Marriage:

About an year back one of my very close friends told me about a product idea. I liked the idea and told him I could work with him on that if he’s willing to seriously build it. His answer was – “yaar abhi job nahi chhod sakta, 6 mahine mein shaadi hai” [Dude, I can't quit job right now, getting married in 6 months]. Okay, get married but why do you want give up on an idea you believe in? Your girl will understand, won’t she?

Guess what? Obviously, he never build it and few months back I saw someone (very famous in the startup community) roll exactly that product out and is quite close to getting funded too! Yeah, my friend’s “happily married”, barely at 27!

I know an entrepreneur who literally fights (or used to at some point) with his wife everyday just because she wants another kid and he doesn’t. His company has just come out of startup mode and is heading towards being an SME. ”I have a 4 yr old kid and having another one now would take me 4 years back! I have been slowly planning the financials but this would mean I start planning all over again, save even more and take even fewer risks!” is what he said!

Indian entrepreneurs’ struggle

One of my ex girlfriend had started talking about marriage barely when we had graduated. I never denied marrying her but I used to tell her lets first achieve something, I want to do a few things in life, be a successful entrepreneur and all this might take a little time, there’s no point in getting married quickly and then allocating funds to expenses that could have been avoided at that age, but no, she wouldn’t listen! Of course, she’s happily married and I, having failed 2 startups in the past, am still building another startup! (I hope this post reaches you, lady!)

Oh! And that concept of getting your kids married at the right age => guys before 30 and gals by 26-27 max! I’ve always stressed, there’s nothing called such as a “right age” – why not just get married when you are ready – 25 or 32 – how does it matter? I hope you’re not thinking about that old shit about retiring and then marrying your kids before that <- That actually is the root problem!

Family:
Sorry to say, but the uncles and the aunts in our (normal middle class) families are the worst. They will keep asking your salary, some of them every single f***ing month. These relatives are probably the ones whose kids would have done “nothing” in their lives, graduated from some (worthless) A league institution in India and landed a fat paying job. And believe me these are absolutely good for nothing folks. If you are a startup guy, you already know that, don’t you They would join a company through campus placement and would be too scared/complacent/useless that they would spend their entire life within that single organization – without even doing something innovative! These uncles would be happy to show the entire family that the ad in TOI today was done by their kid while all that ad would have is a bollywood diva holding a soap bar in her hand. THATS IT!?! That’s all you learnt in your fancy B School?

What’s the big deal in it? If I pay TOI that much, they will even publish a horse shit pic, they just want money! But no, these are the ones who are valued in your family! Whatever they say are Golden Diamond words. What’s worse is you are always compared to these dumb folks whenever you go to a family gathering. And most, all of them would look at you as if you are the piece of shit lying on the roadside.

To share another case, one such highly respected family member told me to look for a career in animation, back in 2007-08. Recently, I met him at another family gathering a few months back and he said “tum animation me kuch kyu nahi try karte?” [Why don't you try something in animation?] I was like…dude? You are still the same! Your thoughts are still stuck where they were 4-5 years back! By the way, this member is probably the highest respected person in my family and heads delivery at a multi billion (yes Billion) dollar enterprise and travels abroad every week. Yeah, (sadly) that’s what puts the stamp on his authority! Am quite sure even Steve Jobs or Bill Gates would have spent more time with their families at his age (and still earned much more if that’s what you want to hear).

More problems we face with family/neighbours in this book.

Flat:

The other fantasy about middle class family people is owning a flat! I never get this point. I, really don’t! Why do they want your kid to buy a flat and then spend the rest of his life paying back the loan? Coming from middle class, we’ve never had loads of money to spend. So the way out always is to pay probably a 10th or even less initially and then take a loan for 60% for the next 15-20 years.

And is duly supported by our Financial system! Go and try to raise money for your startup and the same money for a home, you’ll know what I mean!

Once you have a loan on your head, that too a home loan, for not less than 40-50 Lacs, am sure you wouldn’t be willing to take a risk, would you? And that tension of repaying that loan! Anyways, there is very little probability that our kids would stay in that house for long. They’d go places, do stuff in life and make it big themselves! Actually this would connect with Rahul Dewan’s post where he talks how retired people should recede back to smaller towns and do great things. A brilliant thought by the way, go read that!

