What I Know at 34…
This isn’t a conclusion; it’s where clarity begins
I turned 34 this December, in 2025.
When I looked back at my journey so far, I didn’t feel the urge to celebrate or summarise. What I felt instead was a quiet assurance: I’ve come a long way. Not in the way success is usually measured, but in the way clarity settles.
At this point in life, I wanted to write down what I know about myself; not to explain who I am, but to acknowledge what I’ve learned and, more importantly, what I’ve let go of.
As time passes, wisdom doesn’t arrive as certainty. It arrives as calmness. As patience. As a reduced appetite for chaos. Slowly, peace begins to feel less like an aspiration and more like an end goal.
When I look back, life feels like a continuous pursuit of truth. What I believed to be “truth” kept changing with time. There were phases when I was seeking truth about God, then about myself.
Today, I can say with some confidence that I have a clearer sense of self, a more refined purpose, and a better understanding of what I truly want from life.
In a web series “Kota Factory” there was a line that stayed with me:
“If you don’t know what you want in life, at least start figuring out what you don’t want.”
That sentence describes my life more accurately than any grand philosophy. My journey hasn’t been about accumulation. It’s been about elimination.
Elimination of expectations, constructs, ambitions, and identities that didn’t belong to me.
Freedom Came Early
I was exposed to money early in life. At the age of nine, I started sitting at our shop. From that point onward, I never asked my parents for money not because I was exceptional, but because responsibility arrived early.
Despite growing up in a humble household, I never felt scarcity. Whatever I needed, I earned. That created something far more valuable than financial comfort: freedom.
Freedom from dependence.
Freedom from fear.
Freedom to choose.
This also built an independent spirit inside me.
During college, I did multiple internships, MLM marketing, and various jobs to support myself. That early independence quietly shaped how I think and live even today.
Equality as a Default State
The shop was my first real classroom.
People from every walk of life came there; teachers, officers, rich customers, transporters, and labourers from different states using the PCO to call home. Everyone spoke to me like an adult. Somewhere along the way, I began seeing myself as equal to them.
That equality worked both ways. I listened; sometimes for hours to stories of struggle, migration, and hardship. That taught me empathy without pity and confidence without arrogance. This kept my curiosity alive as I never shied away from anything.
This curiosity naturally drew me toward people, their stories, and the cultures they live in. I rarely take photographs when I travel. Instead, I explore food, conversations, and everyday life, trying to absorb a city rather than document it.
Once, during a trek, someone remarked, “So you travel purely for the joy of travelling—nothing else.”
That stayed with me. I realised it was true. I travel today for the same reason I once listened to people in a small shop; to understand lives, stories, and the worlds they come from.
That foundation carried into the business world as well.
I speak to everyone with the same confidence and respect, regardless of their wealth or knowledge. In my head, I sit across the table as an equal. If someone has wealth, I bring value. If someone has knowledge, I bring curiosity.
There is no inferiority or superiority; only exchange.
This mental neutrality removes self-doubt and ego at the same time. It keeps energy flowing and creates better outcomes.
Business Was Never Just Business
Long before I knew strategy frameworks or business jargon, I learned fundamentals instinctively.
I learned the value of relationships why the same customers returned to our shop even when alternatives existed. I learned that empathy turns customers into friends, and sales becomes a natural by-product of trust. I learned that market dynamics matter more than ego.
For instance, tea shops bought milk from us even though another vendor sold it cheaper because that vendor also sold tea and would hurt their business.
Years later, the same instinct guided one of my companies to sell only software and avoid any activity that could damage our customers’ outcomes.
Even today, we command a premium. Customers still choose us—not because we’re cheaper, but because we’re aligned.
I never fought price wars. I never poached customers. I learned early that if someone isn’t loyal to their current vendor, they won’t be loyal to you either. Every customer we gained came voluntarily even in niche markets.
Many of my strengths today are simply echoes of early lessons.
Curiosity, Learning, and Self-Reliance
I’ve always been curious. It began with reading newspapers at the shop initially as timepass. That curiosity expanded into geopolitics, local politics, storytelling, and opinions.
