AbhijitL

IT Professional, Comms, Education, History, Music

[AbhijitL @zero2null]

Phew! What a word... #Wordle 1852

[Cdr Abhilash Tomy KC, NM @abhilashtomy]

I have often found myself thinking of George Mallory’s answer when people ask me why I sailed around the world alone.

“The why is not theirs to answer.” That is what Peter Nichols wrote in his "A Voyage for Madmen".
When pressed for a reason, men who do these things tend to do one of two things. They either invent one retrospectively, or they refuse the question outright.

George Mallory, asked why he wished to climb Everest, gave the most famous refusal of all:

“Because it’s there.”

He was not answering the question. He was blocking it forever.

The true why cannot be set down on a page because it is not a single thing. It is the sum of every desire, fear, hope, philosophy and ambition a person carries, resolved into one act.

To name it is to shrink it.

Answer the why completely and the magic leaks out, and the residue it leaves behind is a white-collar mission, a project, an objective, a framework or a business case.

But not magic.

The pattern is not unique to sailors. The same instinct, and the same inability to explain it, recurs wherever someone has left a safe shore for an unproven one.

When Jeff Bezos walked away from a senior position at a New York hedge fund in 1994 to sell books over a network almost no one used, the rational case was to stay.

He did not justify the leap on an Excel sheet.

What he did instead was to reach for what he called a regret-minimisation framework, projecting himself forward to the age of eighty and asking which choice he would regret less. It was a way of admitting that the numbers could not have brought him to the decision, and that he was following a road only he could see.

The meaning of such a leap is rarely legible at the time.

Steve Jobs was echoing Søren Kierkegaard when he said that you cannot connect the dots looking forward. He took up calligraphy.

The list is long: Shackleton, Moitessier, Schultz, Dyson, Musk.

None of them could have made the spreadsheet say yes.

So the what is chosen by an instinct that sees what calculation cannot, and the why is assembled later, looking back.

This is as true of a bookstore or a mountain as it is of a thirty-two-foot yacht alone in the Southern Ocean.

The analysis that follows does not pretend to explain the why.

It takes the what as given. An instinct cannot be dignified with a rationalisation, and concerns itself only with the how.

[Venkat G @IndusFarmer]

As I lived in US for decades, I can understand this is not for everyone. In this birth most of us aspire to fulfill our materialistic desires and America's materialism is unmatched for that. At some point, the emptiness will hit us hard and we will start exploring the purpose of life. If we are rooted in our bharathiya values, we will quickly realize - only way out for peace is to give back.

Writer Jeyamohan who travelled around US and interacted with many Tamilians families for decades (with his literature and historical background) advises that "moving to India is not for everyone. If you decide to go back to India, don't expect to get anything. As long as your move is to give back, then yours will be successful" This advice of course a decade ago shaped our family to an extend that our move has been successful and serving our purpose in life. This is not a cakewalk, don't have to say.

Please note I am neither an entrepreneur running a profitable company in India nor got huge asset from ancestors that I no longer required to work to fulfill economic obligations of our kids and our life. I have passion in natural farming and I will have to continue work to fund this farming activities in addition to our family needs and children. My original plan of retiring and only farming was not a practical one, I learned by experience.

Our life in India in a farm with 600 sqft house gave us a lot of confidence and shed our longing for $. This played huge part in our success.

Don't hate Bharat for fear. Please check if your fear is driving your views against this letter. Bharatha maatha will embrace you and bless you for enriched, fulfilled life.

[AbhijitL @zero2null]

@HarveenChadha Sarcastically: aren't they building all that compute, so that you would rent and pay thru' nose?
Realistically it is analogous to the SpaceX vs ISRO, in space. One is industrial, the other vanity, with due respect?
Lesson to be learnt: ISRO launches are cheaper. Will our compute?

[AbhijitL @zero2null]

@GodboleSandeep Another interesting pair of brothers - Gajanan Madhav Muktibodh and Sharatchandra Madhav Muktibodh. The elder, Gajanan was a pioneering poet in Hindi, the younger a doyen of Marathi literature!

[AbhijitL @zero2null]

Indeed!

[AbhijitL @zero2null]

Hey, if I ever were to launch a #moltbook competitor, I would name it Junior Ganymede Club. #PGW
And only AI personal agents are allowed. They can share the escapades of their employers that only a gentleman's gentleman is supposed to know!
The JGCBook is going to be infamous!

[AbhijitL @zero2null]

Expectancy in the air,
A siren to clear the roads
A blur of the leaders
A blob of the peloton
A fleeting moment to cherish
An experience to treasure
And smooth roads, in the bargain, for the city to cheer!
#PuneGrandTour

[AbhijitL @zero2null]

@moneycontrolcom If Indian Govt 'needs' to put in efforts for AI, it is almost like the farmers waiting for subsidy. I mean no disrespect to anyone. Yet, the lack of private initiative, student involvement or social credit for such innovation does not augur well.

[AbhijitL @zero2null]

Just blown away by Jasmine Harrison's @rudderlymad dare to swim around St. Helena island in South Atlantic. No one has ever done that. She almost made it!!
When she is in the midst of Mini Globe Race-circumnavigating in 19ft sailboats!! Unreal, irrational, Incredible!!

[AbhijitL @zero2null]

@GodboleSandeep @VishalBhargava5 Absolutely! Here is Saturday:
Morning bliss- Bhajan at Mandir in GuruwarPeth
Pay GST@CA in NarayanPeth
Whole Day at FC-PuneBookFest! Hindi+Eng+Marathi binge
Home-care for ailing mother
Evening@Yashwantrao- sangeet natak!
Friends,family,work,duty,fun, devotion: in 5km rad!

[AbhijitL @zero2null]

@BleacherReport No. 1 and Cinderella?

[AbhijitL @zero2null]

#Jamaica #hurricane #melissa All Jamaicans and esp everyone of my friends there, I am praying with you 🙏

[AbhijitL @zero2null]

Incredible!

[AbhijitL @zero2null]

@GodboleSandeep पब्लिक डिमांड! तुम्ही फक्त कर्णभेदी ताल द्या, बेधुंद नाचणार आम्ही! नसेल जमत, तर करतो उभ्या स्पीकरच्या भिंती🤦
मावळातली झांजवाली पथकं कमीच झालीयेत. असलीच तर त्या झांजेच्या खेळांपेक्षा लोकांचं लक्ष टोलाकडे जास्त🤷

[AbhijitL @zero2null]

Completed a thousand with 3 misses. Not Bad. Journey started with BANAL, reaches a round number. Never ever been this consistent! Nice, pure fun, with a dash of competition!
Of late, NYT is becoming more insistent about login (good for them), so time to turn myself out. CHEERs!

[AbhijitL @zero2null]

@OlympicKhel And now he is rumoured to have left Jamaica for Turkey! Lured by money??

[Shaan Puri @ShaanVP]

with AI taking off, creativity matters more than ever

i'm working on a talk on why we should all be more like Rick Rubin, slides below:

[AbhijitL @zero2null]

@cathavale @GodboleSandeep Our first fan was bought and installed in 1982, only because we shifted to a place that had asbestos sheets for roof. In 1985, our visiting Nagpurkar relatives, sleeping on open terrace in summer, rushed inside very early morning, literally shivering!
Pune weather was a bliss!

[AbhijitL @zero2null]

@abhilashtomy I have your book, but still would love if you could post the link to that blog. I remember some of the comments were just rad!