How do you sneeze? Yes, you heard me right. How do you sneeze?

Do you go all aa-aaa-AAA-SNEEEEZEEE!! or one of those "fich" sneezes that a person would miss if he happens to be opening a can of soda?

Why? Because my friend, it's important.

Now that reminds me of that Dabur Lal dant manjan ad where Sunil Shetty tells a beefed up guy (who cannot bite an apple) how teeth should not be neglected. Well, neither should the sneeze.

A sneeze is more than what you think it is. A sneeze is an extension of your personality. Think of the chick who sits 10 cubicles from you in office (and despite your extensive efforts, you haven't been able to get introduced to). She knows how you look, and she knows how you sneeze. If you are capable of sneezing loud enough, that is. Btw, if you are one of those guys who thinks that women do not go by looks, think again. How many good looking girls have you told that looks don't matter for you? You can do the math.

So what does a sneeze tell about you? Lots actually.

There are the lion heart sneezes that threaten the window panes and there are the sheepish weak "fich" ones that get you all irritated. There are indecisive "aa-aa-aa-chhi"'s that will take forever to come and there are the violent "HAN-CHHI" that speak of anger and frustration in the underlying souls. In short, there are as many types of sneezes as there are people.

Just as websites have digital signatures, human beings have sneeze signatures. You can copy the content of the website but you cannot copy the signature. Just as you can copy a human, thanks to modern cosmetic surgery, but you cannot copy his sneeze. You might ail or age or be sad or happy, but your sneeze will sound just the same.

Luckily, I happen to be blessed with a powerful sneeze. When I sneeze, one floor below and above know. When my Dad sneezes, two floors above and below know. When Grandpa would sneeze, half the village would know; I attribute the degradation in sneeze quality to the adulteration that has crept into human civilization over time.

So my friend, this rainy season, work on your sneeze. For you never know, you might get caught in a little drizzle and start sneezing. And you will never realize when you let out a sheep sneeze and lose the girl. You look cool, fine; you dress cool, great; it's time you sneezed cool.

As Grandpa would say, "A tiger fears you only as much as you fear it. Where it wins is strength and desperation". It's in moments like these than a tiger sneeze could turn the balance.

- Success.

- What is Success?

- Who is supposed to define what success is?

- Some hot-shots would say linkedin.com is a success.

- I would say linkedin is dumb.

- I am aware that linkedin is valued in billions of dollars.

- There was time when I was little and innocent and what I do today was success.

- There could be a time when what is success today will no longer be success.

- That is, if I get there.

- Does Bill Gates feel the need for more money?

- I am pretty sure the rest of the people on this planet do.

- Who is Successful?

- Is he delusional?

- How happy is he?

- What the heck will he do now??????????

There are three types of people in this world - Normal, Genius and Frustrated.

To illustrate further, I would like to give you an example.

Three people named Normal, Genius and Frustrated walk into a bar. There's a band playing a very catchy tune. None of them has ever played any musical instrument before, but they're all impressed with the music. All of them develop this desire to learn to play the guitar.

So far so good. The story was uniform. Not any longer.

- Normal toils hard to learn the guitar. Ten people say they do not want to teach him because he understands no music. Ten others refuse to teach him because he is not gifted enough. Normal doesn't give up and after what can be called a fair amount of time, he is able to play the tune decently well.

Normal invites his friends for a party and shows of his skills. His friends clap and Normal is happy. He goes off to sleep contented. End of story.

- Genius picks up a guitar. After some time alone with the guitar, he is able to understand how the thing is supposed to work. Some more time, and viola! Genius, is able to play the tune. But does Genius stop here?

No. Genius has a great inspiration and he creates a new tune that is kind of groundbreaking stuff. Next the story can go in two directions.

Rockstar Genius goes on stage somewhere and plays his tune. Instant fame and recognition. End of story.

Shy Genius hides his tune somewhere until a smoking blonde manages to dig it out. She coaxes him (:P) into playing it in public. Instant fame and recognition. End of story.

- Frustrated is kinda lazy so he takes a long long time before he actually picks up a guitar. During this time he is very frustrated because he is not picking up the guitar. When he finally does, some pretty teacher agrees to teach him. She is fairly impressed with him because he is able to learn it really fast. After what some people would call a small amount of time, he is able to play the tune.

Frustrated (like Normal) decides to invite his friends for a party where he wants to show off his skills. Another associated desire is to ask his Teacher out after the play (She is also invited). Frustrated plays and all his friends clap.

But this isn't Normal's story, so it gets complicated. Teacher tells him that he is really cute and talented, but she already has a boyfriend. Some *&#$@? friend tells him how the rendition was almost as good as the original. (Incidentally, he had mentioned this to Normal as well, but weirdly enough, he seemed fine with it).

All this is too much for Frustrated. He continues to go to sleep jittery and frustrated.

I rest my case. :)

P.S. Not to be taken seriously

Some days back my manager came up to me and asked me if we could show a particular stock animation on the Interface at some particular event in the hardware. What happened to that is another story saved for some other time, but what happened a week back is interesting.

I was trying to connect my PC to the internet using a nokia phone and nokia PC suite. This was something my mom and dad had tried sometime back at home (without child supervision :-)) and failed.

