When I was just a few years old, my parents then took me to
the school festival where I was one of the participants and I remember having
performed in relay race, drawing competition and a few other contests. The
festival had culminated in balloons of all different colors being thrown into
the bright sunny white, blue sky by many people including me that too with arms
wide open and a widely open chest. I still have fond memories and a vivid
remembrance of two red balloons taking off from my sprawling hands. I was
barely seven years old then when it was time for me to leave the Bokaro
township in Bihar, India. We were being transferred to Ranchi.
At Ranchi, I remember that we started living in B/31 at
Satellite Township and were flanked on either side by neighbors who had
children of my same age. We immediately forged a solid bond and started playing
cricket, watering the garden, cycling, and other fun activities on a daily
basis. Later, I found that my classmates from the Delhi Public School Ranchi
used to live in slightly afar houses though those were within a kilometer. So,
I used to go their houses and introduce myself to them in a very shy manner.
From there, I learnt to find and identify new friends or new neighbors and
reach them out by going to their houses and by later inviting them to my house,
and then to appreciate the power of not-so-immediate neighborhood because they
were living slightly afar from my house.
All this while, my parents did a very good job at my
upbringing. I was quite talented in studies, drawing, arts, and poetry. My
parents kept motivating me to draw and paint such as my father at the terrace
told me that he would pay me proportionately to the quality of my drawing. I
would fondly draw one nice art every day and put the keeps in my red piggy bank
or gullak.
I began playing flute which immediately gave me a lot of
relief and joy. Whenever I would travel in train to Jaipur or Delhi, I would
carry my white flute and play it when nobody was around.
I also vividly remember playing a long game of football with
my friends and coming back to home drenched in rain and sweat, and then my
mother attending to me to change my clothes, with me thanking the God to allow
me to play such a wonderful game. I immediately became a football fan and that
too a maniac one, with my friend Sumeet Saluja where we would constantly be
found playing in the ground and in our school, and we together rooting for
Argentina then Netherlands then Spain. We would also be found booing away other
kids who were born-fans of Brazil or any other country.
Coming back to the beautiful game of lawn tennis. At Ranchi,
I made two friends who were quite good at playing lawn tennis. I used to
regularly watch them and one day decided to play with them. I lost both my
matches to them. Their names are Amit Vijayvergia and TN Vijay. Those twin
losses motivated me to continue to play the game. However, due to a lack of
enough support or grounds, I was not able to fructify my passion. So, I decided
to take it up as a serious sport when I grow old which meant that when I was
capable enough to draw my first salary.
I had to struggle a lot to earn my first meaningful salary,
which came in the form of internship in USA at the age of twenty three.
My first salary
I got my first chance to play lawn tennis in Minneapolis USA
when the CFO or Chief Financial Officer of IDeaS Inc. offered to play a full
set at a court near the office. I immediately agreed to him, though he won the
match 6-2. I was feeling confident then because I had been playing tennis at
Blacksburg Virginia USA and my body was in good shape, and I had recently
defeated a big bulky Phillip Stephen in Blacksburg.
Books
I have long had a passion and a hunger to read books because
it is the books that give me perspective of life, and all the successful top
people in the world have a habit of reading non-fiction books. In the last
thirty days of this year 2026, I have already finished reading eight books. Now
I have loaned two more books from the Coforge Public Library in Gurgaon. I have
a habit of changing the genre or the variety of the books. Currently, I am
keeping myself occupied with two books – Triggers by Malcolm Goldmith, and Life
3.0 by Max Tegmark. My interest in books was rekindled when I read such
purposeful books by highly acclaimed authors as Arthur Haily (Airport, Wheels, Jeffrey
Archer (Kane and Abel, A Quiver full of arrows), Amitabh Ghosh (The Calcutta
Chromosome, A Sea of Poppies), Dan Ariely (Predictably Irrational), and of late
David Baldacci (Mercy, The Sixth Man, The Camel Club, King and Maxwell, Simple
Genius). Two particular books that were very impressive and left a profound
impression on me is Bertand Russell’s A History of Western Philosophy and Leo
Tolstoy’s War and Peace. I did not like Ayn Rand’s book or Robin Cook’s medical
thriller books. John Grisham and his books constantly captured my attention
only to see it wilting away.