In another relationship, I told my girl that I don’t earn great right now and that I am trying to build a company and shared the vision. At first she appreciated my honesty but then within a few weeks she asked “Abhinav, hum ghar kab lenge?” [Abhinav, when will we buy a home?] That day itself I knew – she wasn’t the one! No wonder that relationship didn’t last long.(I am quite sure you’re reading this!)

I guess I’ve written, read ranted, too much already or else I won’t be allowed to enter my hometown the next time!

Update: I realized most people, even though agreed to this, say its inconclusive. I must add this: The point is that people who can bear all these pressures and can still build a company, are the ones whom we call SUCCESSFUL!

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The incident happened on April 12 and is documented on by my friend who was with me then.

I often document my life using Ohlife. Here are some snippets from what I wrote during those days:

April 14, 2012
Saturday

Went to the Police Station with Ankur again today. Ankur has some good contacts, he took some names and the police changed their tone as soon as that happened. Sad to see the state of affairs at Police Stations. They threaten the victim, really badly. Even though Ankur was talking to them, my legs were shaking. Yes, of course I was not at fault but the way they were talking……
They asked me to prove that I was being assaulted
They asked to tell them who the assaulters were? Yeah, as if i knew who they were. I’ve never heard a more dumb question in the recent times!
No wonder we’ve lost faith in the Police of our country and the whole system in fact

April 15, 2012
Sunday

Went to the police station again with Ankur today. While one constable agreed to note down the application, when we went to a room to get it noted, another one sleeping woke up and behaved in a miserable manner.
He snatched the paper and said no complaint would be noted. Started shouting and asking stupid questions. He said: ‘naam batao jisne ye kiya?‘ Obviously i didn’t know the names: “Agar tum jaaante hi nahi kisne kiya to hum kahan se dhund k laenge” – which to me was the most stupid statement a policeman can make! “Uth yahan se aur bahar nikal“. Yes, the way he spoke, meri literally fat gayi. Thanks to Ankur, who just kept sitting, i got enough strength, even i stayed put in my chair. Finally after a lot of his shouting Ankur also said that ‘aapko complain note karna padega nahi to hum dharna denge‘. This put the nail in the coffin and he just shouted for us to leave. He even said “jo karna hai karle, nahi likhenge complain”. Ankur started to argue but i pulled him out.

Then he called up someone and finally someone spoke to the head constable (Manoj Kumar). Sad to see how people change after they hear a few big names. Its not about VIPs being important, its because how these assholes govt employees change – that the VIPs have become VIPs.

Finally an application was noted but no receiving was given. I don’t have a proof that i’ve submitted the application. Yes, i’d be happy to get my phone back, obviously, but i still i don’t have enough faith in the Indian police. Lets see. Faith and hope are mismatching here!

April 17,2012
Tuesday

Another unproductive day in terms of work. Dont know whats happening… there’s no concentration. The focus seems to have been lost somewhere.

In the meantime one of my friend tried to find a way out to get the police file a report:

@dhirajpandey yes email to police commissioner and then follow it up. Its on record. Keep a print out of it.

— Kiran Bedi (@thekiranbedi) April 12, 2012

So I did what she said.

Notice the mail date and the date below, when some action was taken.

April 30, 2012
Monday

Got a call from the police station and was asked to come down. On reaching there:
Constable: Aap yahan kisko jaante hain?
Me: [puzzled] ?? Kisi ko nahi, matlab??
Constable: Nahi kisi ko to jaante hi hain, matlab minister/MLA wagarah ko?
Me: Nahi to.
Constable: To DCP wagarah kisi ko?
Me: Nahi, but hua kya?

Was surprised to find out that they had a copy of the mail that I wrote to the DCP and Commissioner of Gurgaon Police. And since it had to come with all signs/stamps and probably with a “daant” from their DCP, they wanted to take action on it.
Well, that’s the good part, the sad part is that they said I could do 2 things:
(a) Either be stiff and ask them to act on the complaint. Go the formal way, lodge an FIR and ask them to act on it
(b) Or be friends with them, ‘bhaichara’ in their language. Which meant they’d be helpful and work in an informal way
Obviously, they wanted my support and not complain against them. Not sure if I did the right thing but that’s what i felt at that moment. Yes, my heart ruled over my brain and I saved their ass!

