Honoring My Managers: Dipu Pandey

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Though my tenure at The Webplant was short – less than 6 months – I learned some very basic and valuable lessons at the company – and most of them from my first team leader Dipu Pandey.

In this post, I would share three key lessons I learnt from Dipu Pandey that I wished I had learned and absorbed earlier.

#1 No compromises with the quality of your work.

While working in Dipu Pandey’s team, we would get the site migration projects where we would have to migrate already running client sites to HubSpot.

After the team member would complete the migration, Dipu Pandey would be the first authority to sign off the migration (then it would go to others like Vikram Singh or Deepti Mittal).

In the first review, Dipu Pandey would be matching and comparing the migrated site with the original, element by element and pixel by pixel. I repeat “pixel by pixel”.

That experience with him taught me the value of quality work. And about the role and responsibilities of a team leader.

#2 Go the distance. And then, run the extra mile.

Dipu Pandey expected his team to be the last team leaving in the evening.

Staying late at the Webplant office for some extra 30-60 minutes was pretty normal for his team.

Not that I liked it when it happened, but let’s be honest: If you are willing to go the extra mile for your lead, manager or company, you will register yourself in their good books – which could translate to better work, better pay, better position, better role, or something else that’s “better”.

#3 Leadership

Dipu Pandey commanded respect and authority. He was good at what he did and his team (because of Dipu Pandey’s QA/Testing) also did brilliant work.

There was a line he used to say to express his understanding of the corporate world and corporate culture in general: “Boss is always right.”

Sure, it’s a cliche and an over-simplification but a good starting point to keep in mind if and when you have to face or confront your leadership (be it your lead, manager or just somebody senior).

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Worst Case Thinking

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2026-Jun-26
    
WORST CASE SCENARIO

11 Jun: Abhishek Chakraborty disclosed the termination news — taking my forced resignation instead.
26 Jun: 15 days later.
No other job offer in hand.
A couple of disappointments from a couple of interviews.

Yesterday, Abhishek Chakraborty said I may be getting terminated for deleting my resignation record from my SuccessFactor profile.
That means no salary for June and a marked documentation and blacklisting at IBM.
Read this again: "No salary for June."
I don't have enough in my current account even for next 30 days.
34 + 8K is non-negotiable (42K).
Let's say 50–60K with some expenses even if I live in Tri Nagar.

I have about 2.4L in savings/investments.
That money will last for about 4–5 months.

So, I have about 4 months to find a job (or find a source of money).

Worst case thinking -- If I don't find a job in 4 months:

# I would default on Home Loan.
# Run out of ~2.5 lakhs of savings.
# Would have to redeem other/remaining 10L at (possibly) a loss.

Okay, so 10L might buy me another 20 months (1 year and 8 months) of time.
And after that, I would run out of every penny.
Would have to say goodbye to ***.
AND: Too big and wide a gap in my resume.

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How much money needed to live by?

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19 Jun 2026

The problem isn't dying — but rather in living.
If I were dying, I wouldn't have to worry about finances or relationships. But if I were to live I'd have to calculate the bare minimum I would need to live by my months and days.
After a more rigorous thinking, I have reduced my monthly spends down to 70–80K (which is not a low number either) but down from 1L by 20–30%.
In this 70–80K:

35K is for paying Home loan EMI.
Rest 35K–45K is for everything else.

Breakdown:

35K: Home loan EMI

8K: Society dues (monthly)

1.2K: Internet

3K: Electricity

4.5K: Food

1K: Milk

4K: Subscriptions like DL.AI, WebVeda, PythonAnywhere, Naukri.com...

That's about 57K.
So, 13K for reasons like:

1: Medicine
2: Gadgets
3: Clothes
4: Travel
5: Car/Scooty maintenance
6: Petrol/Gas
7: Cooking gas
8: Or any other luxuries
9: House maintenance (MMV and Tri Nagar)

Effectively, we would run out of 70K, or average out over the time at 70K.
Doing a rough math for an FD @ 6.5% p.a. interest rate: we would need about 1.3 Cr to make enough money for our monthly spends.



