Trout Hemingway

I thought luck was a product of brilliance and hard work. That is until I met this guy. He is a gentle soft-spoken Kannadiga with a calm demeanor and plenty of good luck. He worked in a small firm during the mid 90s when that firm was acquired by Cisco. Although that made him rich by a couple of millions, he loved the quiet of a small company. So he waited just long enough to vest his options out before joining another startup. As luck (or bad luck) would have it, that startup was also acquired by Cisco. Burdened with a few more millions in his bank, and unable to cope with big company politics, he quit again and joined yet another small company, only to be acquired again by the mother ship. Tired and fed up of money accumulating in his bank account, the guy seems to have quit quitting and appears resigned to his fate.

There are some people who are born lucky. You thrown them into a dirty ditch and they will come out with gold watches in each hand.

Ate some good fresh trout this weekend from a restaurant called the 'Fish Market'. The dish was called 'Trout Hemingway'. Nice and rich, baked with butter, bread crumbs and all. Being very hungry I finished it in no time; Little did I know that Trout Hemingway was supposed to be eaten in short discrete sentences.

The Indian grandfather was pushing his grandkid in a stroller at Safeway. Looking at his face I could pretty much guess his name - It cannot have been anything else but Venkataraman or Swaminathan. He had three fat stripes of vibhoothi on his forehead, and a bouquet of long inflexible gray hair decorating each of his ear lobe. He was wearing a khakhi summer shorts and an oversized Hawaii shirt, which stood out as minor but high visibility blemishes in his otherwise beautifully designed south Indian landscape.

Have anyone told you something with this disclosure - “You are the only one I have told this to. Don’t tell anyone”. Few days later another mutual friend or relative will pull you to a corner and bite your ear “Did you hear about so and so… BTW don’t tell this to anyone. He told me not to tell anyone. You are the only one I am telling this”. Then you meet a total stranger while taking a leak at a movie theater, and you discover that you both know the other person; then he looks around like a kid sneaking candy and gently asks you “Did you hear about him? …. BTW please don’t tell anyone. I am telling you because it’s you”.