My life has always been shaped by the shifting currents of a global world. I was born in Chennai and spent some of my early childhood in India before moving to Jakarta at the age of six. Exposure to people from around the world at such an early age led to my continuing fascination with varied languages, cultures, and history.
I moved to Singapore to attend UWCSEA, and after struggled to decide between my equal passions for philosophy, biology, physics, visual arts, and video game development. These fields being as far apart as they were, the decision felt momentous, so I took a gap year after high school to reflect on it. Eventually, I decided on the University of Waterloo for computer science.
The following five years were easily the most challenging of my life, partly due to the mathematical intensity of the course and partly the gruelling schedule with no holidays. But through that time I discovered an intellectual passion for programming and computer architecture. I also gained real work experience through my internships at the height of the software boom. It seemed clear that software was the path I would be on for the foreseeable future.
Life has a way of always surprising you. After a stint as the first engineer at a startup, I started my own company. Suffice it to say scars were gained and lessons learned. After seven years in North America, I realized that I didn't particularly enjoy life there, and I yearned for the organic vitality of home. So I packed up and moved to India to try and experience what a decade of growth both in the nation and myself would be like.
After moving to Bangalore in early 2024, I’ve found a life here that allows me to explore my varied interests in a creative and supportive ecosystem. Since then, I have taken a Vipassana retreat each year and built a large bookshelf that I’m very proud of. Fantasy and science fiction are a large part of my reading life, and I’m particularly interested in worldbuilding inspired by Indic aesthetics, histories, and cosmologies. I’m also helping my sister build her brownie business, Bob’s Browniez. I have rekindled my love for physics, biology, and hard tech, and help organize Deep Tech Week, which I plan to bring to India to highlight the growing deep-tech ecosystem here.
