Longstanding readers of my diary will recall my mentioning my friend Jaikishan who, along with his family, was responsible for straightening out a very screwed up young man (me) back in the late 70s and early 80s.

Apart from just being fantastic friends, and a real family to me, I learnt many things from Kishan, his sister and his parents – from what really good coffee tastes like, to dealing with personal tragedy and failure. They were the “conduits” that eventually brought Shubha and me together,

But it was Kishan’s father, GKN Rajan, who taught his son and me one of the most important things in our lives:

Principles.

He never spoke about it, he never preached about it, he never ranted about it.

He just taught us all by example. Uncle Rajan was one of the most principled people I have ever known.

People who didn’t know him very well would have thought of him as a stern, even stubborn man. But those of us who knew him, knew him to be someone who would never compromise on his principles, yet was a caring and thoughtful man. And the results showed in his relationships (which invariably lasted a lifetime), the way his customers loved and respected him, and the way even the smallest child in the family adored him, never scared of his stern appearance. The kids called him “Car Tatha” because he was always driving off somewhere with his faithful black Ambassador car.

To me, he was an anchor point – a strong, principled man, who opened his home to me when I needed to get my life back into shape, someone who called me his son (which is an easy thing to do) and never let me think of our relationship in any other way (which is an *extremely* difficult thing to do).

After Kishan passed away in an accident in 1994, I often thought about Uncle Rajan. He and Aunty spent a lot of time in the USA with their daughter, and we saw far less of them than we wanted. They eventually settled down in Mysore, which rekindled my affection for the place, and I tried to go there whenever possible.

Recently, in April, Shubha and I stayed with them for a day, and it was unbelievable how being with Uncle and Aunty turned back time, as we sat at the dining table having breakfast, where Uncle Rajan and I got into a deep discussion about digital cameras and assorted gadgets (he was as much a gadget freak as I am).

He was older, frailer and a little more hoarse, but he was the same Uncle Rajan who has played such an important part in my life over several decades. And I came away from the trip full of resolve, my “family batteries” fully recharged.

And with his advice ringing in my mind – “If you believe in something, then it is only right that you should persue it. Anything else is a compromise.”

That was the last time that I saw him.

Uncle Rajan passed away last night, after complications arising out of a surgery.

And for the second time in a year, I find myself staring into a void filled with pain.

Goodbye, Uncle Rajan.

Your son will miss you.

For those of you still speculating about this (and hoping that it isn’t so), here’s some bad news:

I got someone very influential to get BSNL to go on record about the current status of billing, and the answer is:

BSNL *has* started charging for traffic over your subscribed limit from July 1st.

And in *all* places in India. No exceptions.

That means your usage *over* your subscribed limit (1/2/5 GB for 256/384/512 kbps) in the month of July will reflect in your telephone bill that you will get in August, at Rs.2/1.5/1.5 per MB over your subscribed limit.

So if you have a 256 kbps connection (1 GB limit), and have downloaded 5 movies at an average of 500 MB each, for a total of 2500 MB (2.5 GB), then you will be paying

Rs.500 +((2500-1000) * Rs.2) = Rs.3500

in August.

If you work it out, you will see that it makes much more sense to switch to the HOME1800 (512kbps, 5 GB) plan immediately. Starting now.

BSNL Dataone Tariffs page here.

Enjoy.

In October 2000, we were getting ready for Bangalore IT.COM 2000 – India’s largest IT-related expo. As in 1999, the community had got together to put up a big show at the Linux Pavillion of IT.COM, and lots of plans were in the air.

One of the highlights of the previous year was our network – Linux powered, and performing flawlessly. In 2000, we couldn’t afford having anything less.

The day before the event, we began setting up our stalls – a huge, sprawling affair that covered the complete rear of the pavillion. When I arrived there that morning, I watched with glee as bunches of young enthu cutlets put the professionals to shame by setting up equipment, stringing up cables, securing networks, etc.

In the far left corner stood three PCs, which together formed Khader‘s cluster demo. As I approached it, a tall, jeans-jacket clad, skinny guy, whom I had never seen before, rose from behind the table, busily and efficiently stringing network cable around the place. Avinash and I watched him for a while. The new guy clearly knew what he was doing, but never let anyone feel that he was “showing off” – he just did his job, and he did it well.

