Category: Journal

After living in London and working at Meta for four years, I’ve relocated back to India earlier this month to reunite with my wife and daughter, who moved back about a year ago.

There was a lot of contemplation after our third year in London about whether we should settle down there. But considering our personal circumstances and preferences, we ultimately decided to move back, as we didn’t see ourselves settling down there in the long run.

As I leave London, I carry with me many wonderful memories — both personal and professional. It was the first time I had lived and worked outside India, and exploring the city and country with my wife and young daughter was a lot of fun.

Professionally, I had the opportunity to work with some of the best engineers and cross-functional partners. The learnings — from both technical and product perspectives — were invaluable, and I’m sure they’ll continue to shape my journey ahead.

Now comes the big question: What’s next?

I’m planning to take a break from full-time work and instead explore freelancing, while also upskilling and experimenting with indie hacking — something I’ve been keen to try for a while. I’m also open to partnering on the right idea if it comes along. The plan is to explore this path over the next few months and then decide on the next steps.

Wishing myself the best in this new phase! ?

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About two years back, I relocated to London with my family.

It was not something really pre-planned. I was looking for job opportunities in late 2020 and a recruiter from Meta (then Facebook) reached out to me. I had managed to close a couple of other big tech job offers and was almost sure to join one of them. But then when Meta extended an offer, I decided to take it and explore what it was like living outside India.

Two years down the line, I can definitely say it has been a unique experience. From theatres to parks to museums, London has a lot to offer for everyone. The excellent public transport system makes it easy to travel anywhere. Compared to Bangalore where I lived for 8 years, pollution almost seems to be non-existent. The weather is a bit unpredictable and winters could be a bit gloomy but the fesitive spirit in November and December doesn’t make that time that hard. Education and health (although a bit stressed of late) are free which is probably the reason why people don’t worry about building a huge pension pot and spend more on entertainment and hobbies.

However, there are things which we definitely miss when compared to India, the most important being family. The warmth and affection of immediate family members is something that we yearn for here. I do have extended family in UK and I get to see my parents about two times a year, which to some extent makes up for it. When it comes to friends, we are making new friends here it but it doesn’t make up for the decades old-friendships that we have back in India. The impromptu guest visits and the frequent family functions, which sometimes we found a bit overwhelming when we lived in India, are what we realized actually made life more dynamic. And with comparable tech salaries in India now, I definitely have more financial freedom to puruse things of my interest rather than worry about mortgage and increasing cost of living.

We are at a juncture where we are strongly trying to form an opinoin whether to come back to India or continue staying here. And the more we think about it, the harder it gets. Our decision keeps changing every other month. What I finally feel is that whether we decide to stay back in London, or go back to India, there is something to lose and something to gain. Probably what matters more than the decision we take is being content with the decision and how we shape our lives once we make the decision.

I am pleased to announce that we have been blessed with a baby girl on Sep 26, 2014 5:57 P.M weighing 2.76 kg. I had strongly desired for a girl and this is like a dream come true. We decided to name her “Tanvi”. Words can’t describe my joy :).

Today marks the tenth anniversary of starting my career. Exactly ten years back, on June 14 2004, I, along with few of my schoolmates joined Infosys Bangalore for undergoing training. Ten years later, I am again working in Bangalore!

It has been a long time since my initial days in Bangalore. A very eventful journey of ten years, though not necessarily the most smoothest. But definitely with a lot of learnings. The three most important advices that I can give to people starting off with their careers are:

1. Plan your life: Don’t get carried away with your day-to-day life. Try to lead a planned life. Once in a while, look back at what you have achieved. Ask yourself whether this is in-line with you want? And then look forward and think about what you want to do in the years ahead of you and whether you are in the right path. You need not have lofty goals, but you definitely should ask yourself this one question – Few years down the line, if I look back, what could probably be the thing that I would regret the most? Not travelling? Not starting my own venture? Working all the time? And that would help you answer what you want to do today.
2. Take risks: Advance into unknown forays, but do it with careful thinking and feedback. Be risk aware, but not risk averse. There might be a possibility of failure but that shouldn’t stop you from trying. Shit happens all the time. My first startup was a fiasco. I got rejects from all the universities that I had applied to for MS, in spite of having a pretty good GRE score. I was asked to leave an organization with absolutely no fore-notice. But all through this, I finally realized, that what is more important than being successful, is to be resilient.
3. Take care of your health: Last but not the least, take care of your health. It is not for no reason that people say – “Health is wealth”. I ignored it back then and today it is too late. There isn’t a day when I am not in pain (some days it is less, some days it is more). I see a lot of people in their late-twenties and early thirties facing back problems, most of them who like me took their health for granted and abused their body. So, if you are not eating right or not exercising or smoking or drinking, then it probably is high time you start doing the right thing.

Today, I feel truly nostalgic. Some things that I still remember vividly from those 3 months stay in Bangalore:

• A 5 km walk on the first day
• Shared two rooms in a PG with six of my schoolmates
• A snacks shop in front of our PG, where they used to make hot jilebi and samosa. We were pretty regular visitors there.
• One of my roommates, Kishore, who was so scared of dogs, that he used to keep track of the movement of each and every one of them in our colony, including those which had an illicit relationship
• An incident where I got confused and made everyone deboard the bus that was returning home, a couple of stops before the destined stop. And I was severely chastised for this. The very next day, someone from the group did the same mistake and I didn’t leave a stone unturned in returning the favour 😉
• Making a very good Tamilian friend “Shobia” with whom I still continue to be in touch

To all my colleagues and ex-colleagues, some of you with whom I am in touch, and some of you with whom I am no longer in touch, no matter where you are and what you are doing, I wish you all success and a blessed life.

