Photo by Author, of the Author

Donning the hat of a singer:

When I was a child, I used to sing to myself. Songs I would pick up from the radio stations played (loudly) by my neighbors (we didn’t have a radio set then). This was the early years of the 1960s. I would accompany my sisters to their music teacher, quietly sit in the corner, and listen to what they were taught. Back home, I would sing what they were taught, with little errors. But my dad didn’t find my talent (music) exciting enough to be pursued as a career. I kept singing to myself, for my friends, my college mates, and obviously to my wife, who has been listening to it for the past three decades. 

Donning the hat of a research scholar:

I grew up to follow my dad’s dream (desire) of achieving the highest degree known to him, a doctoral degree (Ph.D.), as he couldn’t pursue his desire to study as much owing to financial constraints. I started working as a Research Scholar at a prestigious research institution under the Ministry of Health. I worked among one of the most popular tribal groups of India, called the Gonds, located in one of the remotest parts of the country called Bastar. I completed my Ph.D. in five years. The foundation was laid. The learning from my doctoral training in such a remote location, among the most fascinating people, taught me the basic instincts of survival.

Donning the hat of a Social Expert:

I moved to the world of consultancy and joined a premier research agency in India as a Social Researcher. It later, in the middle of this millennium became popularly known under the attire of Monitoring & Evaluation (M&E) of projects in the social development sector including health, education, child rights, gender issues, livelihood, and many more.

Donning the hat of a Market Researcher:

I was baptized in Market Research in the next agency that I joined as a ‘qualitative resource person’. It was amazing to realize that the research techniques were the same in market research as in social research, but the difference was in the dynamics of the domains.

Donning the hat of an entrepreneur:

I quit my job to start my research agency called Grasp Analytique with my wife as co-founders. We worked in the social development sector in an array of domains such as health, education, child rights, gender issues, livelihood, and many more, working with national (Indian) and international philanthropic organizations.

My baptism in Market Research didn’t go to waste. For the next three decades, we worked with the best brands in the market in India in an array of domains like FMCG, Consumer Durable, Automobile, Telecom, advertising & communication, Milk & Milk products, Realty, and more. We extensively used both quantitative as well as qualitative techniques for the thousand-plus studies conducted so far.

Donning the hat of a published author:

My father wanted me to write memoirs from my experience of working with tribal groups during my Ph.D., but I could never pick up the pen. More than a decade after he died, I suddenly started ‘writing’.

I wrote a Novella on Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) to avoid spending money on my first venture as a writer. I was reading a lot about the ‘Out of Africa Migration’ theory and got intrigued about the concept and wrote a story around it. I named it  The First Empress: 60 thousand years ago.

I have always been dreaming about time travel, traveling thousands of years, and walking with characters who lived on this earth thousands of years ago. I concocted a story around time travel, deeply influenced by HD Wells and his time machine. I used his character in the story, where the protagonist meets HG Wells before designing his time machine.

The premise of time travel was interwoven with the Indus Valley Civilization, one of the contemporaries of the Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilizations. The novel was titled The Curse of Kukkutarma (Kukkutarma being the other name for Mohenjo-daro-one of the many sites of the Indus Valley Civilization).

Writing is my passion and I want to take it up in the second innings of my life.

Music Anthropology Social Research Market Research Author Writing