"The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
— Robert Frost, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep."
The poem I come back to when the week is long. I think of it as a work ethic disguised as a pastoral.
Nine loves, one life.
These are the things that come up when I'm not in front of a terminal. A professional page wouldn't mention any of this. That's exactly why this one does.
The Music
Four traditions, one playlist. Playback, classical, ghazal, pop — and karaoke nights.
▸
The Music
Four traditions, one playlist. Playback, classical, ghazal, pop — and karaoke nights.
If I have to sit still through something hard, this is the song that gets me through it. I've played it more times than any other piece of music in my life.
🎙️ Playback · the voices I grew up on
Mohammed Rafi is the gold standard. There will never be another one; anyone who disagrees can fight me politely over chai. Alongside him on permanent loop: Kumar Sanu, Mukesh, and the velvet melancholy of Talat Mahmood.
Modern era: Arijit Singh — the one playback voice of my generation that I think history will remember the way history remembered Rafi. The women who carry the melody the hardest: Shreya Ghoshal for grace, Sunidhi Chauhan for fire.
🎼 Hindustani classical · the discipline
Raag is a kind of architecture — you can spend a lifetime inside one and never finish it. The masters I return to:
- Pandit Bhimsen Joshi — Kirana gharana; nobody has rendered raag Yaman with more authority.
- Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan — the standard against which every khayal singer since has been measured.
- Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan — qawwali as trance; Allah Hoo still stops me in my tracks.
- Rahat Fateh Ali Khan — carrying his uncle's lineage forward with his own tone.
🌙 Ghazal · the quiet art
The ghazal is the most honest poetic form I know — lovers, loss, exile, patience, and God, arranged in couplets that don't have to rhyme with each other but must answer each other. My pantheon:
- Mehdi Hassan Sahab — the Shahenshah-e-Ghazal. The voice that taught everyone else what restraint sounds like.
- Jagjit Singh — the reason a whole generation discovered the ghazal; Mirza Ghalib on Doordarshan was my entry point.
- Ghulam Ali — Chupke Chupke Raat Din is the song I'd play for anyone who asks what ghazal means.
- Hariharan — bridges Carnatic phrasing into ghazal; his Hazir and Sukoon albums live on my phone.
- Pankaj Udhas — the soundtrack of diasporic longing; every desi in America owes him something.
🎧 Pop · the guilt-free rotation
Backstreet Boys · Michael Jackson · Shakira · Fergie · Kelly Clarkson · Adele · Beyoncé · Taylor Swift · Katy Perry · Carrie Underwood.
🎤 Karaoke specialty: Bollywood classics and Chupke Chupke. Slightly over-earnest, slightly off-key, always committed.
The Poetry
Urdu ghazal, Gujarati kavita, and the quiet precision of Mirza Ghalib. Two languages, one practice.
▸
The Poetry
Urdu ghazal, Gujarati kavita, and the quiet precision of Mirza Ghalib. Two languages, one practice.
🕯️ Ghalib — the measure of Urdu poetry
हज़ारों ख़्वाहिशें ऐसी कि हर ख़्वाहिश पे दम निकले,
बहुत निकले मेरे अरमान लेकिन फिर भी कम निकले।
— Mirza Ghalib. Translated loosely: "A thousand desires, each one worth dying for — many of mine were fulfilled, and still it was not enough." I've been reading this couplet for twenty years and I find something new every time.
🌅 Kavi Kant — the Gujarati classical register
આજ, મહારાજ ! જલ પર ઉદય જોઈને
ચન્દ્રનો, હૃદયમાં હર્ષ જામે,
સ્નેહઘન, કુસુમવન વિમલ પરિમલ ગહન
નિજ ગગન માંહિ ઉત્કર્ષ પામે;
પિતા ! કાલના સર્વ સંતાપ શામે !
નવલ રસ ધવલ તવ નેત્ર સામે
પિતા ! કાલના સર્વ સંતાપ શામે !
જલધિજલદલ ઉપર દામિની દમકતી
યામિની વ્યોમસર માંહી સરતી;
કામિની કોકિલા કેલિ કૂજન કરે
સાગરે ભાસતી ભવ્ય ભરતી;
પિતા ! સૃષ્ટિ સારી સમુલ્લાસ ધરતી !
તરલ તરણી સમી સરલ તરતી,
પિતા ! સૃષ્ટિ સારી સમુલ્લાસ ધરતી !
– મણિશંકર રત્નશંકર ભટ્ટ ‘કાન્ત’
From Sagar ane Shashi ("The Ocean and the Moon"), by Manishankar Ratnaji Bhatt ‘Kant’ (1867–1923) — an ode to the moon rising over water, addressed to God as Father. The refrain "પિતા ! કાલના સર્વ સંતાપ શામે !" ("Father! All the day's sorrows grow quiet") lifts the poem each time it returns. There is no English rendering that carries this.
🌙 Adil Mansuri — the modern Gujarati ghazal
Where Kavi Kant is classical and celestial, Adil Mansuri is modern and human — the ghazal form, in Gujarati, in the twentieth century. The diaspora, the city, the phone that rings and the phone that doesn't. Gujarati poetry is an underappreciated treasure: the meters reward patience, the imagery rewards memory.
