Interests & Hobbies Beyond Work

Agentic AI is where most of my attention sits these days. Not the demo-ware kind — the production kind: orchestration patterns, MCP, human-in-the-loop checkpoints, audit-grade traces, and the hard architectural questions about who controls the model, the data, and the decisions. AI sovereignty isn't a slogan to me; it's the design constraint that everything else has to bend around.

GNU/Linux has been my companion for over two decades. From that first install to architecting enterprise systems—it's been a journey of freedom and endless learning. Every terminal window is home.

Open source isn't just about code for me. It's about believing that technology should liberate, not control. Contributing to projects that share this philosophy is how I spend my weekends.

Privacy and security matter deeply. Privacy is a fundamental right, not a feature to be sold. I spend time educating others about digital rights and building systems that respect user freedom.

Mentorship gives me energy. Sharing knowledge with the next generation of technologists, watching them grow—your success genuinely feels like mine. If you're learning, I'm here to help.

Video technologies fascinate me—the intersection of creativity and tech. From OTT platforms to post-production workflows, there's always something new to explore.

I love traveling—exploring new places, cultures, perspectives. Every journey teaches something. Every city has its own rhythm. But Darjeeling is different. It's not just a destination—it's an annual pilgrimage, a place where the mist-covered hills and mountain air reset my soul. I find myself drawn back every year, like clockwork. Something about those mountains puts everything in perspective.

Photography helps me see the world differently. Capturing moments, finding beauty in the ordinary, telling stories through a lens. The world is beautiful when you pause to actually see it.

Chess is my meditation. Strategy, patience, endless possibilities in 64 squares. Every game is a new puzzle, every move a decision with consequences. Reminds me a lot of debugging, actually.

I tinker with single-board computers and microcontrollers—Raspberry Pi and ESP32 are the workhorses, alongside Arduino, ESP8266, the Pi Pico and other major boards. Home automation, sensor networks and edge experiments: the Pi for Linux-class compute, ESP32 and friends for low-power Wi-Fi/Bluetooth builds and GPIO work. Breaking things and fixing them, one flashed firmware at a time. The joy of building something with your hands (and a few solder joints).

3D printing bridges digital and physical. Designing something on screen, watching it materialize layer by layer. There's something deeply satisfying about holding an object you imagined into existence.

I'm an audiophile—there's magic in analog sound. Spinning vinyls, experimenting with DACs, tweaking hi-fi audio amplifiers to get that perfect warmth. Shortwave radios crackling with distant signals from across the world. In a digital age, there's something beautifully tactile about analog audio equipment.

I live minimally. Not out of necessity, but out of choice. In a world drowning in noise, I find clarity in stripping away the unnecessary. Fewer possessions, clearer thoughts. Simple systems, profound impact.

This extends to my digital life. I don't use Facebook, and I don't use WhatsApp personally—my WhatsApp is a verified business line, kept strictly for professional and external communication. Not just for privacy concerns, though those matter deeply. It's about intentionality. These platforms thrive on endless engagement, infinite scrolling, the illusion of connection while delivering information overload. I choose to limit my social media footprint, to be present where it matters, to guard my attention like the finite resource it is. Every notification I don't receive is time reclaimed for deeper thought.

There's a certain freedom in accepting the absurd—that perhaps there's no grand narrative, no predetermined meaning. Nietzsche taught me to create my own values in a godless universe. Dostoevsky showed me that suffering and struggle are where we find our humanity. Kafka reminded me that bureaucracy and systems can be as meaningless as they are inescapable.

I don't believe in waiting for meaning to reveal itself. Like the existentialists, I believe we create meaning through our choices, our actions, our commitments. Every line of code, every system I build, every person I mentor—these are conscious acts of creation in an indifferent universe.

Nihilism isn't despair. It's liberation. When nothing has inherent meaning, everything becomes possible. The terminal cursor blinks, waiting. The choice of what to type next is entirely mine.