A Lesson Hidden in Two Simple Words

Sometimes profound ideas are hidden in the most ordinary places.

Recently, while looking at two common English words, I stumbled upon an interesting thought:

USEFUL
USELESS

A sketch by Hand!

At first glance, they seem like opposites. One signifies value, purpose, and impact. The other represents the absence of these qualities.

But what caught my attention was something else.

The word useful does not contain the word full.

That observation may seem trivial, yet it offers an intriguing perspective on how we approach life, work, and innovation.

Our Obsession with "More"

We live in a world that constantly encourages accumulation.

More features in products.
More slides in presentations.
More meetings in calendars.
More information in reports.
More possessions in our homes.

There is often an implicit belief that "more" automatically translates into "better."

But does it?

Think about the products you love to use. They are often simple, intuitive, and uncluttered.

Think about the presentations you remember. They are usually clear, concise, and focused.

Think about the leaders you admire. They communicate complex ideas with remarkable simplicity.

Their value does not come from fullness.

Their value comes from usefulness.

The Hidden Power of Less

In design, there is a famous principle:

Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

The same can apply to many aspects of our lives.

A useful email gets to the point.

A useful meeting ends with clear decisions.

A useful product solves a real problem without unnecessary complexity.

A useful conversation leaves us with clarity, not confusion.

Ironically, adding more often reduces usefulness. Every additional feature, paragraph, meeting participant, or decision layer can introduce noise.

Sometimes, less truly is more.

What This Means for Professionals

Whether you are a researcher, engineer, manager, entrepreneur, teacher, or student, the lesson is surprisingly relevant.

Before adding something, ask:

• Does this make the outcome more useful?
• Does this add clarity or complexity?
• Is this essential or merely additional?
• What can I remove without losing value?

Sometimes the most impactful innovation is not what we add, but what we subtract.

Final Thought

The next time you encounter the word USEFUL, pause for a moment.

It quietly reminds us that usefulness does not require fullness.

A product does not need more features.

A presentation does not need more slides.

A life does not need more possessions.

What it needs is purpose.

Useful doesn't have to be full. Value comes from use, not volume.

---

Generated by Copilot. Prompted by Sunil Kumar Kopparapu. The hand drawn sketch the start point.

Cricket in 2030. India beat Cambodia by 23.76 runs!

The Prompt:

``Cricket in 2030. India beat Cambodia by 23.76 runs!

Write a short blog. 

Today the game of cricket is batter friendly. Use things like 5 wickets instead of 3. Runs based on the distance cleared with a stance that if it crosses the boundary the score is zero (not 6 as it is today) .. this should give decimal number.''

Copilot:

Cricket fans were treated to another thrilling contest yesterday as India defeated Cambodia by a comfortable margin of 23.76 runs in the 5th T20. Yes, you read that right. Not 24 runs. Not 23 runs. Exactly 23.76 runs.

The scoreboard looked more like an engineering entrance exam than a sporting event:

India: 182.43 runs for 5 wickets
Cambodia: 158.67 runs for 5 wickets

The result was only confirmed after three statisticians, two chartered accountants, and an AI-powered calculator independently verified the margin.

The revolutionary scoring system introduced in 2028 has truly transformed cricket. Instead of awarding 4 or 6 runs, batters now score based on the precise distance the ball travels. A shot clearing 31.48 meters earns 3.148 runs. A majestic cover drive reaching 57.23 meters earns 5.723 runs.

Ironically, if the ball crosses the boundary rope, the score is zero.

"The boundary is considered an inefficient use of sporting infrastructure," explained the International Cricket Rationalization Committee. "Why reward a ball that leaves the field?"

As a result, modern batters are trained to hit the ball exactly 99.9 centimeters short of the boundary. Teams now employ aerospace engineers to calculate optimal bounce trajectories.

The game, however, remains heavily batter friendly. Bowlers now celebrate wildly when they concede only 25 runs in an over. Taking 5 wickets is considered a respectable performance, while taking all 10 wickets is regarded as unsporting and potentially harmful to television ratings.

