In Jan 2009, Suchitra Sastri sent a message saying, and I paraphrase, “Don’t you think there are too few libraries in Chennai? Let’s start one.” And it started with that. From then on, her, me and a couple of others have been working round the clock to start a simple Netflix style library in Chennai that is accessible and convenient and also profitable enough to survive on its own. On Oct 1, I quit my high-paying Hindustan Lever job to work on this project full time. The weeks since then have been extremely hectic and tiring, to say the least. But two things are working well for us. a) I’ve an excellent team who are working their asses off for the cause. b) We have amazingly supportive and understanding family and friends (thank you reel later in the page).

The point.

Is that.

—

—

—

Coming Wednesday, 23rd December ‘09, we are launching a new Netflix-style library of books in Chennai. Its called ilovereadin and it is housed at http://www.iloveread.in. Join. Tell everyone you know!

—

—

—

Thank you reel:

Special thanks to the following people for being there when we needed you the most (in no particular order):

1. My parents
2. Sahil’s parents
3. Suchi’s parents, Vani
4. All the parents of the people who’ve worked for us
5. Sahil’s close group of friends (you know who you are)
6. Ramna (and Niket)
7. Ayush, Tool, Vamsi, Babloo, other hostel junta, Ravikanth, other CFI junta, Bhawana
8. Prof. L S Ganesh and Prof. Nagarajan
9. Prof. Idichandy
10. Karthika and Aparajita
11. Amrit Vatsa
12. Twosome and Sooper. Sonali and Gitanjali.
13. Tavleen, Mudgal and other ex-colleagues from Levers
14. Anshumani Ruddra (You are awesome inspiration.)
15. Mrs. Jean Isaacs
16. Everybody at PS Senior Secondary School
17. All our close friends who’ve believed in us and have supported us.
18. Pinkus, Sankarakutti
19. Manu

Without you guys, it would have been impossible to even imagine pulling this off. We owe you all one.

My awesome team:

1. IT team X
2. Suchitra Sastri
3. Dalal
4. Interns Hareesh and Varsha and Sudarshan (?)
5. Designer: Aparajita Bose

Update:

IT team X = Sahil + Rajesh + Aneesh. With a lot of advice from Manu.

New story up: Just Another Day.

As usual, comments here, not there.

I am from the school of thought which says that the best writing comes from writers who have been through a lot of pain. I personally think I write better when I am depressed. Which is annoying, because I am not depressed now, and I can’t think of anything nice to write. BUT, I wrote this today, and I like it, and I am happy about it. I am thinking of re-evaluating the effect of a negative emotion on my writing.

I was waiting for you today at the traffic light. So we could stand next to each other and wait for green together. So that I could be a red-light-boy and you could be a red-right-girl and I could say, ‘Hi, do you want to be red-light-friends?’ We could meet at the traffic lights everyday and chat up in 45 seconds. Everyday could start with your traffic light smile. And I could be annoyed and have a bad day when you don’t turn up. And then many red lights later, perhaps, we could meet elsewhere, someplace quiet.

My rural stint is over.

I wanted to write a tiny post on WHY I blogged it. I want to say its pure shameless self-promotion. But a lot of things can be blogged for pure shameless self-promotion. Why this?

Because I thought it made a good story. Really, that’s all there is to it.

Oh, and apologies to post them as pages, I know they didn’t show up nicely on RSS feeds — I should’ve done this better. But now its done!

Finally the rural stint is here. I shall blog it. And in honour of the great rural stint, I have added a new tab on the top that directly takes you to the story of my rural adventure.

Wish me luck.

Oh, and please comment on why you read books in the previous post. Please please please. Pretty please.

This is the question:

Why do you read (books)?

(leave answers on the comments section)

Tee-twenty-two,
this-is-for-you.

New story up — link here.

Context — I wanted to write something for folks back at insti for a long time, having completed a year out of it. Since Sooper asked me to do exactly that, I said, ok, done! And yet, preaching doesn’t go well with insti junta and I think I sound really bad when preaching (Maybe BoFi will remember my attendance preach!). So I wanted to knit it into a story. I am not sure if I did a good job and I am not sure if they are picking it up, but, its written and I am happy with the outcome. Thanks to Prats for edits.

As usual, comment there, not here.

Oh. And three years.

THE BLACK KITTEN

– Gatsby, Smoke, Chops and the Poetess

The Gatsby proposed the story
The Holy Smoke gave it wind
The Carry Chops gave it colour
The Poetess gave it a sine
Together, they spoke in rhyme

Hear, hear :

Bert and Ron, in the middle of the road,
Sat down to rest their weary soles;
Ere Bert was asleep, Ron gave a holler:
“How long afore you think, that jeep’ll run us over?”
“10 meters!”, reported the engineer bright,
Ron, meanwhile, is all ready for flight.
As Fate would have, brakes couldn’t avoid the hittin,
But them it didn’t; it hit a luckless black kitten!

