I grew up in a family where money was always the question and education was always the answer.
We did not have safety nets. We did not have backup plans. Every rupee was counted, every opportunity had to be seized because there would not be another. I watched my parents carry a weight that only people near the bottom of the pyramid ever see — and somewhere in that watching, I understood what was at stake.
I was not always a topper who studied out of habit. I was someone who studied because I understood — deeply, personally — that the mind was the only thing no one could take from me. I played outdoor games with dedication, kept close friendships without burning bridges, and somehow maintained a topper's mindset without ever being the kind of student who existed only to please teachers.
By the time I reached 9th standard, Mathematics had found me — or perhaps I had found it. The way a complex problem could be unwound, step by step, into something clean and certain — that process felt like breathing to me. It still does.
I began teaching Mathematics at sixteen. I was still in Class 11 myself.
It was not a career decision. A friend was struggling, and I found myself explaining concepts more clearly than the teacher had- and she conquered the maths exam she once feared. Something lit up in me — a recognition that I could take complexity and make it land inside another person's mind. That feeling has never left.
Teaching is not about knowing the answer. It is about understanding exactly where the other person's understanding breaks — and meeting them there.
By the time I was 20, I was teaching Mathematics and Physics to IIT-JEE aspirants — students preparing for one of the world's most competitive engineering examinations. By my mid-twenties, I had expanded to NEET preparation — future doctors who needed physics and basic mathematics to build their path into medicine.
The students I mentored between the ages of 24 and 28 went on to clear JEE and NEET. Some are now engineers in top technology companies. Some are doctors in leading hospitals. I watched them walk through doors I had once stood outside of — and I felt nothing but pride. Their success was never a reminder of my own path. It was the whole point.
I attempted IIT-JEE. I came close. I did not clear it.
That failure — and the depression that came before it, in Class 11 when I first encountered an environment that felt more competitive than anything I had prepared for — gave me something no success could have given me. I understood from the inside what it feels like to prepare with everything you have and still fall short. I understood the specific despair of a student who is genuinely capable but cannot execute under pressure. That understanding became my greatest teaching tool.
Life at home was not still during these years. Financial pressure was a constant companion — not as an abstraction but as a daily reality. My family needed me. And so I taught, and earned, and sent money home, while quietly carrying my own ambitions in whatever space remained.
I attempted UPSC CSE in 2017 — India's civil services examination, the dream that had lived in me since I first studied History and Geography with the kind of attention that goes beyond exam preparation. I last attempted in 2023. Both times I walked deep into the examination — and both times, the entry barrier held.
Through all of this — one critical illness after other in the family, COVID, financial collapse, 25+ job rejections before finally landing a Software Engineering role — I kept going. Not heroically. Not without breaking. But I kept going.
After COVID, I made a decision that was difficult but necessary — I let go of JEE & NEET coaching, and immersed myself deeply in engineering to rebuild.
I reskilled. I applied to countless organisations. I was rejected by 25+. And then I secured a role in Software Engineering using skills I had first built in college and quietly maintained through the previous IT jobs and teaching years. From there, I grew — into leadership, into ownership, into a professional identity that I could stand behind.
The gap in my CV was not empty. It was full — of students taught, of exams attempted, of a family held together, of a person who refused to stop learning even when the world gave him every reason to.
Today I carry both identities — Data Engineering Lead and Educator — not as separate lives but as one coherent person. The analytical rigour of engineering and the human depth of teaching are not opposites. In my experience, they are the same skill expressed in different rooms.
I am here to mentor the next generation of civil servants — from the inside.
Not with theoretical frameworks borrowed from coaching centre slides. With the hard-won clarity of someone who has sat with UPSC General Studies, Mathematics Optional, and Essay writing through two serious attempts — and come back with a map that most educators cannot offer because they have never made the journey themselves. I am Committed to landing 10+ aspirants in Civil Services over the next 3 years.
I know what the syllabus looks like from the inside. I know where aspirants lose their way — not just conceptually, but emotionally. I know the specific fear that settles in during Prelims, the loneliness of long preparation, the way confidence can drain from someone who is genuinely capable.
I have been that person. And I have come back. That is what I bring to every student I work with.