Reading the book Nudge by Richard Thaler upon the
recommendation of my IBM Mentor Dr. Niraj Ranjan Sharma when I was already
about to be forty years old aroused in me an interest for such psychology books
so much so that I got a patent filed in psychology with Dr. Sharma. The book
“Triggers” is also about psychology.
Listening to Podcast
I have made it a habit in the past eight months or so to
listen to meaningful podcasts. I learn so much from merely listening to podcasts.
Dr. Andrew Huberman and Chris Williams are a few noteworthy people who I regularly
listen to.
My learnings from job:
I have learnt a lot from the job industry of Analytics and
Data Science. Generally, I have been blessed with amazing managers especially
during my stint at IBM India.
To prepare targets and then to approach any target with a
brick-by-brick foundation approach is what has stuck to me like a leech. Any
milestone should be met with at least ten thousand hours of my efforts and
inputs.
The corporate world is full of people with sublime talent
and a huge hunger to accomplish something. The best advice I can give to anyone
is to identify and socialize such precocious talent and then to follow them,
irrespective of their age or background.
Another vital learning at job is to be as succinct as possible
including in my mannerisms, and in the conduct on email or chats. It is quite
difficult to provide a brief summary of your views to a curious inquisitive set
of people in your group.
I am a sincere believer of having fun at work. We should
regularly play games while at work, go for long walks, and participate in all
the team bonding activities. Dancing and Toastmaster are other nice activities
that I would recommend everybody to do at work. Bringing a Calendar such as ‘This
Day That Age’s can really pep you for the remainder of the day. Also, bring a
mini basket where you can put the basketball in its net and gain yourself some
confidence that would be enough to nudge you to achieve some truly remarkable
things on that day.
Practice yoga with a group at 10 AM or 11 AM every day when
you go for work. Then repeat that yoga exercise at 4 PM for fifteen minutes.
My hobbies and interests:
I am a person with variegated interests and hobbies. I never
get tired of indulging in different activities. These days, I enjoy playing a game
or two of pool at V Club Gurgaon either alone or with one of the club members
or managers. With playing tennis, doing long brisk walk, cycling and writing
and participating in society matters as my perennial pivots for pass-times, I have
time and again tried with challenging myself in such sports as swimming, kite
flying, and hiking. I was never great at any such activity or sport. For instance,
I was at best a college level semi-finalist in chess and badminton tournaments.
I kept trying my luck with Rubik’s cube and the hard Sudoku puzzles but
couldn't succeed in acing those. I consider myself a bits-and-pieces player in
almost all the sports and activities, which I feel is far below the amateur level.
I don’t like to give up things easily.
I like to indulge in nature by touching the trees or
listening to the great vibes sung by birds chirping in the morning hours. I
particularly enjoyed the sunrise and the sunset scenes at Bali, and the sunset
scene at Kanyakumari India.
My dreams:
I always wanted to launch a start-up of my own. Another
favorite ambition of mine is to run as long and as hard as I can. I feel that
my body now finally permit to challenge myself in that regard. My another dream
is to open a library where a book reading culture can be inculcated in India. I
am quite impressed by the book reading frenzy in several parts of India. However,
due to our overall poor education or literacy rate when compared to Vietnam or
other emerging nations, there is a massive room for improvement in the LQ or
the Literary Quotient.
My yet another dream is to travel to Japan and Czech
Republic as both are beautiful countries.
I also wish to write a technical book such as my tips and
tricks on Data Science. I have already published numerous blogs and stories on
LinkedIn and Medium.com. So, it is just a matter of aggregating the content
from here and there, combined with a spark, to prepare a compendium like that.
My tours and learnings from those:
I have traveled to Hong Kong, Macau (both Company sponsored
travel), Mauritius, Vietnam, Bali, Singapore, Malaysia and lived in USA. Within
India, I have scaled the hills of Coorg, went to Kashmir to play sled in snow, shouted
the maximum out of my lungs at Attari-Wagah border, and went to offer my
prayers at Sona Girji temple in Madhya Pradesh.
On Company sponsored travel, I have lived in Mumbai for
three months and Indore, Pune and Chennai for two days.
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