Commentators have also evolved.

"That's a magnificent square cut for 4.836 runs!"

"And he's mistimed it... fortunately it stopped before the rope. Brilliant batting. Had it crossed the boundary, that would have been a disastrous dot ball."

Meanwhile, fans continue to struggle.

One spectator was seen asking, "If we need 17.344 runs from 12 balls, are we winning?"

To which another replied, "No idea. I'm waiting for the app update."

Cricket purists hate it. Broadcasters love it. Statisticians have never been happier.

And somewhere, in a dusty archive, a scorecard reading "India 300/8" quietly wonders what happened to the good old days. 

Travel Diary | Mumbai-London-Dellas-Las Vegas-Chicago-London-Peterborough-London-Mumbai | 2008

The Unsentimental Traveler: Anecdotes from a Travel Diary eBook : Kopparapu, Sunil Kumar: Amazon.in: Kindle Store

To Save or To Spend | A Dilemma

To save for tomorrow or to spend today is a dilemma that no one seems to have been able to solve. I guess it is one of those problems that competes with the prized unsolved problems that still exists in literature. 

Of course there is no one solution that maps to all the people. So, I will assume a persona 

``You are a salaried individual who earned more than what you could spend and has an Indian mindset of saving for the rainy day and have been focusing on saving. You are married. You have kids who have completed their education and "settled" (in Indian lingo) meaning have started earning their living and are not dependent on you (may or may not be married, yet) and neither your family (parents/siblings) are not dependent on you financially. You have retired. You have a corpus and a monthly pension from your work savings (see Money Matters). Now the dilemma is whether To Save or To Spend.''

A Theory

In general, the majority Indian attitude is to save with the hope that your children will benefit from the saved corpus. But in majority of the cases, the children are quite on their own and in no need of your corpus or the children are of the opinion that they will build things on their own like their parents. Putting this two together, in majority of the cases you die rich, meaning you have a good amount of corpus which remain in the bank. Not that it is wasted, your children will pick it up if you have nominated them or have mentioned it as part of your Will. Even if they don't particularly need it.

The essential idea is that while you build your corpus during your pre-retirement days in the way of monthly wages, along similar lines you plan to spend such that the corpus reduces as you age. The only difference, while you know precisely when you will retire, you do not have a clue when you will die! The rest, how much money you need remain uncertain in both the spending and the saving space. That is, probably the catch. Like retirement if one knew when what the ``end of life'' date. 

Fig.1: Depiction of an ideal scenario. Corpus building till retirement and then spending along the lines of end of life. Shorter, spend faster; longer spend slower. 

Things would be much easier, if you knew how long you would possibly live. If you knew that (short, medium, long life) you could spend along the (red, blue, green) lines depicted in Fig 1 respectively. 

The region of dilemma is clearly captured in Fig 2.  If you are conservative in your spend (spend along the green line) but have a short life span (red dot) you leave behind an ``unspent corpus'', on the other hand, if you spend aggressively (along the red line) but live longer & healthy you end up with a ``period of no corpus''. Both are possible especially given that no one (even AI) can yet predict the life span of an individual.

Fig. 2: The dilemma. If you are conservative in your spend (green line) but have a short life span you leave behind an unused corpus, on the other hand, you spend fast but live longer you end up with no corpus to live the longer life. 

While there no real solution to this dilemma, the best one can do is try and minimize the corpus left behind.  

Retirement planning is fundamentally a problem of consuming a finite corpus over an uncertain lifetime. Spend too conservatively and wealth remains unused; spend too aggressively and one risks outliving one's savings.

