In one place, you will see all I stood for, what I thought and how I felt.
Folks, I cannot tell you how delighted I am to share my life’s work, my thoughts, and feelings with you. This blog will also give me a great way to connect with all of you. But before everything else, I do need to share with you, how this brand-new blog has come about.
It was probably sometime in the year 2003 when Mindtree was still a start-up. Manoj Chandran, who is now Chief Executive of White Swan Foundation, had just come on board as the head of marketing at Mindtree. I had brought him in from Cyber Media, where he used to be the online content editor. Right from the very start, I had felt that an early-stage enterprise must document its journey well and build, what I call, “affinity with content”. Let me explain what I mean by “affinity with content”.
Enterprises, whether for business or otherwise, are nothing but a set of ideas. When organizations build content through blogs, books, movies and other avenues, those ideas get limbs, they travel far and wide. That is how we can build the foundation of a knowledge-driven organization. After coming on board at Mindtree, Manoj got after me to start a blog as part of the Mindtree website.
Blogs then were a novelty. Social media, the way we know them today, in all their profusion, were yet to arrive on the scene. I was somewhat reticent about penning a blog. I did not want to start something which I would not be able to tend to. Everything, however small, needs sustained commitment. Starting a blog is like bringing home a pet. Well almost.
But finally, Manoj prevailed. I started the blog. Over the two decades after that, it became a repository for all my writing work that were published in magazines and newspapers, my video interviews, and speeches and many such things found a place in it.
As you probably know, I stepped down from Mindtree in April 2016. But even after, I tended to the blog, off and on, because Mindtree let me keep all the content I had created online on the website of the company. All that changed after the company changed hands in 2019. Understandably, the blog was taken down as a vestige of the past. With it, many of my readers, who liked to read my jottings, essays, interviews, and photographs lost touch with me.
However, thanks again to Manoj Chandran, who had left Mindtree years back, gone to Ashoka Innovators for the Public, and then eventually come to head White Swan Foundation, and Sweta Mohanty, who is part of the White Swan team, the contents have been curated again and that is what you have in front of you.
The technology behind it all came from friends at CSM Technologies, a leading internet company out of Bhubaneswar. Three people out there helped a lot and I must call them out: Animesh Patnaik, Himalaya Pagada and Rahul Kumar Saw.
Manoj Chandran
Sweta Mohanty
Animesh Patnaik
Himalaya Pagada
Rahul Kumar Saw
Now, it is all for you, my dear readers. Some of you are new to me. Many have been with me for decades, people who cared for my thoughts and shared my perspectives and values. But in equal loving measure, I also present this new site to all those who do not.
We do not grow unless we have folks in our midst who do not question us, disagree with us, show us a path other than what we may ignorantly feel to be the path.
So, to all of you, thank you for being here with me. Spend whatever time you like, tell me about your thoughts and feelings. Happy browsing.
