I came to Mumbai to speak at Open Source Summit India 2026. 🎤 We had two days before our talk, and they filled up quickly with travel, crowded halls, and conversations I kept thinking about afterwards. 
Bangalore, then Mumbai
15 June. Bangalore first. The jet bridge, the IndiGo on the tarmac, then the flight to Mumbai. ✈️
Mumbai that evening, from the hotel window. My first time in the city. Trees, apartments, that mix of green and concrete. Our talk was still two days away.
Linus, in the room
16 June. Jasmine Hall 2. Linus Torvalds in conversation with Dirk Hohndel. Linus, in person, under an Open Source Summit India banner. The first time I had seen him directly, not on a screen. Watching him live had been on my bucket list for years. I was so excited. 
A few things that stuck. He hates prepared talks, which is why they do this as a conversation. Twenty years of the same release: no splashy features, a new kernel every nine or ten weeks, Git and email, and he said he is not a programmer anymore. He is a development lead. Rust is interesting, he still likes C, and he likes LLMs for finding bugs and for toy projects, not for hallucinated reports thrown over the fence.
- Trust people, not companies. Code is easy. Personalities are harder.
- They talked for twenty-six minutes without mentioning AI.
- If you find a bug with an LLM, send a patch, and stay in the conversation.
The recording: Keynote: Linus Torvalds in Conversation with Dirk Hohndel.
Around that conversation was a huge venue. Green lights, cameras, and a Linux conference filling a Mumbai convention centre.
Then a conversation with Greg Kroah-Hartman in the hallway, and a round-table after that. People asked about reviewing patches, and how they think about the kernel over the long term.
Night after the first day. Wet road, office lights. Our own talk was next.
The talk, the next afternoon
17 June. Our talk. 3:35pm, Lotus Ballroom 3. 🎤 Towards a Tool for Access-Affinity Based Structure Reordering in the Linux Kernel.
The idea is simple: fields accessed close together in time should live close together in memory. We built a small tool around it called kstruct-tuner.
Introvert nerves 😅. I was anxious about speaking, but I was pretty excited too. Hopefully, I will improve my public speaking skills next time. The questions and feedback gave me things to think about.
Slides
The slides are embedded here too. 📄
Open or download the 60-page PDF.
The Linux Foundation recorded the talk. 🎥
Recording: YouTube. Session: OSS India 2026. Slides: PDF.
The next day there was no ballroom and no schedule. I went out to see the city on my own, starting at a museum and ending by the sea. 🚶 That became my first solo walk through South Mumbai.