If I were to live longer, I may need to have some relationships. And "Building and Managing Relationships" is what I am worst at. Totally clueless.

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Thinking about death, again

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18 Jun 2026 — Thinking about death, again
    
I was not having a very good day.

Headache maybe because of heavy caffeine intake lately and I’ve cut back today — no tea/coffee since 9 AM in the morning.

Was thinking about my death today again and to satisfy my intellectual hunger, watched a TED Talk titled “Let’s talk about death” that encouraged people to discuss the topic of death with (their and others) with the elders or peers or family.

But let’s be real for a second: the other person may not be as interested in the topic of death, the other person may not look at it with the same depth, and there mayn’t be an “other person” to talk to in the first place.

So if I were to talk about death here on a page, let’s start with first things first:

(1) Finances: There are no financial obligations. The house itself covers the home loan and I think there will be some surplus for mom to keep.

(2) Relationships:

Let’s be honest — I don’t have any meaningful relationships to look up to or to look after.

Relationships are built on top of your successes, achievements and possessions.

And I don’t have too many or too much to count as my successes, achievements or possessions.

My relationship with my mom is limited to managing the Tri Nagar house with her.

I think if she had enough money to run her life, she wouldn’t bother me.

She needs money, not me.

I don’t see too much history or future with Anu either.

My last conversation (which was one sided with Anu lecturing me) was very painful and disappointing.

So, in short:

If I were dying, I would be better off without having Anu around, than with having her.

(3) Health

Health is not okay. Headache and stress.

Primarily the reason that triggered me to think about death.

(4) Remaining time (or life)

Now the toughest question: what would I like to do with my remaining time?

Well, I could think about a couple of questions:

(4.1) What could I do to improve my finances?

(4.2) What could I do to better my relationships?

(4.3) What could I do to better my health?

After a couple of minutes...
Completely blank on finances and relationships... 
But yeah I could rest and relax to regain my health.

Cya!

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Saying 'No'

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Steve Jobs passed away in October 2011. I was in college at that time and soon after his death, his biography by Walter Isaacson was released.

There were not a lot of things or lessons I gathered from that book when I first read it in my college days, apart from the sections and parts of the book I connected emotionally with.

Lately, I have been doing endless meditative writings about death and quoting Steve Jobs frequently for his views on death: “What would you do differently if it were your last day?”

That question has acted as a very powerful focusing lens on what I did for the past couple of years, maybe. But this morning, I realized there is also a second very powerful technique that Steve Jobs used and taught frequently to enhance focus. That technique was “Saying No”.

"People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on. But that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully."  – Steve Jobs

As I was starting my day today around 4AM amidst headache and muddled thoughts, my first thoughts were: “To focus better, what would I say 'No' to today?”

And without too much thinking the answer popped up in my head was “Blogging”. Funny, ain't it? 😀

One of the main reasons why I chose “Blogging” to say 'No' to was because it takes me about 2 hours to work on a blog post end-to-end (from watching a video to social media promotion). And now, saying 'No' to blogging meant I could easily save 2 to 4 hours. 

Apart from helping me focus, this technique has three benefits:

1) Helps you focus

2) Helps you get some extra time

3) Helps you step out of routine and ritual a bit. (Very much the case for me: by choosing not to blog, I focused my attention towards office formalities and towards rest. And honestly, the day feels pretty different.)

Thank you for reading!

PS: This technique “Saying 'No'” feels a bit like taking a “niyam” (not eating salt, not eating sugar, not getting angry, not lying, not disrespecting, etc - any one per day) at the Jain temple in my childhood days. And that resolve alone made you pay attention to what you say, do, eat or (maybe) think – making the day feel very different.

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If it were my last day...

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2026 May 27, 4 AM

It is 4AM here in India, and I am sitting on my laptop thinking what to do that would be meaningful at the end of the day, at the end of the week, and maybe month.

I joined IBM Consulting on 24th Apr and it has been over a month and a couple of days. And that’s also how long I have been on the bench.

