Even if you feel the kind of fleeting compassion that trains foster between passengers, the truth is, you are probably glad to get out of there when your stop comes around. Rotting flesh smells really bad — menacing and putrid and full of despair — and you want to run from it. What can you do against that, really, other than flee?

Recently, I read one of C.S. Lewis’ counterblasts to agnosticism, “The Screwtape Letters.” This is admittedly weird reading material and is not very zeitgeist at all, given Christopher Hitchens’ untimely demise (author of “Why God is Not Great”). That, and the fact that Lewis’ book is a bit of Christian propaganda. But rest assured, I read it for the literature value only, and maybe to see how Lewis would have approached the matter of the smell. Charity, devilish Uncle Screwtape would have us (not) believe, is a daily attitude shift that starts at home. Then, the Dalai Lama’s “The Power of Compassion” is a series of lectures on the subject of compassion that an old friend once sent my way. I certainly didn’t set out to write a book review, and find each book I’ve mentioned pleasing in its own way; I’m also not about to launch into a propaganda piece about compassion in general, and how we could use more of it. If anything, I have ambivalent views. I once set aside a Buddhist tract on the subject with frustration because it counseled us to “love our children a little less” and “love our spouses less” all in order to achieve a more transcendent kind of compassion: the kind accompanied by true detachment. That may be fine in the Himalayas, but it doesn’t resonate in NYC, where the intensity of every day experience is amped so high. Detachment itself seems like a goal that’s hard to achieve. Anyway, love seems to be the good stuff in the universe, so why not love your child or your spouse as much as you can, helplessly and without restraint and to distraction? And there’s still the conundrum of the smell on the train; reading doesn’t help with that, unless your book is so engrossing that you forget the stench between stops.

Last year ended on a high note for me. In December, Samosapedia was asked to speak at a conference in Jaipur called INK. My business partner Vikram gave a well-received talk, and attending the conference brought us inspiration and opportunity. Like TED, the INK Conference is the kind of venue that eludes categorization; you bump into exceptional people from different fields — scientists, dancers, artists, actors, humanitarians, entrepreneurs, musicians, technologists, doctors, and historians, amongst others — and then, after a day of talks, you go out on the town and experience synergy. At INK, I saw someone speak that gave me a radically new perspective on compassion. Just knowing someone like that even exists is inspiring.

I saw Prakash Amte being interviewed about his life. Prakash is a man who has dedicated his entire life to providing medical care for tribes in a poverty stricken part of India, in a way that verges on mythical. He set up shop as a doctor in an area so forgotten by time that human sacrifice was still practiced there by a malnourished populace, seeking cures from witch doctors. Amte and his wife slowly introduced modern medicine to the area, often uncovering extraordinary human courage coupled with devastating tragedy. There’s the story of a man attacked by a bear in the forest, who was carried through the forest for 48 hours till he reached the make-shift hospital. The man’s face was horribly mauled; his scalp hung off his skull like a loose bandana, and he had lost both his eyes. Amte cleaned up the wound, and stitched him up without anesthesia, giving the man over a hundred stitches in front of his family. The man didn’t even flinch or cry out once as his scalp was stitched back on, showing extraordinary tolerance to pain. He was sent back blind, but alive. And the story may well have ended there, with Amte as a local hero. But when Amte asked after the man’s fate some time later, he found he had died slowly of starvation. His blindness prevented him from feeding himself properly.

You can watch the talk to learn of how he performed a cataract surgery straight out of the manual for the first time, and how he helped someone recover their eyesight, or about what it is like to raise leopards, tigers, and lions, and watch your children play with poisonous snakes. He was asked by the interviewer why he feels no fear around wild animals; he answered with a word, predictable and saccharine, yet so affirming: “love.” I thought of sadhus in ashrams, mystical men surrounded by a coterie of big cats, radiating peace. I found it inspiring, and deeply moving. I glanced around the room, and saw a few damp eyes. This wasn’t just the love you give your children, or the love you give your spouse. It was something bigger than that, something that encompassed other beings, whether they were humans or animals or the environment you live in. Do a search for Prakash Amte on the web. One of the images that comes up is of him with his hand in a leopard’s mouth.

