A Tale of Travel II

I am now living in 2024 as I sit to write, on the 13th of March. To say I have not travelled would be an utter and complete lie though I guess the title is a giveaway in and of itself too!

To recall my last blog in short, I travelled from Delhi to Bhiwadi and stayed with my grandparents for about 6 months, may they rest in peace. I then moved between places while studying 3D and XR technologies in Singapore and finally moved to Kolar and stayed with my father for a couple of months through the new year and a paternal health crisis. Finally moving into a PG-cum-hostel in Bangalore with my own bank account, and doing an internship at an EdTech startup – life was looking good, with greater challenges, still lurking in the shadows of time.

Bangalore is a city that breathes an ancient wind, the weather is always pleasant with rains that put all else to shame, with the drops rejoicing and dancing as they drip dropped from the sky! Beautiful clouds, a quaint and rustic energy paired with the emerging technological prowess powered by the intellectual influx of highly skilled, and motivated humans from all over the country. The rent of my PG was around 11.5k per month and the base stipend I earned from my very first company was around 20k, at the start. This was an extremely modest beginning and for the first few months, I was able to balance my expenses and addictions well enough.. all the way until I couldn’t.

One thing no one talks about, rather no smoker likes to talk about, is the negative impact of smoking on the body. Much lesser, the psychological harm of excessive smoking, especially when illegally procured substances of questionable origins is also paired into the equation. As my lethargy increased, the second wave of Covid began and Bangalore came to a halt. I had good relations with my local peddler/panwadi and he didn’t care how much I took as long as I paid him in full, in hindsight this is how debt begins. Soo.. soon enough, to pay off my debt I too partook in distribution which inadvertently brought me into conflict with the authorities. If you live like an ant, be prepared to be squashed like an ant. Likewise, you are the best version of yourself, only as an aggregate of the people you spend the most time with. I spent too much time with charlatans, liars, addicts and good-for-nothings.

This city is beautiful, some of my closest friends are people I got to know while living here, I spent a night in jail with blood-stained walls and rats running across the floor with only a rough and smelly blanket – all because of the green goodness that I couldn’t live without. These moments made a switch click within me and though the times had gotten tougher than my 8-year-old self could have ever imagined, I knew that the time to evolve had come. Once back at my pg, I went right back to the green like a sucker for pain. My company too decided that my time was coming to an end soon, my lethargy and disinterest had begun to impact my work, though they still helped out where they could in my search for the next big adventure!

I returned to Bhiwadi with long hair, my mom promptly took a pair of scissors and made the unruly and split hairs go away, and then the company sponsored a short trip to Goa for a team meetup and holiday where some parts of my lost energy could see their points of reactivation. I will forever be grateful to the team as they saw me at my best and worst and helped me through all of it in whatever way they could.

Travel is never one-dimensional, through the year spent in Bangalore, I got to improve my skills too in ways I didn’t think I could. From starting off as an intern who only knew a bit of 3D and XR, I went to being a VR and AR consultant for my company working on bridging ancient languages like Sanskrit with modern computing languages like C# and Python, collaborating with people in Canada and I also better understood the long game being played by Meta (then Facebook and Oculus). Though my self-depreciation is harsh at best and brutal at its worst, my modesty can tend in the direction of seeming lies – my skills had brought me to the 1% of the country in terms of value yet to be realized. My next gig would be 20km outside Jaipur, in a small village known as ‘Dahmi Kalan’ in the Bagru District, at the Atal Incubation Center at Manipal University Jaipur, as an Executive of Technology (XR).

