So this funny thing happened...
It is time to Whatay again... I am 99% sure
This funny thing happened the other day. And I thought to myself: “This is exactly the kind of thing I would blog about, back in the day when I blogged about funny things that happened to me…”
But first. Welcome back to Whatay. (Or, if you are here for the first time, welcome to Whatay! Please come back.)
When was the last time I actually blogged something here? I don't mean self-promotion-y things like book announcements, or stuff like that. But actual, old-school, blog type things.
Ten years? Maybe more? God.
So much life water has flowed under the Sidin Vadukut bridge since then, that I think it is time for a brief recap. And for the convenience of people who are just joining, let me start at the very beginning.
Deep Breath
I started blogging on a Blogspot blog sometime in 2001. (Ok now say that line again and again for maximum tongue flexibility.) Things meandered along at a frequent but obscure pace, until the summer of 2004. That was when I was MBA-summer-interning at Johnson and Johnson in Mumbai. It was an intensely hot summer, a somewhat dead-end internship involving hernia operations, and about a month into the whole thing I fell ill with some sort of heat-stroke. I recouped for a couple of days on a metal bed frame in a dorm room at Makichan Hall, where some of us interns were residing.
Then I decided to do something to cheer myself up. I found an extremely air-conditioned internet cafe nearby, and decided to write blog posts.
And I wrote something that went, as they say these days, viral. Suddenly my daily reader count went from 5-10 people, most of them MBA aspirants, to tens of thousands of people.
In that moment everything changed. Suddenly I was thinking to myself: "Am I a writer?"
The summer came and went. I went back to Ahmedabad to complete b-schooling. But I kept writing and people kept reading. In fact the comments section became a small community unto itself. I am still friends with some of those people from... 21 years ago.
This was a really great age for Indian blogging. It was a nice little community. And there was this sincerity that came from a lack of revenue. It was very nice. Largely pointless. But nice.
Then after a brief stint in management consulting, sometime in 2006 I decided to pursue writing for a living. My masterplan was that if things didn't work out I could always just beg someone to give me an MBA fresher job somewhere. Raghuram Rajan was partly responsible for this. But that is a story for another time.
Then, ensconced in my bachelor pad in Wadala East, I wrote a book. I lost that manuscript. I wrote columns. Articles for Cricinfo. Blogged the Kala Ghoda festival. A column for the Hindu. Basically I was doing whatever I could to get work.
I also blogged furiously. It was all very satisfying.
Then a short stint at JAM Magazine later, I ran into someone who worked at Mint. This happened at the Sports Bar at Phoenix Mills. The exact same evening Yuvraj Singh hit six sixes. A column followed. And then in early 2007 I joined Mint outright.
I went on to work for Mint for around 11 years. First in Bombay and then in Delhi and then, from October 2010, in London. I wrote all kinds of things. Edited all kinds of things. But also started blogging less and less. And less. I am not sure why. I was writing around a 100 articles Mint every year. So I guess it just became too hard to write in my leisure time as well. (That is not to say my Mint job was a pain. It was an amazing job. A dream job. I had both the freedom to do things, but also fantastic bosses who taught me stuff.)
But also I was using my free time to write books. In 2010, I published my first novel. Dork. Two more Dork novels followed. Then The Sceptical Patriot. The Corpse That Spoke. And then Bombay Fever. All of this writing happened between 2009 and 2017. Phew.
All of this is to explain why this blog essentially died sometime in 2010. (I did manage to do a lot of busy work on it though. Templates. Platforms. Design. But not any of the actual writing. Tee hee.)
I did do a podcast, and briefly a newsletter. It was all very nice. But I had too much to do at work. Also I was very much 100% not Mr. Mathrubootham.
Oh also Twitter happened. (The other day I was on a conference call with a company. And some of the youths on that call only knew me as that annoying guy from Twitter. Some of the older people knew me from Mint. And the OG dadbods knew me from Whatay. And none of them knew what each other were referring to. It was very amusing. And ego-boosting.)
Anyway. Where was I? So yes. If you were a Whatay regular back in the day, this is probably the point in the timeline where we stopped speaking to each other. Sorry! I want to change that!
How many words is this so far? 861?
Ok accelerate.
This is a brief (cough) timeline of what transpired from 2017 onwards:
2017: Bombay Fever. A novel about a global pandemic. Mint mint mint. Swiss watches. Mint. So much Mint.
2018: Editor at Mint called me up and said he wanted me to revamp a team and lead some new things. Two days later HR from Mint called me and told me it was my last day. They even tried to avoid paying severance and outstanding expenses. Also completed a Part-time Masters in Historical Research from the University of London. (I like learning things and writing exams.)
2019: Freelanced, wrote a few things, did some cool work with an advertising company in Birmingham. And also rested. I had written a lot for a long time. So what did I do? Yep. Set up a content company with a few co-founders that was focussed on taking true stories from India and turning them into great shows like Narcos or Chernobyl or Serial.
Had a second child! I could write an entire book on that experience.
