India

Repatriating, when I did back in December 2015, after living years away felt weird. It was a time when the industry I work-in hit rock bottom: projects dried-up when commodity prices nose-dived, leading vulnerable companies to either be acquired, merge, or file for bankruptcy. Those that did survive hit their own people hard with massive job losses. Meanwhile, I was going through a little crisis of my own at work, which peaked by 2015. While I did not lose my job for doing the right thing, my health deteriorated under duress. For the first time in my life I really wanted to get off this treadmill; at least this way life would find a pace I’d be comfortable in. Instead, India called. I packed bags, leaving behind wife and kids to finish academic year.

Work was relentless, of course, like out of a frying pan and into the fire. The demand to get more done with fewer people, at lower costs, and with greater efficiency became acute, routinely punctuated by re-orgs. As I recovered, my role began getting stretched to cover all aspects of structural and marine engineering. With this road-less-travelled approach diving into troubleshooting for assets — from assessing blast over-pressures, flare towers, jetty integrity for berthing tankers, flare buoys, CALM buoy product transfer systems, to supporting budding projects, I began to enjoy work again.

Weekends were free and I found programming therapeutic. Every problem at work became a motivation to solve it programmatically fuelling numerous posts I wrote between 2016–18. (It became the base for the monograph draft I’d release in 2024.) Bangalore’s ecosystem of food start-ups fed me, while Amazon and Uber helped me get whatever I wanted and wherever I wanted to go. On the home front, Windmills’ lively community let us into their circle of parents, families and friends as we rented an apartment there. The school bus came to the campus and kids began to commute to TISB.

The yearly overnight camp-out event on Windmills’ lawns, is one of the many wonderful events, organised by grown-ups and enjoyed by everyone. Photo credits to my dear and friendly neighbour Luke.

Between running for PTCs, SATs, and IELTS, kids grew-up, and before we knew, it was time for my elder one to leave home to join her freshman year at university. We try fighting the empty-nest feeling by keeping ourselves preoccupied. And when it doesn’t work, we turn to FaceTime.

After yet another re-org at work last year, I saw myself accepting an invitation to join a project I had been working-on for a while. As a result, we left India last December. Now, life has re-started slowly on these new shores, and is finding that warmth amongst new colleagues, neighbours and strangers yet again.