My Darkest & Challenging days in India!

Everyone had their dark days! (from Shutter Island movie)

Credits: NeuPaddy — Pixabay

Before moving into my past struggles, a quick intro: I am the founder of Tactii — where we do mininal ML prototypes for startups and SMEs.

Here are the toughest and challenging situations I had gone through which shaped my life and helped to face any challenges come in my way!

1. I graduated second class in my Engineering degree — where no employer was ready to consider me for an interview even. Even though I started programming since 2nd year, employers didn’t consider my skills but my marks alone!
2. When I was searching jobs in Bangalore, my mom sent me 3000 INR (50$) monthly allowance while my classmates were making 35,000 INR (600$) monthly.
3. I ate only 2 times a day coz I couldn’t afford when I was searching for a job. (Mostly embarrassed about my situation of ‘rock-bottom’ and punished myself as a judgement)
4. I lived my life under 10 INR/day (20 cents) in Bangalore for a year (4 INR for brunch, 5.5 INR for dinner at road side shops)
5. I got humiliated by my situation of being jobless. I blamed none, but myself and my own actions for my fiasco. I was the school topper in my 10th grade but became jobless in 2005 which hurt me much — my roller coaster life started here. The situation disturbed me psychologically and consulted a psychologist even. He asked me many times whether I had any ‘suicidal thoughts’ comparing my situation. When I said that I didn’t have such thoughts, he was surprised.
6. My church group prayed for my job, but never asked my resume to forward. They didn’t even ask me whether I ate for the day!
7. One Hindu renowned astrologer (from my ex-girl friend’s family) predicted that I would die in 3 years, so convinced my ex-girl friend to break up the relationship and marry someone else. This situation added more pressure to me when I heard about the prediction from her later. I kept this secret for a long time — coz I didn’t want some one to panic and worried about me.
8. One Muslim women in Bangalore road side shop was compassionate enough to understand my situation and offered me more food for less amount and sometimes free — though she knew that I stopped believing God and such theories.
9. Some of my relatives laughed at my situation and even some mentioned that my parents did something terribly wrong or due to bad parenting. That’s the reason I am facing such a hardship in my life. This is very typical mindset in India.
10. I had to teach my self Java as I was embarrassed to ask for a help and my friends were busy in their life. Also most of my surrounding was from non-IT background. Internet was expensive and I couldn’t ask my mom for extra money.
11. Also most of the private institutes were robbing money from candidates like me, never focused on teaching us anything. For them, we are easy victims. So I skipped private institutes after losing 8k for the first time. Comparing 3k INR monthly allowance from my mom, losing 8k INR was the biggest loss. I didn’t tell my mom that I lost the money in those institutes.
12. At one time, my PC was broken for a month. So I practiced Java programs in my notes (handwritten and compiled in my mind). I had no choice but to practice much.
13. I managed to reach the final interview for Huawei but rejected for two reasons: showed up 10 min late and Mechanical Engineering background.
14. I worked for 0–300 INR (5$) for first 9 months
15. Upgraded to 3–4k INR (50$) in my next job in a startup (Where I learned Javascript, Ubuntu and startup techniques)
16. Upgraded to 13k INR (200$) after 1 yr exp as my first manageable salary at IIT-Madras and had a great opportunity to with IIT students and researchers (my best learning-anvil)
17. Some of my friends stopped their learning-efforts after Engineering degree, but I put 15 times of my learning-efforts comparing what I did in college and kept going on high speed. I am still learning rigorously which I am proud of!
18. One thing I cay: Never stop learning and don’t give up your life for any reasons.

Here I am in 2020,
Wrote my technical book (http://bit.ly/spring-5-restful-web-service-raja-csp)
Running my startup (http://tactii.com)
Working as a consultant to feed my startup

and still dreaming big!
I literally erased ‘give up’ in my English dictionary!