Every time I find a good piece of writing on the internet, I get into a rabbit hole of binging on the author’s bio and work. Not sure why and how this became a habit, but it has stuck with me for quite some time now. I guess it’s an inherent human curiosity to know more and more about strangers who echo our thoughts.
Hence, in case you’re here already, this piece is about me and my life of 31 years so far! Writing this has been a great experience. Distilling one’s life in words is a tough but worthwhile exercise (You too should write one, in case you haven’t yet):
- 1990 – 2001 – Birth, Being Studious & Chess:
- Birth1
- I was born on 5th September 1990. Though I am still skeptical about numerology/astrology, both the date and the year are significant for multiple reasons
- 5th September – I have been passionate about teaching/coaching from a very young age. My teachers from Pre KG to business school have left an indelible impact on me and I have always loved my time inside classrooms.
- 1990 – this was the year when Tim Berners-Lee created the 1st web server and the foundation for internet was laid, the human genome project was launched and Nelson Mandela was released. I could be connecting random dots here, but the internet has introduced me to interesting individuals who have shaped my life and beliefs as equally as my family members, biotechnology was my subject of my UG and the jobs I have been holding for over 5.5 years now and untouchability and caste are topics I feel quite strongly about.
- Being Studious:
- Hailing from what I would call a lower middle class family, to parents who did struggle to make ends meet, but never compromised on the education I received, one thing that was drilled into my head early on was that my only job as a kid is to study well, and get good grades. Self help books and magazines, Reader’s Digest publications and the Hindu were a staple at my home.
- Being the only educated person in his family, my dad had somehow grasped the power of education and had instilled in me the habit of constant reading and the earning to strive to become a better version of myself every day. Curiosity and determination were beneficial byproducts
- Chess – I was a district level chess player till my class 5. Had to quit because like all middleclass Indians I had to chose between education vs every other distraction that millennials of my age had to battle while growing up.
- Birth1
- 2002 – 2008 – Sainik School, a Disciplined Life, and Taking the First Big Decision of my Life:
- The Beginnings – What started as a pursuit of all-round development and a lack of great schools in my hometown, led my father to Sainik School, Amaravathi Nagar. With luck and a bit of hard work, I managed to clear the entrance test and the 1st big interview of my life. SSA Life
- Sainik School life from Class 6 to 12 was in one word “magical”:
- Days would start at 5.15AM in the mornings and would involve PT, classes from 8 – 1pm, games from 4-6pm, study time from 6-8pm and then sleep from 10pm. Changing attire 5 times everyday has never been fun since then.
- Students were split into 4 houses (Chera, Chola, Pandya, Pallava) and the house camaraderie and learning from seniors/housemates was infinite. This gradually transitioned to giving back to juniors from Class 9 as House Prefect, House Captain (Class 11) and School Vice Captain – Academics (Class 12). Wonderful teachers, and inspiring friends continue to influence my life right until today
- The focus beyond the classroom was quite poignant – Tiring weekly drills and event day parades, the early morning cross country runs, inter-house rivalries, Thursday evening extra curricular contests, Monday morning assemblies, hockey evenings and team trips, South Zone meets and debate wins, 2nd Sunday Parent Visits, Athletics/Aquatics meets, the 5-times a week non-veg food – the list is quite long…
- Sainik School, beyond the grades and preparing individuals for the defence forces, prepares students for the journey of life
- The 1st Big Decision of my Life
- I cleared the NDA (National Defence Academy) exam in 2008 (written test, SSB interview and my medicals) and was faced with the 1st big decision in my life. Financial troubles, my understanding of my strengths and future plans pushed me to take the road not taken! I didn’t join the Indian Navy and joined for my UG course in Biotechnology
- The Beginnings – What started as a pursuit of all-round development and a lack of great schools in my hometown, led my father to Sainik School, Amaravathi Nagar. With luck and a bit of hard work, I managed to clear the entrance test and the 1st big interview of my life. SSA Life
- 2008 – 16 – Finding Love, IIM-Bangalore, and Starting my Career:
- Transition – College was a whole new experience for someone who had lived the so-called regimented life for 7 years. Looking back I feel like life was playing ping pong with me by pushing me pole to pole! I went from:
- An all boys school to a UG class which had 3x more women than men,
- A strict military routine to a more laissez faire approach to my days,
- No phone/internet to relatively greater/infinite access, and
- From being totally cutoff from civilian existence to an absolute immersion into life outside the boundaries of military schooling
- Love – What started as conversations over the aisle during breaks, turned into deeper conversations of two youngsters trying to figure out their lives and finally evolved into a relationship that’s now more than 11 years young and beautiful!
