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.
A few weeks back, over drinks with friends in Sydney, I was sitting back, holding a cold beer in my hand.
Ravan leaned over, grabbed another chilled bottle from the bucket, and offered it across the table. “Shivam, Have a beer with us.”
Shivam waved his hand dismissively, swirling the ice in his glass. “No way, yaar. Why would I switch to a light beer when I’m already drinking whiskey? Whiskey, vodka, brandy—that’s the real stuff. Beer won’t even hit the spot.”
Everyone around the table nodded in agreement. And on paper, they weren’t wrong. Beer typically sits around 4% to 5% alcohol, while whiskey sits way up at 40% to 42.8%.
Case closed, right?
I looked down at the bottle in my hand, turned to Shivam, and said, “Wait a minute. Let’s not close the case yet.”
The Question Nobody Was Asking
Everyone was comparing the percentage. Nobody was comparing the quantity.
Think about it. When you drink whiskey, how much do you actually pour? A peg is usually 30ml, sometimes 60ml if you’re generous. But when you drink beer, you are not sipping 30ml from a shot glass. You are opening a full bottle — 330ml, 500ml, sometimes 650ml.
So the real question is not “which drink has more alcohol in it.” The real question is “which drink puts more alcohol in you.”
And that, my friends, is where the data tells a completely different story.
A few days ago, I fell down an astronomical rabbit hole.
Right now, as you read this, Voyager 1 is drifting through the cold, dark silence of interstellar space, more than 24 billion kilometers away from Earth. If NASA engineers want to send it a simple “Hey, run a diagnostic check,” they have to beam a radio signal at the speed of light—roughly 300,000 kilometers per second, the absolute speed limit of the universe.
Even at that breakneck speed, it takes over 22 hours for the message to reach the probe, and just as long to get an answer back. That’s nearly two full days just to get a single checkmark on a screen. Imagine sending a message on Monday morning and waiting until Wednesday breakfast just to see the double blue ticks.
For thousands of years, our ancestors looked up at the night sky in awe. Whenever life got overwhelming—a failed harvest, a looming storm—they looked toward the clouds with an unshakeable belief that an ultimate power was listening. Today, we don’t just stare at the stars; we fling machines into deep space to talk to them.
Which got me thinking: if God lives somewhere out there in “Heaven”—presumably way past Pluto, past Voyager 1, past the Oort Cloud, and somewhere beyond the observable universe—how long is the lag on our prayers?
When people discuss football, one debate always comes up: Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo?
Both are absolute legends of the game, but I have always preferred Messi. The reason comes down to how he plays when his team needs a breakthrough.
Cristiano Ronaldo is a master finisher—he waits in and around the penalty box, expecting the right pass, and scores with incredible precision. But Messi does something different. When the midfield is stuck and the passes aren’t flowing, Messi doesn’t just stand up front waiting for someone to feed him the ball.
We all know the ritual. You grind for 365 days, log every tiny win on your self-assessment, and try to convince your boss that you single-handedly saved the company. Why do we put ourselves through this stress? Simple: hard work pays for the lifestyle, dinner table upgrades, and overall well-being of our loved ones.
Whether it happens annually, half-yearly, or in quarterly sprints, the corporate machine always demands its sacrifice. We get evaluated, squeezed into a bell curve, and neatly labeled: Exceeds Expectations, Meets Expectations, or the dreaded Needs Improvement.
Now, given that over 90% of humanity believes in a higher power running the universe, a very reasonable corporate question arises:
What if God had a Line Manager?
Welcome to the annual strategic review at Cosmic HQ.
Xavi Hernández… I am sure it is a familiar name to anyone who loves football. He was part of the iconic Spain team that won the World Cup back in 2010—the very same year I got married.
Throughout his career, Xavi played as a central midfielder. He wasn’t particularly fast, nor was he a flashy dribbler. Yet, he served Barcelona and the Spanish national team at the highest level for years.
So, what made Xavi so special?
The main role of a midfielder is to win the ball from the opponent and distribute it to teammates in attacking positions. But Xavi did this differently than everyone else. He did it through scanning.
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.
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.
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