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Afternoon Naps (Bachpan ~ Childhood) {1}

This is first in a series of short essays devoted to remembering , preserving and sharing my very fortunate and happy childhood courtesy of my hard-working and kind parents, and my  always encouraging and supportive elder brother.

It is a Sunday. Everyone has had a filling breakfast, especially Me and Neel. It was an Aloo Paratha day and we had a mini-competition of who could eat more. Mummy has no cases in progress, and it is just usual calls from patients that are coming in - no emergency. On the other hand, Papa already finished all the chores for the day - this includes cleaning every nook and corner of the house since it is Sunday, while also doing the usual list of daily chores such as washing clothes, putting them out to dry, updating finances in a diary with the latest and greatest of mummy's Caesarean and normal deliveries. 

That's it - now is the time for the grand finale. The march to the bed. Praying that there are no phone calls at least for the next 1 hour, all four of us make our way to get a nap. The fan is on full-speed, although it is winter. We have two large bubble phulka dots wrapped blankets that can render any living being unmovable. We get in - and time takes its course and converts the cold insides of the blankets to warm corners for each one of us. We start drifting off - though there would have been a 1001 worries in mummy and papa's mind and 1 or 2 in me and Neel's head, but for the next 1 or 2 hours it did not matter. We all slept like babies and woke up to go have a nice Sunday lunch next.

Hey Chores, Is it mid-20s or is America?

When I came to the US of A couple of years back, I was a very a laid back person. I had lived on my own back in India, yes, both during my undergrad and during Covid when I was working. During both of those experiences, I used to do chores that were bare minimum but nothing more than that. In the past couple of years it feels that a switch has been flicked permanently. When I worked in Bangalore for a couple of years, we had a cook and maid. I did not need to do anything. If I compare this with that, I am working now and I was working then, it seems as if they are two different worlds.

Chores seem endless, chores are exhausting and yet chores are satisfying. They are comfort in the madness and uncertainty of the day to day. To cook is one of the most relaxing and satisfying parts of the day. To actually grind the coffee beans and let it drip through the Chemex is a luxury that rewards every single time. Chores are what give sanity and structure to the day. They are somehow oddly satisfying. A clean room provides happiness. I actually want to do my own laundry, cook my own food and basically have control over every aspect of my life. Maybe its the individualism in America, or maybe it is the age where these things start becoming important. I certainly do understand why my parents start cleaning the house every Sunday morning with music and joy. It does give joy. There's just something about being able to control and handle your place, your way, and these chores enable you to do that.

A Reflection on The American Graduate Student Experience ~ longform

(1238 words, 6m 11s read-time)

I am finally able to take out time and also have within me, the energy required to reflect on a phase of my life that has lasted for 2 years. It began in the dwindling stages of a pandemic and ends in the middle of a tech recession. To summarise it in a paragraph or to evaluate it only in terms of academics and job market would be a disservice like no other. Instead, it deserves a wholistic look-back. It has shaped up who I am as a person in ways I never thought it would. It has changed the way I look at work, relationships, people, money and myself. 

Work - Quality, Nuance & Ethic

As an undergrad, I was extremely driven. I used to go out of my way and try new things. I also used to think I knew a lot. That changed when I entered into my first employment after graduating. I realised I had a long way to go. I was always the kind of person who never did or appreciated polished work, or work that had finesse. I used to get things to a stage they needed to get to, and then not spend the extra effort turning it into something exceptional from something merely good. During my graduate studies, this is the major shift that I have had in myself. I have worked with peers and collaborators who have been proponents of producing polished work, not just finished. It has now become a part of me, and I abhor work that is not refined. I believe it is a good change and it has pushed me to do better. I have also realised that people in top places are there in those top places because of this quality as one of the primary reasons. My collaborator from Stanford or Google or IBM or UCSD does not allow me to put a figure or a table in my work that is not upto the highest of standards. There is quality control of the highest level and at each component, which automatically drives up the value of the final output.