Mathematically,

Let

• ${𝑡}_{𝑅}$​: retirement time
• $𝐸$: random end-of-life (EOL)
• $𝛿$: uncertainty in lifespan
• $𝐸\in [\overline{𝐸}-𝛿, \overline{𝐸}+𝛿]$
  
• $𝐶(𝑡)$: corpus remaining at time $𝑡$
  
• ${𝐶}_{𝑅}=𝐶({𝑡}_{𝑅})$: corpus at retirement
• $𝑆(𝑡)$: essential spending (food, healthcare, housing, etc.)
• $𝑃(𝑡)$: discretionary or "splurge" spending
• $𝑟$: portfolio return rate

Then the corpus dynamics are

$$\frac{𝑑𝐶(𝑡)}{𝑑𝑡}=𝑟𝐶(𝑡)-𝑆(𝑡)-𝑃(𝑡)$$

with

$$𝐶({𝑡}_{𝑅})={𝐶}_{𝑅}\mathrm{.}$$

Ideal Objective:

"I want to enjoy my retirement, but I don't want to die with lots of unused money, and I don't want to run out of money before I die."

That can be expressed as

$$𝐶(𝐸)\approx 0.$$

In other words,

$$\underset{𝑃(𝑡)}{\min }\mathrm{\mid }𝐶(𝐸)\mathrm{\mid }$$

subject to

$$𝐶(𝑡)\ge 0,{𝑡}_{𝑅}\le 𝑡\le 𝐸\mathrm{.}$$

Meaning

• corpus at death should be near zero;
• corpus should never become negative while alive.

However, E is unknown!

Let

$$𝐸={𝐸}^{\ast }\pm 𝛿$$

where,

• ${𝐸}^{\ast }$ = expected end of life
• $𝛿$ = uncertainty in longevity

If retirement spending is planned assuming

$$𝐶({𝐸}^{\ast })=0,$$

then:

• If actual death occurs at ${𝐸}^{\ast }-𝛿$, there will be a positive leftover corpus:

$$𝐶({𝐸}^{\ast }-𝛿)>0$$

This corresponds to the unused corpus region in the Fig. 2.

• If actual death occurs at ${𝐸}^{\ast }+𝛿$, the corpus may be exhausted before death:

$$𝐶({𝐸}^{\ast }+𝛿)<0$$

This corresponds to the outliving savings region in Fig. 2.

Thus, the retirement spending dilemma arises because one must choose $𝑃(𝑡)$ today while the actual end of life is uncertain:

$$𝐸={𝐸}^{\ast }\pm 𝛿\mathrm{.}$$

Let

$$𝐿(𝐸)=\mathrm{\mid }𝐶(𝐸)\mathrm{\mid }$$

be the mismatch between corpus and lifespan.

Solving

$$\underset{𝑃(𝑡)}{\min }\mathbb{𝐸}[𝐿(𝐸)]$$

where the expectation is taken over the probability distribution of lifespan.

Equivalently,

$$\underset{𝑃(𝑡)}{\min }\mathbb{𝐸}[\mathrm{\mid }𝐶(𝐸)\mathrm{\mid }]\mathrm{.}$$

Interpretation:

• Positive $𝐶(𝐸)$ means unused corpus.
• Negative $𝐶(𝐸)$ means outliving savings.

In reality, most people fear running out of money much more than leaving some behind.

We can safely define

$$𝐿(𝐸)=𝛼\max (𝐶(𝐸),0)+𝛽\max (-𝐶(𝐸),0)$$

with

$$𝛽\gg 𝛼\mathrm{.}$$

Then

$$\underset{𝑃(𝑡)}{\min }\mathbb{𝐸}[𝐿(𝐸)]\mathrm{.}$$

Interpretation:

• $𝛼$: penalty for dying with money left over.
• $𝛽$: penalty for being alive after the corpus is exhausted.

Effectively it means one has to choose the discretionary spending path $𝑃(𝑡)$ to minimize

$$\mathbb{𝐸}[𝐿(𝐸)],$$

where $𝐿(𝐸)$ penalizes both leftover corpus at death and corpus exhaustion before death. The optimal solution balances the risk of dying rich against the risk of living poor.

Does this really help? I am still trying to figure this out what should P(t) look like!

NB: All graphics produced and the Mathematical formulation has Copilot (GenAI) assistance based on prompts by the author. 

Indian Patent Filing | Individual |

 Indian Patent Filing.

