India has given many things to the world

The famous ones you know are Zero, Wootz Steel, the Missed Call, temples for US Visas & Jugaad

But what if tell you, the template used by many countries to destabilize & take over other countries also originated here

Intrigued, Read on It all started in the town of Vellore.

Today is known as the place where we have CMC, VIT, awesome Punjabi food and Chennai Bengaluru riders stop for breakfast.

200 years before though Vellore was important strategically. It was the buffer between European Madras & Mysore.

India has lost many things at the altar of history. But some towns in India lost something far more important

They lost their own history

Towns, which once decided the fates of lakhs of people, don't even influence the districts they are in today

One such town is Vandavasi It's a sleepy town, 126 Kms from Chennai & many people in TN haven't heard of it

And I am sure the people of Vandavasi don't know the impact their town has had on world history

Because it was here the fate of Europe / USA was decided on 22nd January 1760

Surprised, Read on

This post is inspired by Mr Piyush Goyal and a humble auto with whom I had the privilege or riding in Andheri.

Don’t worry this is not one of those “I met my Uber driver who gave me fictional political lessons” posts.

This is something else. As is the norm today, the auto dude had his smart phone mounted in front of him. And instead of the usual obscene titillating reels, he had something else opened in his screen.

It was a fantasy league app.

He was making a team, while he was driving the Auto thru Mumbai traffic

For all of the hatred towards it shown by many people, the most important thing the IT industry showed was that, for the first time in India's history, you could setup a company in India & make it big with only your hard work and intelligence.

You didn't need anything else. If you trace the ownership history of all big companies in India, prior to the advent of IT, you can classify them as

1. Govt owned
2. Owned by the people who were Govt lackeys.
3. Big named businessmen who were British lackeys
4. Owned by people who bribed / swindled the govt

If you ever want to see an example of how something that began right and then went wrong pretty quickly, look no further than the months of June and July in 1914.

Those 2 months are the worst example how everything that could go wrong, went wrong

And killed 22 million people. Immediately Prior to 1914, like the 500 years before 1914, countries in Europe didn't trust each other.

Because, Europe was a bar where every country had fought with the other country for no reason other than fighting each other.

Because in 19th Century Europe

Indian equity market is now at a point where every theory, thesis, formula and literature about stock markets, stocks and investments, has been run over by a king size bulldozer, and whatever remained has been burnt with a flamethrower.

Let's take the recent IPO of Ola Electric The company not only successfully listed but has zoomed faster than ISROs GSLV rocket. The returns are so outsized that anyone who didn't apply for the IPO, looks like a fool today.

But then, if you look at the financials, the story is a little different.

Olympics happen every 4 years. Immediately follows are our recriminations, on why we suck in them.

So, I decided to do some digging.

I wanted to know who actually runs the sport federations, in which our athletes compete.

And the results are not very surprising.





I analyzed 32 positions across Athletics, Badminton, Boxing, Shooting, Hockey, Archery, Weightlifting, Swimming & TT

And here are some tidbits

1. Except Hockey & Athletics, no President is a sportsperson
2. All Presidents except Athletics are politicians.

Today is Budget day. Naturally, everyone in your office, including your boss, will be discussing the Budget. So how do you sound intellectual in those discussions?

Don't worry. Here's a primer on how to sound amazing on Budget Day, without even watching the budget. First, start off with a sentence containing phrases like, proactive tax Rationalization, infrastructure financing, economic intervention.

Say stuff like, "This budget should focus on proactive economic intervention with infrastructure rationalization"

Unpopular opinion : All our aspirations of replacing China as an advanced electronics manufacturing hub, Building 3 nm chips, becoming the biggest ship builders on the planet can wait

We first need to lay roads that don't resemble the lunar surface at the slightest hint of rain Case in point are the entry roads to Mumbai.

Imqgine the worst criminal you can think of, then visualize the worst form of hell to send him to, then visualize the road that will get him there.

They will still be better and smoother than the entry roads to Mumbai.

I was watching a video by @deepakshenoy where he spoke nicely about how, contrary to perceptions, Tata were generally unfriendly to shareholders when compared to Reliance.

He gave a wonderful example of ACC to highlight that.

Which led me digging thru the history of ACC Because ACC has a close connect to a quote that I had read sometime back.

"If you want to study the cartels of a country, study its cement companies"

And the origin story of ACC reflects that quote perfectly

The story of Cement started in India in the year 1904 in Madras

Only an Indian govt body, like the BMC, can wash their hands off of a tragedy that tragically killed several people by saying they didn't approve what was supposedly India's largest hoarding and they didn't know it was there.

