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This is Warli or Worli?, a newsletter about Observations on the world around me.
Where are you?
Imagine you are sipping your favourite/favorite beverage (is it hot, or cold?). You are sitting in the sun-lit living room of a small apartment, like the ones in Mumbai, which is my home, the home of the author of this newsletter series. As you glance around talking about gardening and about the various potted-plants you see in here, I tell you I will share a story for every week or fortnight.
‘What kind of stories?’, you ask.
‘Observations about things around me, and some experiences.’
‘So its non-fiction?’, you say.
‘ Yes, but unlike a professional business writer. These are a lot more personal.’
Who writes this?
About the Author
Anil Bahuman is a Harvard, UGA, and NITK alumnus who turned to writing fiction during the pandemic as a side hobby. He spent one decade as a software researcher (writing, editing and reviewing technical publications) and another decade in business development on internet businesses (writing, editing and reviewing business plans). His most memorable experience has been staying at IIT Mumbai for almost 20 years, a campus where frequent earthworm, parrot and leopard sightings are not uncommon.
Here, almost all you readers know me. In case of new referral readers who don’t, I live in Mumbai with my wife Chaitra Bahuman and my two children. The sources of my stories, in no particular order, include my grandparents, the books I read growing up: esp. Asimov, Wodehouse, Christie and Ludlum.
Another source is my love for challenging projects. Having always lived in populated cities, I took up the challenge of spending 6 months in a tiny Indian village called Pabal and to help support the first wireless internet and a Question-Answering online forum there.
Spending 6 months in a cement-igloo, a Mongolian-yurt like dome, gave me a more rounded experience of village India. The journey from Mumbai (I reported to HQ once every month) to Pabal involved traveling to and fro in public transport buses, jeep and by foot. Some dull, some rich conversations with people I met. And the learning from the diversity of guests visiting the NGO I was based at, from philanthropists, BBC reporters, leaders of NGOs, civil servants, students from abroad and NGO sponsors. I was exposed to projects like finding ground water, water harvesting, solar-cooking, desiccating foods for storage and making things DIY.
As an adult, we are all conditioned NOT TO talk about illnesses or other suffering we endure from time to time. I was advised by a mentor writer, that as a writer to reveal more of my life’s challenges in print. This will not be easy for me, but here is a start. Some of the experiences that shaped me were challenges with family battling cancer, depression, and strokes and losing a sibling aged 39.
Other experiences that shaped me: my US years, studying and working in the arcane area of Artificial Intelligence for 4 years in and around Atlanta, also working at a struggling AI Startup co at Georgia Tech ATDC. Returning to India, my experiences as an employee, not student, of IIT Bombay with the many visitors (like Narayan Murthy, Muhammad Yunus and Yann LeCun). Curious characters make up the faculty, staff and students at IIT Mumbai campus where I spent most of my working life, 2002-2020.
Like many contemporary Indian writers, my choice of words is 1/3rd Indian English, 1/3rd British and 1/3rd Indian American (as computed by a fictional computer.)
What did you do before this?
Brief Bio–With degrees in Electrical Engineering and AI, and working for Citibank (Hyderabad), Boeing (Seattle) and an AI Startup (Atlanta), I found my calling back in India.
As an MIT-Boston employee in India, I spent six memorable months with Srinath Kalbag, a Magsaysay awardee who ran a vocational school for children who had quit formal schooling. I headed exploratory projects here, teaching 3D Printing, increasing Internet access and tutoring English in a tiny Indian village.
I then joined MIT’s project partner, IIT Bombay, leading a project office to expand internet access in and around 70 other surrounding villages via internet kiosks.
Then came the cellphone revolution, the trend was converted into a business opportunity leading to a 7-year CEO position building a social venture powered by technology, similar to the Quora Website with Ads, serving a few million farmers across 550 districts of India, bought by Tata Consultancy Services (mKrishi) in 2013.
I currently advise top management and product heads at a major telecom firm in Mumbai. In 2018-19, received admission in Harvard Business School. I completed a one-year program for Senior Leadership in classrooms at Mumbai & Boston.
I began my debut novel in the pandemic.
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