Towards the end of the talk, he was asked what he might demand of the audience. Here, you could imagine a solicitation for donations, but instead, all he asked was for us to visit places that give you perspective, like the remote forest village where he works. To go to places where people live so differently than you do, that you gain a bigger understanding of the world you live in, just by having having that experience.

Which I suppose brings me back to the F train. I had to come back there somehow, didn’t I? A city like New York is like Mumbai or Sao Paulo, maddening with contradictions. In the same city as last night’s venture capital event, someone with a gangrenous wound, huddled by themselves, isolated beyond recognition, is sharing my ride. Now I suppose I’ll gesticulate adamantly into the ether, saying we have to have a health care system that doesn’t let this happen. I didn’t promise to solve the problem; I’m just calling it out. But I know that by leaving the house, on my way to a place I’m supposed to get to, I’ve ventured to a place that gives me perspective. The year’s still young; taking the NYC subway might not be what Amte means, but it’s all I’ve got for you now, really. Every day gives you a chance to be “conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience.” DFW said that to a graduating class; I’m going to crib my New Year’s greeting to you from him, too: I wish you so much more than luck.

I spend a substantial amount of time either thinking about or working on Samosapedia, which is not surprising for any co-founder. Software alone is not really what keeps me busy. The very smart Braxton, who joined us because he loves the concept, stewards the code (Ruby on Rails straddling Heroku) really well, and puts up with our proclivity to IST with humor, which cemented our bond. The big questions to me include the editorial oversight needed to build the world’s largest cultural dictionary.

Let’s first touch very briefly on the imperfection of calling it The Definitive Guide to South Asian Lingo, since in choosing to call it that, we reveal something about ourselves as editors. One of the most priceless reactions we got to the term “South Asian” was “Aren’t South Asians Filipinos?” It turns out the term “South Asian” causes a small modicum of irritation and confusion. Other observations were that we shouldn’t use the term South Asian at all, but instead say “desi” or “Indian.” On this one, we’re sticking to our guns. There are enough commonalities linguistically and culturally, and enough radical differences, for us to be geographically inclusive on the site. The term “South Asia” may come from a taxonomy generated outside South Asia itself, but we can’t find a better, more inclusive term that matches our aspiration for a giant cultural dictionary. We’re ceasing to worry about labels. The existing one has been well received so far — thanks to our users, we have over 6000 entries now, and we’re going to keep on growing.

What becomes interesting is that sometimes, definitions aren’t merely objective. We don’t really want them to be objective, which is why we allow for multiple entries for a given term. Take for example entries like the one for the Jan Lokpal Bill, which as of this writing, still features prominently in popular press in India. One user’s idealism may test another user’s opinion on the whole approach taken by the bill, with the result being controversy. We welcome it — the lingo we’re collectively cataloging is multifarious, and controversy is the by product of engaged users. By that same token, one user’s humor may offend another. Here, we’ll traipse as lightly as possible, because we want to allow maximum self-expression, liberating language and encouraging our users to be creative and playful. Soon enough, we’ll also want to have users help with moderating words. It’s not just a dictionary we’re building here, but a community, responsible for its own editorial oversight, without the founders being gatekeepers.

Samosapedia has rapidly become a small anthology of South Asian writing, and makes people laugh, bringing delight and nostalgia (nostalgindia?). I am really excited about it, and about all the things we’re going to do with it in the future.

Let us also say you’re vague on the answers, mumbling something about a startup, about Sanford Meisner, about films, and about some writing that you intend to do. You like what Woody Allen said about how much of life and success is just showing up, so you show up a lot: you’re seen loitering at TEDx events; you attend meetings at generalassemb.ly; you fidget in the background at writer’s meet-ups in Brooklyn; at the New York Public Library, you find the quietest reading room possible and skulk there with your laptop; you hang out with web developers at a hackspace, doing something; once, you’re even seen on stage in an off-off Broadway scene. The vagueness doesn’t bode well, since it doesn’t douse the curiosity about your structured sabbatical, and certainly doesn’t help answer the hardest questions of them all: are you happy and do you like NYC? To complete this picture, let us also say that on Big Love Day in mid February, you aren’t certain that you even want to go out, really. You don’t like Valentine’s Day, owing to circumstances beyond your control.