I remember Avinash looking at me and raising an eyebrow. We have always used events to identify potential new team members. At IT.COM ’99, that resulted in Shanu being “assimilated”, which later brought in Sony as well – and of course our first interns: Kalyan, Madhu and Mrinal (who were all studying then).

Anyway, after we watched the tall, lanky guy at work for a while, we knew that we had another “potential”.

By the time the event was over, this young man, who had never participated in any of our community activities before, and was not even from Bangalore, had become a part of the group – everyone felt like they had known him forever. And as Avinash and I had hoped, he turned out to be yet another valuable addition to our team at Exocore, which he joined a few months later.

Over the years that he worked with us, I watched him grow into a responsible, trustworthy and hardworking engineer, and he (like most Exocore people) became a close and valued friend (and probably the only person on earth that my mutt, Judo, was afraid of – and loving every minute of it).

When he eventually moved on we were all sad to see him go, but happy that he was following his dream.

Since then, he has continued his career in far away lands, with resounding success. When I met his current boss last year, I was thrilled to hear the appreciation in his voice of this young man’s achievements, and how much he valued him.

And yet this young man returned, year after year, during Linux Bangalore time, to help us set up things, make sure that things ran smoothly.

Well, this young man had another dream to fulfil – one he had dared to address just before he left Bangalore.

And today, this particular dream of his comes true, and I’d like you to join our extended family, friends, colleagues and me when I wish him all the best that life has to offer.

Congratulations Vaibhav, on your marriage to Pooja.

Good things happen to good people.

Am I the only one who finds this statement interesting?

It should go straight into India’s IT chronicles, to be reflected upon as often as possible, never to be forgotten.

Remember N.Vittal’s comment many years ago that India should not buy software from foreign countries, because we don’t know what’s in it?

Was that man a prophet or what?

This morning, I attended friend Samyeer Metrani’s daughter’s naming ceremony, which happened at the Ashraya International Hotel on Infantry Road in Bangalore.

Great food, and it was good to meet a lot of old friends whom one had not seen for many years.

At some point, I found myself in the hall down there, right at the end, and I turned around, and found myself swallowing a giant lump in my throat.

This was where the Bangalore Linux User Group used to meet from 1998, until a little more than a year ago.

I closed my eyes, and I could “see” my old friends and fellow BLUGgies sitting in chairs scattered around the hall, chatting in an animated fashion.

There in a corner stood Madhu, cracking up everyone around him with some advocacy tale from college or some event. His favourite was the story of the two Sardars who stood near him at IT.COM 99, smiling patronisingly as they watched him run Windows on his machine – until he hit a key and they realised that it was Windows running as a task under Linux. As he put it – “the loudest sound was that of their jaws hitting the floor”.

Towering over everyone else, there stood Kalyan, totally soaking in the bonhomie and the cameradie as people around him hatched plans to get more students into the fold.

Standing at the door stood Jessie – she without whom nothing could ever happen – relentless ensuring that the hotel served up only the best food available, while ruthlessly negotiating with them to keep the costs down for everyone.

And scattered around the room were Shanu, Sony, Surjo, Mahendra, Kartik, Nikhil, Sushanth, Gopi, Mrinal, Kishore, Samyeer, Hanish, Harsha, Biju, Kalakrishnan, Avinash, Guru Bhat, Khader, Naim, KD, Vaibhav, Jace and so many other familiar faces, who all worked together for so many years to get people to understand what Linux and FOSS was all about, and get people to use it – while at the same time having an outrageously good time.

It was a time when we were breaking down technical walls. I remember the crowd reaction when Khader demonstrated X running on a Sis 6215c in FB mode. Or when we all brought digital cameras to the meet and figured out how to use them with Linux. Mrinal doing music composition under Linux, and Shanu editing a movie. All things that people said couldnt be done under Linux, and there we were, doing it.

Those were the days when the only question that ever came up when we hatched an outrageous advocacy plan was “when do we start?”.

The days when we sat and brainstormed about getting some Linux presence into IT.COM – only to have the IT Secretary of Karnataka stand up at the back of the hall and ask us what we needed to make it happen. When we said “a stall would be nice”, he gave us a pavillion, one that the Times of India would later refer to as “the crown jewel of IT.COM”.

Yes, the Ashraya holds some great memories for me. Memories of a revolution, and memories of a community.

God, how I miss those days.

This afternoon, I did something seriously scary.

