100th Post I started to write on a blog 10 years back and registered shabdh.com about 8 years back. Its my humble attempt to share something useful or interesting. Since this is somewhat like a milestone for me I thought I will just do some giveaway to mark the occasion. Here is a book that I am planning to giveaway to a randomly chosen person who has liked the post. Since I can ship only in India, this is limited…
Mother Tongue There must be a reason why we call the language that one speaks as a kid as mother tongue. In ancient times women folks were generally no that mobile and were not migrating as much as men. So when a bunch of men migrated and displaced local population, they took the local women as their wives and the young kids learnt first the language of their mother and hence the mother tongue. India and its languages कोस-कोस पर…
Calculus – A little Personal Background Calculus was introduced to us in India in Plus 1 is the CBSE curriculum (we have a 10 +2 system, where one spends 12 years in School + 3 years in Nursery, KG1/2 before getting to school). I am an engineer and have taken many courses in mathematics but unfortunately my interest started waning down quite a bit and I missed the fun in doing mathematics and it became a very dry subject for…
Have you gone nuts? Wait a minute? What is Banda and why would anyone in the right mind swap Manhattan for Banda. Where is this Banda and what the hell I am talking about. All these questions are valid and if you can give me five minutes I can explain. Banda Islands Banda is a small group of islands in the Maluku region now a part of Indonesia. Here is snapshot of the map to give you a better picture….
Conference Room 1729, KGF, Bangalore, Circa 2118 Kolar Gold Fields have been recently resurrected by the Indian Entrepreneur Antriksh Shah who made his fortune in the hi-tech startup. He has bought all the remaining physical as well as the trademarks and branding. But he has been very secretive with what he wants to do with all these assets. Meanwhile Srini Asteroid 99944 is a Near Earth Object which will be travelling close to Earth’s vicinity in the year 2121. Scientists…
Tail Event? Talk about a tail event and disruption, Covid has been a tail event that nobody wanted and hair cutting salons in India are hard hit. While doing my own hair cut today myslef I was thinking if someone would have asked me pre Covid “Would you cut you own hair at home ever in your life by yourself?” My answer would have been straight no. Almost everyone has a favorite barber shop and also a chosen barber to…
Zero: The Backdrop Zero is a unique number. Technically every number is unique but Zero as a number and concept was considered dangerous by many for millenniums and we will delve little more looking at its history and its rise in application in various technology. Many would have heard that Mathematics is called the Queen of Science and Number Theory is Queen of Mathematics. This quote is attributed to gifted Mathematician called Gauss. Our very own Srinivasan Ramanujan explored number…
Last Mile Businesses that directly deal with customers probably want them to have best customer experience but that is generally not delivered in a way that most businesses and customers would like to. Businesses normally spend a lot of time hiring and training people who are in the backend and but not their frontline workers. The frontline workers who directly interact the customers are many times contractors, outsourced or temporary. The call centers that service customer calls are one thing…
Mosquito: The Nemesis Mosquito are mostly treated condescendingly by humans. As much as we humans may think that the advancement and where we have reached today maybe attributed to the ingenious mind which may not be entirely true. Recently I finished reading up The Mosquito, A Human History of our deadliest Predator by Timothy C. Winegard and this a brief of how I felt about the whole story. A nice video explaining how mosquito has evolved to be such deadly…
Qatar and its population breakup The most remarkable thing about Qatar is that it’s Qatari population is only 313,000 whereas the expatriate population is about 2.3 million. Of this 2.6 million population about half of population lives in the capital city of Doha. There are about 7 expatriate for every Qatari native. There are about 300 males for every 100 females in the country overall and the most probable reason is the expatriate population. For Qatari population the sex ratio…
The Battle Battle of Buxar fought in October 1764 that set out, a greedy private enterprise East India Company headquartered in London, on a path that changed the South Asia forever and the after shocks are even felt today including what we see today in Afghanistan in 2021. As a kid I have been to the place and unfortunately there wasn’t much there except agricultural fields and few graves for British Officers reminiscent of the bloody battle. Lets look at…
Dehypothecation What? So whenever you take a vehicle loan for 4 wheeler or 2 wheeler, basically debtor (one who takes loan) pledges a collateral to secure a debt. Once the debtor closes the loan the Registration Certificate (normally called RC Book, it is mostly a Smart card now like a Chip Credit Card) needs to be updated and the process is called Dehypothecation and recently I closed loan for my two wheeler and had to go through this. Now why…
Why Alchemy? Alchemy is one of the oldest somewhat scientific approach through which people have tried to make gold from different methods. But with all the technological advancements we still have not been able to make fundamental elements artificially. The periodic table have a number of elements that have been discovered over the years. The first 94 elements are from Hydrogen to Plutonium are found in nature, some are found in traces and rest from 95 to 118 are synthesized…
Disclaimer: This is not a parenting advice. I am not qualified enough but this is a reminder to myself and open for feedback. All this is subject to change. My daughter Ira is more than 2 years now and these are thoughts that crosses my mind many times. I do not know what is right or wrong but maybe when Ira is old enough she can give a feedback. Anyways my dear readers feel free to comment and share your…
Why do we need to understand our neighbor? China is no doubt a superpower and it is very important for India to very much aware of the neighbor. Here is a first article of two part series where I look into three different people from Chinese history and it is inspired by BBC’s Program called “Chinese Characters“. Chinese civilization is almost as old as our civilization and our histories are connected in more ways than we can imagine. The Silk…