But you do go out, in the end. Your buddies Dave and Dhruva — the guys behind Sub Swara — tell you it’ll be a cool house party, and something about staying in by your lonesome smacks of concession to the winter (you resolved earlier on that you wouldn’t bail on things because of the cold). Before long, you’re in the Village, and you find yourself in one of the nicest apartments you’ve ever seen. You look around and have some questions. Like, why is everyone at this party so tall? And who is the host? And who are these people? The food’s really good, though, and soon you’re in line waiting for a shot at the punch bowl. A really intense young woman plays piano and sings her ass off about heartbreak. She’s a friend of the host’s, and you’re impressed with her song. The host has musical friends, and an incredible record collection.

“GORDON is going to sing soon! Right after Joan!” someone tells you.

Oh, you say. You politely nod. She seems a bit nonplussed by your attitude, and walks over to someone else.

“Do you even KNOW who Gordon is?” she says to no one in particular.

So you feel embarrassed. You want to ask her how you can possibly know who Gordon is, since you’re new around here? Or who Joan is. You just walked in, and you only know the two people you walked in with. You want to point out that her irritation is unreasonable, and express that you wish she wasn’t so snooty, but then, you’re afraid you’ll seem unreasonable, and you’re not actually unreasonable. You lose yourself to the punch bowl for a while, and make small talk with people.

You soon discover that you’re surrounded by musicians, and by music. And then, when Joan finally does sing a lovely song with a piano accompaniment, you realize that Joan is Joan Osborne (who is demonstrably one of us — unlike God — but with more ethereal beauty). The Gordon mentioned haughtily earlier is actually Gordon Gano of the Violent Femmes.

You find yourself enjoying yourself at this party now. You marvel at the fact that you could have stayed in, but you chose to go out. When Gordon actually sings, you know you’d recognize that voice anywhere, really, given enough context. He’s really short, and he’s losing hair (but so are you) and you flash back to long discussions about his unique voice in college. You remember listening to Blister in the Sun and Kiss Off and Gone Daddy Gone and you remember a beer-sodden conversation once about how much Gordon was in all your favorite music at the time: Gordon Gano from the Violent Femmes, Gordon Downie from The Tragically Hip, and then the album Gordon by the Barenaked Ladies. Dave is playing drums at the party while Gordon is singing, and it is all improvisational, and you suddenly feel awed by circumstances beyond your control.

It dawns on you then that this year, with her fluoridated water and her ad hoc punch bowl and her frigid winds and impatient snootiness, New York City is your Valentine, and you resolve to court her for some more time yet, as best as you know how.

Of course, soon after I left, the Giants are making a World Series run, making me long to be near Willie Mays plaza. I love San Francisco, with its micro-climates, improbable topography, and draconian parking inspectors. I spent one third of my adult life here. I worked with inspiring people to advance the reach and capability of a massively hyper-connected world; I played enthusiastically (if not adeptly) in the magnificent outdoors; I got up to all the usual urban shenanigans in my twenties, even getting my heart broken and wizened; and — at the great risk of courting the obvious metaphor — I emerged from the fog of a prolonged adolescence into what I hope will pass for maturity. I’ll miss the City by the Bay. There’s no place like it in all the world.

Within reason, I relish change, and seek it out whenever I feel I’m getting lulled into complacency. I’ve wanted to explore non-technical projects for a long time now, and the best way to do that was to leave the epicenter of technology for a while. My childhood brought with it much travel; I was raised in India, Hong Kong, Ethiopia, Russia, China, and France, with some time in Canada. I often dodge direct questions about where I grew up, preferring the quick version of the story, but I am sticking to the facts when I tell people that San Francisco is the longest I’ve ever lived in any one place. So why, then, New York?