Jail or even an overnight lockup at the police station can change one’s perspectives and one important change I brought to my life was simply making one strong decision, in my case – to never actively seek substances to harm myself. Within the first week of my entering the University, I was able to find a good place for myself to stay as well as make healthy food plans as my neighbour suggested making tiffins for me. My dad also visited around this time and made a small investment which helped me get a bicycle – enough to move between my home and the office. This bicycle was much needed and also contributed to an improvement in my health. Though I had stopped seeking greenery to bring life into my life, I was unable to quit tobacco and a chance encounter brought a new peddler/panwadi into my life, as well as new acquaintances that enabled my drug abuse. I am still in touch with these people as the time we spent was thoroughly modest. I had shared my past with them and they respected my stances – they brought the green to me and I could see that there was an obvious difference in the perceived status which caused the gravity to tilt this way. I was after all an academic employee working on the main University grounds, while they were in more assistive roles in the hostel areas, surrounded by spoiled and rich privileged kids who treated them poorly.

In Jaipur, my work was extremely fulfilling – I truly felt that years of my efforts were finally bringing rewards to me, a healthy and clean village environment with no pollution, a saatvik diet and enough physical activity. Intellectual work in 3D and XR at the office as well as conducting faculty training programmes and even teaching, guiding and mentoring students passionate about the domain! Through chance, I was able to guide a student through their final year BTech Project as their remote guide (based in Singapore) was unable to provide regular support and all I had learnt was finally beginning to come together. Around this time, a new emerging AI/ML technology known as image diffusion too had started making rounds – something that I knew I had to latch onto. My life had reached a point of comfort – and I invited my closest friend from my alma mater to see where I was now.

This was a much-needed reality check that I had not gotten in a long time.

He asked if he should bring some things I hadn’t tried yet and I gave him the go-ahead since experimentation is a part of life.. though my exposure to the world of drugs had been limited to only cannabis – at times chemically laced cannabis – I had never tried the so-called ‘stronger’ substances. This was my first introduction to LSD, better known as acid.

It is hard for me to explain how the experience went – unexpected is the only word which can illustrate the impact. We spent the evening in smoke and took our patches on the tongue at an early enough time so we could enjoy the sunset. That is when I noticed arrows and triangles emanating from the moon. Soon enough, the sky was full of diamonds. Everything was the same, it had only started shimmering as though perception itself were only a wave of belief.

After an hour or so into the mood, it had already gotten old, fast. The only thing on my mind was how much longer this would last – since the manner in which LSD impacts the mind and body – sleep is best not to be thought of since the activity of the brain under the influence of the substance, simply would not allow it. The drug had heightened my sensitivity to color and sound and my eyes felt covered by a cheap abstract RGB filter. We both cried together for a while, my lamenting with him about how much of the lure drugs showcase is an outright lie. I had dropped out of college, but my friend had been through it all. He further highlighted how horrible the lies and illusions were under the veil of peer pressure and petty pretentiousness. That night I made another decision to do whatever I had to do to improve my life as this was certainly not the direction I wanted to be in, when I saw myself at 40.

He had told me he would remain mostly silent and quiet during the ‘trip’ and in hindsight, it makes sense why it was so. We did find a way to spend the night with good music and enough smoke to forget the tears and rise with the morning.

The next morning, we caught the rising sun and the cool winds felt nice too. We had a good lunch at ‘Delhi Durbar’ – the main store where my main seller operated from and on the walk back, there were the usual, typical village scenarios – a couple of old men sitting on their haunches while wearing dhotis and headscarfs, smoking beedis. I pointed out to my friend ‘look how natural my life has become’ to which he simply responded ‘you are from delhi. do you really want to stay with them for the rest of your life?’

His words were a shock. Electricity activated in my brain again realizing that not even the friends I made here in the village would be so brutally honest with me. The reality of India is well known and while a good balance can be struck in any lifestyle, stagnation does not come with warning. My internal motivation to do better and more had been reawakened. I still relied on smoke, both brown and green, addictions coming from years of abuse – too hard to give up, now being consumed as fuel for an unquenchable fire. I started reapplying to new jobs, all over the country, in domains I was proficient at as well as underprepared for. Most applications were rejected since paper qualifications always come prior to real-world skills. Through countless rejections, failed assignments, educational programmes and AI research I was engaged in – a silver lining appeared after more months of effort – and the time to say goodbye to Jaipur and Dahmi was here again.