Another Sunday evening. With my wife not at home, I feel bored and decide to go to office and finish some pending work. After work, I go to a restaurant and have two delicious parathas. As I begin to walk home, I pass a paan shop where I had a meetha (sweet) paan the other day and had relished it. So, I go to the paan shop and not wanting to have the same flavour paan again, order for a theeka pan. I pay the guy and start walking home chewing the paan.

Within less than a minute of starting chewing the paan, I begin to feel extremely dizzy. I’m unable to walk straight. I was holding two water bottles in my hand and it felt impossible to hold them any longer. My body began to sweat and I started to feel slightly nauseous. I jut couldn’t understand what was happening to my body. Wild thoughts start crossing my mind. Have I been sedated? Could this be the symptoms of some dominant major health condition which has just manifested? Was it the food at the restaurant? Or was it the paan?

I had already swallowed half of the paan by now. I quickly look around for a spot and spit out the rest. It was already past ten in the evening and there just seemed no way I could make it home, which was still about a kilometer away. Thinking quickly, I ran back to a restaurant where I have dinner generally. Terrified and not understanding what was happening to my body, I called up a colleague of mine living in the same building as mine. He came like a God sent person, and took me home.

After reaching home, I just fall flat in my bed. The feeling of nausea had increased and my body continued to sweat , the way it happens when you are running a high fever and then it suddenly comes down. I have a hard time trying to fall asleep and get up much earlier than usual the next day. I felt I had lost my appetite and didn’t feel like eating anything much that day morning. However, by lunch, I had recovered and was feeling much better.

So, what had happened? Simple. The paan which I had ordered contained tobacco. The two varieties of paan that I have are Meetha (Sweet) Paan and Saada (Plain/Mild) Paan. For some reason, I wasn’t able to recollect the latter name and instead asked for a theeka paan. The guy at the paan shop took it for a tambaaku (tobacco) paan which I had never had my life. And all the side-effects that I have mentioned above, were as a result of my first time consuming of tobacco.

This will be quite an episode that I’ll remember all my life. I often wonder – Does it really take rocket science to understand that a substance that can affect your body so strongly, could also have extreme adverse affects on your health? Shouldn’t this be the first sign to turn one away from smoking and nicotine. Yet, people get involved and addicted with it. Food for thought.

This post comes in a little late. I’ve recently joined Lexity, a startup with headquarters in Mountain View and branch office in Bangalore. Lexity is an E-commerce company which mainly designs products for small businesses with online stores, to increase their traffic and sales.

Work and environment have been pretty good at Lexity. I was given a choice of choosing my own laptop and because of my lower back pain, I decided to go for a Thinkpad X230 (~1.3 Kg). Colleagues are pretty friendly and are always ready to reply to my queries. Being a startup, there is no buffet for lunch as such, but we do get an option to order from a choice of nearby caterers. And the guy who has performed the best during the week also gets to decide and order groceries for the entire week. Work is fast paced here and being completely new to the e-commerce domain, it is taking me time to catch up but I’m pretty confident I’ll pick up pace soon.

On my personal front, I’ve taken a two bedroom apartment exactly 1.6 Km from my office and I walk up and down daily. The building in which I took the apartment has been recently built and there is a common swimming pool and gymnasium for the residents. My wife is yet to move to Bangalore and I plan to make use of these health facilities once she comes here. Also, as we have many tourist spots around Bangalore, we plan to go on a trip at least once in a month. Oh boy, how badly I miss her :(!

That’s it from my side for now guys. I hope I have a great time in Lexity and in Bangalore.

Today, my GPG key has been added to the Debian GNU/Linux keyring maintainers package, thereby converting me from a sponsored Debian maintainer to an official Debian maintainer.

A little history about this. My involvement with Debian packaging started while working on Synovel CollabSuite. The Darwin calendarserver which we were using as part of the product had an outdated package in Debian. Therefore I went ahead and upgraded this. As I had anyway upgraded it, I decided to get it into the official repository so that other Debian users could benefit from it. I got in touch with the then package maintainer, Guido Gunther, who gladly accepted my proposal. With the help of Guido’s excellent mentor-ship, I pushed the upgraded Debian packages into the official Debian repo, and took over as the maintainer of the calendarserver package.

However, I was still a sponsored Debian maintainer as all my packages had to be signed by Guido. Today, with my GPG key being added to the Debian keyring maintainers package, I can sign and upload the packages by myself.

I hope that I’ll get the time to continue contributing to the wonderful Debian GNU/Linux project, and that I will eventually become a Debian Developer.

What an eventful decade this has been – Graduation, Work, Friendships, Break-Ups and Marriage. With all this experience, I do hope I’ve become wiser :).

Unlike every time when I’m generally not very enthusiastic about celebrating my birthday, this time I went with my family to a farm and spent the day there. Later, I met a very close friend on my way back home.

Unfortunately, my current activities is leaving me very little time to spend on my blog. I have a list of more than ten pending blog posts which I hope to publish soon.

I wonder what the next decade holds for me – children, travel, investments and perhaps another startup???