Can I file a patent by myself. No patent attorney. No, nothing. An Experience.

Logging into IP Portal

As soon as you land on PATENT eFiling page you have two options. Create a (a) Electronic Signature or (b) Digital Signature. I choose Electronic Signature more because of familiarity of using my Aadhar to esign (for example Indian Income Tax Returns)

Q: How to Procure Electronic Signatures?

A: As per the e-Mudhra policy, all e-filing users are requested to use only the e-Mudhra sign-up link provided on the IPINDIA e-filing portals to subscribe to the e-Mudhra e-sign. Users are advised not to register through the general emSigner website, as it may result in subscribing to a plan that is not aligned with the specific requirements of IP India/Patent Office. The sign-up URL is customized and specifically provided by e-Mudhra for e-sign users of various IPINDIA e-filing portals.

Following the URL you go through a process of generating an Elecornic Signature. The cost of the E-signature is 250 + taxes which (as on 2026-Oct) is 295 INR (valid for 1 year or 100 usages). Easy payment through UPI. In the process you need to fill in your Aadhar # and PAN # (do not know why but there is not much choice) and then you need to do a video KYC and read out a pre-defined text (which is displayed on the portal) and record your video. In this process you create a 6-digit PIN and a username. Post that you should see something like this. Though the approval process says 15 minutes. It does not happen in that quick time. 

An email suggesting to login (mobile # and otp) would follow

Your KYC account has been successfully verified.

To complete your activation, please complete the following:

1. Log in using your username, PIN, and OTP
2. Review and sign the Subscriber Agreement

Post this you can register on PATENT eFiling page!
You need to choose a 10 char userid and password so that you can login to IP portal.

Point is you have to e-sign ID to login to IP Portal!

The Other Side | Retirement

When you are on a job everything is a time defined template and this flows into both your work and personal life. Clock is the main driver. The orbit (your journey) is highly templatized which very few or delta deviation. 

When you remove the main driver, "The Clock", you move into a very different orbit. Fortunately, the journey in this orbit is not a template. Everyone has their own way of moving in that orbit. Making the journey very personalized both in space and time.

A few common observations

1. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday = *Day
2. Purchase fewer things at a time to maximize the market visits
3. Eating at a slower pace (eating a small yellow banana in 4/5 bites instead of 2/3) and chew food the way it is recommended by doctors all the time
4. Picking up all calls. Even if they are spam/unsolicited and politely telling them you do not need a loan
5. Multiple visits to open Senior Citizen Savings Scheme account - fortunately SCSS cannot be opened online, yet!
6. No need to hit the road to face traffic
7. Can book travel in the middle of the week (need not think of clubbing the travel to buffer into Saturday and Sunday)
8.  Suddenly you make plans to compensate you "zero salary" with monthly incomes from buying an annuity, MIS from a post office, etc unless you are smart planner when you were in the previous orbit (see Money Matters)
9. Use the "usually working hours" to pick up your needs from the nearby departmental stores instead of Sunday, Saturday or after 1800 hrs etc. 
10. You wake up when you want to (your body feels rested) rather than when an alarm dictates.
11. Midnoon resting as and when your body asks for it, not when the calendar allows.
12. Watching a complete movie without wanting to hit the fast forward button (especially on OTT)
13. Leisure breakfast, lunch, dinner (you really chew your food as recommended by health experts!)
14. Fewer activities are dictated by a deadline
15. (If you are from south of India) season the coconut chutney and serve out of a bowl instead of consuming directly from mixie jar minus seasoning!

#3 and #13 are similar!

After a Long Innings | Matter of Money

Background

If you are anything like me, a salaried employee, you would have not worried about the money that the organization compensates you. At best, you would look at your salary slip, maybe glance through the deductions and make sure the amount mentioned after the deduction and the amount deposited in your bank match. You do a couple of times, which assures you that there is a match, and then you do not even look to match. You are happy if at the end of the month there is an SMS that your salary has been credited and that is it.

