New Delhi Times

As if one doesn’t already have enough to worry about, the spammers are really getting on my nerves now. I receive almost 500 pieces of junk mail on my email account every day. I receive an equal number of spam comments on my blog. Not to mention the spam trackbacks. Spam! Spam! Spam! Its every where! Heck, even my mobile service provider Hutch daily sends me almost a dozen spam SMS messages (no, I don’t want to download Kingfisher calendar models on my cellphone!).

Somebody please save me from spam!

Meanwhile, I have re-enabled comments on my blog. So please leave a comment and help massage my ego. And I haven’t forgotten about New Delhi Times 2.0! Its gonna happen real soon!

I have been getting so much comment spam of late that it is choking my web host server. So i will have to disable the comments for now. Will figure out the issue and enable comments shortly. Meanwhile I can of course be reached at gaurav at tekritisoftware dot com

It has been two years of blogging on New Delhi Times in its present incarnation. I am feeling a little bored and stagnant with the present format. I want to make some changes but not sure what. Some of the things I am thinking of are

1. Inviting guest bloggers to post on the blog so it doesn’t remain a monologue (email me – gaurav at tekritisoftware dot come - if you are interested in contributing)

2. Keep the blog as it is but add a couple of “HOWTO” sections (2 most common howto requests I get thru my blog are for return to India and setting up companies in India)

3. It might be even worth it to build some basic community (forums, groups maybe?) around entrepreneurship and/or R2I. 

4. Just do some UI changes because I am myself getting tired of the present layout

5. I have briefly contemplated doing product/website reviews because I am getting a lot of requests for that too. This is something I am not very keen on doing on a regular basis because it requires too much time and time is something I am always short on!

6. Anything else?

What do you think? Suggestions are most welcome!

It has been exactly two years since I started this blog. I never imagined that blogging could ever become such an important part of my life. By nature, I am NOT a person of habits. I rarely sustain interest in anything new for any significant period of time. So when I started blogging, I didn’t really think I would still be doing it after two years.
This is how I started my first post ever:

Hello! My name is Gaurav Bhatnagar. After working for 3 years in Microsoft here in Redmond, WA, I am moving back to India at the end of this month. Many people have asked me about the experience and how hard or easy it is for an NRI to go back to India. That prompted me to start this blog. I will be using this blog for documenting my R2I (return to India) experiences.

My views about blogging have gone under lot of transformation over these two years. I started with the idea of
documenting my experiences on returning back to India so that others in similar situation could gain from it. Eventually my blog became more about entrepreneurship and technology. I guess, as expected, this blog is a reflection of my own life. It is very gratifying to know that people read my blog far and wide. I get email thru my blog almost on a daily basis. Professionally, blogging has helped a lot. It has helped clients understand our style of working and it has attracted people to come work at Tekriti. In fact, at times, I have felt that the blog has become bigger than me! People identify more with “New Delhi Times” rather myself as a person. This is especially true for people I primarily know thru my blog or those who have read my blog before they meet me in person.
I have only one issue with blogging. Blogging is like talking, and we all know that talk is cheap. It is easy to self-proclaim greatness on one’s blog and also easy enough to start believing in your own hype. There are many bloggers out there who are known primarily for their blog. While there is nothing wrong with it, I think I don’t want to be in that category. I would rather that I come to be known as a successful entrepreneur or a technologist and not just a “prominent blogger”. I would rather walk the walk, instead of just talking the talk. There was a period of time when I was very concerned about how many people read my blog, who links to my blog, where it appears in search engine rankings, how many comments I am getting etc. Fortunately, I have managed to move past that stage. I blog when I have something interesting to say. I don’t want my blog to be my claim to fame. Hence my motto – “Blog less and slog more”! Nevertheless, it has been a roller coaster two years. The beginning of this blog also marked the beginning of a new chapter in my life. I think I wont be giving up blogging anytime soon!

Man, I am bummed! I am seriously perturbed by a rather silly little thing. There is this movie which everybody is raving about – Munnabhai-II. I saw this movie a couple of weeks back and hated it. Ok not hated it, but definitely did not like it. It is one those sugar coated feel good movies which are nothing like real life. I watched the movie right after it released and kind of assumed that it will be a flop. But lo behold, everybody and their mother in law are going ga ga over the movie! I mean, people are discussing the movie like its the answer to all their problems. Its a hit and I can barely find anybody else who did not like the movie. I am hearing things like “it changed my outlook to life”. Hello? Are we talking about the same movie here?
Now it is not such a big deal of course. But I am very puzzled as to why I did not like this movie. I am a movie buff and I can sit through most crap that would make normal people doze off. And I am a Gandhi fan and Gandhism is the theme of this movie (their portrayal is not quite correct but thats another story). So now I am wondering if I am too cynical to like feel good movies. I think I am an optimist by nature – entrepreneurs have to be to optimistic! I liked some other feel good movies before – Forrest Gump, for example. So what is it about this movie that I couldnt stand it? Its silly but its definitely puzzling me. If you watched the movie and didnt like it, please leave a comment. It will make me feel better!
UPDATE: OK so I watched it again! And I agree its not such a bad movie after all. Not as good as I had expected it to be based on the first one. But not that bad too! Thanks for the comments. The vociferous support for the movie was one reason I gave it one more chance

I got a really weird call today on my cell phone. Some girl called asking for “Om Malik”. Now as we all know, Om is a very popular A-list blogger. So you can imagine my surprise. She might as well have been asking for Bill Gates (which actually might have just felt like a prank!) I asked incredulously – whom did you say you want to talk to? She repeated “Om Malik”. I said, “Sorry, no Om here.” and she hung up. Sigh. Just for a moment I was propelled from the F-list to the A-list

Pardon the shoddy artwork. I am an engineer, not an artist.

Yup, you cant have it all. In fact you cant have most of it. So choose what you want carefully. Not that you will get it. But just in case you do!
p.s: Hugh is a genius!

Scoble (whom I actually met in person at Gnomedex!) has a very thoughful post on being thankful for what you have. Many times we feel that life is not being fair to us. But in fact life is like that only and we should be thankful for what we have. People have problems that are much worse and often insurmountable. And yet they do live on and make a life out of it. Life is a gift of God and even though at times life is a bitch, we got to try to live it to the max!

Every time i fly to the US I wonder why aviation technology hasn’t progressed much in last so many years! I mean, why should it still take over 15 hours of flying time to reach US from India? Why are plane speeds stuck at a measly 500 miles per hour!
Anyway, I landed in SFO yesterday. I was feeling pretty good until jet lag started to hit last night. The weather is great here as always. People Aggregator is in final stages of bug fixing and performance optimization. We should be done by the weekend. The product lunch is barely a week away! Exciting times!
I have to admit I am already missing our office in Gurgaon! It has become such a part of my DNA that it feels wierd to wake up and not go to office. A big hi to the team back home! You guys rock!