2020: Built the company! It was fun! It was exhausting! Produced amazing journalism. Amazing podcasts. Amazing ads. All of us slogged our asses off and made decent revenue. An actual pandemic happened. Still not blogging.
2021: Company was respectably booming but we now needed to raise money to expand the team, stay liquid, and actually make the spectacular media stuff we wanted to. Investors backed out. Tried raising money. Other investors did not want to touch anything that had a journalism angle in India. Plus we were a little bit of an agency business. So I get why all the VCs were nice but said no. Sold the company back to the seed investors. Did not become a millionaire.
Completed a part-time MSc in Archaeological Practice from the University of London. (I really really like learning and exams etc. See above.) Still very much not blogging. Once again decided to take a break. Once again failed at it. Met the CEO of a B2B SaaS company on Twitter. He needed someone to help with content, comms, talent, and just generally being an adult in the company. We hit it off splendidly. Joined the company.
2022: B2B SaaS-ed my ass off. Hiring people. Running meetings. Getting COVID. Getting COVID again. Expanding offices in Bangalore, Berlin and Helsinki. Doing whatever it took to support the founders to get stuff done. Learnt a lot about Data Engineering, DAGs, Kubernetes, ClickHouse, Grafana, Kibana, Jo Vaada Kiya Voh Nibana etc. Great people. Smart people. But definitely needed an adult.
2023: SaaS company headcount was now 3x. And I felt that my 0 → 1 generalist adult role had run its course. Decided to step back into an advisory role.
Meanwhile a brand new Venture Capital fund in Bangalore asked me to join them in another 0 → 1 role focussed on brand, comms, research and marketing. Wow. Avoid. Wow.
2024: B2B SaaS guys were like bro come back for a few months? Help sort out some operational issues? In the interim the company had grown even bigger. So I said ok why not. Not exactly 0 → 1. More like 1 → 1.2.
2025: After SaaSing around for a second stint, I was now thinking of what to do next. And then a sequence of conversations happened. Some people came to me and said: Bro why did you stop writing things? Write about everything you have done? Write about 0 → 1 things? Write about funny things that have happened to you? Write about South Indian names? Have you seen the number of Vihaans and Amairas? (Yes. It is a plague.)
So I thought and thought and decided fine. I am going to take a couple of months off. Rest. Exercise. Read. But most importantly... write! Blog! Podcast! Just do things. And then in September or October 2025 I will think of what to do next in terms of directing coin towards bank account. Maybe more 0 → 1 things involving being "adult in residence" in companies.
But for now I will write, and do some fathering for the children during school vacation.
So I immediately opened up a file on my computer and started writing dozens of blogs and recording hundreds of podcasts hahahahahaha no. I was doing absolutely nothing. Absolute 100% writer's block.
And then the funny thing in the title of this post happened. Totally forgot about that.
I live in a suburb of London called Bromley. It is fantastic. We just got our very own Taco Bell. We also have our very own Desi Shop. I actually don't know what the shop is called. I just call it Desi Shop.
A few days ago I went to the desi shop to pick up dosa batter, yam, plantain type items. And suddenly craved some banana chips. I carefully went through an entire rack of options and chose one SKU made in Kerala.
Then I went to the counter. The shop, by the way, is owned by a hilariously passive-aggressive Sri Lankan Tamil couple. I mean with each other. Not with customers. Remind me to blog about that soon.
I go to the counter with my basket and the man starts beeping things into his machine. And then he says:
"Don't buy these banana chips..."
"Why not?"
"They are not good."
"How come?"
"They are made in Kerala in coconut oil. They are terrible. Please go take that one. It is better. Made in Gujurat."
"Excuse me?"
"Are you wearing Airpod again? I said you should buy the authentic banana chips made in Gujurat! Don't buy Kerala chips."
Friends. Readers. My homies. What the heck man. I mean.
What the.
What the heck.
Immediately I thought to myself: "This is 100% the kind of travesty I would blog about."
I came back home. Made some notes over a few days. And now here I am. Writing my first old-school blogpost in maybe ten years.
Anyway. So over the next few weeks, months, maybe even years, I am going to publish here. I am going to write blogposts and publish brief podcasts. I am going to write the first part of multi-part blogposts. And completely forget to write any further parts. And we will enjoy it together yes?
I might also write about things I have learnt from the last few years of doing work things. I will try and not make them read like LinkedIn influencer things. But what can I do? I am an older and wiser person. And most of that wisdom has to do with MRR, ARR, KPI, HR, CI/CD, MCP etc.
I have a plan to make it fun for both of us. You can always complain in the comments or via Twitter or telegram.
I also have an idea for a podcast. I am not going to overthink it. And just do it. I have a plan to make it fun for both of us. But you can complain.
So to summarize: I have two plans. You can complain about both.
So there. Banana Chips was the final straw that broke the writer’s back camel that went through the needle... wait what?
Anyway. Welcome. And Welcome Back. Leave comments. Are you as excited about this as I am? No? I thought so. Rascals.
Shit, I feel so old. Probably because I am and made so many friends during those blogging years.
Whatay was my companion when I started my first job out of college as a consultant. Epicness ensued when I saw your email this morning. Can’t wait!