- B School
- Joining B-School had always been a key priority given the poor scope of Biotech in India (with just an UG degree) and due to financial commitments. I had to earn more and earn quickly (Back then, B-school was my best bet or that’s what I thought so)
- Thankfully, I got admitted to IIM-Bangalore’s PGP program in 2012 soon after my UG and that continues to be one of the best things to have happened to me! The 2 years at B were life changing in many ways, chief among them being the jobs I could interview for and my starting salary! Having said that, beyond the tangibles, the eclectic group of students I got to interact with, professors, ITC internship and the international exchange experience at Canada helped me evolve beyond measure
- First Job:
- It was now time to join the corporate world! Luckily enough, my 1st posting was at a FMCG Packaging Factory at Chennai! Apart from the factory life, 6-day workweeks, and daily firefighting testing my soul’s resilience, good friends, proximity to the beloved and a good starting package helped me go on for 2 good years!
- Boredom, a nagging feeling of being under-utilized, and career anxieties made me switch to a Life Sciences role at a Bangalore startup
- Transition – College was a whole new experience for someone who had lived the so-called regimented life for 7 years. Looking back I feel like life was playing ping pong with me by pushing me pole to pole! I went from:
- 2017 – till date – Getting Married, Finding a Good Job and the Pandemic:
- Marriage – With me and my wife belonging to different castes, and parents being parents, our wedding events, (attended by both families) continues to be one of the toughest things we have been able to orchestrate jointly. The next biggest thing which we accomplished together was the construction of a farmhouse in our native after COVID. In Tamil there is a popular saying “Kalyanam Panni Paar, Veetai Katti Paar” (Get Married, Build a House) – Having done both I now understand the reasoning behind it (these two events can teach you 80% of the most important stuff in life. (Our ancestors, understood the Pareto principle before it was postulated)
- Working with Intelligent Systems – As I continued to settle into married life, an interesting opportunity knocked my door when I was looking for it and took it up in spite of my doubts. The company had built an intelligent NLP software which was to text, what excel was to numbers; they were looking for India-based folks who could leverage the tool to deliver insights to pharma clients. It helps users understand themes in volumes of unstructured data. As Cal Newport2 suggested in his brilliant book “Deep Work” about how the economic restructuring would benefit a class of knowledge workers disproportionately, I predicted that this ability to work with intelligent machines would help me in the long run and hence just pounced on it!
- COVID: For every millennial alive today, COVID would be a turning point/milestone of sorts. COVID personally has accelerated my learning curve, made me rethink the purpose of my existence and made me introspect about things that I love; I’m not sure if this blog would be here today, if not for COVID. It helped me understand more about things that are within my control and those that are beyond. And how recognizing this makes a huge difference. I read a lot, took care of my mental health, started meditating and journaling regularly.
Notes:
1Birth Year Events Inspiration – Kalaignar Karunanithi, one of the popular writers and political leaders of Tamil Nadu, starts his biography (Nenjukku Neethi), with a brief overview of events that happened in the year that he was born. He named his son Stalin, because he was born in the year that Stalin died. These traits highlight how Kalaignar was curious about the events around the world and how much he was influenced by Russia
2Cal Newport’s 3 Types of Knowledge Workers Who Stand to Gain the Most in the New/Restructured Economy (Deep Work, Chapter 1) – High Skilled Workers, Superstars, and the Owners