Today (Dec 23, 2012): This is something that I regret now! I wish I would have complained against them. No, I did not know any media personality who could help me then. I got in touch with some Star News guy 3 days later but all he said was “ab to 3 din ho gye hain, matter purana ho gya so kuch nahi ho sakta” – yeah! While I was still in trauma, for the 24×7 media guys it was too old a matter!

This is what I wrote on the day of the incident: Gurgaon women: don’t step out after 8 but what about men – don’t step out after 7

Really sad! He’s my first ever FOSS superhero! R.I.P. RT @niyambhushan Rajmathur of linux-delhi fame just died an hour ago.

— Abhinav Sahai (@AbhinavSahai) December 12, 2012

The next few hours I just spent time looking for his mails, digging out my old blogs, where i’d talked about him and reading them. In the process, I came across some pics too which made me nostalgic. Even though I never really got close to him, I was always trying to learn from him from a distance. His to the point conversations. His brutally honest statements. His humour. His love for food and booze. The amount of passion that he had for his work. Rarely would you find such people.

Thanks to @gmishra for introducing me to him as what followed after my first meeting with him and the Open Source world has governed a lot of my mind and life, till date. Yes, despite not being a coder anymore, I still use a Linux machine and go about promoting the FOSS philosophy wherever I go and will always do. Incidentally, it was @gmishra himself who broke the sad news to me!

Thanks Raj sir, may your soul rest in peace.

Freed.in pic. Snap taken by his best buddy Kishore Bhargava

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By now you would have understood that this 2nd company is going to delay projects by a minimum of 3-5 days. In some cases, the client would be ‘just okay’ while the others might complain a bit. Either ways, whether the client complains or not, why would you want to deliver a wrong message for your company? Who knows, this small bit might result in you losing out to some good referrals. Word of Mouth still remains the best form of marketing, right!

We have a lot of festivals in India. While on most of those off days we might end up working, but, let’s be honest, there are some days when you want to keep work aside, even if you are an entrepreneur. These are the days when you just want to be with your family & friends. Most of us would agree here but some of them might just want to work. What is important to understand here is that whatever way you feel (taking an off or not) your employees would definitely want to take off for a day or two. In most cases, even your clients want to do that, right? So why shouldn’t you just declare that week off? Even the west completely shuts down during Christmas after all, with auto responders always set!

So I would believe this first company has done a great job – has kept employees happy by giving them a week off and at the same time communicated this to the clients that they would be shutting shop for the Diwali week and the deadlines set accordingly. To me this sets expectations clear on both the client’s and the employees’ point of view. And if both the sides are happy, I believe you as a sales guy, a project manager or an entrepreneur would never have to hear harsh things from anywhere!

Agree/ Disagree? Share your views in the comments or shout out to me @AbhinavSahai or on LinkedIn

Since then I try to go at any startup event I can possibly attend. Next week also comes another event, a big one though. Its the Nasscom Emergeout and this time a lot of focus is on startups and/or SMEs. There are about 13 sessions and the entire agenda can be found here.

Since there are parallel sessions, the ones I am interested in are the sessions on “Big business decisions”, a discussion on “Scaling up your product” and the one on “Effective sales strategies”. Of course, this is apart from the Keynote sessions where speakers are of the stature of KrishnaKumar Natarajan, CEO – Mindtree, Aditya Ghosh, President – Indigo Airlines, Venky Mysore, CEO – Kolkata Knight Riders and Rajan Anandan, Managing Director Google India.

You can register here. I know, its slightly expensive if you are a startup, but then there’s a deal for startups! Also, there are a few contests running on Twitter, check out the Emergeout hashtag.

Still if you feel the fee is high, here’s a small tip I got from a VC sometime back. “Don’t register for the event, just express interest. Most of these payment forms would be tracking who all fill the details but don’t pay. In most cases, event managers contact these guys and offer them a low fee entry on last days”. That’s what he told me, I don’t know how often does that happen though

If you are coming, great! See you there, I would be available @AbhinavSahai

[First published on DARE]

SSP #Guwahati blames Del media 4 ‘hyping’ molestation. says N-E girls get raped in Del & no hype.(w/ dis mentality no wonder only 4 nabbed)

— GAURAV C. SAWANT (@gauravcsawant) July 13, 2012

No wonder what happens, its the Govt. that gets blamed, rightly so!