The subtlety and the specifics in everything you do has the potential to define the entire thing itself. Whether it be a course assignment or an intern project - small things matter. Working with people who have had different upbringing than me, and come from different cultures and bring different approach to work, has taught me a lot. Details that I would have earlier glossed over, people obsess on them. This idea of nuance ties in closely with the earlier mentioned notion of quality, but it has a subtle distinction. High quality work can also be not nuanced at all. However, graduate studies force you to focus on the details because the details are what you are here for.

The intensity of work is something I had not experienced ever since my first 2 years of undergrad. Even then, that intensity had a youthful ignorance about it - it was about being intense because of naivety and the endless possibilities. This is something else-this is about being driven and intense while rooted in reality. Despite acknowledging the fact that this work/task is not ground breaking, it demands the same youthful enthusiasm. I have met people who refer to their jobs at Big Tech as their “day job”. They do not define themselves through that. They do their own things once their “day-job” with their “employer” ends. There is a lot of pride in work, whatever that work may be. There is a lot of emphasis on individual branding and individual work personas. It is a lot of grind and people who embrace it and do it because of interest and without any complaints (especially immigrants).

Capitalism - Money & Things

Given money, there is no shortage of ways to spend it. When I used to work in Bangalore, there was not much you could do even if you earned a lot. Yes, you could go to nice places on the weekend to eat or drink, or yes, you could take a nice road trip - but there were not too many places to spend money on. America has a way with getting you to spend money. You can buy a mattress worth thousands of dollars, or you can go to a restaurant where the top would amount to a hundred dollars. Getting frozen food from Trader Joes ranging from Butter Chicken to Shrimp Gayozas, with a bottle of Gin and Tonic from Ralph is way too easy. Yes, you have to do everything yourself, without manual help - but there is something for everything. From robotic vacuum cleaners to dishwashers, there is no need of manual assistance because you have a way into everything - all you need is to earn enough to afford all of it. Which makes money so much more essential to live a good life and an easy life. I never valued money as much as I value it now. In the US, it is way more strongly correlated with the quality of life you live, than it would be back home. In some ways, there is never really enough of it here, because there are a 1001 ways you could spend it, and actually also get value out of it. This is definitely not the best place to be poor.  

People & Relationships

By and large, people are easy-going and friendly. However, it is friendly by courtesy, and is surface level. It is a norm - you be nice, be respectful, and smile and you get the same in return. It is automated - there is no depth to it, and that is okay since it is not expected. Interactions are professional, to be kept cordial and high-level. In a country that is not my own, it is always instinctive to be alert and a skeptic. There is no rest for the brain - keeping on hand, a plethora of documents always to be ready to prove my existence. It comes with the deal and so it is best to embrace it. It is not easy to form deep connections which might be due to both this age, this place and the times we live in. It forces you to get out of your shell and go out and be extroverted and easily approachable and also I might say - be interesting, because you need something to talk about! It is also essential in professional settings. To be of value and to communicate that value to people so that they are interested in talking to you and collaborating with you. It is transactional yes, but on the flip side, it is also very transparent and clear - no keeping up of appearances. It blends in with the capitalistic idea - every thing and every one has value and that value is either traded with time or with money. As an immigrant, it is always about being an outsider, but that is not necessarily bad or surprising. I am in fact an outsider, and that is perhaps an advantage more than anything else in most cases.

This is just my understanding of things from a limited but rich experience of two years. It is bound to evolve and I look forward to see what shape it takes in the next few years. It will be fun to compare it with this piece~

When it all adds up (and not if)

One Republic, the band, says this in one of its songs “ I lived” - Hope that you spend your days but they all add up and when the sun does down, hope you raise your cup.