A technology innovator working through a startup was interested in hiring me for the role of XR Development at his firm, E3 Tech Systems and Services. I had worked on many 3D software though my experience with hardware had been limited. The headset I had to work on was a Hololens (Gen1) though the Hololens 2 had been out for a few years as well. I had been working with the Rift, Quest, Quest 2 and HTC devices so I accepted the challenge. The pay was marginally higher and instead of a 5-day work week, this guy wanted 6 days of work. I gladly accepted. Anything was better than being stuck in an underdeveloped and backward village. Thus, I packed my bags, said goodbye to my colleagues and booked a bus to Vadodara in Gujarat to begin the next chapter in my life.

At the University, I had my own classroom which could seat more than 60 students as well as a lab with multiple PCs, a 3D Printing machine and IR sensor setups for advanced VR tracking applications. My new office in Sayajigunj was half the size of the classroom and the desk I was sitting at was at least 10 years older than it looked. The PC did not come with a GPU. Apart from the fancy and minimalistic logo of the company, I could not see the cutting-edge technology I was hired to work on. Though it had taken months in Jaipur for me to realize I was in the wrong place, here it barely took an hour for the same sinking feeling to set in.

I stayed for a few days in the home of one of my mother’s distant cousins and realized why the distance existed. There wasn’t much either colloquially or culturally that could connect me to them and I was fortunate enough to find a comfortable penthouse to stay at. A real PG this time, not a pseudo-hostel with a curfew like the one I had in Bangalore. The landlord was also comfortable when I shared my habits with him and laughed at my mention of brown and green smoke. Among his previous tenants, it seems that an unruly frenchman had also graced his abode and altercated with the cops over drug-related issues. My landlord spoke fondly of his previous tenants and only told me to be careful with whatever I wanted to do. It seems my being conversational in English had a certain impact on his overall demeanour toward me. My housemate too was an interesting person, she was from Mauritius and pursuing her Masters in Philosophy though after a short conversation, she knew nothing of the great Marcus Aurelius or even Plato. I decided not to venture into discourses surrounding the Vedantic schools of thought so as to not appear confrontational!

Though Vadodara is a Tier 2 city and I stayed in Alkapuri, one of the most prestigious areas – the work was unfulfilling and the ladder I felt I was climbing did not seem to have moved as far above as I had hoped. In addition to visiting the office 6 days a week now, I also had to make sure my travel to the factory was self-organized. See it took some time for me to figure out that my boss was the CEO of my firm, he was in fact the Director of a sister company, ATR Asahi, that acted as a parent company. Through my work at this pharmaceutical equipment manufacturing company, my insights into bridging CAD-based projects into XR-based simulations helped pave a stronger grasp on 3D as a whole. My involvement with AI also increased as I put greater effort into understanding what makes simple prompts generate beautiful images. I was also able to work and develop on both the Hololens device models, my boss did buy the Hololens 2, though I had told him to get the more modern Quest Pro – and also introduced me to collaborate with nearby associate Universities and students.

I was now able to resume my teaching (in part) with a couple of passionate students who wanted to better understand this 3D world and XR technologies.

When we initiated discussions with a German company to distribute their augmented reality software, this should have been my first red flag.

In Vadodara, I did not seek out green pastures even once. Only shared my desires with my housemate since she might have known people at her college and a colleague and as luck would have it – I met a new friend. I still do not know how it happened but overnight we were able to get close enough to talk about our lives and found a kinship. We are still connected with each other.

I shared my past with him and how I would like green in my life without risk and he promptly decided to fulfil my desire by becoming a link in a chain that could arrange almost anything, even alcohol in a dry state! The harsh reality of my new job now had a kinder way to balance things. While away during the day, smoke away all sorrows at night. Such kindness is generally unheard of. During this time, I continued exploring the depth which AI could touch and through the hallucinations of Midjourney, I also realised that being able to sell a good product is not an easy job. My friend suggested I set up a small shop to sell posters of content the AI helped me generate, and at the end of the day I gave away a poster for free since I did not want to leave with everything that I had brought with me. Perhaps the venue and event too was not the best to try it out, learning does ultimately come in many flavors.

