I heard that Vivek Shanbhag had launched a literary magazine with translations into English of stories from various regional languages. I think this is a great way to access works in Indian languages.
Excellent new literary journal launched by vivek shanbag. What it proves yet again is that the most serious, inventive and ambitious writing, working with the most interesting material, in India is coming from the writers working in regional languages. pic.twitter.com/KCaS60yDy6
I then read the Scroll interview with Shanbhag where he talks about the story behind the name:
Hyphen takes its inspiration from the poet, scholar, and translator AK Ramanujan, who once described himself as the “hyphen” in Indo-American. This striking metaphor aptly conveys the idea of connection and serves as a guiding principle for bringing diverse literatures and cultures into dialogue.
I visited the website and found that if I logged in with your email id, I could read one story. I read Benyamin’s The Postman.
Benyamin is a Malayalam writer I want to read in the original Malayalam one day. Manjaveyil Marangal is of interest to me. But, his most known work is Adujeevitam, which was made into The Goat Life.
The Hyphen carried his The Postman. This story was translated to English by J Devika. The story is about a postman who is otherwise very particular about following the rules of postal delivery but who does not delivers certain letters because he believes it could affect their lives. I would love to read this in the original Malayalam.
You can either read The Postman or see who else has written in this edition of The Hyphen. The best case would be to read someone you know of who has written in your mother tongue. After you read it in The Hyphen in English, try to read it in your mother tongue as well.
I subscribed to both the print and digital edition of The Hyphen which is available in India, but they do not ship it internationally yet. I plan to read the physical copy of the magazine and then donate it to the public circulating library that I am a member of. There is also a page on The Hyphen’s website that has a list of places where you can buy the magazine.
After The Postman, I am reading Indulkar, written by Kiran Gurav and translated from Marathi by Shanta Gokhale.
Sarah explains how she “orchestrates rather than writes” the documentation. She reviews the documentation in GitHub so that all of her reviews are tracked and can be fed back.
Some suggestions that she had for technical writers:
Learning how to a steer a module through skills, plugins, or customization layers.
Build your own style guide and then try to get the model to follow that guide.
Start tinkering.
I get surprised sometimes when I hear that a company that I follow for various reason has tech writers. And then, it would make total sense to me that as a technology company, they would have tech writers – if not in India then in some other part of the world.
I came across a post about Blaugust 2026 (via Zachary Kai)just before I started writing this post. Belghast, who wrote the Tales of the Aggronaut, started Blaugust in 2014. He passed away this year in July.
A Discord community that runs Blaugust has decided to still go ahead with Blaugust this year despite his passing. Since I wrote a post yesterday, I thought I could keep going through August.
26 July 2026
This was a day after a week of Jantar Mantar protests, India’s Minister of Education, Dharmendra Pradhan had resigned. Gen Z which had been vilified had led protests in their own way and had got the kudos of many people. It had also made Instagram the platform for protests and for the place to consume news.
I always feel queasy about hosting content on these social media apps and building your business around this. But, it seems to be working for a few of these folks.
I ended the day watching two wonderful episodes of Shut Up Ya Kunal where he interviews Ramchandra Guha and Jerry Pinto.
I also got a call from the Hospital saying that my follow-up appointment had been postponed to Wednesday. This would continue for two more days.
27 July 2026
Former ISRO Chairman Madhavan Nair spoke to Chethan Kumar of Times of India about scientists working in important scientific projects at ISRO leaving to work in the private sector.
This old interview reminded me of my old web surfing days. D V Sridharan used to write on a website called Good News India before working on this project called pointReturn which he talks about in the video. I remembered this after reading a Weekly Note by Abhinav Sarkar. He had a photo of a windmill atop the note that reminded me of the windmill Sridharan had put up at pointReturn.
I was so surprised that I could connect a blog post I saw on this day to a post that I read in 2007 or 2008. I used to type in the url manually and visit the website.
I went through the websites of Cory Doctrow, Derek Sivers, Dave Winer, Doc Searls, and many others over the next few days. Google Reader broke that habit and ever since I have depended on some form of a RSS reader to read blogs.
28 July 2026
I got another call from the Hospital postponing my surgeon’s appointment to Thursday.
