artificial-intelligence

October 4, 2026October 4, 2026

Technology Is the Answer, Not the Pitch – an SBI Credit Card Story

Last week I was at HiLite Mall in Thrissur with my family, headed into Lulu Hypermarket, when a sales executive from SBI Card stopped me near the entrance.

“Are you planning to take a credit card?”

“No,” I said. “I already have an HDFC and an ICICI card.”

She wasn’t ready to let go that easily. “But this one gives you cashback for every ₹100 you spend.” I still wasn’t convinced — I’ve heard that pitch a hundred times, and two cards in my wallet were plenty.

So I asked her a simple question: “I drive about 15,000 km a year. What’s in it for me, specifically?”

Here’s the thing — she knew the card inside out. Cashback percentage, the fact that it was tied specifically to BPCL fuel purchases, the reward structure, all of it. What she couldn’t do was the next step: take my number — 15,000 km a year — and turn it into a rupee figure that meant something to me. The feature was solid; the translation from feature to my life was missing.

A smiling man at a counter using a mobile app displaying savings data for electric vehicle usage, while a woman looks on, both surrounded by a retail environment.

So I pulled out my phone, opened the calculator, and we worked it out together, right there at the kiosk.

September 4, 2026September 5, 2026

From Stone Age Axe to ChatGPT: What We Keep Giving Up

A few days back, my son Sid was stuck on a school assignment, and before I could even open my mouth to explain it, he had already typed the question into ChatGPT and had a full answer staring back at him. It made me pause for a second — when was the last time I actually worked through something myself, instead of just asking a chatbot?

That one small moment took me down a rabbit hole. Because if you think about it, this is not a new problem. We have been doing this to ourselves since the Stone Age.

July 30, 2026July 30, 2026

How I Mercilessly Laid Off My Favorite Proofreader (Sorry, Honey!)

For years, I had a very specific, high-stakes ritual every time I finished writing a blog post about Azure. But I was bit lazy to do proof reading few times to correct it and make a good flow.

So, like any loving husband, I did what felt natural: I handed it over to my wife.

Now, you have to understand—my wife works in a completely different domain. Cloud architecture to her might as well have been ancient Greek. But bless her heart, she never hesitated. She’d sit there for hours, squinting at complex technical terms, patiently fixing my clunky sentences, and trying to make my Azure ramblings actually read like human English.

Did those technical blogs make any sense to her? Absolutely not. But she was a total team player.

The silver lining for her back then? I rarely wrote blogs. So her “unpaid proofreading side-hustle” didn’t completely ruin her work-life balance.

February 21, 2026February 23, 2026

From Rivers to Repositories: “Shifting Left” is Simplified

Once upon a time, a thriving town was built along the banks of a Great River. For generations, the town flourished, but as the population exploded, clean water became scarce. To keep the town running, the Mayor decided it was finally time to tap into the river’s massive current.

There was just one problem: The river water was thick with mud.

The Mayor summoned two experts, each proposing a radically different vision for the town’s future.

February 2, 2026February 2, 2026

The Pressure Cooker Whistle: Explaining My New Job

I am writing this from thousands of feet above, on my way to Seattle for Confluent’s Global Kick Off 2026.

It’s been three months since I joined. Looking back, leaving my previous role wasn’t easy. I was comfortable. I knew Azure like the back of my hand. Moving here meant leaving that safety net for a completely new technology stack. I have always loved technology, and I learned everything put in front of me. But the biggest change isn’t just the tech—it’s how I explain my job.