In any case, my camaraderie improved and with time, we went out to explore places and smuggle alcohol from Diu (which was surprisingly easy with a well-placed bribe) while simultaneously my trips to and from the office and factory, from 9am to 7pm, 6 days a week was eating away at my soul. Without needing another visit from my batchmate as I had in Jaipur, I again began the search for brighter horizons the moment my boss decided to move me from XR Development to Business Development.

I had asked him clearly and bluntly after having been told to make cold calls to leads on why he would hire me as an XR Developer when he needed someone for Business Development. His reply was simple ‘your vocabulary’. It was an unexpected response though it did seem fairly obvious. All other employees I had encountered either spoke broken Hindi and Gujarati, knowing only few phrases of conversational English. It made sense, and lit an enraged flame within me. I began counting the minutes I was spending in that dingy rented, broken down office.

Vadodara was a place where dreams and desires came to die. I know, maybe not for everyone but certainly true for me. As my new friend got a phoenix tattoo, I too rose from the ashes of cigarettes and joints to even greater intoxication and inebriation through complex assignments for uncaring and distant companies – until I struck gold. Three genuine applications, one from Thane, another from Pune and yet another from Bangalore. One is a hardware company and the other two – on the software front. The triad was actively engaged in a proper recruitment process and a thorough evaluation process. I cleared through the assignments put forward by the Mumbai-based company while the assignment from Bangalore, more complex but well-delivered, was not what they were looking for. The Pune-based company too showed interest in my skills but were not able to match or meet the other offer. My next destination too was finalized.

While I was in the city of Banyan trees, my father did visit during the rainy season. I was able to share my growth with him and we both could see that my growth was still in the process of maturing. Most of the animosity I held toward him had gone and he too could see the physical and emotional struggle I was going through.

Speaking of health, I realized the importance of a healthy diet the hard way, while in Gujarat. From having home-cooked meals, I now had to eat out everyday – the lethargy was still strong enough to discourage me from cooking my own food – it was so much easier to just push a few buttons on the phone to order readymade tasty sandwiches, burgers, pizzas, noodles and so many more things at discounted prices! The city was fortunately cheap enough to afford such food deliveries and my habits were further solidified. My stomach was not as happy though. As the time for my departing Vadodara came nearer, my father decided to reach Thane in advance and help me look for worthwhile properties near to where I would be working. As luck would have it, my new office was in a building called Lodha Supremus and a 2BHK flat was available at Lodha Grandezza, a stone’s throw away. With the new rental agreement ready and my train tickets in hand, my father threw another googly by informing me he could come to Vadodara for a long road trip to Thane, which I agreed to as well.

It felt like a victory journey as I left the city and bid adieu to my landlord – my boss had peevishly asked me what the rent of my new home was to which I candidly responded. I guess what surprised him the most was the fact that my rent was higher than the salary he was paying me. The drive itself was pleasant, my dad had healthy lungs and good stamina, something I lacked and so I slept through the journey as we went along the national highway. We reached Thane sometime in the evening and as I entered our new house, I was taken aback at the regal beauty of the balcony view across the town, from the 14th floor and also, the strong stench of garbage flowing in. As I remarked, my dad simply had this to say ‘Every street of Mumbai is known for the distinct scents it produces’. My only fear was that I may have to live with this scent for the foreseeable future!

So came an end to the travel and a new chapter of patience had begun. It has been a long time since I have sat down to write and document my experiences and it has been difficult to cover everything that occurred from November 2020 through to November of 2022. I spent about a year in Bangalore, and about half a year each in Jaipur and Vadodara. There are many tales of failed romantic trysts and challenges of rain that have not made their way through to this blog – life is always an adventure – I do hope to cover all that has transpired since then to today – whether I have reached where I desired to be is still in question. I am confident and happy to say this at least, I do see the edge of the mountain I am destined to climb, and there are many more tales of travel that are just around the corner, waiting for the right time!