I loved watching all the psychological tricks in customer service and advertising discussed in this episode with Rory Sutherland.
One of the videos that resonated a lot and that the YouTube algorithm surfaced this video was made after the CAA-NRC protests six years ago.
I watched this video of William Darlymple at Kerala Literature Festival 2026 where he released the Malayalam version of his book, The Golden Road and also presented many of his points that are expanded on in the book.
29 July 2026
I discovered the work of Dominic Hart, an Australian YouTuber from his videos on using a pocket notebook. But, two videos I loved watching are on his building a shed in his parents’ backyard and his moving into an office space in the city.
I watched a nice interview with Kunal Kamra, which talked about how his family members reacted to his various controversies and run-ins with the police.
This video is a nice introduction to the concept of social arbitrage investing. They use only social media signals (mostly TikTok and Instagram) to make investment decisions. I think it works in American markets because they depend on the efficiency of stock markets to weed out fundamental and technical issues. He says he is bullish about future investment in Amazon.
30 July 2026
The discourse around the 20 July 2026 protests at Jantar Mantar began to turn with people blaming Gen Z for using unparliamentary language against the Prime Minister and various organs of the ruling dispensation finding protestors who had used such language and getting them to apologise on camera. Nothing much has changed for the apologisers despite the apology.
Two of my favourite YouTubers, Ali Abdaal and Matt D’Avella did a mutual interview podcast. They spoke about their respective YouTube journeys, parenthood, and the differing paths they both took after launching YouTube courses.
31 July 2026
I went to the Hospital despite the Doctor not planning to turn up and got my stitches removed. I have to follow-up with the Surgeon on Tuesday (4 August) for care instructions.
In the evening I had almost reached Part Two of the Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson. The long waiting time at the Hospital was great to catch up on a lot of this reading. I signed up for Brandon Sanderson’s newsletter. I was impressed about how he transparently talks about the books he is writing and the progress he has made in each book.
Cory Doctrow also does this. I had picked up his book to read as well.
I have listened to Arz Kiya Hai as a background music for different Instagram and YouTube short videos but watched the original video for the first time on this day.
Bridges in Pune were going underwater as water was released from Khadakwasla Dam. As I said on X and on Mastodon, Pune must build bridges that raise themselves up when the flood waters in the Mutha rise.
I spent the rest of the day asleep and did not work.
01 August 2026
I was considering how I write my posts here.
I would usually write posts like this on my link blog that I keep on Tumblr. I usually just post links on Tumblr and then give context for myself using the tags. In the post that I wrote on this blog, I ended up giving context. Tumblr is great for this. It is also a great place to expand on text, if you think that is necessary.
Tumblr is owned by Automattic, the company that runs WordPress.com. I wanted to reduce the points of failure and try another blogging service, like micro.blog.
I have not decided yet but it is something on my mind this week.
SpaceX’s Starship Flight 13 is adrift in the Eastern Indian Ocean. The commentators expected it to explode but it did not. It just sat there – floating in the Ocean.
Watch a minute of that splashdown in the video above to see how crazy this was. The ship continued to transmit on-board cameras views via Starlink after splashdown!
Elon Musk announced that ships were going out to try and tow the ship back to port.
Some ship watchers are now following this mission more closely. A YouTube channel called What’s Going on with Shipping? made a nice video about the challenges of an out in the ocean towing mission. As he says, the Norwegians are being sent out to sea to try and tow the ship back to port.
I loved watching this especially since I have worked in a shipyard way back in 2011.
I followed Priyanka Dalal from the early days of Twitter. I followed her probably because she was from Mumbai. I then followed her blogs – one on travel and one on spirituality.
I saw a pinned post on her X profile stating that her book was out for pre-order. When I went on Amazon, I found that the book was already available on Kindle. I purchased the book and began reading it.
It is rare to read books of rational spiritual experiences and how paths are taken and left behind. The experience of reading this book also touched one aspect of my own spiritual path. I think it is important to read this book to understand your own path better.
The book was a fast read for me and got me back to reading.
A day after the historic launch of Vikram 1. Questions remained related to the mission that have not all been fully answered yet.