The Cricket
India first. Australia close second. A genuine, confusing-to-others dual loyalty.
▸
The Cricket
India first. Australia close second. A genuine, confusing-to-others dual loyalty.
I grew up with Tendulkar and Dravid; I matured into appreciation for Ponting and the Waugh brothers' almost mechanical ruthlessness. India–Australia Test cricket is, for my money, the best long-form sport on earth.
I watch the third session the hardest — when the light starts to go, the ball starts to talk, and the batsman has to decide whether to survive or score. That's where character shows up.
🏏 Live scorecards — my two teams
📊 The greats — my personal XI
🇮🇳 India
🇦🇺 Australia
When India plays Australia, I don't pick. I just watch.
The Choir
Church of the Sacred Heart · South Plainfield, NJ · Saturday & Sunday masses.
▸
The Choir
Church of the Sacred Heart · South Plainfield, NJ · Saturday & Sunday masses.
I sing in the choir at Sacred Heart. It's one of the few hours in the week when the work is communal, the outcome is not a deliverable, and the metric is whether the congregation felt something. That's a useful discipline to carry into everything else.
Singing with other people is also the single most reliable cure I've found for a bad week of meetings. Sound has a way of dissolving things that logic cannot.
The Community
Three organizations I give real time to. Work that compounds.
▸
The Community
Three organizations I give real time to. Work that compounds.
UGCOA
United Gujarati Christians of America
ugcoaorg.godaddysites.com ↗Gujarati Catholic Samaj of USA
Community, faith, and cultural continuity for Gujarati Catholics across the U.S.
gcsofusa.org ↗GoGoodToAll
Broader social work across causes and cultures.
dogoodtoall.org ↗I was raised to believe that a career is something you fit around a community, not the other way around. That view has cost me some time and saved me a lot of regret.
The Movies
Bombay matinees, Hollywood on flights, and an absurd willingness to watch anything at least once.
▸
The Movies
Bombay matinees, Hollywood on flights, and an absurd willingness to watch anything at least once.
Bollywood heroes: Shah Rukh Khan for the charm, Amitabh Bachchan for the gravity. Different generations, different answers to the same question: what does a leading man do with his time on screen?
Bollywood leading ladies I'll never miss: Madhuri Dixit · Aishwarya Rai · Sara Ali Khan · Deepika Padukone.
Hollywood: Marlon Brando · Brad Pitt · Tom Hanks · Keanu Reeves · Adam Sandler. A list with no unifying theory except that I enjoyed each one at different stages of life.
🎞️ The two films I will re-watch forever
The Ideas I Admire
Liberal in the classical sense — open to argument, unpersuaded by volume.
▸
The Ideas I Admire
Liberal in the classical sense — open to argument, unpersuaded by volume.
The thinkers I return to: Mahatma Gandhi, for demonstrating that moral seriousness and political effectiveness are not opposites. Martin Luther King Jr., for the same reason, translated. Socrates, for showing what it costs to ask questions and not be satisfied with fashionable answers.
"The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others."
"The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."
Politically I keep a soft spot for the Indian National Congress — not in its current shape but in what it once represented: the idea that a pluralistic country needs a party willing to hold many identities at once. That ideal is harder than it looks.
The Sky
Voyager 1 & 2 for inspiration. Planet X & Nibiru for entertainment.
▸
The Sky
Voyager 1 & 2 for inspiration. Planet X & Nibiru for entertainment.
Every week I check where the Voyager probes are. They are, to me, humanity's best argument for itself — two small machines still reporting home from interstellar space, decades past their designed lifespan, powered by plutonium and audacity.
🛰️ Live mission status
Voyager 1
Voyager 2
I also, with zero embarrassment, enjoy the entire fringe library — Anunnaki, planet X, Nibiru, the whole catalogue. Not because I believe most of it, but because conspiracy theories are wildly revealing about what cultures are afraid of and what stories they need to tell about the sky. Treat them like folklore and they get interesting fast.
The Gadgets
Tesla FSD beta tester. Lifelong Android guy. Stubbornly early adopter.
▸
The Gadgets
Tesla FSD beta tester. Lifelong Android guy. Stubbornly early adopter.
I drive a Tesla on Full Self-Driving and I've watched every generation of the software argue with American roads. It's not finished. It's also more impressive than most of what gets called "AI" in the enterprise world.
I've been an Android partisan since the G1. Not because iOS is bad, but because I like the side of the fence where the ecosystem is noisier, the defaults are debatable, and the phone will do what I tell it without asking me to sign a contract with Cupertino.
📰 What I'm tracking
Tesla — official blog & releases
Software updates, FSD milestones, and the quieter engineering notes that don't make the cable-news cycle.
tesla.com/blog ↗Android — Google's official blog
OS updates, feature drops, Pixel releases, and the occasional material-design philosophy piece.
blog.google/products/android ↗Pattern-wise: if a new platform launches, I'm in the first thousand users. That is a personality trait, not a job requirement.
If any of the above is also your list —
— please write to me. I collect people who share at least three of these, and the world is small enough that we're probably one email away.