Dear Government of India, the #Guwahati incident was also an act of paedophilia, concerning which, you recently passed some stupid laws.

— Mishra (@Pakespeare) July 13, 2012

Something that all of us have believed in now (and its not just women)

#guwahati Pathetic! Shameful! Indian women better realise that they are on their own.

— Farhan Akhtar (@FarOutAkhtar) July 13, 2012

Media can bring down governments, only if we had better journos though

20 men molested girl in #Guwahati. only 3 arrested so far. Dont spare the beasts

— Rajdeep Sardesai (@sardesairajdeep) July 13, 2012

Sad state of our country!

Men are not scared. They are aware about the inaction of our police. #guwahati

— blahhh (@blah_di_dah) July 13, 2012

Not sure, cynics? Or maybe they are right?

Exactly!!! “@mcoond: @jayantgajria come on dude, their own friends will be tweeting here but wont identify them :/” #guwahati

— Jayant R. Gajria (@jayantgajria) July 13, 2012

Of course, some people will always believe its those fake film stars who can solve all our problems!

Dear @aamir_khan hope ur reading.. RT @ChalHuttt: its all so fucked up. the people. this country. #Guwahati

— ???? ? ?????? (@epattni) July 13, 2012

The difference between the Facebook and the Twitter junta:

Wow! Nobody on Facebook seems perturbed by what happened in #Guwahati. All busy drooling over ParineetiChopra and DianaPenty. #Pricks

— Kanupriya Jain (@msgreeneyd) July 13, 2012

Yeah, someone needs to defend the media too!

Only 1 journalist Binay at the #Guwahati. molestation. Tried to intervene, was beaten. So called cops, recorded the horror. Helped arrests.

— Shiv Aroor (@ShivAroor) July 13, 2012

Update: The verdict was delivered a few days back: Amar Jyoti Kalita, 10 others convicted; TV reporter acquitted

Incident 1: [Gurgaon] Its around 3 in the afternoon, I was walking towards the metro station, barely 2 mins from my office. 2 girls were walking ahead of me. I saw a bike coming, 2 guys, no helmets and just when they crossed those girls, one of them shouted – “arre idhar aaja meri jaan!” (come to me my darling).

Incident 2: [Delhi] It was 8.30 PM. I was with a female friend of mine, waiting for an auto. I see a Maruti 800 coming our way. 2 guys seated in the front, I didn’t notice the rear seats. As soon as they crossed us, one of them, shouted “abe yahan kyu khada hai, ghar leke jaa na!” (why are you standing here, take her to your home)

My friend tells me the security guard at her apartment stands in her way everyday while getting into the building, leaves barely any space for her to get in. You obviously know what he’s trying to do. Just to remind you – he’s the SECURITY GUARD!

If you are thinking these are frivolous incidents just for a minute imagine what would these girls be going through in their daily lives? No, you can’t imagine. Nobody can, Nitin and I tried once but failed.

Dhruv Arora has started a great campaign against such people. Great campaign Dhruv but honestly, I believe that such campaigns reach only the people who are not the ones whom I mentioned above! I hope it solves some purpose.

No, I don’t know what the solution is, maybe capital punishment!

Ever since I’ve moved to NCR from Bangalore, if I’ve read/heard numerous such cases. (No, I am not even talking about the rape cases.) I suddenly feel why did I move at all? This is the NATIONAL CAPITAL REGION – within an year, I’ve found out the capital of what!

In case you’re unaware, these are the things to do in Delhi. (Keep clicking on that text)

Btw, this is what pushed me to write this post.

Post the event, I got a chance to converse with him. When we discussed about his livelihood, he said he used to be a teacher till sometime back but then he quit in his early 40′s. He does shows at events for a living. He even makes sure returns home by 5 (mostly) and cooks dinner, as he loves to cook. He mentioned that his wife also works and normally comes back around 6. We happened to ask him whether he’s able to manage with just doing shows? Is that enough?To this he answered that they manage to sustain their lifestyle fairly comfortably. Yes, he has kids too.

