Aman Aniket

I am a Liberal

Mon, 09 Oct 2017 00:12:37 +0530

Yeah, I’m a liberal. I’m a nationalist and by association of the republic of India being a liberal democracy, I become a liberal. But wait, I was born a Hindu and India being a admittedly secular country, I inherited the religion.

I’m many more nouns if I keep on thinking about it which raises the question, what indeed is religion? Why do we unquestionably follow a religion? Some of us have no second thoughts about how the creation of the universe played out owing to our dogmas derived from religious texts, but a lot of others indeed have a part of us questioning constantly about the gaps in our understanding. The scientific revolution has supported us with a lot of rational tools to answer some of the existential questions, or at least take a stab at them. This is what my latest read talked about in detail.

Religion

Sun, 03 Sep 2017 16:04:46 +0530

All of us are born into a religion. A lot of us spend our whole lives defending a dogma that was associated to us just by a matter of consequence. Come to think of it, I had myself not tried seeing the bigger picture and had largely procrastinated investigating the central idea of religion. The question was posed while going through Sapiens which is a de-facto outer view of the history of human existence. Understanding the idea of religion from a historical perspective gives you invaluable insights.

Book review: Thinking, Fast And Slow

Wed, 30 Aug 2017 15:33:49 +0530

Daniel Kahneman, the author of Thinking, Fast and Slow is a renowned psychologist and a Nobel laureate in Economics. Through this book, he talks about his broader contribution to behavioral psychology and the science of decision-making including this Nobel winning work Prospect Theory.

During the course of our day-to-day functioning, we take innumerous decisions. A majority of these decisions come naturally to us guided by our intuition, often at the risk of fleeting assumptions and systematic errors in judgement. This book deals with understanding those behavioral patterns through an engaging narrative filled with interesting experiments. What I particularly appreciated about the book was it’s constant endeavor to stick to facts and not be preachy. Think of it as a bunch of information that is supposed to nudge you towards making the right call in everyday decisions. Gets a tad informational in the middle but ends with the science of happiness which was a pleasure to read. Overall it’s a great read if you are a person who deals in stats and facts rather than opinions.

Racing

Fri, 25 Aug 2017 00:32:19 +0530

I have never been a racing person. What I have always enjoyed and found challenging though is the ultra aspect of things. Having said that, there’s that thrill you get from speed which is all but a different flavor of the sport. So when The Champions Sportive was announced, which essentially is planned to be a set of 102K competitive races across 8 cities of the country. This is the first edition and Bangalore was the first city to host it. And it didn’t take me more than 2 minutes to register. I was BIB 10'8’, for crying out loud! I had always wanted to try out a competitive race and this sounded like the perfect combination of racing and endurance. And I was not disappointed at all.

Mysore

Sun, 13 Aug 2017 01:26:31 +0530

Ever since I started attempting long distances on the cycle which was roughly at the beginning of 2017, I have always looked for out-and-back destinations which

Have a healthy amount of climb.
Approachable mileage given my current conditioning.

Given my last outing was an around 200k affair, I wanted to really try myself out this time. The last one had been to the Avalabetta peak in the mid-April scorching heat. An out-and-back Mysore trip sounded like a good and doable challenge. Little was I to know the challenges mother nature was about to throw at me. As has been the norm for the TO part, reaching Mysore was a breezy affair and I was in high spirits about being good on the total time.

Being an endurance athlete

Sat, 12 Aug 2017 07:05:40 +0530

I am asked by my mother, “Why do you cycle so much? Planning to go to the US to meet your brother?”. She already thinks bigger than me.

Being one? Guess what, I didn’t decide to be one, one fine day. It just came to me in the form of the beautiful sport of Running. I started running because I had lost touch with any form of activity. I was in sophomore year of college, and running seemed liked the best way to start embarrassing myself lesser when on a weighing scale. It was a couple of years before I came across the idea of a long distance run. It seemed challenging enough and I went for it. There’s been no looking back ever since. But one thing that has remained constant is the challenge. The mental battles you fight during an endurance activity are way more fierce and educative than the physical ones. Those meditative sessions give you a lot of time to introspect and understand yourself better. And there is no dearth of challenges, ever. As soon as you accomplish a goal, an another one will be greeting you with a smug. I’ll leave you with this read that I really liked.

