EXPERIMENTERÉ

In 1868, they buried pipes under a new road to save Calcutta from thirst. In 2026, a metro must negotiate that same past to move the city forward. First water. Now transport. The problem of today was the solution of yesterday. In 1865, British engineers stood on the muddy northern bank of the Hooghly and faced a city in crisis. Calcutta — capital of colonial India, seat of empire east of Suez — was drinking itself sick. Its tanks were fouled, its wells contaminated, its population of four hundred thousand caught between a sacred river and the arithmetic of cholera. The solution they designed was ambitious: draw clean water from Palta, twenty-two kilometres upstream, and pipe it south along a new road built expressly for that purpose. That road was the Barrackpore Trunk Road. The pipes came first. The road followed them.  What those engineers could not have imagined — and what no one in 2010 paused to appreciate — was that their solution would become someone else's problem. That the...

                                       The summer of 2022 feels strangely distant now. I had just stepped away from my role in the pharmaceutical sector for family reasons. Like many professionals at a crossroads, I decided to bet on experience. Along with my late father, Dr. Paresh Chandra Das — who became my co-director — we sat with a Chartered Accountant in Bhowanipore, Kolkata, and formally incorporated TDC Ventures Pvt. Ltd. on 14 July 2022. The idea was simple: build a consulting-led marketing venture rooted in two decades of experience across content, branding, digital communication, and business growth. Fortune favoured the beginning. Soon after launch, I secured a content mandate with a Delhi-based startup. The requirement was ambitious — nearly 10,000 words of original content every week. Blogs, health articles, press releases, news features, lifestyle pieces — scale ma...

 The debate over digital versus physical classrooms has intensified significantly in recent years. While technology is an inevitable part of modern life, the consensus remains that online learning cannot fully replace traditional classes. As the saying goes, "You cannot learn swimming in a classroom"; similarly, the depth of a traditional education involves nuances that a screen simply cannot capture. While e-learning serves as a powerful tool for accessibility, several critical factors highlight why the physical classroom remains the gold standard for education. 1. The Necessity of Hands-On Experience Not every topic is suitable for a digital interface. While you can learn the history of a subject or government guidelines online, complex practical skills—such as flying an airplane, performing surgery, or playing competitive sports—demand a physical environment. Practical knowledge is gained through hands-on endeavors that virtual simulators can only approximate, but never f...

Maalik   is a film that tries hard to be gritty and intense but ends up feeling hollow and overwrought. The characters operate at a constant fever pitch, which quickly turns exhausting rather than engaging. Rajkummar Rao, known for his nuanced performances, seems lost here—his anger feels forced and theatrical, lacking the raw authenticity we've seen from him in better roles. Prasenjit Chatterjee, usually a dependable screen presence, is reduced to a character whose only notable trait is a persistent passivity. His cowardice isn’t explored with depth; it's just presented as fact. Perhaps the most baffling element is the transformation of a footballer into a supposedly fearsome gangster, who then spends most of his time brooding under a cot, chain-smoking and looking aimlessly into the distance. There’s a sense that the film wants to say something profound about trauma or the cost of violence—but it never gets there. Instead, we get a string of hyperbolic moments with little emo...

 "You will always be in my heart… because in there you’re still alive." We are in mourning, and whether I call him Papa, DasBabu, or Doctor Saab, he will forever hold a special place in our hearts. May he find peace wherever he may be. My father used to be super excited during the Pujos. Be it in Dehradun or here. Father loved his newspapers, until This is my first Pujo without my father, who left us last November. I remember taking him to our neighborhood Pujo last year, and during Ashtami, I had the chance to take him to Habra, his birthplace. Those memories, from September and October, now feel like cherished fragments of time. May god give strength to our mother and let she be our guiding light, for the remainder of our lives.  Got him wear the VPCL shirt got as a souvenir  Ma, BaBa Winter Chilling Focussed always He went to see, my first job in Kalyani, post Covid, always his hand on my shoulders Most loved person I took him to show the para (neighborhood) pujo and d...

 Sharing something after sometime. Thought (again) of re-reviving my decade old plus blog. There is one common connect in these pictures from the vault. Each place has a story and learnings. Want me to get niched???

In the quiet corners of our hearts, the echoes of a simple yet profound man linger. My father last month expired, due to a rare disease Alzheimer's. A wonderful person, a simple and down-to-earth human being.  Mr Paresh Chandra Das was fondly called DasBabu or Doctor Saheb (in Dehradun) and led a life as simple as a sunbeam, devoid of any ostentatious display, in fact, he detested any flashy lifestyle. Down-To-Earth, yet above all, the rock-star father was a true hero in all senses. Served the central government services for over 35 years before voluntarily retiring in the early 2000s.   Many years ago, I asked him the perrenial existentialist question,  "Baba where is my home? What is my home? Where do I belong to? I was born in West Bengal, Grew up in Dehradun (spent 22 years), Adult Working life in Delhi (13 years), Working Abroad in Fiji (3 years) and now living in Working in Bengal (last 4 years).  "Son, " his voice, still echoing rumbled, "where you...