In the 28 years of my existence on this planet, there have been moments that have been imprinted in my mind so vividly that I visualize them as Technicolor films in slow motion that when replayed bring back a gush of emotions from those defining moments of my life. I may not be able to yet look back at this from the future but something tells me today is one such moment.
Today is my last day as an employee of Hillcrest Labs, Inc., where I’ve spent nearly the last 4 years working on exciting products at a young and dynamic start-up company. For the first time in my career that began after I graduated from IIT Madras in 2001, I will no longer be seeking employment at a major (or start-up) corporation. I am leaving to pursue what has long been my dream and the singular goal of my career – to start my own company.
Today not only marks the end of what is perhaps the most defining experience in my career so far, but also the beginning of my last 17 days of residence in the United States of America. After 7 years in 3 different cities of the US I’m moving back to the only country that is my home, India.
People close to me have always known that when I first set foot on American soil on January 20th, 2002, I had every intention of tracing this exact path through my time in the US and eventually returning to India one day. And following through on a promise I made to myself all those years ago is a truly liberating feeling. I don’t know if the word “liberating” quite captures how I feel, but knowing that I am still in control of my life and not yet the victim of inescapable routine that seems to engulf us all as we grow older and more accustomed to a steady life, definitely feels quite liberating.
The logical question to ask (and no doubt one that I’ve been asked a lot these last few weeks) is why I’m choosing to leave the US and go back to India.
My arrival in the US was in pursuit of a dream that I had nurtured my entire life. I had been admitted to Wash U to pursue a degree in Computer Science and it was my shot at making my career in the only thing that ever truly captivated my imagination and it meant the world to me. It was a vindication of everything I had taught myself outside of classrooms (given that I was learning Chemical Engineering inside!) and a reinforcement of my belief that one’s determination and steady effort towards a goal could get you there, even if it was not obvious to everybody around you how you possibly could pull it off.
In the years I have spent living in the US I have grown to love and appreciate America for what it is. My varied experiences have influenced my growth and broadened my outlook as an individual, which is why I feel so overwhelmingly positive about the life I have led. As I often like to say, I may not be an American citizen but I am to some extent American in my thinking, having spent some of my most crucial years in the universities and companies of the US.
I am returning to India now mostly in pursuit of yet another dream. I say mostly because there are of course a multitude of reasons but the most important one is really about a dream. A dream that I have nurtured from the time I was first fascinated by the history of the great technology companies of America and when I first came across the word start-up. As I read everything I could on the subject, sitting on the trading desks at Morgan Stanley in New York, it became quite apparent to me that if I wanted to really do this myself some day I had to learn by being at a start-up to begin with. Where could I learn the ropes than at an actual start-up? Where could I gather the skills that were crucial to making an actual company out of nothing more than an idea and pure determination? Hillcrest Labs is where I trained to one day start my own company and today I’m moving on to the second and most important part of any real training course: doing it yourself.
I’m 28 years old and I owe myself a shot at pursuing my dream. It is time to follow up with action on what have only been words and thoughts so far. This is about doing what I truly believe in and irrespective of how this turns out in the end I know it will be one hell of a ride!
(Editorial note: This post was originally composed on April 24th, 2009, but did not make the presses at that time because of an intervening vacation in Hawaii.)
