WORRYING OVER NOTHING

 

When we had been wondering why there was delay in speech development in our child, a friend messaged us to have patience. It made a world of difference to our perceptions.

We responded:

Grateful indeed for your message. It was the most sensible message we have received ever in our life.

Sharing and brainstorming always gives you answers for the cascades of tormenting issues. You have exactly done that.

Though life has taught me so much I am still learning.

The greatest lesson I have learned is, I am a nobody when I compare myself with others.

Three days ago, my cousin's husband at our native place  had phoned me. He had something to convey.

Then we went chitchatting. He enquired how the children were doing. What we all invariably do.

But he was aware of the minor health issues that occasionally had plagued the children.

I replied they were ok now and added that the younger one is falling behind in speech development.

 Though this is already long, I am placing here his response.

It  was a soothener indeed.

 He tells me, his younger son had started speaking after 3 and a half years only.

He says though the child began speech at that age whatever he conveyed lacked clarity.

Clarity came after he turned eight 

The boy finished his engineering later as he grew up.

He's now employed at Singapore

To conclude, I can only say we - I mean us - normally worry over nothing as we have nothing to worry about. 

TAMIL NADU

 

TAMIL NADU

Ujagar Singh, former IAS officer, TN Cadre who had contested in the 2016 assembly polls presents a comprehensive view of Tamil Nadu in the Times of India of February 25, 2026.

Water is perhaps TN’s most urgent issue. Per capita water availability is less than half the national average. Reservoir levels swing sharply between monsoons. Groundwater continues to fall. Tanker lines are a routine sight in cities. Yet, water rarely dominates election speeches the way identity issues do.

Identity issues may be elaborated as, one, DMK in govt. is sharpening its federal rights and social justice pitch., two, AIDMK is trying to rebuild its organization and three, BJP is looking to expand its footprints in a state it has always struggled. In addition smaller parties position themselves around identity, language and regional pride.

There is an important dimension added by the Supreme Court. The honorable court has noted that governments cannot rely indefinitely on freebies neglecting creation of sustainable employment. Though it was not directed at any one state, it resonated strongly in TN where welfare schemes have long been central to politics.

People across TN discuss on water, jobs, exam pressures, rising costs and uncertain incomes. Voter behavior is impacted by access to water, stable prices and constantly worrying support systems. . Nearly 56% of TN still depends on agriculture and allied activities. But the sector has struggled with erratic rainfalls, soil degradation and rising input costs.

TN contributes roughly 11-12 of India’s manufacturing output and is among the country’s most industrialized states. But parts of its industrial ecosystem are under pressure. Closure of large units in recent years has affected supply chains. The Sterlite plant used to produce nearly 4 lakh tones a year, about 35-40% of India’s copper output. Since Sterlite’s shut down in 2018, India has turned into a net importer of Copper. For thousands of small manufacturers of motors, pumps, grinders and compressors in Coimbatore, higher copper prices have raised costs.

The textile and garment industry which employs 20 lakh people across spinning, weaving and apparel units is faced with rising cotton and power costs. More than 300 textile mills have shut operations in the last five years. Export oriented clusters like Tirupur have seen orders fluctuate with global demand, forcing some units to cut shifts or delay hiring. (No wonder, neighboring  Kerala’s hotels, textile shops,  many industrial units and labor force are populated by employees belonging to TN)

The auto & auto components sector, a backbone of the state economy, is also navigating a transition as the shift towards EVs has created uncertainty for component manufacturers who depend on traditional engine parts.

Taken together these pressures cut across the economy. There are longstanding legacy issues for a sustainable balance between development and environmental protection that are to be addressed by the government. For many in TN’s industrial belts, concern is the stability of their next pay cheque.

The NEET debate remains deeply emotional here. TN has always argued that the system favours the affluent and students from CBSE schools.

Sri Lanka continues to arrest fishermen near Katchatheevu Island. Each arrest disrupts incomes and creates anxiety. For the fisher folk the issue is not geopolitical but one of livelihood.

The issues highlighted crave for resolution.

It is high time the parties In Tamil Nadu, shift the conversation from symbolism to solutions for the all round betterment of the people.

 

MY PAPA

 

ANDY HEALD 

Communications, marketing & fund raising consultant

Lives in Scotland.

He writes:

On my 19th birthday, I rode my small motorbike 200 miles to visit my uncle. 

In 1995, satellite navigation was a science fiction dream.

Hence my father drew a simple route map of the key roads I needed to travel. He fixed it to the top of my fuel tank. 