For the love of cycling

Mon, 03 Jul 2017 16:20:21 +0530

The sport of cycling came and stuck to me quite serendipitously putting me on the right track in a lot of aspects.

I still remember the first time I decided I wanted to get a cycle. Things came up to a point where I would not budge or eat anything without getting one. My parents had to give in quickly as they rarely saw this quiet and reserved kid really adamant about something. I still remember that feeling when my dad conned me into believing that he was still holding my back. That ended up with the ever-so-liberating feeling of having to balance myself on my cycle without any supporting wheels! Cycling became a daily activity and my cycle my closest companion. Things moved on as I relocated for my studies and my humble old cycle was somehow left behind… A variety of things ensued which ended in me landing up in a college that was humungous and in the middle of nowhere. What that implied was you had to use cycles for commuting within campus. Cycling came back not as a hobby but as a necessity. The trigger for this passion which was buried deep down came up again while we were researching for an adventure trip to mark our graduation. We came across this 7 day mountain biking trip being organised to an almost obscure range in Himachal and I immediately knew I had to do it! We ended up having a great week out in the serene mountains.

I wrote a poem!

Tue, 23 May 2017 16:33:28 +0530

Yes, had to be done. This came up to me during one of the discussions that I should write a poem. As impulsive as I am, I went ahead and actually wrote one. Please pardon me for wasting 2–3 minutes of your life (depending on your wpm of course)

What would I want from the girl whom I’d want to be with?
I would say just be yourself. Just follow your heart,
Just be there and make a positive change
from how you see the world, how you imagine it to be.

Conquering Avalabetta and more...

Tue, 25 Apr 2017 16:11:34 +0530

Avalabetta is a beautiful hilltop located around 100 kms from Bangalore. It is an ideal place for a short trip with great scenery to offer.

The mountain biking bug first bit me after incidentally joining a YHAI 7 day trip to Jalori Pass. Nearly a year later, I was about to attempt cycling around 200 kms in a day. I had been cycling around 25–30 kms a day for 6 months now so I knew I had the conditioning, but a long stretch of cycling brings a handful of challenges with it, the intense 35 degrees arid weather topping the list for me. Jittery and excited, I tried sleeping off only to wake up at 3 am next morning.

Hello, Goodbye

Wed, 19 Apr 2017 15:28:53 +0530

Somebody asks me, ‘Oh, You are a final year right? You must be feeling terrible about leaving this place! “. Should I? I think. And then indulge myself into a reverie

I came to to this place exactly 5 years ago with lots of hopes and expectations. The excitement of entering that phase of life is inexplicable. The most dominant feeling coming here was freedom. Yes, more than anything else. This was it. I had the liberty to lay back once in a while, to pursue every other hobby I wanted to, watch tons of TV shows and movies and whatnot to the extent that one would start abusing it. But with time came experiences and with experiences, learning. Lots and lots of it. The best part of it was that it was all sub-conscious and profound. In the present, things and events looks so ordinary and in place, but only when we look back and have that realization, the profoundity becomes cognizant. So, were I asked if I could have lived these years any differently, I would answer in a resounding NO. The way you feel is always a choice and I choose to feel proud and happy rather than wistful for the time, the place and last but not the least, the people. I’ll fondly remember the innumerous memories that I made here but I choose to be happy because of the fact that I may leave the place and the people but these memories and experiences have shaped me become who I am and shall forever stay with me. You say Goodbye, and I say Hello!

About

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Hi, I’m Aman. I am currently building Oolka, an AI native fintech operating in India. Previously, I was building Alle - a personal AI stylist. I’ve matured as a systems engineer working on multiple products at Intuit after graduating from IIT Kharagpur.

AI is going to fundamentally change the way we learn, work and live - I’m trying to contribute and shape this future.

Talk to me about: Engineering, Distributed Systems, AI, Consumer products, Startups, Books, IoT, Public policy, History, Health & Fitness, Psychology