Beginnings of Things

Desperation and Pencil Lead

This is the beginning of a story, very loosely based on real childhood experiences, that I had been kicking around in my head for many years before a writing class exercise in 2014 demanded that I actually start to write it.

Further Clockwise

This is a poem from 2014 that takes the memory of being allowed to sit in my father’s lap to steer our car for a few minutes on our way home from weekend trips to my grandparents’ house in landlocked Secunderabad and transposes it into a completely different fictional setting in Vizag.

Crucial Omission

This is the beginning of a story that I started in 2014 and have not revisited since. Maybe I’ll finish it as originally intended someday. Maybe I’ll cop out and turn it into a scene within something larger.

Zoom Level

This is a prose poem I wrote in 2018 about a high school teacher who inspired the love of maps and geography on which I have built much of my career in tech so far.

Mr. Madani’s classes began in near silence. He walked in to our habitual singsong greeting, cutting it off midway and…

Undeserved Bed

This is a piece of fiction written in 2017 for a writing class that I have no concrete plans for. The middle-of-sentence opening was a requirement of the exercise.

…and at other times, I succumb to the oddly complementary fears instilled in me by two religions — of karma and…