MD #1 - What's In a Name
A name might seem like a small detail among the many other details you judge someone/something on. Yet, it’s the first thing we know about anything.
What’s your name, BTW?
Shikhar? Are you into sports? Amulya? Are you a pretty girl? Lavanya? Can you count in Hindi till 30? Irfan? Do you hate Modi?
It’s very easy to judge (or misjudge) someone merely on their outer identity, the name of the wrapper. Maybe that’s why I wanted to keep the identity of this newsletter a little ambiguous and interesting.
Introducing Masala Dew! I could’ve used my name and continued writing on my website. I could’ve asked ChatGPT for name suggestions (tbh, I did) but the suggestions made me yawn half of the time and cringe for the rest of it.
In fact, I’ve been running circles around this problem since 2020, and I couldn’t ever come up with a satisfying answer. I told my friends that I’m working on this unnamed “project” and will share it with the world soon. But none of my 100+ shelved drafts saw the light of the day.
Recently, I read a couple of Austin Kleon’s books, namely — Show Your Work and Steal Like an Artist. I thought hard about it and realized that I was putting off the naamkaran of this newsletter just to procrastinate.
I needed some time. Any post that I’d put out about the things I was interested in, might make me look like an imposter (or that’s how I felt). I was figuring out my career path and my strengths. Unfortunately, core engineering probably wasn’t one of those things.
What I knew for sure was that I wanted to stay close to tech but also to the people who are affected by it. I thought product management fit that problem statement better than a traditional engineering role, as it answers the “why” questions much better than the “how” ones.
Now that it’s been two years into my role as an APM at Atlassian, I think I’m ready. I’ve been “beta-testing” my work by sharing on my own domain and assessing engagement. But before starting this newsletter, I had two apprehensions in mind.
What if I run out of things to say?
What if my friends mock me for posting my thoughts online?
I resolved these questions in the following way. This helped me move forward.
I’ll run out when I will. There’s no point in overthinking about it right now.
This one’s purely experiential: The people who read my work usually like it. The ones who don’t read: well, they don’t even give a shit.
Now, all that out of the way, what is this newsletter even about?
Masala Dew is a popular beverage served at the amazing Sky Labs on the BITS Pilani campus. Thinking about that glass of Masala Dew on a hot summer afternoon brings back a lot of good memories.
It has a desi component to it and is also kinda cool if you ask me.
However, this newsletter is not about Masalas or Mountain Dews. For now, it’s mostly around technology and it’s implications on our culture mostly in India. Sometimes it’s about things outside of India too, but my country remains my primary frame of reference.
I’ll put some emphasis on brevity. I’ve gotten reviews that my writing is a bit too long and windy at times, and I’ll try to make it so short that you’ll be done reading one edition as you slowly sip your glass of Masala Dew.
Honestly, I don’t know what all I’m gonna post here, since tech touches all the big and small aspects of our everyday lives. I’m a bit inclined towards tech and have always been: for that’s what I do for a living.
I’m open to see it evolve into something niche and but still cool enough to read. Even though I mostly deal with software these days, I still have an active interest in how the hardware/deep-tech space is evolving in India. I’ll take the liberty to write on all of these things on this platform.
Think of this as an Indian version of Stratechery meets Wait But Why but really really dumbed down, nostalgic, nerdy and desi. I honestly can’t pretend to know a lot, because I don’t. I hope this also makes me read all the sources that I’d refer just so that I don’t look like an imposter.
Whatever it ends up becoming, my primary aim is to make every edition both entertaining and insightful. And personal, opinionated, slightly funny. Basically, something that makes me look cool among my Gen-Z brethren.
Substack is getting more vivid day after day with a lot of cool writers flocking to it. I’m interested to see how this space evolves in the coming few months/years and will post something about this very soon.
I’ll try to post at least one a month, for at least a year. This should give me about 12 posts by the end of June 2025. That should be good enough for me to understand how good am I at this Substack-thingy.
Thanks for sticking around.
Bonus content:
What’s In A Name is this hip karaoke bar in Koramangala, Bangalore. Not too shabby if it’s your first experience at a karaoke bar. You basically get drunk and sing your heart out. But there’s always this chance of getting too far and bleating like a goat if you’ve had too many kamikazes. That’s not recommended.
