India → Germany → Everything else

One-way ticket. Two suitcases. Zero idea what I was doing.

I left India with the confidence of someone who had watched too many YouTube videos about Europe and not enough about German bureaucracy. The first winter taught me humility faster than any mentor could.

German classes, culture shock, and the art of pretending I understood.

I learned that 'Wie geht's?' is not an invitation for your life story. I also learned that belonging is not a document you receive — it's something you build, slowly, awkwardly, one misunderstood joke at a time.

Startup #1: enthusiasm 10/10, market research 2/10.

I convinced myself that passion was a business plan. It wasn't. I lost money, sleep, and a fair amount of dignity. But I also learned that failure in Germany comes with excellent paperwork.

Stopped calling myself a developer and started earning that title.

Five years in, I finally understood what production means. Not tutorials. Not side projects. Real users, real deadlines, real consequences when you push on a Friday afternoon.

Businesses #2 and #3: different ideas, same outcome.

The second was a consultancy that consulted itself into irrelevance. The third was an e-commerce play that discovered Germany already had Amazon. Three strikes, and I finally stopped swinging at every pitch.

Eleven years later, I became German on paper.

The ceremony was short. The journey wasn't. I now hold two passports and still feel like I'm in transit — which, honestly, might be the point of Desi-Jetlag.

Started telling the stories I'd been living.

Not a travel blog. Not a dev portfolio. A journal for anyone who has ever felt permanently jet-lagged between where they're from and where they ended up.