(This is the story behind the reference to tea in this earlier chapter of the memoirs.) The phone rang as I started shutting the front door behind me. In one of those momentous decisions that define history I overrode my initial inclination to continue on my way out and stepped back…Continue reading→
Stories from my life
The 1980s
Bengali COBOL
In the early summer of the following year (following the on-time, on-budget arrival of Baby #1, (chronicled in this post) financial conditions hadn’t really improved. A meager income was being gleaned by teaching. My wife and I took up part-time lectureships at various schools that were mushrooming everywhere. Schools that…Continue reading→
Baby steps in
Things went back to normal after An Inauspicious Start. Of course, normal was the new normal which wasn’t quite the same normal as the previous normal. Progressing pregnancy dulled the pain of financial doom. Sometime in the 3rd month we had signed up for a 5-day package at Woodlands Nursing…Continue reading→
An Inauspicious Start
Shortly after the “Hello World” episode, the startup shutdown. Cast into the wilderness, not yet 27 years of age, boasting a pregnant wife and mounting debt caused by 3 months of no pay, I drifted out of the corporate world. Disillusioned by the posturing, the politics, burned out from nearly…Continue reading→
Hello World! Chopped!
Read Part 1 Read Part 2 “Well, I’ll be damned!”, I said. “This looks just like a GW-Basic Interpreter. Where the hell did you find this?” “Well…”, he started. “Never mind, everyone go away and leave me alone. I need to think.” I waved everyone away. On my table in…Continue reading→
Hello World! The Edge of Darkness!
Read Part 1 No, you’re wrong. It wasn’t my COBOL code, or my system design skills. The floppies were not corrupted, I could see the data outside my code with tools I had. As more boxes were delivered, I went down to ask for tea and a conference with the…Continue reading→
Hello World!
In the spring of 1987, I was lured away from my employer, a fast-growing, much respected Indian IT company by a startup. They offered double the salary, nice. A department to run, nice. A chance to put my reputation as a crazy, wacky and arrogant solver of weird problems on…Continue reading→
The Tale of the Cantankerous Cat
About a year after the wedding, my wife and I moved to a small flat, (apartment, if American). The area of Calcutta known as Lake Gardens sounds delightful. In reality the lake was man made, access to the area was via a congested level crossing of a busy commuter line…Continue reading→
Fish
Sometime in the past, we had listed a series of things we could chat about and we asked our faithful, feckless, faceless and fearless readers to vote on them. And no one voted for Fish. And none of the regular contributors to this blog (!) could remember what the…Continue reading→
Mr Deka's Nightmare – Part 3
Click for Part 1 of the Story Click for Part 2 of the Story That night the three of us did not get to bed as Anirban took apart every card, every peripheral and reassembled the machine and the cycle of testing continued. I learnt to use a multi-meter that…Continue reading→
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