The bus screeched, cranked, and eventually stopped. Dust flared up in the air. Half of the travelers coughed and whined. The completely comfortable bus conductor in his special seat cried loudly, “Shahadaaaa.” That was the name of a small village en route to my college, my graduation college where I was studying in the second year of BSc. It was a very important year for me to decide my final-year special subject. I could choose only one from Physics, Chemistry, or Math. I hated Chemistry because I was not good at it. I had to choose between Physics and Math. It was a day in March 2000. “You don’t play cricket when you’re nearing your 20s. You study hard and plan on reaching Ankaleshwar,” taunted Yogesh Bhai, the most qualified person within a 100-meter radius of my house. I was disturbed while emulating test cricket’s fourth inning with my cricketing Read More

The year was mid 1997. Personally everything was going well, and professionally I was working with Majesco Inc (US subsidiary of an Indian company Mastek) based out of Silicon Valley, with a good salary slip at the end of the month. Those days your Green Card would be processed within the H1B validity period of 5 years & I was in the second year of this timeframe. Companies would start applying the green card on your behalf primarily to retain employees for a longer period. While this was a comfortable situation, my dream of setting up a company was constantly gnawing at my mind space. One of the inspiring stories those days was the buy-out by Microsoft of email service Hotmail.com from founder Sabeer Bhatia. To provide some context of what we do not even value today, those days emails were only accessible from within one’s company network while Hotmail Read More

I used to teach Biology for a living- now I paint life from my own perspective. I left the classroom behind to pursue a long-held dream of becoming an artist, trading microscopes for paint brushes and lesson plans for blank canvases. As a child, I dreamed in colours, quietly nurturing the desire to become an artist. But life, in its curious ways, led me down the path of Science- I became a Biology teacher. While the classroom gave me purpose, the canvas kept calling. With time, age, and the whisper of my true self growing louder, I chose to leave behind a rewarding career to embrace the art that once lived only in my dreams. My father Is an ENT Surgeon, and he always hoped I would follow in his footsteps and become a Doctor. He once told me that my long, slender fingers would make me an excellent Plastic Surgeon. But within me lived an artist-quiet at first, but persistent. And , perhaps those Read More

I followed the well-worn path. Engineering. Management studies. A secure job in a public sector bank for over a decade. My parents, too, retired from government service. Stability and structure were the norms I grew up with—and I never questioned them. Life was proceeding as it “should.” Then came 2019. My mother, retired and excited about a long-awaited pilgrimage, suffered a brain stroke during the trip. That single event shook me more deeply than anything before. We often postpone our joys, our interests, our passions—waiting for retirement, waiting for the “right” time. But what if that time never comes? What if our best health, energy, or even clarity is behind us by then? As I watched her struggle through recovery, the illusion of control began to dissolve. I started asking difficult questions: What am I chasing? And is it worth it? What if everything I’m putting off for “later” is simply Read More