I’ll spare you my romantic observations about cities. E.B. White (of Strunk and White and Charlotte’s Web fame) said it much better than I ever can back in 1948 (but you should read him in 2010, since his words have aged so well). A small snippet:

“There are roughly three New Yorks. There is, first, the New York of the man or woman who was born here, who takes the city for granted and accepts its size, and its turbulence as natural and inevitable. Second, there is the New York of the commuter — the city that is devoured by locusts each day and spat out each night. Third, there is the New York of the person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in quest of something. Of these three trembling cities the greatest is the last — the city of final destination, the city that is a goal. It is this third city that accounts for New York’s high-strung disposition, its poetical deportment, its dedication to the arts, and its incomparable achievements. Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness; natives give it solidity and continuity; but the settlers give it passion.”

For the next conceivable while, then, I’ll be a settler. I’ll bring to New York my “what if” questions, and see what happens when I pursue the answers with passion.

The transition does mean I’ll miss the people I worked with over the years, particularly at Mozilla, a project I grew up with almost right out of college. Few things compare to the thrill of contributing to something that you really believe in. Mozilla paved the way for what is now the triumph of open-source on the web over a closed-source monopoly. Not working on it full-time means that I’ll no longer be associated with some things, like being the Chair of the WebGL WG or being front and center for developer relations. But it also means I can take on some manageable tasks and make sure they get chaperoned through to completion.

I’m in what seems to be a a bigger pond now — a chaotic, crowded one with four seasons and a subway and even more draconian parking inspectors. The Fall is lovely here, and I am optimistic.

What makes a compelling story for me is the browser peace, though. The web as a platform (“The Web Platform”) wins through consensus about standardization. I blogged recently about standards in the device era. What I didn’t touch on is whether patents will thwart the attempt to build out the promise of a seamlessly interoperable web. I’m not moderating a discussion dubbed “Browser Wars” this year, but I’ll leave last year’s attendees (as proxies for their browser companies) some fly-by notes:

Dear Darin (aka Google Chrome guy): I’m sorry I went easy on you last year. You guys can afford to move faster than us on some things, because you don’t have the marketshare considerations we do. You also have an armada of people working on Chrome (I think you have more PR people than we have employees, but that’s cool). I value interaction with you guys, not least of all because you have big web applications that can help drive use cases for all the stuff you put through in standards (GMail, etc.). We don’t have that, so we need to be diligent about developer relations, which is my big passion these days. We’re doing great things with WebGL (and the guys you have in standards are top-notch). I just hope we can agree about other stuff, like the right course of action on HTML5 Video.

Dear Chris Wilson (aka Microsoft guy, aka “go to” guy for IE team for years and years): You really handled my nagging last year with grace, and you made me look bad for doing it (I’m sorry). And you know what? You guys’ recent blog post about working with the HTML5 Community was really, really encouraging. I’m glad we agree on some things, like the fact that the SQLite API is the wrong choice for the web, and that we’ll work to fix this with a successor proposal, like Indexed DB. But what about video, canvas, 3D graphics, and all those other things? I’m watching, and expecting big things from you guys. What’s generally surprising to me is that with the promise of an agreement on fonts and other things, we’re agreeing more than disagreeing. Maybe browser ballot issues in the EU, coupled with the stance organizations are taking about killing IE6, will collectively improve the situation for the web (that you guys kind of caused).

Dear Apple: *sigh. I guess you couldn’t make it to the panel for the past three years, but that’s no biggie. Your participation in standards more than compensates for your restrictions on public speaking. The iPhone’s got some great stuff with respect to Orientation Events for Safari in it. Maybe we can agree on standardizing this stuff, just as we agree on other device capabilities, like WebGL (which works in nightly builds). And Safari 4.05 really moves the needle on the web platform, implementing the kinds of Ajax improvements we worked on together. I’m optimistic that your patent portfolio won’t cloud the future, and that the web will benefit from your smarts.