After half a decade of doing our annual event at one place, I today shook hands with the venue manager of the place where our event will be held from now on.

“Change” is a dreaded word, but I hope that this will work out well. The FOSS community needs it.

Speaking of which – did I just chuck a stone into a hornets’ nest here? I better start looking for some asbestos shorts.

From here:

But Abbott says Brazil currently enjoys the most generous pricing agreement of any country outside Africa. It argues that if patents are broken, pharmaceutical companies may be deterred from investing in further research.

Just for saying that, I think Abbot should be punished with Brazil breaking the patents on HIV medication.

Because this is possibly the *worst* possible argument you can have to stop someone from breaking patents, and the best possible reason to actually do so.

Let me explain (and spare me the economics lectures, please):

Abbot is a manufacturer of HIV drugs that are widely used across the world. Because they have a virtual monopoly over the drug, thanks to their patents, they can charge outrageous prices for drugs that will decide whether someone lives or dies.

But that isn’t the point behind my post. My point is that Abbot claims that if patents are broken, pharmaceutical companies may be deterred from investing in further research. If you believe that, then you probably also believe in the Easter bunny, Santa Claus and the fact that the Golden Gate Bridge is for sale.

The reality has always been that there is more money in the treatment than in the cure. I think it is time that someone breaks the stranglehold that pharmaceutical companies have over peoples’ lives, and make it infeasible to run a business producing *treatment* medication (which should be left to the generics) and focus more on *cures*.

There is a strong parallel between the way pharmaceutical companies are facing a challenge from generics, and the way Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) has challenged traditional software businesses.

Despite the fact that FOSS has completely broken the back of the monopolies that a few software (and even hardware) companies have enjoyed, none of these companies have run out of business, or even seen their revenues reduced in any measurable way. Instead, what FOSS has done is take away the low-hanging fruit, forcing companies like Microsoft to focus on the more difficult stuff (like producing an OS that cannot be cracked in 12 minutes).

In fact, FOSS can literally be seen as the “generics” of the software world, and the positive impact that FOSS has had on the software world has been acknowledged everywhere.

Similarly, I not only disagree with Abbot’s contention that generics will cause pharma companies to stop research – I in fact think that breaking such patents will force pharma companies into a direction that will yield much more credible and tangible results – both revenue and quality-of-life wise.

So GO FOR IT, BRAZIL. Become the Linux of the life-saving world.

If you are interested in this year’s FOSS event, read this.

One could really use your inputs right now – especially if you are interested in FOSS in any way.

It’s been a few years (like maybe 20) since I have been to a play, and usually I am not much inclined to go to one, either.

But tomorrow will find me at the Ranga Shankara theatre at 7:30pm, to watch Romeo and Juliet.

Why this sudden change of heart? Well, apart from the fact that this play features some friends of mine, it is also a peek at the next generation of performing artists in Bangalore, who will take over from the current incumbents. The people acting in this play are usually seen acting in minor roles in most stage productions, but are stepping into the limelight this time. That deserves support, and it certainly has mine. So I, the wife, the daughter and bunches of friends shall be at the theatre by 7pm to watch “The Next Generation” take their first few steps.

If you are planning to be there, make sure you are in time. Ranga Shankara apparently is tough as nails about late comers. Once the play starts, latecomers will be denied entry. Period.

The guys at Phenom are getting some unexpected publicity all over the place all of a sudden.

Right up front is a really long and detailed interview with “bassy” Gaurav, in the InfinityMag – I *love* that huge photo of Gaurav’s there! And it is nice to see Gaurav competently tackle difficult questions about the Creative Commons license they used for their first album.

Next, on Monday evening – that’s the 27th of June, at 8 pm – Phenom is featured on WorldSpace for an hour. If you have a WorldSpace receiver, tune in! If you don’t, you still got time to go buy one!

And finally, there is a Phenom news item waiting for the right time to be announced. I know what it is, you don’t (na na na na naaaa na!), so you’ll just have to wait a few days to hear it.

While on rock music – if you are awake tonight at 1:30am IST (technically, that is Saturday morning), you may want to visit The Fooz (Flash required) and listen to their broadcast. Fellow BLUGgie Kaustubh Srikanth is going to be RJ’ing a show about independent rock productions, especially from India. You can “phone in” via Skype – if he doesnt play Phenom, howl at him, if he does, call and ask for more!