Death is Nothing at All by Henry Scott Holland

    Death is nothing at all. 
    I have only slipped away into the next room. 
    I am I and you are you. 
    Whatever we were to each other, 
       that we still are.
    
    Call me by my old familiar name. 
    Speak to me in the easy way 
       which you always used. 
    Put no difference in your tone. 
    Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow.
    
    Laugh as we always laughed 
       at the little jokes we enjoyed together. 
    Play, smile, think of me, pray for me. 
    Let my name be ever the household word 
       that it always was.
    Let it be spoken without affect, 
       without the trace of a shadow on it.
    
    Life means all that it ever meant. 
    It is the same that it ever was. 
    There is absolutely unbroken continuity. 
    Why should I be out of mind 
       because I am out of sight?
    
    I am waiting for you, 
      for an interval, 
         somewhere very near, 
           just around the corner.
    
    All is well.

9 years ago, on this day, I landed on the shores of California. I was talking to mom on the phone and of course, like every mother, she hadn’t forgotten the date and to commemorate this, casually said – “That sure has been a long time but you haven’t really come too far in life”. Ouch!

Oh well, on a lighter note, to remind myself that I have at least done something in all these years, a quick glance down the memory lane:

1 degrees earned
2 jobs
3 trips to the motherland
9 countries visited, more like backpacked
3 attempted ventures/side-projects -1 never-saw-light-of-day, 1 never-took-off, 1 work-in-progress
3 times drunk (i’m aware it’s a abysmally low number)

Paul Graham (whose essays are pure gems of wisdom) posted a new essay The Top Idea in Your Mind which spawned a brilliant discussion on Hacker News the other day. The concept is simple – the top idea in your mind is the thought that you drift towards when you’re taking a shower. Think about it – when you’re showering, you tend to wander spontaneously and impulsively to something that has been on your mind. This, is the top idea in your mind and takes much of your attention. If it’s a productive one, you’ll make progress and get something good out of it. If it isn’t or if it is a worrisome one, it will end up sapping your energies.

I am amazed at the collective thought, intelligence, and wisdom of the Hacker News community. One discussion thread wandered into how most people have a ‘ground state’ – a state of mind that we tend to naturally gravitate to. For some this may be writing, for other watching TV. When we don’t find ourselves occupied with something else much, we tend to drift towards this activity.

One of the threads veered off into how bad ideas tend to take a stronger hold and stay longer in our minds. It is harder to ward them off. One HNer posted a cool zen story to illustrate this point:

“Two monks were returning to the monastery in the evening. It had rained and there were puddles of water on the road sides. At one place a beautiful young woman was standing unable to walk across because of a puddle of water. The elder of the two monks went up to her, lifted her in his arms, and left her on the other side of the road, and continued on his way to the monastery. In the evening the younger monk came to the elder monk and said, “Sir, as monks, we cannot touch a woman?” The elder monk answered “yes, brother”. Then the younger monk asks again, “but then Sir, how is that you lifted that woman on the roadside ?” The elder monk smiled at him and told him ” I left her on the other side of the road, but you are still carrying her.”

Going back to the original thought, I, too, have always believed that the best ideas and solutions in your life often come to you when in the shower or while driving – if something productive or constructive is on your mind, that is.

What is the top idea in your mind now?

I bookmark a lot of things. Articles, websites, advice, blogs, technical stuff, pretty much everything I think could be a reference someday. Bookmarking might be passe but I like it. No Delicious type crap for me.

I categorize them under tabs such as shelf (kind of like my bookshelf – except these are blogs), wisdom, webdev, marketing, pricing, india startups, startups-of-interest, humor, style and so forth.

Here are some super blogs/sites from my ‘Shelf’. You might enjoy following them too. The entire list is over 170 links so this is just an excerpt.

Sorry, they are heavily skewed towards business and startups.

http://paul.kedrosky.com/


http://bigthink.com/


http://startupi.st/


http://blogs.hbr.org/


http://dustincurtis.com/


http://ksrikrishna.com/


http://www.sramanamitra.com/


http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/


http://aconversationoncool.tumblr.com/


http://theimpossiblecool.tumblr.com/


http://www.godinchief.com/


http://edw519.posterous.com/


http://sivers.org/blog


http://the99percent.com/


http://blogmaverick.com/


http://sethgodin.typepad.com/

If you haven’t, the Ranbir Kapoor starrer Hindi film ‘Rocket Singh: Salesman of the Year’ (available on Netflix) is worth a watch for any aspiring entrepreneur.

I love this dialogue from a powerful scene in the end.

(in Hindi)

jab khoon paseena ek saath kagaz pe chapta hai na,
table bed ban jaati hai aur office ghar,
bhook pyaas bhul jaati hai,
baal bacche rul jaate hai,
tab jaake sali company banti hai

Translated loosely(and I’m admittedly bad at it), it means:

When blood and sweat become the ink on your drawing board, the desk becomes your bed, the office your home. Hunger and thirst take a backseat, family and friends become a distant memory – and that is when you know you’ve got yourself a company.

By the time we’re ready, it’s too late. Start before you’re ready.
http://www.stevenpressfield.com/2010/07/start-before-youre-ready/
* * * *

Our ability for massive change My loss * * *

How to start an entrepreneurial revolution – Harvard Business Review blogs

Jeff Bezos’ commencement address to the 2010 Princeton class We are what we choose * * * *

The Monday after three astronauts were killed in a fire on board Apollo-1 during testing, Gene Kranz, NASA’s legendary Flight Director delivered this speech to his team. He speaks tough, in a manner that commands respect and attention.

Spaceflight will never tolerate carelessness, incapacity, and neglect. Somewhere, somehow, we screwed up. It could have been in design, build, or test. Whatever it was, we should have caught it. We were too gung ho about the schedule and we locked out all of the problems we saw each day in our work. Every element of the program was in trouble and so were we. The simulators were not working, Mission Control was behind in virtually every area, and the flight and test procedures changed daily. Nothing we did had any shelf life. Not one of us stood up and said, ‘Dammit, stop!’ I don’t know what Thompson’s committee will find as the cause, but I know what I find. We are the cause! We were not ready! We did not do our job. We were rolling the dice, hoping that things would come together by launch day, when in our hearts we knew it would take a miracle. We were pushing the schedule and betting that the Cape would slip before we did. From this day forward, Flight Control will be known by two words: ‘Tough’ and ‘Competent.’ Tough means we are forever accountable for what we do or what we fail to do. We will never again compromise our responsibilities. Every time we walk into Mission Control we will know what we stand for. Competent means we will never take anything for granted. We will never be found short in our knowledge and in our skills. Mission Control will be perfect. When you leave this meeting today you will go to your office and the first thing you will do there is to write ‘Tough and Competent’ on your blackboards. It will never be erased. Each day when you enter the room these words will remind you of the price paid by Grissom, White, and Chaffee. These words are the price of admission to the ranks of Mission Control.

Read it. Digest it. I could (read this) over and over. If I ever fantasize about working for a boss, I would consider myself supremely lucky to work for one like him.