Kitten being dead, the Soul prepared to leave,
All ready to rise, and Heavens to receive.
The pull but came, from below, so it fell
“Black Black Kitten Soul! You belong in Hell!”
“Apartheid! My Lord! So truly unfair!”
“Just one way out…that if you dare
To scratch a Human and set Soul free.”
Failure alas! For Metaphysical Misery!
No longer substance, the Soul couldn’t touch;
Leave alone scratch, or for that matter clutch!

Smart Soul then, had an idea bright,
Thought no more, but entered right
Into the body of Bert not Ron,
Cause Bert had more muscle and brawn.
Though ready to scratch, the Soul but fails,
For Alas! Bert had not the long-sharp-NAILS!

“No matter! no matter! we’ll sit and wait,
For nails to grow, for thats our Fate.”
And they sat 3 years, like roadside beggars;
Incidentally, the driver was Arnold Schwarzenegger.

As the three years drew to an end,
The Soul had nails no man could defend.
All ready to scratch and liberate itself,
But lo! a Spaceship, and out came an elf;
Elf-like Aliens rather, with multiple heads,
Armed with nail cutters and so they said:
“We come to rid the world of the muck
Who grow their nails and never cut!”

“Start with the First Man! Let there be drama!”
And they flew to inspect Barrack Obama.
The Oval Office, they found him in,
All wan and pale, with fingers thin,
And nails so long, bade the aliens utter:
“Give us all your Nail Cutters!”

Obama grabbed a cutter and ran,
To simultaneously cut, was his plan.
But footnails he couldn’t, while he was running,
A fierce chase then followed, with constant gunning.
A cave he ran into, breathless with fear
But aliens at the door, the end is now near.

But to his surprise, Kitten Soul appeared:
“I started, I’ll end; Dont be afeard!”
With a puppy face, “MEOW!” he’d spoken,
And lo! The Aliens were all Nail-broken!

Total responses = 509

Here is the location spread –>

Here is the results growth –>

Both are much less spectacular than I had hoped for. I have to assume that a lot of people just didnt fill the survey although they got the information / they didnt forward. Also, there is a bias in the information only 0.2% of respondents said they don\’t read books, which I find highly suspect to be representative of the truth.

A HUGE thanks to all those people who filled the survey and those who forwarded it. Thanks.

Announcing The Great Chennai Book reading survey and The Great Chennai viral networking challenge.

The survey is meant to address one question – Is Chennai a ‘well-read’ city or not. The idea is that while everybody seems to think that Chennai is a ‘well-read’ city, i.e. people in Chennai read books a lot, there is no hard evidence. And one cant act on a thought. If we can prove the statement either way, then we can present it to the people who matter and say, look Chennai doesnt read as much as you think so lets do something about this OR wow, Chennai reads a lot, lets be proud of it.

While we were discussing this survey in its initial phases, we thought we will pay a market research organization to do this for us. But then we thought, lets viral-market it. And while doing so, lets test the mathematics behind viral marketing. Essentially, Chennai is a small city and most people are separated by a max of 3 degrees of separation* (this is my guess), so that would mean that the exponential growth of viral marketing will plateau. Simply put, the number of respondents over time should like like this — link here.

If we are able to get a good curve, then it might be possible to estimate an average degree of separation in Chennai. (Although, I wont promise it.)

The link to the survey is here — http://survey.we-bloggers.com/index.php?sid=62781&lang=en (Survey average fill time = 3 mins.)

The live result of the viral networking curve (updated hourly) is displayed at the end of the survey. There is also a link to an internet usage survey that you might want to answer.

Please please answer the survey if you are in Chennai. Please inform your friends about it. Please blog about it. Please put it in your status / facebook / orkut message. Please be part of the survey and the challenge. I’ve sent out an email forward, if you want a copy, email me at booksurvey[at]gmail[dot]com.

* — Degree of Separation — If I know Amrit and Amrit knows Raghav and Raghav knows Ashwin. Then Ashwin is 3 degrees of separation away from me. It is theorized that everybody in the world is separated by a maximum of six degrees of separation. BUT, in a closed world (like Chennai), this will maybe smaller. For instance, in a village of 200 people, eveybody will know eveybody!

** — Survey owners — Amrutash Misra (alumnus IIT Madras, PS Senior school) and Suchitra Sastri (alumnus Wharton b-school, PS Senior school). Webs space provided by — Amrit Vatsa (alumnus IIT Madras). Bezier curve representing results — Arun (slinky) (IIT Madras). Special thanks to all the people who have argued over Chennai book reading habits over cups of filter coffee. And extreme gratitude to all our friends and wellwishers for helping out.