Dear Chaals, Opera Guy: You’re a standards titan. You guys implement everything! Congratulations on Opera 10.50, which has slick features. Particular kudos on doing the right thing on HTML5 Video in Opera 10.50! It’s clear, however, that we don’t agree on Widgets vs. the Open Web. They are very different, but some of your guys argue that they really aren’t that different (see my general thoughts on what to do in the device space). I think equating them as the same thing is sheer folly on you guys’ part. That being said, Opera Mini is a smart piece of technology, and I definitely felt a little rueful that Firefox for Mobile (Fennec) won’t work on all the devices Opera Mini works on that I saw used by the audiences I addressed in India.

Lastly, Dear Web Developer: I’m keen to spend time with you here at SxSW, since you’re really what drives us all. Brendan’s here as well (as are lots of the Firefox team, addons, JetPack, etc.), and I’ll try and get the other guys (mentioned above) to come out for beers, maybe some time after the Mozilla Party at SxSW.

My buddy Cindy Li fixes things. Like the time she fixed my kitchen sink with a broom, or realigned my closet door with a kitchen knife. Her blog post on DIY VW Bug lightbulb changing received more comments than any other blog post she wrote. She’s also designed a bunch of stuff, and so I pestered her to give my blog a face-lift.

Matt Harris, who translated Cindy’s design into code for WordPress (and code is poetry), gave me a three-column HTML5 template and some widgetry. Cindy used a picture of me clambering over a rocky hillock in San Francisco as a metaphor for the ‘new new arunerblog.’

So there it is. I’ve given the medium a facelift, and I promise you’ll hear more from me on my shiny new blog.

For one, I now actually work for a browser company. Sure, some folks argued that I never really left (at least spiritually, since the last time around) but there’s a difference between just contributing and picking up a paycheck. And this time, we’ve got a fourth participant — Darin Fisher, who now works on Google Chrome, will join the discussion I moderate. This will be a fun session — we’ll have to break Darin in, but he’s been around the block, too, with past history working on Mozilla. It’ll be a spirited discussion (some of us will talk smack), and audience participation makes it all worth it. But really, we want to discuss where the web is going from here. The web is 20 years old now, and was feted where it was originally invented today, at a nuclear research institute (CERN) in Switzerland. With the JavaScript performance wars, escalation on the standards front about things like fonts and graphics, and the advent of a new entrant, where do these guys think it will all go?

Some things, however, don’t change much over the course of three years. Still no Apple — their PR machinery won’t allow it, given the publicity this thing has gotten. But Darin (who worked on Firefox and Chrome) will speak for Google’s use of WebKit, Charles McCathieNevile (worked on lots of W3C specifications; is Opera’s standards officer) will speak again for Opera, Chris Wilson will represent IE (worked on every single version of the thing, and is a CSS muckety-muck), and Brendan (invented JavaScript) will represent Firefox.

If you’re in Austin, say hi. If my voice holds up, you can also see me at Fray Cafe, telling a story.

It’s about midnight, and a wedding party next door is boisterously dancing to loud drum beats, preventing us from drifting off to sleep.  sethb gazes out at the shadows behind the curtain with wide open, sleep-addled eyes.  Like me, he’s probably exhausted and jet-lagged, but he is curious and intrigued by what he is looking at.  It dawns on me that sethb’s adventurous curiosity will make him a great travel buddy as we do a Mozilla trip through India, hitting the road lean and mean.  It’s our first day in Delhi, and it’s set a high octane precedent for whatever else will happen.  Twenty or so hours ago, Seth got in from Europe, after FOSDEM; I got in at the same time from California and we meet up at Indira Gandhi Airport, Delhi.  We haven’t really slept much.