As I sit here with muddled thoughts and a bit of headache, I ask myself “What would I like to do, to see get done before my death?”

It is both a simple and a tough question:
Tough because it forces a person to ponder about his death.
And simple because death at the end of the day seems like “we know how we are going to go out”. In reality that’s not how it happens. Before seeing death, there is a very, very long period of reduced capacity, reduced capability and a declining health. That’s about 20-30 years in many cases.

So as a dying person, what do we deal with first: reduced capability, declining health, or final stop?

As a person who wants to practice “Uttam Kshama” (Supreme Forgiveness), I want to believe that the world spares the dying by letting them know that “S/he has done well, and s/he has done enough.”

~~~ Conclusion ~~~

The way forward from here is better described in some Buddhist (or Western, or otherwise) lessons and teachings:

"Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." — Matthew 6:34 (KJV)

"God, grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, and Wisdom to know the difference." – Serenity Prayer

“If you can do something about it, why worry? If you cannot do anything about it, why worry?” — 8th-century Indian Buddhist monk Shantideva in his text, the Bodhicaryavatara (A Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life)

“Whatever happens, happens for a reason and happens for good.” — Bhagavad Gita

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Refocusing (May 2026)

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9 May 2026, 5 PM

What would I do if I were to die in 24 hours?

Latest achievement: paid back a friend some money I owed him.

Let’s be clear I don’t have any loans now (apart from some 38+ Lacs for Home loan — which is collateralized so pretty much painless :: Just that even if loan itself wasn’t a problem, the EMIs were 34+ K is like 34% of my monthly expense.

There is a thought that just clicked in my mind:

And let me be outright, the thought would seem pretty dumb and stupid, pretty irrational and aggressive

“Can I close my Home Loan in 1 Year?”

---

Let’s do some math:

• Loan amount: 38 L

• Salary: 2—2.3 L/month (24—28 L annually)

• Monthly Expense: 1—1.2 L/month

• Savings: 1—1.1 L/month (12—13.2 L annually)

Looking at the “Savings — annually” and “Loan amount” — seems like at current pace, it would take me 3 years.

Factor in the investments that I have currently: 13 Lacs

So effective burden from loan: $38-13=25\text{ Lacs}$

At current pace that would take about 2 years to reach.

Rough calculation would say: to reduce time to half (i.e. 1 year), I’d have to double the input.

---

Apart from this target-1-year period, what other timelines am I acting under?

• 6 Months of probation (May—Oct)

• 1 month of allowed bench period

• How long have I been on bench already? 24 Apr — 9 May = 15 days

That makes me think that: apart from having an urge to clear my Home loan, I should also have some emergency fund which going by the books is: 6—9 months expenses OR for me: 6—9 Lacs.

As a first step towards building emergency fund that can also be used to pay home loan, I would:

1. Update my Expenses and Investments sheets daily

2. Park some money 1k—5k in a Liquid Fund today

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Six Months To Live (May 2026)

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“If you learned today that you only had six months left to live, how would you spend your last six months on earth?”

(Read more about this question »)

I thought about this topic for about 30-40 minutes and I realized in such 6 months I would be busy repairing my relationships and I would be busy managing my finances (or debts to be specific and clear).

I could be more sensitive, respectful and careful in my relationships but I can't really try to mechanically try to fix them like a broken toy or gadget.

For my finances, I would really need to be watchful of where money goes and how I spend it.

My debts aren't exactly problematic because I have got them covered but I think about them for two reasons:
    1. Debts are still Debts. 
    2. The money which I am spending towards EMIs could have been used towards creating a financial cushion, a safety net.

In this way, debts aren't the exact problem but poor money management is.
Also, what concerns me is if people (in my relationships) would be able to do well financially after I am gone (that thought is despite how broken my relationships are).

~~~

Having written this much already makes me feel a bit lighter 😀

I am thinking after I would have made some progress towards my relationships and finances, I would devote some time (or rest of my time) towards my spiritual wellbeing.

