Chapter 4

2014/15

In March 2014, forced to choose between me and her family, Nat decided to move to Chennai to start over — a decision that left me devastated. I couldn't fathom that this was happening to me all over again. Once again, I faced a dilemma: fix the problem or let it go. And once, again, I chose to do the exact same thing I had done years ago with Min — go all guns blazing to fix it. I couldn't accept a second failure and was stubbornly convinced that what we had was worth saving.

Years earlier, when Min moved to Chennai, I couldn't follow because I couldn't find a job. This time, I wasn't going to let that stop me. I gave myself no excuse to fail. I had friends and family there; all I needed was a job, or at least an internal transfer within Wipro.

Exactly six months after Nat left, driven largely by a bruised ego, I packed up my life of cricket, football, and Unix administration in Kochi and secured an internal transfer to Chennai. By then, just like with Min, Nat had cut off all contact and was trying to move on. All I knew was that she worked for the same company, just on a different campus, and I hoped to somehow cross paths with her again.

Career-wise, however, the move to Chennai proved to be a massive turning point. In Kochi, I was doing Unix administration with Nokia; in Chennai, I saw an opportunity to pivot into web development. I interviewed for an opening with Apple — one of Wipro’s biggest clients — looking for a PHP developer. I cleared the rigorous process without much difficulty, thanks to all those years of self-taught web hacking. If not for that childhood hobby, I might have stayed in Kochi, and my life would have looked entirely different.

With the very real possibility of relationship failure hanging over me, I refused to leave my career to chance. Apple upgraded my toolkit to high — end machines like Mac Minis and MacBook Pros. Working alongside engineers from both Wipro and Apple, I felt completely at home. Everything came naturally because I already spoke the language of the web, and I poured myself into the work. I was allowed to take my work laptop home — something highly unconventional back then — and I treated working for Apple like a dream. There were days I skipped sleep and meals, refusing to leave the office. I was finally at a point in my career where I was being paid for my addiction.

Wipro filed my H1B visa to temporarily relocate to Infinite Loop in California, though it unfortunately fell through two years in a row. While that played out, work required frequent trips to Bangalore, where half my immediate team sat. Travel came with great perks — four-star hotels, all expenses paid, and, best of all, Bangalore’s lovely weather.

But because I wasn't making headway on the relationship front, I needed another outlet to pull my focus away. I made the bold decision to invest my own money to take cricket seriously, harboring the absolute determination to play for India in the 2019 World Cup. I joined a prominent local club, Cricket Drome, paying ₹6,000 a month — a significant sum for me at the time.

I had my bike couriered to Chennai. I lived in Thiruvanmiyur, rode to the office in Sholinganallur via the bust OMR or the sometimes quieter ECR road, drove to Thoraipakkam for evening coaching, and rode home late at night. I still remember those pleasant, breezy rides. Chennai had a notorious traffic culture, and my Kerala-registered bike constantly caught the eyes of traffic police, whom I routinely bribed with ₹100 to avoid steep fines or trips to the station. Commuting across that triangle every single day was dangerous, but I didn't care.

Practice at Cricket Drome was brutal — some days involved running until I vomited. I played Division 5, which frequently required taking days off work to play ODIs across Chennai. Eminent coaches visited regularly. Many of my teammates came from wealthy families who had played since childhood and could literally buy their way into elite teams — the two essential ingredients to reaching the top. Yet my passion for the sport matched my obsession with the web. I worked hard all day, trained until 10:00 PM, and repeated it the next day.

But it was a disastrous recipe for my body. Training without proper warm-ups or cool-downs, ignoring injuries, working a grueling 9-to-5 (often longer), smoking 3 to 5 cigarettes a day, and subsisting on ₹50 street dosas or ₹200 McDonald’s dinners — skipping meals and sleep altogether — took a heavy toll. I kept re-injuring my right ankle. The worst blow came in 2015 when Mignon du Preez, captain of the South African women's cricket team, and their coach Jolene Campher visited our club for a session. While practicing sliding techniques, I snapped my ankle so violently I heard the ligament tear. For weeks, I walked on it wrapped in a crepe bandage, ignoring the agonizing pain and refusing to see a doctor.

Amidst all the chaos, I moved around a bit. I initially lived in Thiruvanmiyur with five college mates working at different companies. When my friend Vin moved to Chennai, we shifted to Velachery to live with his college friends, but the commute between home, work, and the cricket club proved too brutal. Eventually, we settled in Narayanapuram with his friend Kan, where I rented a room for a cheap ₹1,500 a month.

Despite the injuries, the smoking, and the near-starvation, I was addicted to the grind. On one occasion, I literally fainted in the office cafeteria at 1:00 AM while eating my first meal of the day before. I remember telling the woman sitting opposite to me that I was about to collapse and asking her to get help. When I woke up, the campus doctor was treating me.

Those were years of pure desperation — I had to find success in something. My body ran on pure adrenaline. By 2015, I was toiling in Chennai during the week but living like royalty in Bangalore on corporate trips to nurse my battered body.

My career, meanwhile, was skyrocketing. From a PHP developer, the training and experience at Wipro and Apple propelled me into becoming a frontline Frontend Engineer just as Node.js was taking off. I was awarded the Apple Prodigy Award, and while the California move didn't pan out due to the H1B lottery, my skills were suddenly in high demand. For the first time in years, my career was firmly on track.

It was also during these years that I experienced real loss for the first time, spending long nights at CMMH hospital as someone close to me lost a battle with cancer.

Looking back, crossing that professional boundary with a colleague was a mistake. I often ask myself why I was so adamant about winning her back: Was it fear of rejection? A toxic cocktail of shame and ego? Or simply an inability to accept that lightning could strike twice in the worst possible way? Whatever the underlying drive, it was the catalyst that brought me to Chennai for good.