He then mentioned about a friend of his.

This guy goes to work at 8 in the morning, comes back around 8-9 and then goes to play badminton. His friends wife leaves for office around 9 and comes back only around dinner time. They have dinner and then they sleep. In the midst of all this they have a 16 year old daughter……

After saying this he looked into our eyes and said:

You decide how much is enough?!?

Update: Uncle Andy pointed out some corrections in the comments about his work: i do not do shows..i do voice overs and some acting…and my wife gets home at 730/8…delhi traffic!.

• About the local Gurgaon crowd being inexplicable stupid? Mind you, the locals, read uneducated.
• About my physique not being great? I cannot fight these tall healthy guys!
• About me taking that shortcut route to home, which by the way every other ‘ordinary’ person takes?
• or About Gurgaon Police – who tell me if I got assaulted and robbed of a Rs.32,000 phone – it is my fault that i carry an expensive phone? ‘Victim Blaming’ is quite a known feature of Gurgaon Police!

Yes, today while returning from office with my friend, we got assaulted, injured and robbed of my phone and whatever money my friend had. Thanks to some gutsy behavior in the later stages, we saved our laptops, our credit cards, my watch, some more cash and most importantly – our Lives!

And all this happened when the sun had barely set – around 7-7.30 PM! I got the message, Welcome to Gurgaon. 5 men surrounded us at a somewhat lonely patch of the road we take to home everyday and within few minutes we were running to save our lives! Probably the scariest incident of my life where for 5-10 mins i actually remained NUMB

By the way, a small question for Gurgaon Police – if women should not step out after 8 PM, should men stay inside after 7 PM?

Yes, all the pages had the same content, just a little bit of change in timings. Okay, the truth is that my day started at 10AM and ended at 10PM with the entire day spent playing and watching cartoons. But that’s not the point I want to make here.

Incident 2:
A few years later, 2nd year of my BTech. One day a senior asked me – kal ka kya karne wale ho?
I responded with a strange look, the look didn’t mean – I don’t know, it meant – How would I know?
No, he wasn’t asking to invite me to a party, he wanted to know how would I make the most of the next day. The fact is like other batchmates, I didn’t know

Now I use Ohlife daily and the reminder mail lands in the inbox with the subject line ‘How did your day go?” And mostly my response starts with ‘Okayish day….nothing major …. ‘ and the story continues. Yes, once in a while I am really excited about this Ohlife mail, like the day we launched Moneno, but that doesn’t happen too often!

What do I/you/all-of-us do on weekends? Booze, movies, sleep, cleaning? Thats it!?!

14 years have passed this way.

Today if my ma’am asked me to write that diary it would be like:

Wakes up. Walks to office. Works/tweets/facebooks simultaneously. Have meals sometimes. Walks back home. Eat. Sometime read. Sleep.

My ohlife now often has “Nothing New” written over it. Every time i write that i am reminded of Steve Jobs’s Stanford commencement speech.

“If this was the last day of your life, would you still do what you plan to do today? And when the answer is NO for too many days……”

My problem is even bigger. I dont know what i am going to do! Yes of course work, but do i know exactly what am i gonna do?

I read a few articles, have a lot of unread articles opened in various tabs, often i have 50-70 tabs opened and because of twitter, end up increasing that unread count each passing day. And then suddenly one day the browser gives up, read crashes, and i ask myself, do i really need to restore all those tabs? What if i don’t? No, i never have an answer to that question, primarily because i don’t even remember what tabs i had opened! And because of fear of losing something important that was to be read, i always end up restoring all those tabs and the same cycle repeats.

What happens next? Of course, this entire bigger cycle repeats. And then in the daily rut of things, forget about whats actually happening in life. Whats important to note here is that:

Not that i am doing bad at my work. Not that i am doing something i don’t love, I really enjoy my work. Not that i am living someone else’s life. Not that i am not making money. Not that i am away from friends. Achieving, attaining a lot of things, i still feel i am kind of lost. Something’s wrong!

How can i sense that? My creativity has taken a beating. I get irritated and angry a lot often. I feel i am not doing enough. In the longer run my productivity decreases. And apart from all that, i often end up feeling/thinking what i’ve just written!