Whenever that happens, I get a call explaining the problem and expecting a fix. I had never seen that software at the time, so all I could come up with was some 'useless beating around the bush' which, needless to say, failed (My Dad, as usual, thought my engineering degree was a waste of money).

So coming back to previous week, at the climax of the connection activity (while the PC was trying to connect), there was a decent, neat animation showing waves travelling from the PC towards the tower (You must have seen it if you have ever connected to the internet using nokia PC suite). My Dad, who had been watching wordlessly till now, commented -

"As long as no waves come back from the tower, this cannot possibly connect."

Animation brings life to UI's and has enormous potential to confuse simple people.

Once during my first experience of Windows OS, something that I had put for copy hung. The progress bar wouldn't budge a millimeter, but I was happy because I could see bits of paper flying from one folder to the other!

To tell you the truth, I never intended to guide people in becoming entrepreneurs. Far from it. It just happens that three people pinged me on facebook to tell me that they thought my blog was good.

I believe in science. And I believe that science says that when you have the same observation thrice, it's about time for deduction. Which in this case has lead to an attempt to bring my dead blog back to life.

Before you start, to prevent you from getting any false ideas about me, I would like to clarify the following.

• I come from a family where they have never been any entrepreneurs/businessmen. In short, no one I am related to has ever made a "profit".

• My family does not believe in entrepreneurship. In short, everyone I am related to tries to explain why the whole idea of entrepreneurship is not a very smart one.

If you still want to learn from me, I would gladly feel sorry for you. Here goes the list of do's and don'ts.

• Don't start deciding the name first. We spent the first two months doing nothing except working on the name!! And what we finally agreed on (and have stuck to), in our college lingo means 'idiot'.

• If it's an internet/software startup, forget about getting a server. We wasted the next two months thinking about the advantages we would have with a dedicated server. When we finally worked on the disadvantages list, it turned out to be so long that today we host our website on a free webspace.

• If you haven't already, do not watch the movie "The Social Network". Not that it isn't an awesome movie, but they day my partner watched it (I recommended it to him), he started talking about how much each of us own and how we should always inform the other before every decision taken. *wink*

• This one is very important. Never, and I mean never ever announce a product before you have it completely ready. The following things could happen:

- Out of the blue your day job may start demanding hectic hours and you won't get any more time to work on the product.

- You may start getting bored with working on the same thing for a long time.

- You start getting the feeling that the product is useless. This is usually the most common.

• Well this one is a revelation. You have your website up and running which tries to tell people what you intend to do and how you intend to do it. Simple enough. You post the link somewhere (a little bragging never hurt anyone), and next thing you know is you start getting the following type of messages on Facebook -
  
  
  "Awesome work man! Btw what are we supposed to do on the site?"
  
  
  You are not supposed to do anything dumbo! All you are supposed to do is to look at it and tell us if you think it's good/bad.

• If you are a group of one/two/three etc people, you must understand that you can't be one/two/three for the rest of your life. So you need to bring in new people. How? Don't ask me, we are still two.

• This one is a secret. Odd jobs never hurt anyone. I suspect that all entrepreneurs have done some at some point. For example, I sometimes do assignments for grad students in US/Europe to keep my paypal account ticking. *wink*

• You always live in the morbid fear that you are getting accustomed to (and maybe even interested in) your day job. Trust me, it's not true. After spending an uncomfortable more than a year, I finally realized this. "All day jobs suck and have always sucked".

• Try not to tell everyone you know that you are the proud owner of a company without a product. I understand that at it's really difficult, but atleast try.

Well, I suppose that almost sums up my knowledge of becoming an entrepreneur. If you are a lonely reader who happened to wander to this dead blog, post a comment if you feel like.

On a bright sunny morning in April, 2010, a bus dropped us at Haldwani, Uttarakhand. We were en-route to Chowkori, a little hill station in Uttarakhand when my stomach declared trouble.

We neither had the time nor the intention to book a room or something, so armed with a paper-soap, I walked into a place called "HI-TEC toilet". Needless to say, after an overnight bus journey, I was under immense pressure.

After I had settled down, and everything had settled back to perspective (If you have ever faced a similar situation, you know what I mean), I noticed a tiny little piece of graphiti amidst all of the porno that is so characteristic to an Indian public toilet.

It said, "Maaza aaya??".

I so wanted to write "Yes" a thousand times over :-).

Does this happen to you too?

I was eating loads of street food, when someone commented that on the hygenic aspect of street food. In response I told everyone how I had a pretty robust digestive system ( Which I still maintain that I do), so that I could loads of everything and anything that I wanted. The next morning, everyone else is fine, while I keep shuttling between the room and the loo.

I tell someone how I efficiently wrap up my work on time, so much so that I never need to stay back late or go to work on weekends. All through that week, I do 11+ hours and also work from home over the weekend.

I tell my folks how popular I am in college (again I still maintain that I am still a recognized face in my campus, even though I am out of it now), and the next day they meet someone who has never heard of me before. The day I had told someone that I was good with mechanics, the graphics lab prof told me that teaching me graphics had been a complete waste of his and my time.

It's not a crime to brag once in a while, is it??