About

I currently live in Navi Mumbai (since 2005) with my parents in Nerul.

First innings

I was born in 1981 in Thiruvananthapuram (aka Trivandrum), Kerala, India.

Till the age of 6-7, I lived in Delhi after which my family moved to Waterloo, Canada for two years (1988-1989). I started my schooling in Canada which is the reason why I started off with learning English as my primary language.

We came back to Delhi in 1989 and I did my second grade in St. Gregorios School, Janakpuri, New Delhi. We then moved to Basra, Iraq where I was home-schooled for my 3rd grade until the war between Iraq vs Kuwait started. Even though we came back to India on a holiday just before the war started, we couldn't go back to Iraq to pick up our things because of the shelling between the two countries and Basra is at the border.

So I ended up doing my 4th grade at Arya Central School, Trivandrum in 1990.

Best decade of my life - the 90s

After one year of being in Trivandrum, my Dad got a job at Haldia Petro Chemicals, Kolkatta where we moved to the City of Joy. I started my 5th grade in St. James' School. I was there till 1999. I had dropped out from my 10th grade in 1997 and repeated my 10th classes again - I got a one-pointer (so it was called there in the 90s) in Math can Computer Science. My computer science teacher, Mr. Abhijit Sircar, was my ONLY guru, no one else. He was the one who taught me not just computer science but how to think differently. If he had taught Math and Science at the high school level as well, there would've have been scores getting into IIT every year. He was also a great writer and many of the inter-city school plays were made based on his scripts.

Unfortunatley he passed away in June 2022. And I never met him after 1999, well I never visited Kolkata post April 1999. I always thought I would create something super-cool and be used world-wide so that I could go back to him and say thanks of appreciation for his wonderful years of teaching.

Kerala

I continued in St. James' for my 11th grade in 1998 but failed the exams and hence went off to Trivandrum for my high school (11th again and 12th) where I switched to the CBSE board. I faired miserably in exams again but passed my 12th with great difficulty (I had to re-take my Chemistry exam).

College

Then in 2001 I went off to Coimbatore for my college to do B.Sc. Computer Science where I was in the computer lab most of the time. Again I failed most of my tests but topped in the pratical exams. By the time I finished attending college for 3 years I had 19 arrear exams left out of which I cleared 16 in another 3 years. I did not get through my remaining 3 exams post my bike accident in 2008. I didn't gradute.

Freelance + Work

I freelanced since 2004, right after getting out of college. Got 3 clients who paid me Rs 1,000 each for the entire year of 2004. In 2005 I got into RentACoder.com which was a famous platform for outsourcing. That's where I met Dave Lavinsky of Growthink, where I got a contract job and freelanced for him since 2005.

I worked full-time at office location(s) for Phonethis Mobile Media in 2009 and again in 2010 for 3 months. Worked for Morningstar in 2012 for 2 months and then at my friend's company, EPQRS, for over a year. I then worked full-time for Growthink from 2016-2020. I was job-hunting in 2020 whilst doing some freelance work until I joined Applied Data Finance in January 2021 till February 2023. Starting February 2023, I've been at CloudXChange where I am currently working on an interal product as a full-stack developer based on Django and HTMLX.

Health

Well, 2008 year wasn't a good year for me - I ended up being caught in the cross-fire with during the 26/11 Mumbai attacks.

I've been diagnosed with schizophrenia since 2011 - more than 12 years ago at the time of writing this. As a result, it's almost impossible for me lead a regular life and hence am still single and can't live by myself. This is not much talked about topic since schizophrenia is almost considered like taboo. I am not really an advocate of mental health because it'll make me look like I'm suffering from some super major illness. And it's now very common to notice the way I am looked upon as by others. But I am not bothered any more. I now understand the meaning of discrimination. As a result of which I am misanthropic.

Personal

I've never had a girlfriend in my life and never dated. Not that this is considered taboo, its just that such an scenario never occurred in my life so far.