So they aren't responsible. The funny part is the hoarding guy advertised as India's largest hoarding. But the BMC guys didn't realize it was there.

I mean what level of obliviousness are BMC guys operating on, that they miss India's largest hoarding, which was also apparently illegal.

Rounding up my Australia & Sport series, here's the most Australian sporting success story, in the history of sport

That too from sport hardly any of us know

Short track Speed Skating

Here's the stunning story of Australia's first winter Olympic Gold Medalist, Steven Bradbury This is not a Disney movie story, or like that of Shashank Singh, where a guy gets picked randomly out of nowhere and then achieves Success.

This is a story of persistence, bloody mindedness and some luck, which all came together in one magical moment to create magic.

Indian elections are uncertain, but I think the results for the 2024 polls are more or less done

I think, we will witness a govt with the highest majority since 1984

And this means an amazing opportunity

I know this post means nothing, but here's my Wishlist for the next govt This govt should focus on the boring things. Because boring things, build civilizations

We need to start by streamlining babudom. And a timebound approval system.

In this digital age, taking two weeks for a GST certificate or 67 permissions to build a hotel is ridiculous.

If you noticed, a week ago my handle was changed to "Wormhole" and the profile Pic had changed to some arbit picture

And then random bitcoin posts were made.

In case some of you thought I had gone over to the other side, dont worry

Here's one small story of my sorry stupidity I was just getting of my amazing fight with the VW fanbros, when I got a DM from a verified account. The account said they were from Barrons.

The same GRE/GMAT Barrons.

Now the message said they were exploring some kind of collab with me, regarding some kind of podcast.

In the last 5 years, the Brit Royal family is averaging scandals a day. The latest one involves a lady called Rose Hanbury

Now, I normally stay away from regal scandals. But this time I decided to make an exception.

Because this one has a Mumbai connection

Intrigued? Read on The story starts in the 1700s, in Iraq, when Iraq was a part of the Ottoman empire

By now, the various East India companies controlled global trade and Iraq, thru its location, had become very important.

And most of the trade in Iraq was controlled by one community.

The Jews.

On Jan 22nd when the Prana Pratishtha ceremony was conducted in Ayodhya, the dreams and aspirations of thousands of people was finally realized

It took the efforts of people across the world, to bring this vision to reality, Including as far away as Denmark

Confused? Read on The year was 1937 and India was under the British rule and Europe was dark with the clouds of war. In those dangerous times, a Danish Engineering company called FL Smidth decided that they wanted to do business in India and sent one young Engineer as their representative.

If I ask you which is the most important company in the world today, chances are you will name Apple, Google, Samsung, Nvidia etc.

What if I tell you, there is one company, that too a Dutch one, which is more critical than the ones above.

Surprised?

Read on Most of the technology today that you use, be it cars, watches, phones or aeroplanes, all run on microchips. Chips with so much computing power that it will make Superman blush.

These nanotubes of wonder are the ones that make the life as we know today, possible.

The death of Henry Kissinger was one of those deaths that was universally celebrated.

However, there's a section in India, which wished that we should have had our own Henry Kissinger.

I don't blame them. Maybe they didn't know how evil he actually was.

Let's educate them. The beauty of Henry Kissinger is that he started to be evil, before he actually got into the position where he could be actually evil.

In 1968, the US Presidential election was fought between Hubert Humphreys and Richard Nixon.

And the Vietnam war was raging on the side.

People glamourize Silicon Valley companies which started off in Garages & how they are now worth trillions of dollars.

Here's a garage, where a movement which uplifted 50 million people out of poverty, took off

This is probably the greatest garage of all time

Here's its story The year is 1948. India is newly independent. You are from an elite family, who was just graduated from the Michigan state University, on Govt Scholarship and have come back to India.

You would think you life is all set and you are going to live happily ever after.

Two things are certain post India's world Cup win.

One are the firecrackers & the other are the management lessons from India's victory posts, on LinkedIn.

To ensure you don't miss out on that party, here are some posts which you can freely use to sound like a management guru. Post 1:

For any organization, leadership is extremely critical. A good leader is worth their weight in gold in this complicated environment.

A great leader is selfless, inspiring, puts organizational goals above personal ones, recognizes people's skills and supports them.

The more I read about it, the more i believe that the only logical explanations of why we signed the Simla Agreement in 1972, is that

1. Zulfikar Bhutto was a master hypnotist
2. He had a MIB style neuralyzer which enabled him to stun Indians into signing it. We had won the war, bombed the shit out of their most important city, repulsed them everywhere and held 93,000 prisoners.

If this was a mobster den, then we were the Godfather.

We could have extracted pretty much anything at that point in time.