They talk about this hope that you spend your days such that they add up - that they accumulate to something meaningful. At first glance, it appears to be a wild hope. If this hope comes to fruition, it seems to answer the classic question of what the meaning of life is. The meaning of life is that whatever you do adds up to something meaningful to you, and that it all makes sense looking backward. However this is not that unachievable, is it? Looking backward things can always make sense - you can always join the dots in hindsight. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Even if things do not make sense at the moment you’re working for them, looking back it can all make a coherent story. That is surprisingly hopeful. I also feel that it is true. It is perhaps another definition of an optimist. No matter how tough and meaningless things may seem at any instant, if you push through and then look at it when the dust settles, you will find some sense in it. Perhaps it helped you grow in ways that helped you indirectly achieve other things. Or maybe, more simply, you achieved what you set out to do and it makes pure sense. Regardless, it seems that this hope is not really a pipe dream. It is achievable - and if one has not achieved it yet, it is a matter of time before they do, and then everything adds up making complete sense. Until then, one has to keep at it!

Runs to Beaches.

There is something magnificent about a run to a beach. It could be Bogmalo near Zuarinagar, or it could be Scripps near La Jolla. The fact that you can run over concrete for 20 minutes and arrive at a place that looks, feels and smells like heaven and sets you at peace, is worth pondering upon. The beach hits you exactly the same at both places. The relief it provides from every day life and existence is also the same. For me, it gives me strength that if Bogmalo could carry me through BITS, then Scripps will carry me through UCSD. The individual runs maybe nice, but it is always the ones with friends that stick in memory. I am grateful to everyone I have ever shared a run to the beach with. Arshia, Sarthak, Purav, Zap, Akshat, and Edwin. What a privilege to land upon, not once but twice - A beach < 3 miles from the college, in two different continents.
Beaches  >>> Mountains.

Summer Of '22

It has been a very different summer. It has been challenging, but all the challenge taken on was voluntary. None imposed. I got very nice work sponsored travels to Santa Barbara and Baltimore. The one in Baltimore was for ICML - finally fulfilling my dream(?) of going to a top-tier ML conference and present my work there and talk to people there. It was a great experience and it was tiring as hell. I had to keep up with my internship in PST while attending it in EDT. It was a juggle. It was full of adrenaline during the process and full of exhaustion after it ended.
And then there has been swimming and tennis. Two things I have never done before in my life for which I go to classes every week. Swimming has exhausted me like nothing else. It seems to take so much from me in just a one hour class twice a week Yet it is so addictive. I am sometimes mad at I not getting a chance to learn it while I was a kid after seeing 5 year olds learning it in the pool on Sundays. Tennis is good too. But needs a truckload of practice and I can take it slow. I was never the kind of person who would do these things. It feels good to challenge myself and take up things outside of my comfort zone and deal with the challenges that come up with it.
My internship has also been pretty good. I really wanted to try a proper SDE role before committing to any specific type of role after graduating full time. I like the process! The thinking, design choices, the code and the documentation- the entire process. I believe I can be real good at it.  And it pays well and allows you to do other things in life too. It is a sweet deal. And the people I work with are also so nice and relaxed. Landed on quite a good fit for myself.  All in all it has been a nice, different kind of summer, with its own challenges and difficulties but very sweet moments and rewards as well. 

Zero Days

The year is 2017. I'm a first year undergrad and I'm motivated and energised like I never have been before ( and never will be again?). Hustle culture is my friend and motivational quotes are my ally. There's one of them from that time that has particularly stayed with me, albeit for different reasons than it was intended. It goes -

"No zero days."

