was an orientation session here. VMH is run by Swami Vivekananda Youth Movement. The CEO of SVYM, Dr MA Balasubramanya gave a speech in the orientation session. He ran through the history of the organization. The values of SVYM is “Satya, Ahimsa, Seva, and Tyaga”. SVYM does an incredible amount of good work in Karnataka. And it started from two batches of students of MMC. It has taken 32 years for this organization to become what it is right now. And it hasn’t paid a single rupee in bribe to reach where it is.

The most important thing that he spoke yesterday and that hit me hard was that it was indeed possible for honest people to survive. That it was indeed possible to do good things. That good people do, in fact, exist.

I have a theory of love. When you fall in love with a person the first time, there is a component of infatuation. Once you grow beyond that, you start to see imperfections in your partner and stop loving them as much. But there is a certain moment in the relationship where you fall in love with the same person again. The difference is that this time, you know all the positives and negatives of your partner and you are loving the whole person. This newfound love is unbreakable. Because you have accepted all the bads of your partner, there is nothing new that can change your love.

I think I should now apply the same theory to ambitions. Initially we go through the rosy feeling of the entire world being full of possibilities and unlimited potentials. Then there is a rough patch in which you grow tired and weary, and forced to give up. It was only when I had given up and threw my hands in despair that I got help.

If I had ever been able to believe in mythical spirituality, I’d have called it Swami Vivekananda’s infinite power. Otherwise, what can explain the coincidence of my first love of the world be propelled by Swami Vivekananda’s books and now, my rekindled love of the world be propelled by an organization that lives by his name and values?

Positive thoughts come to you when you are surrounded by positive people. Fortunately, I’ve come to such a place. Now is the time to ride the wave. Expect more.

May 31, 2017
A Lot Can Happen Over Coffee

Yesterday, I met two scientists. One is a neuroscientist about to join Yale, the other, her husband, an immunologist in NY.

And they changed my perception about how I should pursue my higher studies after MBBS.

No, the meeting wasn’t a coincidence. I’d never be in CCD on any given day unless someone invited me over there. But the events that led to it, was undoubtedly a long chain of logical but random choices (even involving a confessions page in facebook).

So, what was so earth-shattering about this meeting that my career plan has to undergo a complete overhaul?

***

Here’s a slightly modified transcript of the conversation:
(KI = the neuroscientist, AG = the immunologist, ASD = me, SSB = my friend)

KI: So, how are you liking MMC?

ASD: To answer that, I’d have to go back in history. Till about the end of grade 10, I was going to be a Professor of Mathematics. Because back then, I liked and understood the subject really well. But at the end of grade 10, I decided that I had to do something relevant and of importance to the world (not that Mathematics is pointless). I decided I’d do MBBS. And after MBBS, I’d choose IAS and enter social service; or do DM in Neurology, so that I’d be doing some research in brain and cognitive sciences later on.

And then, at the end of grade 12, I had a real chance to pursue Computer Science and Mathematics. But then I stick to my ill-logic of practical importance, and choose to satisfy my curiosities in CS and math as a hobby while I become a doctor.

And what makes me confident about this all encompassing polymath style approach, is the over-confidence that my study technique lends me. I believe that even in a fact-oriented subject like Medicine, when you go deeper with your understanding of the concepts (sometimes hypothesising on things) you’ll have made facts intuitive, thus avoiding the need to memorize them, and at the same time making you very good at the subject. That’s why I started learnlearn.in and I’m just waiting for the results.

So, in short, it doesn’t matter to me, the college. I like it, because I’m in it.

AG: So, you thinking of developing a brain-machine interface, or the like? You know what, the research on all those is going full swing right now, and probably by the time you reach there, it’d all be over. They’re mapping out all the connections in the brain, and the US government has given nod to a $300 mn bill already for the ‘connectome’ project.

ASD: Okay! But that’s so going to fail.

