VrujenAndhare

If you had met me as a child, you would probably have had no idea what I would grow up to be. To be fair, neither did I.

I grew up in Nagpur in a middle-class nuclear family, in a home where love often looked like a careful calculation of what mattered most. My parents might not have bought a fancy mixer for the house, but they would get me the new Faber-Castell pencils. They made sure I had comfortable, fashionable clothes, sometimes putting my wants ahead of their own. A nicer kurta, a new shirt, the things that made a child feel like himself. Looking back, I realise that while we weren’t surrounded by luxury, I grew up surrounded by a different kind of abundance: the freedom to explore, the encouragement to create, and the feeling that my little world mattered.

When I was one, my parents moved out of our joint family home with a mattress, a cupboard, and a few basic necessities. The three of us began building our own life, one decision at a time, with trust, faith, and an incredible amount of reliability in one another.

Even as a child, I was asked what I thought about decisions concerning our home and office. I grew up around adults, conversations, clients, and the everyday realities of running a business. I served tea to clients, caught naps across two chairs pushed together, and made PowerPoint presentations and Excel sheets long before either became a school assignment.

The office became my playground, and life became my classroom.

While my parents worked, they made sure I stayed busy. Candle-making, drawing, painting, magic tricks, karate, taekwondo, basketball, swimming, skating, sand painting, classical music, and so much more. I was constantly being introduced to something new. Nobody could have predicted what would stick, what would fade, or what would return to me years later in an entirely different form.

I certainly didn’t know.

But I am deeply grateful to those two people who gave me a childhood full of possibilities, and to the little boy in those photographs who went around trying things without needing to know what they would lead to. I still look at him for inspiration. He wasn’t worried about building a career, defining his identity, or figuring out what the world expected of him. He was simply curious about what it had to offer.

Somewhere along the way, growing up became about figuring out who I was supposed to be. Growing older has been about learning to become a little more like that child again.

Curiosity eventually took me to the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, where I studied for four years on the DST INSPIRE scholarship, pursuing a Bachelor of Science (Research) in Earth and Environmental Sciences.

At university, my curiosity found a new direction. I became interested in ecology and the intricate relationships that shape the natural world. My final-year research project focused on avian malaria, giving me an opportunity to look closely at the connections between organisms and their environments.

For a while, I considered pursuing a master’s degree in cognitive science. It felt like a natural extension of my desire to understand things, whether ecosystems or the human mind.

But instead of immediately following the next predictable step, I took a sabbatical.

I travelled. I explored. I gave myself permission not to have everything figured out.

During this time, I went to Delhi, took up digital marketing work, and began building a professional life that looked quite different from the one I had imagined at university. I handled social media and digital accounts for textile and hospitality brands, learned how businesses communicate, and discovered how storytelling could connect people with ideas, products, and experiences.

I also worked with a drama company for children and with CCAW, an organisation working with autistic children. These experiences brought me into different worlds and helped me understand the many ways people learn, express themselves, and experience the world around them.

Looking back, my life has rarely followed a straight line. Science led me towards questions about the natural world. Music taught me to listen. Digital marketing introduced me to communication and strategy. Working with children brought me closer to play, imagination, and different ways of seeing.

I didn’t know it at the time, but I was collecting tools for a life that would eventually bring all these interests together.