Zero days is when you do nothing worthwhile.  It's the opposite of a productive and fertile day. It's a day when you voluntarily stopped and it's existence didn't make any difference to your life or your goals. The quote said no zero days. I obeyed. There were no zero days for me in the summer of 2017. Maybe I should have taken some while I could. Fast forward five years and zero days is all I crave. Adulting has sucked the zeroness out of days. There's always something to be done. Even on vacation, there's some chore to be taken care of, some mail to be sent. Zero days are an endangered species. Time and again, I still attempt to materialise a zero day with all my resolve but it never comes to fruition and always ends in abject failure. It makes me think how our parents have been living without zero days since ages. It makes me grateful to them that they allowed us to have zero days when we were kids even when they had super stressful days and nights. That protective shield from chores and productivity allowed a few privileged folks among us to actually experience and feel what beautiful things zero days are, and how therapeutic they could be. Most people never get one throughout their life. I am glad to have known zero days and to have lived them. I understand they aren't feasible in the near future, but I'll still long for them because it gives me a lot of peace just to think about them and relive them from memory.

PS- I wrote this draft on 9th June. On 10th June, there were incidents of communal violence in my home town. In the wake of it, the government suspended internet services for the next two days. The first half was a struggle and quite worrysome without internet, but once I lost hope of immediate restoration, I ended up having a nice-ish unexpected zero day thrust on to me. I ended up talking quite a bit to my parents, watching a cricket match on satellite TV, and finishing a book,Ten Steps To Nanette! Surely an unexpected chain of events or as some may say, Manifestation!

Brief Encounters :  independence in the West & window seat negotiations ~longform

As I prepare my mind and body to take me through a 2 day journey back home, I think about all the people I would meet in transit. I won't end up disappointed. It is a journey which begins with a train that runs along the West coast. A surfliner.

"Amtrak is offering 2500 jobs across the US. We offer competitive pay and perks ". 

The announcer in the train pitches to us. An old white man sitting across from me lets out a laugh. He adjusts his sunglasses and quips -" I'm not going back to the workforce. Do you want to?". He tells me he's been retired since a decade and a half. He adds that he is a war veteran with a crooked eye. He puts an obviously in front of the last fact. We keep talking intermittently throughout the 3 hour journey. He informs me that he just came back from Hawaii and is heading to Vegas and that San Diego was a beautiful stop. He jokes about his children being worried about him spending all their inheritance. Since he has trouble with his eyesight and Hawaii is a tricky place to navigate, he had asked his daughter to help him navigate. “If you are sponsoring, why not?”, she and her husband happily oblige. Of course my newly minted acquaintance sponsored. Once they arrived in Hawaii, he requested his daughter to leave him alone to travel if she would not be offended. They went their separate ways and he spent an extra couple of months after his daughter and her husband left. All this would be quite alien to where I come from. This level of pragmatism in family relationships is not something we do in our part of the world. Sometimes the level of independence of Americans astounds me. Both old folks and young. I don't know if it's a good thing or bad. Mostly, it's neither. It's simply very different from what we have in India where parents and their children are supposed to be there for each other more concretely. Eventually, perhaps it is simply about the prevalent norm in respective cultures.

The next 24hours or so is a blur since it involves a bus ride to the airport, and a subsequent 16 hour mega marathon flight from LAX to Dubai. With a little bit of travel experience, I have finally developed some skills for these monsters. The only method to this madness involves a carefully crafted mix of two meals, alcohol, controlled media consumption and the blessings of good a pair of noise cancelling ear buds. With all of these, and a bit of luck, you can end up taming this beast by virtue of optimal cross time-zone sleep. You need to sacrifice one meal if you want to have a shot at a medium duration nap - a sacrifice that is totally worth it. Another pro-tip is to not watch anything new or too simulating on the media front. I end up watching random Succession episodes - Little Lord Fuckleroy to the rescue.