Earlier in the day, we attended an event at the Indian Social Institute called MozCampDelhi, put together by the inimitable Mohak Prince in just a few short days. Mohak (aka “~~~STigMaTa~~~ ~~~HaLLuCiNaTiNg AmBiGuiTy~~~” in all his emails) is a Mozilla Campus Rep in India, and has a real flair for organization.  Along with a really sharp crew of open source enthusiasts that helped put the event together, Mohak brought together an impressive audience of professionals, students, and hobbyists.  It was a great crowd for a Tuesday afternoon. It was also pretty illustrative of the use of Twitter, Wikis, and the blogosphere in India as instruments of event promotion and spontaneous UnConferencing. I sensed that this was going to be a really smart, savvy and interactive bunch of people, and I remember feeling really elated to be there.

MozCampDelhi’s afternoon session started out with a Skype presentation by Pascal Finette, discussing the Mozilla Labs Concept Series.  The important thing here is that contributions for directions the ‘fox can go aren’t restricted to those who can code; anyone can submit a prototype or an image or a video clip of themselves explaining something with interpretive dance (I exaggerate, but why not?).  Pascal’s talk stimulated discussion in the crowd about Creative Commons, and other lab projects such as Ubiquity and Weave.  Folks wanted to know whether localization initiatives were also part of the purview.

Seth then discussed localization initiatives. Against the backdrop of the BBC publicity about Firefox in Hindi [BBC] (amongst other languages like Gujarati, Marathi, Bengali, etc.), I was personally interested in the number of users of a localized browser at MozCampDelhi. Very few hands went up when I asked who used Firefox in a localized version, but this could be a function of the audience.  Seth got a great question about string transliteration across Indic languages, rather than always reinventing the wheel on a given Indic localization. This was something we took up with other folks in Pune.

As a bit of an intermission between talks, Mohak showed us a video telling the “story of Firefox.”  This just really cracked me up.  It had Dave Hyatt and Blake Ross as post-Netscape visionaries in a sort of animated version of the browser wars.  When I see stuff like that, I’m always reminded of the fact that my day job impacts people. Lots of people.

My talk was about the Open Web — I’ll have my actual slides on SlideShare soon.  All of my demos can be found on the Mozilla Library wiki, but in particular, I reused a lot of eye candy from Vlad’s talk on Web Graphics and Multimedia.  I showed the audience demos of SVG, Canvas, CSS, and the HTML5 video element (on a trunk build).  I also showed them the Bespin IDE running on localhost (later, at IIT Kanpur, I’d have students hack on code using Bespin — stay tuned for that update).  The questions from the audience were provocative.  Somebody asked us, somewhat pugnaciously,  if “Opera was simply a better browser.” *sigh There’s one in every crowd.  My opinion is self-explanatory, but I did point out to mobile enthusiasts that unlike Opera, we weren’t making a J2ME midlet for lower-end devices (and we weren’t providing a web proxy).  Instead, Fennec goes after smarter phones, and is still a work in progress. In general, the keenly expressed desire to look for alternatives to IE and Windows is really awesome to behold. It was a welcome question, and I got it again repeatedly at IITK and Pune as well. Firefox memory leaks were also pointed out in no uncertain terms, and this clearly is something I’m going to take back and look at closer.

Others were really curious about open codecs on the web, and wanted to know if existing formats (like Flash), by virtue of their widespread availability, would stymie the advance of Ogg Theora and Ogg Vorbis as open alternatives to the incumbents.  I pointed out that it was about the Open Web — that is, the intersection of fonts, graphics (SVG and Canvas), style (CSS), and video which is where the promise lay. That is, video as as first rate citizen of the web, not as something punted over a walled, rectangular garden (aka a proprietary third-party plugin) within a web page.

After it was over, Kinshuk Sunil got Seth and I to talk about stuff on candid camera. We’re both totally beat after we call the event a wrap, but my gastronomical enthusiasm convinces Seth to come with me and some family to Old Delhi for kababs (“Secret of Good Mood, Taste of Karim’s Food”). We haven’t really built much acclimatization time into this schedule.

Oh, and then the drums. They stop slightly past the witching hour, marking the end of Day 1. We’re off to Agra tomorrow, catching a 6a.m. train. So it begins.