I would practice forgiveness. And humility. And also the other of ten Jain virtues…

Wish you well!
Thank you for reading!

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Ask ‘Why’ Five Times…

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Asking ‘Why’ five times to clarify my intentions and motivations, deeper reasons, personal values and motivations of why I do that what I do...

    1. Why do you study ML (or algorithms, or whatever)?

To be able to crack interviews.

    2. Why do you want to crack interviews?

To be able to get a project (before today: it was to get a better job)

    3. Why do you want to get a project / job?

To earn money.

    4. Why do you want to earn money?

To live a comfortable life… with, maybe, decent standards of living.

Well, no, I responded to question in two points in the above answer almost to the point of justifying my current situation and way of life.

So, I would rather say: “To live comfortably” 

But then even now it seems to reveal an escalating loop in my thinking: “I am choosing an uncomfortable way of life to seek a comfortable life.”

And the grey area appears: I don't want to think of my way as the way of delayed gratification. Because no book on delayed gratification tells you how delayed it is going to be.

And then I recall my learnings from Buddhism and reckon “There is no such thing as comfortable life. Everyone suffers.”

    5. THE LAST ‘WHY’

Assuming my last answer (“to live comfortably“) was okay and accepted.

Then I ask again “Why live comfortably?”

I am not getting any thoughts, other than thinking of myself as a hedonist... 

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Mind Your Own Matters

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I have been in a lot of mess, a lot of chaos, a lot of trouble because of one mistake, one habit – I don't mind my own business.

As I try to see its truthfulness, its validity, I see it in play in most (if not all) of my relationships and equations with other people.

Somebody comes to me with a problem and I tend to make it a personal task, goal to accomplish.

My maid asks for help in police verification for working in the society and I make it a personal mission – she may neither be that appreciative of my help, nor may be critically needing it.

Some girl in my society in first year of college asks for my help with Math and Python, and I make that a personal mission. Even when (same as before) she might neither be that appreciative of my help, nor may be critically needing it.

My mom calls me and tells me of some issue with some tenant, or some issue with water, or electric, or some tool or equipment, and I would be totally distracted from what I would be doing. Packing my things and leaving for Tri Nagar. And then when things are sorted, my mom would be telling me that “my personal intervention was not needed”. I then at such times think (for no reason) to myself “why did she call me then to rant?”

At the NGO I went to for the last two months to teach, I thought of it as a personal responsibility, and felt an onus for it to make sure that the kids there learn something. Even when their parents and the kids themselves don't see much value in it, though the kids cannot be blamed given their age. And this is not my assumption, I see it in absenteeism and falling attendance.

The same thing applies to my blogging activity – what do I have to do with Iran? What do I have to do with Bihar? What do I have to do with Bengal? What do I have to do with Delhi? Nothing, nothing and nothing – but I still write, I still blog, still waste my time and energy.

Then came the moment of realisation…

Yesterday afternoon, I was at Bikaner Sweets to buy some sweets and namkeen. There I saw an electric kitchen appliance that was frying samosas in an oil pool. I was totally excited to see that and could not hide my excitement. I asked “is that an electric appliance for making samosas?... Is that an electric appliance for making samosas?” Then the old bitter-and-sour man sarcastically remarked, “No, that's running on gobar-gas!” (Gobar: cow dung)