The final leg of the destination is a moderate 4 hour flight from Dubai to Bangalore. I pre-book a window seat and end up with a small kid of 5-6 years along with their parent on the other two seats. The kid is longing  for the window seat. I'm dead tired from the 16 hour flight sitting spree.  I tell the parent that I'd really rather not switch seats. I assume that the airline would definitely give them their window seat someplace else. They did it for an adult in the previous flight! This doesn't go down well with the parent. They get super passive aggressive and complain to people nearby about the guy at window seat not switching (me, duh). I believe this is a lot of privilege. If I pay for a seat for a 4hour long flight that comes after a 16hour flight, maybe I get the right to keep it without being made to feel tired about it. After another couple minutes of hearing nagging through my muted ear buds, I concede. I just want a peaceful time. I end up moving to the aisle. My dear single travelling friends, I'm sorry. A week later I will end  up in exactly the same situation on my domestic flight from Bangalore to my home town of Ranchi. However, this time the parent simply tells their kid (and I again listen through my muted ear buds) -"This is the seat we booked and this is the seat we have. Sorry but we can't change." The kid then rests peacefully on their parent's lap. We also switch the window seat happily mid-flight and she is  wowed  by the cool sunset view. Anyways, that's two distinct ways to raise a kid right there. I have been thinking at length about both. Do you want to teach your kid that they should never settle and that if they keep asking and nagging for something, they might get it. Or, do you tell them to stick to the rules while playing the games. Honestly, I don't know. I'm conflicted. I was raised on the latter maxim and I am grateful for that. Yet, I'm not really sure if that's the best way. You tell me.

Play the play game.

Oof, everything is a game. Every destination has a hack. Contacts and reach combined with a baseline level of ability tends to always give far better results than grind and hard work alone. Privelege compounds. As long as you do not mess up big - if you were lucky enough to have a decent upbringing, it is relatively straightforward to keep piggy backing on your accumulating privelege and credentials to keep advancing. Knowing the right people and taking a small amount of discomfort at the right time can go a very long way and make you move hundreds of steps in very short amount of time. Capitalism rewards the haves significantly more than the have-nots. You just don't have to screw up royally and you will be good. Amen.

Music, caffeine and flow.

As I think more and more about what are some of the things that make me feel alive, I constantly keep ending up at this trio. It is when I am well-rested, highly caffeinated, with music in my ears, doing something that has my entire attention, ie, something that has me in this now popularised state of flow. It could be running, working out, reading, doing an assignment, or writing this mind-dump. The activity in itself does not really matter, as long as the setting is right, and it can capture my attention and prevent distraction. It has been of the most satisfying parts of my day to day existence. It is what I think about, when I think about something good, and of some time when I was happy. It may be quirky, but it is what gives me happiness. I am thankful for it.

Assumptions and auto-pilot

To live and interact with people on a daily basis inevitably makes us sometimes switch off and get into auto-pilot mode. We make assumptions about people and situations, that we should not make. Most of the times we do not intentionally make those choices. However, it does affect the person on the receiving end with high variance. Maybe they are themselves on auto-pilot and prone to ignore these assumptions that you just made, or they are hyper-alert and over-analyse whatever you do. If it is the latter, it is an unfortunate situation. We can try our best to be mindful of our assumptions and seemingly harmless behaviour. It is exhausting to be always ON, but we can try...

Habits that maintain sanity are not optional

I used to read books, write about my experiences, run, meditate, workout and spend time doing random things on the internet in cafes all day long. But, a few months ago I somehow let go of most of these things for most of the time. I thought it would be okay. It wasn't. And the thing is, once you get out of consistent touch with any of these things, it becomes very difficult to crawl your way back to consistency. I'm trying to crawl now. It seems like a mountain of a task. The only way to approach is to take it one day and one thing at a time. I have this belief that I have done it before so I should be able to do it again. I hope this logic works.

Startup founders and researchers feel eerily similar

Been wondering a lot about this relation lately. Both kinds of people create something new, have to market(publish) it well for their work to have impact, both have extremely high stakes, and a slow start. Usually both kinds of people have some arrogance/pride and their identities attached to their work. In both cases, only a few make it to the very top. The top is fulfilling, rewarding yet constantly intense for both as well. They both need to collaborate a whole lot to get funding(grants) and pitch their ideas as well. No wonder a large number of PhD folks end up starting their own ventures. Quite inter-related it seems!

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Just my thoughts