Tuesday 21 July
I went to the hospital for a post-surgery check-up. Recovery looks good. Follow-up on 27th.
Thursday 23 July
I decided to get back to reading. I picked up My Journey to Devi by Priyanka Dalal. It was a short less-than-100-pages read that I completed on the same day.
I then picked up The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson which is a book club read-along later in the day. I am way behind on where I should be in reading progress but I will catch up. I am reading this now.
Saturday 25 July
I wanted to read the blog of Derek Sivers. I went to his blog and read his posts from the first half of 2026. I then went on to read the blog of Dave Winer.
I then moved ahead to the blog of Cory Doctrow. This reminded me that I had read his book, Red Team Blues. I then went to his website, Craphound to see the books he had written since. I found that he has written a book called The Lost Cause. I purchased that book to read next.
Vikram 1 lifted-off as if in a hurry from the First Launch Pad on 18 July 2026 at 12:05 PM. It cleared the launch pad and headed to orbit and placed two satellites in orbit. We now have India’s first successful launch of a launch vehicle by a non-governmental entity.
I live-tooted on Mastodon where things remain calm. People just went crazy on X. A stream of congratulations followed.
Before lift-off
I have been recovering after a surgery earlier in the week. Hence, my father was also at home. I casted the webcast on YouTube on my TV. I was active on WhatsApp, Mastodon, and X.
The webcast commentary frequently spoke over the callouts. You could hear the callouts better on the X webstream. However, I was not able to cast the X webstream on the TV.
The lift-off reached a hold 5 minutes before lift-off scheduled for 11:30 AM. We saw that it was a Navigation Monitoring Failure hold. After a few minutes of discussions, the Automatic Launch Sequence was re-started with the lift-off time set to 12:05 PM. There were some anxious faces in the Mission Control Center.
Countdown and Lift-off
I breathed the first sigh of relief when the countdown went beyond the 5 minute mark. As the countdown went into 5 second call outs to each second countdown to zero, there was a great sense of being part of history.
I felt there was a brief pause before the launch vehicle leaped off the launch pad. Lift-off and clearing the launch pad was an important launch milestone. The launch vehicle had not exploded on or off the launch pad. That was an achievement!
The camera angle immediately after lift-off felt weird. The cheers from the Skyroot Aerospace team went over the calls for MaxQ. The graphs were textbook for the first two stages.
There were some beautiful on-board camera views. The blue Earth just beyond the plume of the solid stage was a sight to behold.
Trouble (that did not affect the overall launch) seems to start after the Stage III cutoff. There was a combined coast phase where the spent third stage flew with the fourth stage. When the third stage separated, it seemed to push towards the fourth stage and hit it gently.
There seemed to be worry also when there seemed to be a temporary loss of signal from the vehicle a little after fourth stage ignition and well before satellite separation.
It may have been because the signal switch between Indonesia and Australia or because the stage may have rolled.
We got back to images of the Earth in the background. There was another round of celebration. More followed when the satellites separated. The indications on the screen seemed to indicate they had planned somethings that didn’t work but they skipped mentioning them until they happened.
Payloads on-board Vikram 1 Mission AagamanDawn of a new era of private Indian rocketeers
The image of the Sun rising over the payloads seen through the Cosmic diamond was just a goosebump-inducing experience.
I switched off the webcast after the end of the stream with the announcement of completion of a mission. I then hung out on X asking questions and listening to answers.
Payloads
Grahaa Space announced that it has achieved mission objectives.
SOLARAS has achieved its mission objectives! Telemetry confirmed by the global amateur radio community across multiple passes, validating our spacecraft systems in orbit.
Cosmoserve Space said that “The robotic petals which were supposed to open could not do so due to an unusual settling of the petals which might have been caused by a combination of extreme space conditions.”
There was nothing heard about the Skyroot’s SCOPE satellite.
There was independent confirmation of mission success by Space Force.
Space Force orbit data shows the expected three objects from the Vikram-1 launch in a 441 x 451 km x 59.9 deg orbit, independently confirming success of the launch. Congrats @SkyrootA
Before the launch of Vikram 1, I wanted to put together what is known from various online sources about the launch vehicle and the various payloads that will fly.
