All in a days work ...

C.I.D office. Cyber Crime Division.

Arrived on the dot for the appointment with the Inspector and Investigator - 2PM!

Inspector was having lunch. His assistant outside wanted us to wait for a few minutes, take a round about the office and come back in some time. We were back again after having a coffee at the canteen - 2:20PM.

This time we talk ! Long interrogation. Detailed observation of all the paperwork.
Fine technical questioning. Among infinite interruptions..

Mostly people queuing up to complain "someone created a fake face book profile and harassing ...", some one hacked in to g-mail deleted job offer. Many such complaints. The inspector sending them away to local police station.

After a good long discussion, he gets the importance and seriousness of our complain. And slightly leaning towards accepting it .. but not sure yet !

He walks us to the DIG. Young IPS officer. And aware of the name of the company.
We again walk through the entire explanation. He shuts the inspector and the lawyer off, and wants to hear only from the business guy (yours truly).

He gets convinced and sends us back, instructing his inspector to file the case.

Its like any other work place really! The inspector assigns the case to one of his team, and the guy says he is over loaded. He should assign it to another one. The conversation was really eye opener. With the superior one saying "you have not closed 3 cases even this year", and the sub-ordinate explaining his problems, suggesting him how his next cube guy is always idle and should be assigned new job. The inspector them telling him, this is the easiest case, all work has been done by the company.. quite an interesting manager-sub-ordinate talk.

Then another session with him. Re-tell the story once over. 6 PM.

He then passes us on to another technical guy. Same story. Repeat one more time. 6:30P.

Finally, we get a long list of items to collect. Logs of this and that. Additional information, asked to go back and submit all that and get a receipt of FIR.

With all these, the most comforting feeling was from the fact that, they were really detailed, knew what they were doing and from their questioning generates a good level of understanding of this highly competent organization.

Ok.. will be back here again couple of more times looks like !!

Feeling of safety !!

.. is it just me ?

If I am driving by a lonely road in the evening, I am more scared to see a police than odd strangers.
Should not police evoke the feeling of safety ? And no - I ve NO criminal intent or back ground - ever ;)

Even then, in India, the sight of a cop is scary !

But normally I do not ponder on that much .. I do see them, get nervous, and when they disappear in the reverse mirror, everything is alright all over again.

Until now.. !

One of the fellow engineers from my team left the company and went to join a competitor. This happens a lot. Nothing un-usual. But in this case, we figured out - this person has secretly copied very vital intellectual properties the day before his last day.


The employer decided to file a case with city cyber crime police commissioner - and I became the chosen representative for the company. All traces, proofs in place. Just that I am scared to keep going to police station, where even though I am representing the victim of the theft, I feel treated more like a thief. And only after getting there struggling morning traffic, I am told to either wait for few hours, to be told again to go home and come back on another day !!!!

..is this only me who gets the creepy feeling when I see a cop, or are there other normal citizens out there who feel the same way ??

Living is expensive.. Life is cheap !!

Reading the events of the week, on a rainy, lazy weekend that forces one to reflect back on issues wider in scope - I notice the following !

The very basic necessity to survive, that we buy, Food is being more and more expensive. Double digit inflation year over year in India, on food items. No sign of prices cooling off.  

And people refer to this as "Cost of living is very high".

Turn the page of the newspaper - you see dozens die while going about their routine evening stuff, by some indiscriminate explosions. "Life is cheap".

There definitely is a disconnect in this economy of time - If life is so cheap, why should living be so expensive ? 

Brownian motion ..

I notice two types of inaction in corporate life. Especially when there is huge change ahead of all.
Especially when the future is not clear, and challenging.

And that happens every few years for sure .... !

The first type of inaction is Leaders moving very slow to take decisions. Not sure where to put their money. This batch gets in to a spectator mode - the "wait and watch" mode ! And all become som sedentary, restful, lazy and static - YET very very tense !

And there is a second set of leaders - given the exact such changing environment and uncertainty they will make very fast moves - tall decisions, bold moves - alas ! Only to roll it back the next week. And make another one ! Taken a horizon view, it ends up all being static. Running on a treadmill, and still where you were.

I ve been wondering what could be a scientific term for it - and then I saw a note on "Brownian Motion" in a different context ! That's it. Brownian motion.

A lil bit of control..

Met a wonderful couple in their 70's. Golden years  !
The husband (Mr. Bose) was in forest services and he sure loves to drive his vehicles fast. Ghats, city traffic, unknown terrain - he just keeps driving fast.

While taking a ride with him, he driving, Mrs. Bose in passenger seat, and bunch of us in the back seat, and as usual complaining about Bangalore traffic, we noticed one unique thing.

As he drives criss-cross ducking all BLR hurdles and traffic, his vehicle screams out two types if horns.
Two distinct sounds !

Finally, while having lunch, we asked ! Why two types of horns ? There he spills the secret. In his vehicle, there is one horn for the driver, and another one controlled by the passenger seat.

And that's because, Mrs. Bose was always afraid of driving fast, no matter how clean is Mr. Bose's driving record. And to just calm her down while driving, he had devised this technique. Wherever, she felt the car is out of control she honked, from the passenger seat.

She was a co-driver in a way !! And that kept her calm. She needs that even to her 70's.