| Sunday, 14 July 2024 |
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Good morning [%first_name |Dear Reader%],
Good morning dear reader, I’m thrilled to be back in your inbox after a week. The Saturday afternoons I spend writing so you can read me on Sunday are something I look forward to now.
You’ve changed me in the process.
Things that I was merely personally curious about or fascinated by must now pass another test: are they worthy of our time? It’s not an easy test, I tell you. Because I must try and balance what will interest as many of you as possible (between 100,000–150,000 each week) without making it formulaic.
So, I take notes and photos. They go into different sections of my Obsidian notes like “introductions”, “ledes”, “links”, and of course, “Quests”. Sometimes I’ll even start writing an edition, only to realize that it doesn’t feel ready yet, so I’ll save it with a future Sunday’s date as the filename.
That is how today’s edition started. I opened the file named “FP July 14th.docx” that I had on my desktop for a few weeks now.
And its first line was, “Watching school kids from government schools recharges you.”
I take Gabru for a walk each morning down a path that leads to a nearby government-run primary school whose gates you must cross if you need to visit the lake it abuts.
Each morning, I watch dozens of kids of various ages walk and cycle and run to the school. Most are probably walking from their homes which are nearby, unaccompanied by their parents.
They are the original “free range kids”, before we folks rediscovered the concept.
Some are munching snacks, others cracking jokes, and yet others are racing each other with the sort of wild abandon only kids possess.
Occasionally a particularly excited bunch will summon the courage to approach Gabru, me, and almost always, our poop scooper.
“Uncle, what is his name?”
Gabru.
“Uncle, does he bite?”
No.
“Uncle, can we pet him?”
Sure.
Gabru doesn’t mind kids at all. He stands calmly, but watchfully, as the kids gather around him. Some are petting his head, some his back, and a few, his tail.
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Hari Buggana
Chairman and MD, InvAscent
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Harshil Mathur
CEO and Co-Founder, Razorpay
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Kiran Mazumdar Shaw
Executive Chairperson, Biocon Limited
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Rahul Gonsalves
Co-founder and CEO, Obvious Ventures