Historically, he had always driven us. 

While he couldn't show me the route in person, he cared deeply that I would go the right way to arrive at my destination.

It brought to me memories of my Papa. He had always ensured that I was on the right path as long as he was on earth. His prayers and  guidance have made me. I miss him every moment.

Recently, when someone queried who was behind me for my limited success in creative writing, I had only a single response.

My Papa.

POSER FOR THE DAY

 

Poser for the day:

Many people have financial ambitions. 

But can you express your spiritual ambition?

Something like this:

To live so that others get a little glimpse of God from your ways.

IF WE TRY

 

IF WE TRY

                   WE'LL GET THERE

Believe it

                 Go ahead

                

DISTILLATION

 

Distillation was familiar to me when I had been a student of Chemistry.

But an editorial in the Times of india of 25th February 2026 teaches me 'Distillation' is an important term in the IT segment apart from Chemistry.

Excerpts from the editorial;

 Anthropic doesn't want rivals cloning Claude for free, but that is what three Chinese firms, including last year's newsmaker DeepSeek, allegedly tried doing.  Anthropic says they used Claude as a teacher for their "student" models. Hardly two weeks earlier, Anthropic's bigger rival OpenAI had accused DeepSeek of extracting its model.  And last year, DeepSeek's market shaking debut was clouded by similar allegations.

Distillation is a decade old idea that was rejected when first presented at a conference. The way it works is that a rookie AI poses millions of questions to a leading AI model like ChatGPT. It seeks not only final answers but also steps used to arrive at them.  This reveals the larger model's "thinking,"  which the new model copies to deliver pretty good answers most of the time, using a fraction of hardware and energy.

Distillation isn't always a bad thing. AI firms distil their own models for speed and efficiency regularly. But it is unfair when rivals use distillation to catch up. It can also be dangerous. Please recall that Claude was reportedly used in America's Venezuela operation to extract Maduro.  If Chinese firms figure out Claude's reasoning, but strip it of all safeguards, the resultant AI could be used to cause havoc. AI firms will have to improve their capabilities to detect and thwart unauthorised distillation attempts. As AI aspirations and capabilities grow, its models might also face such attacks. It is evident, AI defences should be built starting now.

RAHUL PATIL CTO ANTHROPIC

 Rahul Patil is from Bengaluru. He did his schooling and engineering there. Later he emigrated to USA. He holds a master's in computer science from Arizona State University and an MBA from the University of Washington. He has over 20 years of experience in enterprise-scale infrastructure, with previous leadership roles at Amazon Web Services (AWS)Microsoft Azure, and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.

As of early 2026, the most prominent individual  in technology is Rahul Patil,   the Chief Technical Officer (CTO) at AI startup Anthropic, a major AI company. He was appointed at Anthropic  in October 2025 to lead infrastructure and engineering and security.  He is an experienced technology leader based in the US. He was formerly a senior vice president at Oracle and CTO at Stripe. He is recognized for managing massive-scale infrastructure. He has now taken over as CTO at Anthropic,  Formerly the CTO at Stripe, he succeeded co-founder Sam McCandlish, who moved to a new role as Chief Architect to focus on pre-training and large-scale model development. The new CTO at Anthropic, is to oversee product, compute, infrastructure, inference, data science, and security to strengthen Claude's position as an enterprise AI platform. 'Claude' is from Anthropic.

'Claude' derives the name from Claude Shannon, the father of information theory. He had , established in his 1948 paper "A Mathematical Theory of Communication,"  the foundational framework for modern digital technology, defining information as quantifiable, probabilistic, and measurable in "bits." It measures information through entropy (uncertainty) and establishes maximum transmission rates (channel capacity), disregarding semantic meaning for efficient, reliable data encoding. 

It is said that within days of the unveiling of Claude, there had been a substantial reduction in the share value of IT companies.

I was inspired by an article by P. Kishore  in the Malayala Manorama newspaper of 23rdFebruary 2026 in its business folio to write this post. The article tells us how much one could aspire. It has no limit. Especially when you are from India, that too with roots in a village in the Uttara Kannada district in the state of Karnataka. The district is familiar to me as I had worked there for a short period and had been visiting the place frequently later on. Those days development was a distant dream for the people there. To compose this post I have relied on data available in the internet. 

Rahul Patil has set the benchmark high. He is an apt role model for all Indians. He has shown us the way forward. It is for the aspiring to go forth and reach for the stars.