About Me

I was born, raised, and educated in Bangalore, India. I spent most of this time in Basvanagudi, and got to know every little corner of the Lalbagh. I've lived on three distinct continents, but this includes a Subcontinent, a significant Peninsula, and a notable Island, so I think this adds up to about three-and-two-thirds. In North America, I've enjoyed the hospitality of both the USA and Texas. Somewhat disturbingly, I've made home near three different water bodies legendary for catching or being set on fire.

Writing

I used to have a blog. Then I didn't have a blog. Now I don't have a “blog” but I do have two different places where I post what I write. (I'm planning to eventually migrate almost everything from the former to the latter.)

You can find me on various social media.

I also enjoy reading, and used to write book reviews. My older ones are here. The newer ones were hashtag in my Google+ posts but you can't see them any more. Not having (completely) learned my lesson about the impermanence of social media, now I write my reviews on

• Twitter/X
• Bluesky
• Mastodon

Sports

Like most Indians, I grew up crazy about cricket. My father loved it too, so it was easy to get hooked. I've watched some dramatic play at Bangalore's KSCA stadium. In the US I've followed baseball as the next best thing, but I find it coarse, lacking cricket's subtlety, and thus only a tepid substitute.

To a first approximation, I enjoy playing all sports that involve linear objects hitting spherical ones (cricket, tennis, racketball, etc.). But these invariably involve scheduling with anywhere from one to twenty-one other people, which is beyond my organizational abilities.

While I was still seeking out something I could “play” regularly, a rental bicycle in San Francisco taught me that Lance Armstrong was wrong: sometimes it could be about the bike. Because I was already addicted to watching road racing, I bought my first road bike, a Specialized Sequoia, which was electrifying.

In April 2005 I went a step further, buying a Bike Friday Pocket Rocket Pro: a folding road-bike that fits in a regulation airline suitcase. It's an odd and, admittedly, awkward looking contrivance, though it's all the better at fooling people into not taking it seriously.

My Bike Friday has let me explore many wonderful places in six US states and six countries: riding across the Mississippi, through Flanders, and upon some of the cobbled sectors of Paris-Roubaix. Though I don't have the ideal physique for it, my real pleasure is steep uphill rides. I've tackled Greylock and other climbs in the northern Berkshires of Massachusetts, the Muur van Geraardsbergen, the Col de Porte (in the Chartreuse), Sierra Road, the Col de la Madone and, in the single most delightful day of my sporting life, L'Alpe d'Huez. I dream of many more.

The Bike Friday is lovely, but it made me miss the feel of an aggressive road bike. After our daughter was born, I realized my travels were going to be a great deal more limited. In July 2009, I therefore bought a Felt F3 SL and relegated the Bike Friday to backup duty.

It changes your relationship. When you see your advisor in spandex every day, it's hard to take him as seriously.

Sports, Redux

Over the years, I came to realize that there was a peculiar thing I enjoyed that is common to the two sports I follow the most (cricket and cycling). Both are played over essentially three vastly different timescales. A cricket game can, by design, last anywhere from 2–3 hours (Hundred, T20) to one day (ODI) to five days (Test). Likewise, a cycling race can last anywhere from about six hours (spring classics) to a week (stage races) to 21 days (a Grand Tour).

There aren't may other sports that have this much variation at the highest professional levels. Strictly as ratios, it would be like the same runner competitively participating in races of 1500m, 10,000m, and marathon length. (The analogy is not strictly accurate, of course, because cricket and cycling are team sports far more than running on a track is.) Most intriguing to me is that many players compete in all three formats.

While the essentials are the same, the demands of each duration call for extremely different strategies. The short versions demand decisions almost every minute, while the long ones reward deep concentration and attention to detail. There are days when it's nice to watch a quick evening game or recap, and there are times (like the dog days of summer or the cool depths of winter) when there is nothing quite as becalming as watching a “longform” event, when—in the immortal words of John Updike, speaking of another sport devoted to whittling away—“the only thing at stake is the tissue-thin difference between a thing done well and a thing done ill”.