Chapter 1

2010/11

The story starts when I was 20 and in the final year of college. I was studying Electronics & Communication at the University of Kerala rather reluctantly. In school, I liked Physics, Maths, Biology, and English, but I hated Chemistry and Computer Science. To secure an engineering seat, I had to do well in Physics, Chemistry, and Maths—which I did. I earned a spot at one of the top colleges under the University of Kerala.

The engineering degree comprised eight semesters, with eight subjects per semester, each evaluated out of 150 marks. The scoring relied on a dual-tier system: Internal Assessments (50 marks) and a University Final Exam (100 marks). A total of 75 was required to pass, using a "compensation" model where a higher final exam score could offset a lower internal score, provided the aggregate met the 50% threshold. Failing any subject meant waiting six months for a retake.

However, because the last three years of school (years 10, 11, and 12) were so grueling, I arrived at college completely burnt out, lacking the energy required to keep up. Throughout my first year, I was convinced engineering wasn't for me. I kept failing three to four exams every semester, and by the time I reached the 8th semester in 2011, I faced the herculean task of passing 18 exams from semesters 5, 6, 7, and 8 just to graduate. The most dreaded of these was C++ from the 5th semester, which I had already failed three times. Adding to the pressure was the rumor that if you failed to graduate with your peers, you would likely never finish at all.

All the exams were scheduled over a brutal two-month period between May 13 and July 13 that year. Having no hope of clearing all 18, I accepted a bleak future and started working as a PHP developer at a local startup founded by my college seniors, earning ₹6,000 per month. At a time when no company hired without a degree, I got the job only because web developers were scarce and my extracurricular coding had caught attention in college. Most of my colleagues were also ex-students who hadn't finished their degrees, treating the job as a last resort. All my friends, meanwhile, had lucrative corporate offers from campus placements for which I wasn’t eligible. I had only myself to blame.

As if that wasn't enough, I was also fighting a losing battle to revive a broken relationship that, just a year earlier, had seemed unbreakable. Min was a girl I had known since school. Well-known for her academic and athletic prowess, she was way out of my league as an average student, and I initially thought I had no chance with her. But what started as a simple Facebook conversation around 2009 brought us closer, quickly turning into my first romantic relationship. Unfortunately, by 2011, things had turned sour, and she stopped talking to me. I was desperately trying to win her back, but she rejected all my attempts, pushing further away with every effort I made.

Between May and July, I fought on two fronts. Desperate and depressed, my heart sank every time I thought of my predicament. The worst part of it all was that I couldn't show it outwardly - not least because I had a younger brother who looked up to me. I had two choices: find the courage to mount a mammoth effort in both areas, or just give up. I chose the former. During the day, I tried desperately to win Min back; during the night, I studied meticulously. I slept agonizingly little. I remember trying various things to stay awake, including watching Batman: The Animated Series to draw inspiration from its dark, somber, serious atmosphere and superhero ethos.

Deep inside, a voice of reason kept telling me it was selfish to expect to win both battles, and that I would have to sacrifice one to bring the universe into equilibrium. Winning her back was just as important to me as getting my engineering degree. Unable to carry the burden alone, I relied on my close friends for inspiration. I remember great advice from my friend Sud: to do my absolute best and detach myself from the outcome, since it wasn't in my hands. It’s simple advice, but remarkably hard to master. I later realized this echoes verse 2.47 in the Bhagavad Gita.

The only thing that consistently gave me joy was the Web. My first computer was an Intel Pentium my dad brought home from work back in 2000. He was a telecommunication engineer. I remember browsing the internet on IE5 in Windows 95, playing games like Prince of Persia and RoadRash, listening to the screech of dial-up modems, and the thrill of watching adult content for the first time on popularscreensaver.com. My final years of school coincided with a campus trend of building Google AdSense websites to make money. While other kids got addicted to games, I got addicted to the web.

Whenever the computer broke down, I ripped open its internals to fix the hardware and wrestled with pirated Windows installations, which forced me to read up on tech. Even though I hated Computer Science as an academic subject, my constant battle with the "blue screen of death" turned me into a self-taught developer. By college, I was effectively working full-time as a web developer and treating my studies as an afterthought. This brought me into constant conflict with my father, who had high expectations of me. He tried various ways to redirect my focus, even locking the computer with a BIOS password. I would simply disable it by removing the CMOS battery—a trick he had taught me himself.

Our conflicts intensified throughout college as I grew more engrossed in the web, to the point that his attempts to make me study or socialize in the real world proved entirely in vain. The adulation I got from building things online was a drug. I traveled across state college festivals winning web development competitions, made good money, and ran my own tech events. In 2010, I built the website for the RAICS International Conference held in my city and taught web development classes to actual Computer Science students. In 2011, I launched a platform where users could input their data to automatically generate a personal portfolio, resume, and job recommendations—calling it vyakthitva (individuality), long before LinkedIn existed. I even formed a team and partnered with local colleges and companies. It was my first entrepreneurial attempt. But I didn't pursue it fully because startups in India were unheard of back then, a career in web development was shunned, and nobody had an appetite for risk. Going with the flow was the only option.

I was in my office on September 1, 2011, when the results dropped. Miraculously, I passed all 18 exams with flying colors, shocking everyone—including myself—and shattering my reputation as a failed student. Elated, I drove back home and promptly met with a minor accident on the way, almost ending up under a bus. That’s how I got my engineering degree. It was a monumental feat by any standard, and the news spread across college, turning me into an overnight sensation.

But Min never spoke to me again. Over the past three to four months, she had completely moved on, shifted to Chennai, changed her number, and blocked me. There was nothing left to do, proving my sacrificial goat theory correct. Life proved to be a great leveller: that relationship was the price I had to pay for my career success. I readily accepted it because it felt like poetic justice. The sorrow of that loss completely canceled out the joy of my heroic triumph, and vice versa.

Looking back, the truth was I was neither emotionally nor economically ready for that relationship. Some of the things I did were petty and unworthy of trust. I lacked the maturity to let go and instead clung desperately to someone who didn't want to be with me, pushing her further away with every attempt.

That period between 2010 and 2011 was an abyss. There were days when the sheer weight of my failures left me entirely blind to any way out, and the quiet, dangerous thought of ending it all crossed my mind more than once. I was hanging by a thread, desperately hoping for a miracle. And on that September morning, it finally happened. But the miracle didn't come with a neat, happy bow. It taught me the harshest lesson of my youth: that life rarely gives you a clean sweep. You can win the war you fought sleeplessly for, but you still have to pay the toll for the battles you lost. Standing on the other side of that chaos, holding a hard-won degree in one hand and the absolute finality of a lost love in the other, I realized that survival isn't about getting everything you want. It's about having the scars to prove you fought for what mattered—and the grace to let go of the rest.