I went quiet. I thought about it. And put in my pocket the lesson he meant to impart…

~~~

Thanks for reading! 

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Soft skills I need to improve and need help in

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There are many things, many improvements that I can do in myself. One such area is “Soft Skills”. And let me clear: it is again a very broad term (“soft skills”) – what I meant by it was: 

    1. Communication skills
Communication with my friends (listening to them, taking interest in their stories), family, coworkers (how to talk to them while not losing your temper and while treating them as humans who could falter), managers (clarifying myself of their expectations, and clarifying to them of my limits or capability or capacity)

Another example of this poor communication was: When I analyzed my interview calls, I realized I was most of the time underselling my skills, myself. I used unconfident language even for questions I had good hands on and exposure.

    2. Team Handling
How to decide:
    • When to direct them
    • When to guide them
    • When to spoonfeed them
    • When to patronize them
    • When to escalate/reprimand them

    3. Temper Management
When I am in a bad mood or temper: I tend to use bad language with people close to me (friends and family) - which further ruins my equation with the other person rather than improving it.

And it is totally the other way round with somebody senior  to me (be it managers or be it someone in authority higher than me – at work or at home): I tend to go “spineless”. I tend to go defenseless. Becoming obsequious or servile.

    4. Time Management
This could be an issue with my prioritization skills, or time management.
I don’t manage time that well. I do things that I enjoy for personal satisfaction rather than which are needed for the time, hour or the requester / manager.

For ex: I have been advised by friends and family against “wasting time on blogging”. I have been advised by my managers to not make the project “academic” and report on status (whether pass or fail) in a timely manner.

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The Things We Take For Granted

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Before I start on this post, let me first clarify that there is nothing happening to me or to people close to me that requires a talk on such a grave topic.

And if I were to tell you (which I will in a bit) what actually triggered me to pick this topic, you would be like “I'm making a mountain out of a molehill”.

Have you ever thought or paid attention to how trivial we think of it to have correct details on our ID cards like Aadhaar or PAN maybe?

I haven't checked the exact details about the case that I am going to share but at a high level it goes like:

A girl about 7 or 9 years old is out of school at the NGO I go to teach at. And the reason I got from the instructor there was that she had some errors (Plural) in her Aadhaar card.

Her name was written as “Baby of Anita” – not her actual name. Her date of birth was incorrect. And her parents' names were put incorrectly in Aadhaar. 
These details are not matching her birth certificate.

Because of this, she is not able to get admission in any school. 

I tried to assist this girl and the instructor by giving them the details of people in my contacts who do Aadhaar Update as a profession but it was of not much use as I was anticipating. I tried to talk to Dhirendra ji in my society and he said he will provide me a number to call.

I doubt if it will be of any help to the girl or just another dead end.

I am basically out of words to express myself about what other consequences lie waiting for this girl ahead.

As I write this today, you have no idea how grateful I feel for my grandfather and my chachaji (younger brother of my father) – just for the proper documentation of my details!

~~~

Other things that I had in mind which we take for granted are the usual: air and water, simple acts of breathing and walking, ability to taste food, ability to see, etc. 

The reason I see these things with such importance today is because I have been thinking about death lately. Thinking about death as a way to refocus and reprioritize my activities and life. And as I had some cough and cold today, I thought about what it must be like for people who are not even able to breathe properly.
From there my attention spiralled to other senses, and simple acts like walking, eating, being able to talk to people we have valued in our lives – and whom you could still talk to (for me, I was thinking of my grandmother).

~~~

And all of this also goes for essentials like: electricity, shelter and schooling – all of which I thought my caregivers owed me. I was wrong – I got them through the conscious choice of my grandparents.

It requires a bit of awareness, a bit of gratitude, a bit of appreciation to rise above the auto-pilot mode of living, above the daily rut of our lives and see, appreciate and feel thankful for what we have – rather than complaining about what we have not. 

I guess that's all for today!

My message to anyone reading this would be: 
Consider the things you take most for granted, the simplest of simple things – those actually might be the things which make life worth living!

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Honoring My Managers: Deepika Saxena

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Good morning!

In my 13 years of experience, I have worked under a lot of managers. To keep this post manageable for me to write and for the readers to read, I am going to stick to a few of those managers (and sometimes to their qualities, rather than to them as a person).

Let’s me start with my first manager, Deepika Saxena.

I was there at the NetEdge Computing in Noida for internship, and I wasn’t doing exactly well with the Android app that I was building. So one bright sunny day, around 10, 10.30, Deepika called me into the conference room. She sat on one side of the oval table and I sat on the other, but not facing each other, and like 1 or 2 chairs away.

Now she said something on these lines: “...We at NetEdge look for a few qualities in a person when we hire him or her and so do every other company. And let me tell you that you do have those qualities in you…” And she went on with that conversation, asking questions normally about work, about my college, education, my interests, family, health and other things.

The qualities that she mentioned were:
- Attitude: maintain a positive attitude towards work expected from you, and people you work with
- Competency: This is the most visible and reported quality in corporate world
- General Intelligence: Not everyone can know everything all the time, but you could cultivate the basic ingredient that makes you knowledgeable and that ingredient is general intelligence
- Commitment: Companies and managers like to hire people they see long term future with
- Humility: Deepika used to say a phrase to people and it was “There is always going to be some person better than you...”