The first launch by a private launch vehicle from Indian soil is on the horizon. The latest NOTAM put out seems to point at a launch sometime after July 12 (and latest by August 4) from the First Launch Pad at Satish Dhawan Space Center, Sriharikota. NOTAMs can change. The first mission of Vikram 1 is the Flight Test 1 or Mission Aagaman (Arrival).
[Update [10 July 2026]: The latest NOTAM puts the launch at after July 18.]
Vikram 1 is a four stage launch vehicle. The first three stages are solid and the fourth stage is liquid. The first three stages are powered by the Kalam 1200, Kalam 250, and Kalam 100 engines respectively. The fourth stage is called an Orbital Adjustment Module is powered by four Raman 2 engines.
Skyroot Aerospace has been building a launch vehicle since their first test of Kalam 5 in December 2020. Their subsequent tests tested out bigger size solid motors – the Kalam 250 in March 2024. They also worked on the liquid fuelled Raman 2 engines since July 2023.
Skyroot Aerospace’s first launch was the Vikram S. Named after Dr. Vikram Sarabhai—the father of India’s space program—it successfully reached a peak altitude of 89.5 km during its historic maiden flight on November 18, 2022, from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre. They launched from their own launch pad.
There have been reports in regional media about the launch as the rocket segments moved from their factory in Hyderabad to Sriharikota. The fuel that the solid stages were to be used were to be filled at ISRO Solid Propellant Plant (SPP) at Sriharikota.
Skyroot announced the payloads on 6 July 2026.
Payloads on a ride to space. 🚀 Vikram-1's Test Flight-1, Mission Aagaman, carries multiple technology demonstrations: @grahaaspace's SOLARAS S3 satellite, Cosmoserve Space's in-orbit robotic arm Embrace, an in-orbit demonstration from Germany's @DCUBEDspace, and Skyroot's own… pic.twitter.com/l1GoEuL19U
Flying alongside them: Cosmos Diamonds' artwork Cosmic Bloom, and a Microart by Ajay Kumar Mattewada — an 18K gold rocket holding micro-sculptures of Sir C.V. Raman, Dr. Vikram Sarabhai (Vikram-1's namesake), and Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, each smaller than a grain of rice. pic.twitter.com/gorfigyYCv
Dcubed (Deployables Cubed GmbH) is a German NewSpace hardware manufacturer headquartered near Munich, specializing in in-space manufacturing and deployable space technologies. They are widely known for producing high-performance micro-actuators, release nuts, launch locks, and deployable solar arrays designed to maximize payload power while minimizing launch volume. Dcubed plans to demonstrate its proprietary space hardware technologies: the uD3PP (micro Dcubed Pin Puller) and the mD3RN (micro Dcubed Release Nut).
Grahaa Space (legally registered as zSpaze Technologies Pvt. Ltd.) is a prominent Bengaluru-based Indian spacetech startup focused on Earth observation. Founded by former ISRO scientist Dr. Loganathan Muthuswamy and ex-IBM/Dell executive Ramesh Kumar V, the company is building an advanced constellation of nano-satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) designed to stream near-real-time, high-resolution geospatial video data.
Their first mission, Solaras S2 which flew on South Korea’s HANBIT-NANO operated by Innospace launched on December 23, 2025, from the Alcântara Space Center in Brazil due to a launch failure. This is their next mission.
Cosmoserve Space is an emerging Indian space technology startup specialized in Active Debris Removal (ADR) and space sustainability. Founded in 2025 by former ISRO scientist Chiranjeevi Phanindra, the company is headquarted in Hyderabad. They are developing autonomous, robotic spacecraft designed to safely de-orbit dead satellites and dangerous orbital clutter.
The founders page on the Cosmoserve website puts Skyroot’s founder Pawan Chandana as a Founding Partner. Pawan gets to play a role in both putting satellites in orbit and helping with their end of mission.
Cosmoserve released their mission patch in a video on LinkedIn. Varun Guru posted a nice explainer on how the mission is expected to work on X.
Space is extremely crowded.
There are 45,000+ objects orbiting the Earth.
But SpaceX wants to launch 1 million more satellites.
Right now, the best way for satellites to avoid collision is to dodge.
