This is a more personal site than a professional one, though all the basic professional information is included here. I love writing short articles for my friends and family and I will include them here whenever they are ready. All these articles express my opinions but they are based on my reading, observations, and inferences. Being a scientist, I try my best to be rational about my theories but I do let my imagination go wild at times.
I have had the most normal life of my time and therefore people of my generation can relate to my stories quite easily and others can learn how we lived during the late twentieth century and perhaps the early part of the twenty-first century. Do feel free to read my personal anecdotes as well.
I was born in the town of Narasapuram (నరసాపురం) where one of the several divisions of the mighty river Godavari empties into the Bay of Bengal (part of the Indian ocean). My family is Telugu-speaking and comes from a socially and financially backward class. My maternal grandparents lived in the village of Laxmaneswaram (a few kilometers from Narasapuram), where I spent my first few months of life.
When I was eight months old, I moved to my paternal grandparents' house in a remote village called Matti (ಮತ್ತಿ) near Davanagere in the southern part of Karnataka. We lived in a house built on our farmland. The nearest neighbor was around a couple of kilometers away. The hill next to our house inhabited a family of (Bengal) tigers not too long before our arrival. During my two years of life there, my friends included our calf Ramu, our dogs Moti and Rani, and a cat. The vast expanse of green fields and light breeze throughout the year in Matti etched on my memory forever. Perhaps, because of that early experience, I always long for places that are green and away from urban civilization.
When I was three years old, my parents and I moved to the city of Hyderabad where I lived till I completed high school and moved to Chennai (formerly Madras) for my four years of undergraduate education. Subsequently, I migrated to the US where I spent all my time in academia as a student and a faculty member. In total, I lived for seventeen years in the US residing in the states of Florida, Georgia, Missouri, and Tennessee. In my late thirties, I repatriated to India and lived in Hyderabad for over ten years followed by a small period in Amaravati, Andhra Pradesh, and finally now in the coastal town of Visakhapatnam.