More importantly, I learned to be self-reliant early; to solve problems, take decisions, and move on without waiting for validation. That habit has stayed with me longer than any technical skill.
Many people describe my lack of need for validation as an advantage today.
When I reflect on it, it feels less like an advantage and more like a habit formed early in life;
when validation wasn’t readily available and self-reliance quietly became the default.
What I Didn’t Become
Life also teaches you what you are not.
I couldn’t play sports growing up, so group sports or team work feels unnatural to me. I gravitate toward individual pursuits; swimming, running, trekking alone.
I couldn’t spend time in festivities, fairs or celebratory events like birthdays or new years. Usually I spend these days like any other day now.
I couldn’t invest much time in friendships, so I don’t have many now.
I didn’t attend many parties or spend long vacations with relatives. Even when I did, there was always a quiet anxiety about responsibility and survival. I am happy, that I have stopped engaging in these events, parties or get-togethers in the pretence of social acceptance.
I’ve seen too many broken and pretentious relationships to romanticize social templates. I’ve tried fitting into them but it felt dishonest.
Pretence drains me. Solitude restores me.
I’ve learned to respect that truth about myself.
How I see work today…
I’ve been working for nearly twenty-five years now. Over time, work stopped feeling like effort and began to feel like practice. Even on holidays, if I don’t spend a few hours engaged—learning, reflecting, refining—the day feels unsettled. If I’m not at a desk, my mind is still quietly observing, connecting, resolving. What I call work today is really a form of sadhana. It has shaped my ethics, my character, and my sense of responsibility. Business isn’t something I step away from; it’s an expression of how I move through the world.
I remember something Jagjit Singh (ghazal singer) once said, which I heard on TV when I was very young. If he didn’t practice for a month, the audience would know. If he didn’t practice for a week, his spouse would know. And if he didn’t practice for a day, he himself would know that his voice was slipping. That awareness is why he practiced every single day.
I’ve come to see work and learning, in the same way. Not as pressure, but as upkeep. Not for applause, but for inner alignment.
When you live close to your nature, you can sense even the smallest drift. And once you know that difference, discipline no longer needs force you return to the practice on your own.
Spirituality, Business, and Travel
Three forces anchor my life.
Spirituality is my compass. It helps me make sense of life whether the waters are calm or turbulent.
Maps & directions take an individual to places known to mankind, but spiritual compass leads towards path not taken, without an iota of fear of unknown.
Business is my purpose. It gives my days direction and allows me to add value to people’s lives, even when those relationships aren’t personal in the usual sense.
When your why extends beyond self-interest and begins to serve something larger, work stops being something you do and becomes something you inhabit.
As Friedrich Nietzsche observed:
He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.
Travel is my joy. Not escape but reward. I don’t chase photographs or memories. I absorb places fully: new countries, familiar cities, industrial zones, factories, be it early mornings in Mahabalipuram or quiet nights in Chennai.
If you can experience life whenever you want, you don’t need to preserve it. Memories have no purpose if you can have freedom of experiences.
These are my only priorities in life and I’m glad to fulfil these in best way possible.
Control: The Road Ahead
This doesn’t mean life has been easy. I’ve had my share of challenges.
Which brings me back to a movie, All India Rank, and one line that stayed with me
All one needs in life is control.
As I step into the next phase of my life, I’m not chasing more; I’m refining less.
Control is the missing piece.
That is what will take me from a rookie startup founder to a seasoned businessman. From instinct to mastery. From motion to direction.
Control, for me, doesn’t mean rigidity. It means emotional steadiness, disciplined execution, and the ability to act without inner friction.
If earlier years were about learning and survival, the coming years ahead are about governance; of time, energy, attention, and intent.
I don’t know exactly where this road leads.
But I know how I want to walk it.
Slowly. Deliberately. On my own terms.
This isn’t a conclusion.
It’s simply the point where the noise has reduced enough for me to hear myself clearly.
And for now, that feels like enough.