AG & KI: If you look at it, it’s much like the human genome project. They’re just trying to figure out the connections as perfectly as possible, and once we have it, possibly we’ll end up with a whole lot of applications of it. You know how the CNS pharmacology is not based on our knowledge of the brain, but on pure luck.

ASD: Okay! I meant it wasn’t going to solve consciousness or intelligence or anything. For health, of course, yeah. So, tell me your stories.

KI: I did my MBBS starting in 1999, while AG started in 1996. Towards the end of it, I realized that writing an entrance examination after graduating, and then getting into post graduation rate race, was so not going to happen for me. But, I also knew that to get into research positions abroad or in India, I needed to have something in my c.v. So, I went to the National Centre for Biological Sciences in Bangalore during my internship and stayed there for 3 months, doing their work, closely learning how the entire system works. And I convinced the director there of my commitment to do science, that they wrote a recommendation letter for me.

And with that I could join a neuroscience research team. In essence, when you apply to universities, they ask you what you have already done, because they need some way to separate the grain from the chaff. They need to find out who is really committed to doing this, who is capable of doing this, and who knows what they’re going to do.

But that’s not an excuse to neglecting your academic performance in college. They really aren’t waiting for a guy who took 5 years longer to finish medical school just because he was interested in doing much cooler things. They want someone who is good at whatever he does.

And, you gotta compartmentalize your academic studies from the things that you learn for your research interest. Because they could well be at odds with each other.

And then +swathi sb comes in after finding her lost scooter key.

SSB: Sorry I’m late. I know you’re talking about career. I wanted to do something in public health, for the poor who are suffering. So, does this all apply for me?

AG: Well, we aren’t pretty confident about that sector, and there are people who’re better qualified to answer that. But still, there are a lot of ways you could help the community. You needn’t necessarily be working at a rural setting, because that’d only make you a practising doctor in rural areas. You could gain experience while working as the doctor for NGOs that operate in rural areas. That’d fetch you insights into how things work or doesn’t work there. Then maybe you can use it to do some work from the cities.

SSB: Okay. Forget about me, continue your story?

KI: Ha, so I did some work on astrocytes, the glial cells. Now, to do my post-doctoral work I’m joining Yale Medical School.

ASD: Wow! The Yale?

AG: Yes, the Yale. Like I’m joining Sinai for getting some clinical practice.

ASD: Okay, you haven’t told us your story.

AG: Ah, I finished MBBS, like she already told you and then I went to Bombay to stay with my mother. While doing MBBS, I had done some studies in P&SM, and with only that experience I went to the nearby Tata Hospital. And I didn’t know whom to meet there. So, I went to the Director directly, and told him “Sir, I’m a medical graduate. I am interested in doing research.” And he was amused. He talked with me for a while. And then he wrote a note.

I took that note to the lady it was addressed to. And she was an immunologist. They were working on genetics and stem cell therapy. And I worked with them. And I was among the team which discovered a therapy for ADA deficiency, which was also first of its kind.

ASD: That is the example for stem cell therapy in biochemistry.

AG: Yeah, so you know how important that was. And then I was thinking of doing some stuff, when I stumbled upon the much cooler stuff that one of my colleagues were doing there. He was trying to make changes in dendritic cells that’d enable them to better identify cancer cells. And then the T-cells would be able to identify them and kill them naturally. So, I’m working on it, now.

ASD: So, what progress are you making on it?

AG: In research, you usually do not make any perceivable progress in a short term. That’s, maybe, one disadvantage of it. But you shouldn’t really get bogged down by that. You will build on someone’s work, and then someone else will build on your work, and maybe credit you. That’s how progress is made.
And if you ask us whether we’ve made the right choices, we are not old enough to say so, but so far so good.

***

Thinking of it, my idea of doing a DM in Neurology is stupid, when all that I want to do was research on the brain. The most natural thing for me to do is, after MBBS, to join some institute where they do some actual research on the brain.

And so is it going to be.

May 22, 2013