Full Stack

As super-specialization becomes pervasive in all professions, our notions of what constitutes an all-round superstar are also shrinking. Full stack developer? Full stack data scientist? Try full stack engineer. Wait, make that full stack engineer-musician. How about full-stack engineer-inventor-musician? Let's try "Engineer. Musician. Entrepreneur. Paradigm shifter." There. That's more like some of the more pretentious job titles on LinkedIn these days. You take one look at one of those and think: Humbug! That's not a thing. There aren't any of those.

I was reminded today that my father is one of those. An engineer's engineer, and then some. Starting thirty-nine years ago, he created a series of electronic products that revolutionized the way Indian classical music is performed. He built an industry that manufactured thousands of musical instruments that have become ubiquitous for both practice and performance of Carnatic and Hindustani music. But before that, he invented, prototyped, and built several of these instruments completely by hand. And that word --- completely --- will put many a "full stack" so-and-so to shame.

Exhibit 1A: There's no kidding about the term "handmade" when it comes to the two "music boxes" labeled 1979 and 1987. My father:

• Dreamed up the concept that an electronic tanpura/tambura/tabla would make his life easier (he is a concert-grade performing musician),
• Designed the electronic circuitry and acoustics for the instrument,
• Prototyped the electronics and acoustics, including designing and etching the PCB, and soldering all the components on by hand,
• Designed mechanical enclosures, a chassis to hold everything, brackets for the knobs, and a battery compartment (power failures in Bangalore were even more common then),
• Fabricated the chassis and brackets out of sheet aluminum,
• Built the box out of wood (he is a skilled carpenter),
• Used aluminum paint to paint the artwork on the instrument, and finally,
• Toured the country giving concerts, in-person demonstrations to classical music maestros, and lecture-demonstrations at several venues (at one of which he was assisted in an ambitious but eventually hilarious manner by his eight-year-old son). The dings on the speaker border attest to the well-traveled antecedents of this prototype.

He ended up building tens of these instruments himself, by hand, and selling them to renowned artistes, but over the course of the next quarter century, he started and successfully ran a company to serve the classical music community. Needless to say, this was a boot-strapped business, no venture capital and catered lunches. His little musical boxes became so synonymous with Indian music concerts that cartoonists started including them in their caricatures of "the music scene".

These days, in his seventieth year, he's branching out, trying to get back to another of his adored fields: aviation. Having spent ten years in the seventies as a design engineer at a public-sector aeronautics firm (eventually resigning in frustration at the pace of progress), he's now designing gadgets to modernize and indigenize several subsystems in the Indian Air Force's fleet.

Today I took my four-year-old son to tour my father's factory, to see his "thatha's work". I can truly say to him: this is your grandfather's full stack.