My real journey with programming started when I was in the 9th standard. But, to better understand how I think and what fascinates me, a bit of prehistory. I was born in Chandigarh, India in 1988. My family is Sikh, Punjabi and middle-class. I have always been on the introvert side of the spectrum. As a kid till high school, I was quite less social. Also, I was introduced to Guru Nanak and Kabir quite early on through their stories. However, apart from their religion, what impressed me as a kid was their simplicity in thought and reasoning. Given, my loneliness, and having quite a bit of time, I got knack of imagining and creating short scenarios/stories in my mind. My elder brother and I used to play with GI-Joe figures, we used to collect them, operate them, and play various scenarios with them. As I grew older, I was introduced to the likes of Ruskin Bond, Khushwant Singh, Reader’s Digest. Given this was non-digital time, I also was fascinated by maps, and the atlas we had in our home. I used to spend a lot of time, going through the roads and the unknown cities and towns and imagining their stories. Given the Indian context and cricket, I used to build cricket game scenarios using GI-Joes and other toy-like things in my house. Later, I would develop a love for soccer and poetry and short stories. Education-wise, I was and am never good at giving exams. I simply cannot cram, and can only remember things that interest me. I like Mathematics, but in some areas. I was good in 2-D geometry and some algebra. Computers early on was all theory and a bit of practically revolving around MS office and paint applications. There was some Boolean algebra, but it was hard to solve without being able to imagine it. Basically, I was an average student. I liked history cause of stories, and stars as we used to sleep outside under them and I used to “daydream” before falling to sleep.
From the memoir I am writing, one chapter at a time.