"Rather than the destination it is the journey that lends meaning to our lives."

Some of my favorite reads are listed below. Of late, my focus has been on search for inner truth.

  • Fiction - "The Fountainhead", "Paths of Glory", "The Alchemist", "The Firm", "Da Vinci Code", "Digital Fortress", "Angels & Demons", Harry Potter series, "Five Point Someone", "Two States- The story of my Marriage", "3 Mistakes of my life", "Shiva Trilogy", "The Monk who sold his Ferrari".

  • Non-fiction - "Maximum City - Bombay Lost and Found", "Rajayoga - Swami Vivekananda"

  • Biography - "The Wings of Fire - APJ. Abdul Kalam", "Lean In - Women, Work and The Will to Lead - Sheryl Sandberg", "My Experiments with Truth - Mahatma Gandhi", "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman - Richard Feynman", "Tesla, SpaceX and the Quest for Fantastic Future - Elon Musk", Steve Jobs by Walter Issacson, "Autobiography of a Yogi - Parahamsa Yogananda", "Perspoulis"

  • Social Entrepreneurship / Economics - "Infinite Vision", "The Blue Sweater", "Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish", "The Undercover Economist", "Rich Dad, Poor Dad", "Think and Grow Rich", "Thinking, Fast and Slow".

Like every Indians, I grew up playing Cricket and Chess all through my school and college days. Once into IITB, I started playing Table Tennis and learned Swimming. At UMD, I destressed myself by engrossing in Racquetball and Squash. Among the world sport icons, Roger Federer is my idol and hence I love watching Tennis. In the past, I actively participated in the Maryland Adventure Program and Terrapins Trail Club trips enjoying Para-Sailing, Mountain Biking, Caving, Kayaking, Stand-Up Paddle Boarding and Rock Climbing. I also enjoy yoga and long distance cycling. Of late, I am actively training for Marathon which motivates me to run / walk in total >50 km per week.

I have always loved thrills and adventure in life, and thus whenever time permits I enjoy traveling to unexplored countryside places across India. Except for East India, more or less I have been to every corner of India. Some of my favourite hikes:

Lohagad, Peb Fort, Rajmachi, Chembra Peak, Kodachadri, Top Station - Munnar, Skandagiri, Chennagiri, Savandurga

Shenandoah - Old Rag, Angels Landing, Joffre Lake, Big Basin State Park, Henry Cowell State Park, Tegernsee-Gindelalmschneid trail

I was always interested in Photography but never got a chance to try my hand at full-fledged Photography during my school days. My parents did possessed Analog camera. With the savings from my scholarship at IITB, I finally bought my first digital camera and life has never been the same since. Now I possess Nikon DSLR D5100 & D5300 cameras and photography seems lot more fun. I still consider myself novice and have lot to learn & explore in photography.

My love for coding goes back to my school days. And infact, my coding skills can be considered to be completely orthogonal to my past academic life. Nevertheless, my research work in the field of Computer Vision reinvigorated my old love for coding. In the past, I have completed professional courses on C, C++, .NET and J2EE programming. In last few years, I extensively coded in Matlab, C++ and Python for my research. In the past I had coded in VHDL and Verilog. Though it may seem a little bragging, but from my past experience I can confidently claim that I am a very good debugger and I have always enjoyed this kind of challenge from system.

I have been interested in Music and other forms of music engineering for as long as I can remember. Indeed, my love for Music inspired me to learn Keyboard during my childhood. Although, I haven't practiced it for many years. Infact, my craze for music led me to implement Music Synthesizer for one of my course project at IIT Bombay. My inspiration mainly comes from music guru A.R. Rahman, Yanni, Pink Floyd, Anoushka Shankar, Prateek Kuhad and Joni Mitchell. Apart from my role models, I grew up listening to all forms of Hindi, English, Tamil, Malayalam and Telugu music.