Closer to your retirement or superannuation, especially if you are in an employment where there is no central/state government pension suddenly "money matters" especially because your monthly credits in terms of salary disappears and you need to plan or figure out how to try and fill that "monthly salary".

This is when the deductions in your salary slip (which was not cared for all these years) requires your attention. 

Read on, if you are someone like me!

Deductions which Pay you forward

While I cannot say this is applicable to everyone, this is based on my personally going through the process and must be true at the least for all people in Tata Consultancy Services Limited.

Aside of the Tax deduction, which is based on your income and the uniform professional tax (200 INR as of 2026) which show up prominently in your deduction section of your salary slip. There are a few deductions that actually are useful when you retire.

1. Provident Fund (PF): Which is 12% of your basic pay which is mandatorily deducted from your salary. Of this 8.33% (meaning 8.33% of 12% of the basic) is deposited into Employee Pension Scheme (EPS) operated by Employee Provident Fund Office (EPFO)
2. Voluntary Provident Fund (VPF): You have the choice of determining how much you wish to save for a later date. You could choose between 0 and 88%. If you choose 88% (the max) would mean that you are putting your entire basic salary into PF. Subsequently your take home salary, the money credited into your account will be lesser
3. National Pension Scheme (NPS): This is also a voluntary contribution which is of use when you retire.

Though not shown in the deduction (your Annual Compensation Letter will talk about)

1. Superannuation Fund: You can opt-in or opt-out. An opt-in means 15% of your basic is credited to your superannuation fund. Obviously, an opt-in means lesser take home salary when you are employed!
2. Gratuity: Usually based on policy which depends on the number of years that you have worked in the organization

When you turn 60 years

You retire at the end of the month in which you turn 60 years. If you turned 60 on August 1, 2026, then your last working day would be 31-Aug-2026.

When you retire

These are the things that you get

1. Your gratuity is paid immediately [see Compute #1]
2. If you have accumulated earned leaves (max of 56), you get paid immediately [see Compute #2]
3. You can have access to the money you have in your PF (the 12% of basic that was deducted + any VPF contribution you might have contributed)
4. You last month salary.

These are available as lumpsum almost immediately after your retirement. The idea is you could invest/use this money in a way to compensate for the salary that you were getting till you turned 60! 

The other deductions (EPS, SF, NPS) require you to buy an annuity which will enable you to get a fixed monthly income in lieu of your salary. Note that you can choose the annuity payout to be yearly, half-yearly, quarterly, and monthly.

1. Pension #1: EPS (the 8.33% of the 12% of your basic pay that was deposited with the EPFO) should allow you to get a steady pension (a small amount) almost immediately. The computation is based on the number of years of service. Approximately it is 15000 x (# of years of service) /70. As a quick compute if you worked for 35 years, you would get a monthly pension of 7500 for the rest of your life.
2. Pension #2: Superannuation Fund requires that you buy an annuity for at the least 2/3 of the total amount in you SF fund. You have the option of commuting (withdrawing) 1/3 of the SF. This 2/3 of SF is your source of pension.
3. Pension #3: The monies in your NPS account also require that you use at the least 40% of your funds to buy annuity from a list of annuity service providers. This 40% is another source of pension.

In brief you have (see the figure below)

Monthly source of income coming from (a) EPS directly from EPFO credited to your account, (b) monthly annuity from the 2/3 of your Superannuation Funds and (c) monthly annuity from the40% of your NPS Funds. 

Which might in all probability not match the salary that was getting credited in your account every month before you retired.

However, you have the (a) funds in your PF (between 12% to 100% of your basic salary saved over several years), (b) 1/3 of your SF (15% of basic salary if you opted to contribute), (c) 60% of your NPS, (d) Gratuity, and (e) Earned Leave encashment in your hand, which you can "make use of" so that you can generate a monthly payout. 

Both these are the substitute for the salary that stops getting credited into your bank when you retire!

At a Glance. Browns can give you monthly pension. While you have the cash (in blues) that you can invest/use to generate monthly income!

[ Compute #1]