Year: 2018

Mr. Boland Roberts, Bishop’s School Pune

Mr. Boland Roberts was former principal of The Bishop’s School Camp from January 1973 to June 1999. Mr. Roberts as he was fondly known as passed away on the 12th of April 2018.

He was my principal for 11 years. I thought a note of how I remembered him would be my contribution in celebrating a truly incredible person’s journey.

The most amazing thing about Mr. Roberts was his beaming smile. It makes it hard to imagine the person who owned that smile was also a disciplinarian. If you knew the gentleness of his smile you’d have trouble reconciling those ideas too. When I remember him, he’s leaning over me as a much smaller boy, smiling down and asking me a tough, direct question to engage me. He often moved around the school grounds after morning assembly in his black cape, occasionally speaking to boys he ran into.

Other old boys will recall he personally handed out certificates before school gatherings, providing a firm handshake and verbal encouragement to every boy for every reward. I remember receiving a book at his hands in class VI and every time I went up there to meet him, it was special. He did his best to make it so.

Class X of ’93 had a serious run in with him. They were caught by him in the St. Mary’s annual fair despite having clear instructions that they were not to attend. This was a classic moment of rebellion and they were pulled up by Sir himself. Schools can go much easier now, but back then I believe Mr. Roberts genuinely wanted the boys of Bishop’s to be gentlemen ambassadors of the school.

He was my principal in class X of ’94 and continued to lead the school up to his retirement in 1999. He ran the school with vigor and I’m sure he enjoyed every day of it. My thoughts and prayers are with his family and I believe his immense contribution in making Bishop’s an institution will be remembered.

Summer Cold and Arduino

I have a cold and it’s a miserable feeling to have one in the Summer. I tried to be careful when spending time with my Son this Sunday morning. The Arduino kit we were working on required us to work together in close contact.

We ran into a tiny issue that needed debugging. The Arduino IDE picks the default board and we changed it to the right one to get it working. He had a real blast changing the LED delay times and uploading the code to the board. I’m looking forward to the different experiments we’ll try together. I wonder if he’ll be able to read and change the code too?

Persistence is its own Reward

Are startups owed an exit? It sure felt that way when I wrote this piece. Somewhere down the line, my thinking changed.

All founders are desirous of the big exit. Be it a venture investment, IPO or maybe even being acquired. An investor and startup come together when it’s a win-win, right? The investor believes that the startup is a compelling story, that they would miss out if they didn’t invest. The startup believes taking the investors money and involvement has greater rewards than the trouble.

Then there are dire situations where founders are struggling and they believe they need a cash infusion to stay afloat. I know of many such journies. I too was at that point once. It felt then that an exit was owed. I denied myself the reward of persisting. A lesson learned.

You deserve an exit when a competitor believes they have to buy you out, an investor believes that you’re a must-have investment, a strategic investor thinks you’re going to deliver on a key priority, or it’s just simply too hard for you to go on. I imagine I might have missed some other rational or irrational scenario, but otherwise, there’s no exit.

Then there is future. There is always future. When we’re looking into the future, the exit goal clouds the constructive, path-finding attitude. So set it aside. You can build a future if you believe you have one. Surprise your self and those around you every day. Look to inspire and get that next customer, that next user, the next investor, the market and so on towards the larger more complex ideas. Trust me, as the future unfolds – you’ll see there are limitless possibilities to surprise you. I don’t say this trivially, I did find a future myself and I’m sure you’ll find yours.

Forty

I’ve turned forty! I really hope I’m getting wiser, some of the signs say otherwise hilariously.

The morning began with getting my son to the school bus stop. After we got on the bus, there was lingering anxiety for so many things. For instance, where did he lose his pencil-box? There are so many things that aren’t in our control. A dear friend called to check in with me. It didn’t take long for us to get around to his business, to trade ideas and to share advice.

In this past year if I’ve learned anything it’s that as I get older the debt that I owe to my parents, family, colleagues, and friends only grows. I’m glad to have such awesome people to share my journey.

How Goes the Running?

My average running times this year have improved from ~ 8:20 mins/km to < 7:50 mins/km. Today I posted a personal best of 7:20 mins/km over 3km. It’s great to follow my friends Shantanu and Sudhanshu on Runkeeper who’re posting times well below 6 mins/km. While I’m slow in comparison, I’m happy with the improvement I’ve been able to see and I think with the right plan I might be able to improve further this Summer.

This is me on Runkeeper.

Pune Angels

Angels who can trace a connection back to Pune and willing to invest in Pune-based technology Startups.

I know of *many* such stories.

The idea of Pune Angels has the potential to do tremendous good in our backyard. It came up in two different conversations. It goes to show you really can’t stop a good thing from happening.

I’ll continue to bubble the idea through the many digital back channels in our local eco-system.

A New Home

Sukshma now has a new home. It’s no longer hosted on wordpress.com and is now self-hosted.

I did it because I think being able to say whatever it is you want to say, without ads, without the constraints of some corporation is more valuable than ever.

That leaves me with another question – What do I really have to say?

I’m just happy to try out self-hosting and I hope it’ll work out for me. Fixing https remains. I’ll get around to it soon. And maybe I’ll blog a bit as well.

I’ve had to disable comments in order to fight off spam. It didn’t take long for spam comments to find their way here.