Chapter 8

2018/19

In early 2018, heavy snow blanketed the city — giving rise to what the media creatively dubbed the "Beast from the East." Amidst the freezing weather, it finally looked like my life was coming together. I was back with Nat (albeit long-distance for a bit longer), making a decent living, and navigating a London existence that was chaotic yet shaping up nicely.

Over the years, having moved houses so many times for various reasons, I had built what I call a "packable life" — a lifestyle where I could pack up and move at a moment’s notice. I physically owned only the absolute essentials needed to survive: a laptop, a phone, and clothing, all fitting neatly into a 30kg suitcase, always waiting for the next transition. There was a strange liberation in realizing I had built a life across two countries while owning almost nothing.

At work, I was excelling. When Pol moved on to other projects, I inherited the added responsibility of maintaining the product. We transitioned to a brand-new office on London Wall, and I scored a desk with an incredible view overlooking the city. Working there with that team was pure joy — a rare collection of people. They might not have been the highest-priced "talent" money could buy, but they were the best people, and those two things are entirely different.

To cap it all off, after two years of intense mentoring and interviewing, Nat finally made it to London. She had shown extraordinary resilience throughout those two years, rarely missing a single teaching session. I remember waiting for her at Heathrow arrivals. All those years of refusing to give up culminated in that exact moment when we were finally reunited. We had met in 2012, split in 2014, found our way back in 2016, and now, in 2018 — six years after our paths first crossed — she was here with me. We naively believed that nothing could ever stand in our way again.

For the first few months, she lived on her own since we couldn't easily have partners in our shared accommodations. By August 2018, however, we decided to move in together. After a string of unsuccessful viewings, we found a great studio in Wapping for £1,600 a month. It would have consumed nearly 30% of our combined take-home pay, and neither of us could stomach it. Looking back, it wasn’t that we couldn’t afford it; rather, we weren't used to spending that kind of money on living standards. We were so conditioned to paying cheap rates for basic setups back home that we resisted upgrading.

That experience taught me a vital lesson: spending money to improve one's lifestyle is a deliberate choice you have to actively make. The psychological comfort of watching numbers grow in a savings account kept me from upgrading my life, defeating the whole purpose of earning money in the first place. Money is only useful when it is spent. Even though my heart wanted the nicer flat, my frugal brain panicked. That was the moment I realized affluence is entirely a psychological concept, and my deeply ingrained Indian thriftiness prevented me from crossing that invisible mental barrier.

Eventually, we compromised and moved to Dalston, sharing a house with two others. We paid £1,000 a month — a premium for a renovated double room near the high street with excellent transport links to work. We loved the area and quickly fell in love with a local Turkish restaurant called Cirrik. What started as a weekly date night fast became a daily ritual. I still remember the owner, Cum, teaching us how to use cutlery to cleanly remove the bones from the sea bass. My absolute favorite dish became the Tavuk Shish Yogurtlu, smothered in pomegranate sauce with chargrilled onions and peppers.

Financially, I was aggressively padding my savings by trading comfort for cash. Unfortunately, I wasn't investing it; it was just sitting there in cash, and I completely missed out on utilizing the UK’s tax-free ISA allowances out of sheer ignorance.

Meanwhile, my health began to take a serious hit from a potent cocktail of smoking, chronic stress, and a sedentary lifestyle. I was at an age where I poured every ounce of energy into my career while neglecting everything else. On weekends, I still played recreational cricket with a local group of friends. One weekend, trying a flashy hook shot and losing my balance, I re-injured my notoriously fragile right ankle — the same one I had spent years ignoring. Except this time, my body decided it had had enough.

By the close of 2018, my life sat at a striking crossroads:

Career & Relationship: I had achieved the unthinkable. Proving myself at a high level professionally was a monumental task, and mentoring Nat to help her move to London and live with me was another. Neither would have succeeded without my unyielding obsession with the web and my stubborn commitment to her. Yet, that same obsession had curdled into a toxic addiction. I resisted anything that threatened my coding time. Once, during a weekend disagreement over social plans, I wanted nothing more than to stay holed up with my laptop, much to Nat’s dismay. Another time, when she fell ill, I chose to go to the office instead of taking her to the hospital. She didn't say much at the time, but she watched the anti-social recluse I was turning into. I was neglecting the fundamental, most important duties of life, fully aware of it yet entirely unable to course-correct.

Finances: My net worth was finally compounding. I had built up a decent financial corpus across both India and the UK, with my salary hovering just under £50K. But I was entirely financially illiterate — ignorant of taxes, investments, and wealth management, simply lacking the time or inclination to educate myself.

Health: My physical well-being was taking as severe a beating as my career was thriving. At work, my main smoking buddy was Sho, a meticulous, hardworking Ethiopian colleague considerably more experienced than me. We used our smoke breaks for deep philosophical discussions — pairing the slow poison of cigarettes with therapeutic life talks, which in hindsight was a disastrous health strategy. The compounding effects of a sedentary desk job, erratic sleep schedules, and a decade of untreated sports injuries were finally beginning to carve themselves into my face.