I did my schooling at All Saints, where I managed to spend as much time in the classroom as I did outside participating in painting and literary competitions. This seemed to have impressed my teachers a lot, for they gave me the 'Best All Rounder' prize several times. The fact that Azharuddin went to the same school did not help me much in becoming in a cricketer. So just like every other kid who is not good at cricket and has to choose between engineering and medicine, I decided to go the engineering way.
When I joined the Ramaiah classes for JEE after 10th, life took a new direction. Nocturnally. For the next two years, I found myself waking up at 3.00 in the morning (and sometimes 2.00) to attend classes at 4.00 am! It was a great learning experience though, in terms of discipline and punctuality. Oh yes, we were also taught Physics, Chemistry and Maths in the last six months of the course. Extra-curricular activities took a back seat during this period. Except for a gold medal in a national level essay and a chance to meet the then president Shri K. R. Narayanan, much of these two years were spent studying, commuting and squeezing sleep.
At IIT, thankfully, things got back to normal when I could afford to sleep at night. Life at IIT was a paradigm shift (I guess it is so for all IITians). To sum it all up in one A4 page would be a little difficult (Sandipan Deb, Outlook magazine, wrote an entire book!). While Civil Engineering programme was very satisfying academically, what I truly enjoyed was the life outside the classroom - friends, rides, night outs, debates, quizzes, fine-arts, meeting Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam, and of course Techfest (IIT Bombay's annual science fest). I thoroughly enjoyed organising two Techfests and taking it to a new level by launching it internationally. And in these two organising teams did I meet the best bunch of people I have known. As I flip my pages at IIT, I feel that there can be no other place like it. The campus life is addictive!
During my five years here, I was awarded the Organisational Citation (2000-05), Organisational Colour (2004) and Cultural Colour (2002). And as I graduate from here, I take a lot of things with me: A mediocre CPI of 8.4, two degrees in Civil Engineering, the Techfest experience, a job with ITC and some of my best friends. Thank you IIT Bombay. And now as I pass out of IIT Bombay and join ITC, the learning curve is once again about to rise steeply.
As far as hobbies go, Painting was my first love. It was long affair; almost twelve years. But I was spending lesser and lesser time with my paints and brushes. I decided I needed something else in life and photography was it. Now you would almost always spot me with my backpack and Nikon D70. 'Urban streets' is my favourite subject and I just love shooting people and their environments. My photoblog on the web, where I post one picture daily, receives a few thousand page hits everyday from around the world. My inspiration for photography comes from the street heroes Henri Cartier-Bresson, Raghu Rai and Steve McCurry.
Reading could be my second love. If I am not painting or making photos, I would be reading. Crunching a few books per month can never be injurious to health.
I enjoy long rides, Formula 1, chess, Toblerone, black, blue, Calvin and Hobbes, Michael Schumacher, Ayrton Senna, Azharuddin, Madhubala, Scorpions, winter morning, first rain, Adidas, Arrow, Nikon, sausages, rumaali roti and good food. Don't smoke. Will prefer Coke for a drink.
I come from the city of Hyderabad, and job permitting, hope to return to it someday. I live there with my mother, a journalist, and my younger brother, a computer science undergrad.