Writing

The other side of
the equation.

Poems I've written, books I'm reading, and ideas I can't stop turning over. Engineering is how I make things. This is how I make sense of them.

Poems

Two poems.

No. 01
memory
identity

chinni ki dahi

They lined us up like we were already sorted, small feet, pressed shirts, the world not yet a blade, then the teacher's voice, and I felt the room decide me, felt the air go out, felt something in me fade.
No. 02
home
delhi
roots

where i am from

I am from fireflies, from ancestral hymns and love. I am from the place I still call home even in my dreams, where the air smells like my grandmother.

Currently reading & thinking about

A small library.

The Myth of Sisyphus Albert Camus
deep dive

The essay on philosophical suicide hit me differently than Camus intended. I have a different stand — one that diverges sharply from his conclusion.

I think philosophical suicide is worse than physical death. Death, even in its cowardice, leaves remembrance — a trace that someone was once awake and questioning. But to surrender the will to question, to take that leap of faith away from absurdity, is the ultimate act of cowardice: it takes even the remembrance.

Camus argues for revolt against absurdity. I'd argue that philosophical surrender is a more complete defeat — because at least the cowardice of real death still leaves a ghost.

For the Love of Physics Walter Lewin
What I loved: he doesn't bury you in maths. He shows you that physics is just looking at the world honestly and asking obvious questions without embarrassment. It's about love of the subject — and the conviction that you can learn anything by treating it as simple, beautiful logic.
Ignited Minds APJ Abdul Kalam
Learning how to fly — in every sense of the word. A reminder that vision at scale is possible, and that the people who change the world are usually the ones who refuse to stop asking what it could become.
Learning How to Fly APJ Abdul Kalam
A different kind of flight — inward as much as upward.

My ideal

Richard Feynman.

Feynman is everything I aspire to be: a Nobel Prize in Physics, made ideas feel like play, and spent a life proving that curiosity beats credential. The man learned safe-cracking, played bongo drums, drew, painted, and then went home and solved quantum electrodynamics.

He's also — reportedly — one of the lowest-IQ Nobel laureates in history, which I find both extraordinarily comforting and absolutely hilarious. The implication being: the smartest thing you can do is not worry about being smart.

If he won a Nobel at his IQ, I feel reasonably assured I can do anything I set my mind to. Statistically speaking.

I was born not knowing and have had only a little time to change that here and there.

Things I think about

Recurring questions.

i.

Systems & scale

Everything is a system. The best engineering problems and the best human problems have the same structure: constraints, feedback loops, and a search for elegant solutions.

ii.

Identity & belonging

Growing up between Delhi and Melbourne teaches you that belonging is something you build, not find. The in-between is where the most interesting people live.

iii.

Policy & people

The gap between what we know about inequality and what actually changes it is enormous. Iradda is my attempt to build a bridge across that gap — starting with women's empowerment.

iv.

Absurdity & action

Camus was onto something. The world doesn't owe meaning. But I think the response to that isn't revolt — it's creation. You make meaning. You build things. You refuse to go quiet.

v.

Physics as a way of seeing

The best thing about engineering isn't solving problems — it's developing a way of looking at the world where everything is interesting. Every crack in the pavement, every shadow, every sound.

vi.

Writing as survival

I didn't choose to write poetry. It chose me. It's what happens when feelings have nowhere else to go — when the engineering mind needs somewhere to put what the equations can't hold.

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