~~~

One observation I had that’s work related from my time at NetEdge Computing (under Deepika) and at Magic Software (under Vikas Kumar Gupta) was that:

“In POCs and Projects with research like goals, you got to come back fast with response and development to a task / ask / or query – a little bit late and your manager or your client or your company may start to lose interest and start questioning the requirement itself.”

Thanks for reading!
Stay tuned!

Dated: 2026-Apr-15, 9AM

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Honoring My Friends

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This is a debatable post – reason being: I am not in touch with any of the people about whom this post is.

People very often have asked me “who my friends are?”
And I have fallen short of an answer for most of the recent years – my list would be like one or two people long.
For my years (2018-2022) in Chandigarh at Infosys, it was Anil Dahiya. He was like my friend, mentor, emotional support, my go-to person for most things but then he moved to the US from the Ford project and I moved to Delhi. I think I last met / hung out with him in 2021.

Well, I am happy as I am writing about Anil, otherwise I didn’t have him in mind when I was thinking of this post: I was thinking about Rohit Sud, Vikas Jain and Yajuvendra Gupta instead.
And so now I will make this post about four people instead of three.

Anil is like an idol to me, my role model. 
I admire him most for his strength to face the painful, life-altering disease of Ankylosing Spondylitis. And I regret writing this because he had told me last time (in 2021-2022ish) that he doesn’t want the world (friends, family or at work place) to know that he has this illness because Anil doesn’t want their pity, he wants their respect.

In my hindsight from my time in Chandigarh, I only remember being friends with two people: Anil Dahiya and Rohit Sud (though Rohit had quit Infosys in Nov 2019 in about 1 year and 8 months to move back to Delhi – but I was in touch with him on calls – The only person I used to call).

The thing about Anil and Rohit is this: They both teach you the philosophy of YOLO (You Only Live Once) – though neither of them have done anything for their own guilty pleasures / mischievous things that I am aware of. They both maintained a very clear, clean and disciplined image in my eyes – partly the reason why I adore them so much.

They didn’t share their difficulties with me and in contrast, they guided me through my tough times.

~~~

I came to know Vikas and Yajuvendra from my past workplaces. Vikas from Webplant and Yajuvendra from Mobileum. So they are both known to me for over 10+ years.

What Vikas and Yajuvendra teach me isn’t YOLO precisely but both of their lives do teach things on similar lines.
Vikas and Yajuvendra believed in enjoying what they did – otherwise (with a very high chance) they would stop doing it (eventually if not immediately).

One of their qualities that has definitely rubbed on me is: straightforwardedness (which I realized lately is also a Jain tenet practiced in Daslakshan days).
They express themselves so clearly, in such simple words that it would be understandable even to a five year old.

They are both hard working and look after their families (wife and children – Yaju has two (now) grown-up boys and Vikas has a daughter, Shivanshi who might have entered school) as responsible people.

One very contrasting thing about Vikas and Yajuvendra is how they see money: Vikas is definitely money-hungry, while Yaju practices contentment. And this reflects very clearly in their interactions with others.

Religiously and community-wise also I am able to connect with them: Vikas is Digambar Jain, and Yaju (though not Jain) is a Baniya (same as Jains 😀)

~~~

PS: 
All four are senior to me years, age and experience wise.
All four are married.
Three also have got kids – Rohit is yet to get there.
And I am a 34 years old bachelor.

Dated: 2026 Apr 10, 7.30 AM