Category: Personal
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A Tribute to Prof. Arvind P Kudchadker
There are people. There are institutions. And then there are people who are institutions. In August 2024, several people spread across the US and India lost such a person with the passing away of Prof. Arvind Kudchadker (whom I fondly referred to as Aajoji). Aajoji had a multigenerational impact on my family, first as my…
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Happy Father’s Day
How do traditions get made? What should they signify? Circa 1996, one day my mother was asked to stay back in school at pick up time since the teachers wanted to have a word about me with her. It was sort of an intervention, one where they expressed their frustration at how, for the life…
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A Eulogy for my Grandmother
June 6, 2018 Every year since 2018, June 6 marks the death anniversary of my grandmother. In 2017, around this time I had to cut short my visit to India and I never got to say goodbye to her. This, I suppose, is me processing that loss and making peace with it. A few years…
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An Emergency Room Thanksgiving
Everything about the arrival of our baby in my life has been unusual. Like the fact that I was admitted in an emergency room (ER) on this exact day 2 years ago (Thanksgiving 2021) when I found out I was expecting, while being checked for if my life was at risk. How did this happen?…
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An “Alien” of Extraordinary Ability
A candid story about EB1A – legal immigration to USA.
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This one’s for you my Love
When I was around 12 years old, I had the (mis)fortune of observing a girl’s (Indian) wedding from very close quarters. While most people partied, danced, ate and generally wasted themselves to death, something about the society’s norms and expectations from a girl and her family turned me off. Like, massively. My prince charming for…
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The Swartz Fellowship
circa 2011: Brijesh, Saurabh and me were standing outside the LTC. The last hope for a Conquest sponsor had pulled out. We simply did not have the money to pull off Conquest the next week. (We eventually did somehow). But that day I went back to my room and wondered, “Why am I doing this…