Do it for the plot

(This turned out to be a very weird rant. I am writing a blog after 1 year, you can skip this)

Yours truly has been 25 for a while and is almost about to turn 26. At this point, I feel like my life has taken a form which I never even imagined to be possible, for better or worse. I have also started seeing signs of a quarter crisis in my behaviour. Randomly trying to do a startup, going to Japan solo randomly, deciding to go for a master’s after a random conversation with a senior, it’s been a weird year. If I look back at the last year and try to figure out my rationale for doing the things that I did, I find no real reason other than what one of my dear friends might say — Just do it for the plot. ( I used an em dash; I DID, not ChatGPT, you judgemental prick).

On paper, and in reality as well, my life as a 25 or so year old in BLR couldn’t have been better. I was employed in one of the hottest AI startups in India, getting paid more than I knew what to do with, I had a fairly active social life, and my health had never been better. I also had enough free time to pursue whatever hobbies I wanted to and also study whatever I wanted while getting paid. I was getting better and better job opportunities, both in India and then increasingly abroad, and I was starting to explore the founder/startup ecosystem in BLR and attracting interest from some really cool people.

Why, then, oh why, did I decide to throw it all away? Why did I decide to move to a different country, zeroing my savings and racking up massive debt and dealing with job uncertainty, away from all my friends and family and everyone I care about and love?

So much, just for a plot twist, eh?

Even though I am almost sure I have aphantasia ( the lack of visual mental imagery, comically manifested by my total inability to imagine a mental abacus while being put in an abacus class in my childhood for 3 years straight), I kinda have this mental image where I had the realisation that I need a plot twist in my life. The image is of me sitting in a pretty cafe in South Delhi (or in Indiranagar/HSR in BLR or Jubilee Hills in HYD) and sipping my hot chocolate (Blue Tokai ftw for this) and reading a book on my Kindle, without any care in the world. Adjusted to my own needs (which are not really bourgeois), money has sort of lost its importance; I can go on international trips, I can buy whatever I want, eat wherever I want. Any form of art is made to inspire you to ask questions, and the only question I can think of when I ponder this particular imagery is — Is this it? Is this all I want to do in life? — Cue an immediate episode of a quarter-life crisis.

So for a while, I did what any self-respecting 24–25-year-old techie would do when faced with a quarter-life crisis. I tried to find meaning in new hobbies. I never thought I could sing, so I joined a singing class and also learnt guitar, keyboard and cajon. Although it ended up with me not being able to do any one of these even semi-decently, I now know I am at least capable of doing any of these if I just put in effort. I never thought I could do a pull-up, so I joined a callisthenics class and broke my front tooth, but I can now easily do one or 10 (okay, maybe not 10 that easily). Oh, I have also been practising doing handstands for the last 2 years and can kinda get away with a decent one about 20% of the time.

I got bored with my 9–5 job, (although it was more like a 10–10 job 🙈 ), even though it was full of exciting problems ( my task for a day once was to recreate the one piece Wano trailer using a video model, or to listen to ASMR audios to teach our models to whisper or to try to replicate the voice of some of the most famous people in India or to figure out if we can do GRPO on TTS models to improve their pronounciations) and insane amounts of ownership ( I directly reported to the CEO, and had practically infinite freedom to approach problems however the fuck I wanted and a semi-decent amount of GPUs to play around with). I got approached by recruiters daily and had to explicitly turn down many lucrative offers regularly (my peak moment was saying F you to a big HFT firm in India cause they refused to pay me for a take-home assignment ).

Oh and I also travelled a bit. I was totally blessed to have found an awesome friend group at MSFT, and have been to Vietnam, Pondicherry and Ladakh with them over the last 2 years. I also ended up living the otaku dream on my trip to Japan, alone. Needless to say, all the travel needed money, which my job provided for, and I also was lucky enough to have employers who respected holidays ( I once took a holiday on a day which turned out to be one of the worst messes in our company’s history, and to their credit, they didn’t call me even once )

Why oh why, did I leave this life? Answer 1 — Cause I am an idiot. Answer 2 — Just for the plot?

The above 2 answers are probably the real answers. But if someone asks me to give an answer which sounds better and more motivating, I think I have one.

I realised at 25 that no matter how badly I fuck up my life, I can always come back to India, take some tech job and earn my daily expenses since India is fucking cheap, (unless you have a health issue or want to start a family). I have zero family responsibilities being the youngest kid; nobody in the whole world depends on me, and I really don’t have many materialistic needs ( after seeing my apartment, a friend commented that I live like someone earning 20x less than what I do ). My parents are middle-class but well off, and can comfortably provide me a bed in their home whenever I want them to. They are insanely loving, supportive and will fight against the world for me if needed.

And what do you do when you have someone who has your back? You bungee jump (10/10 experience btw, totally recommended, I remember feeling like, if I end up doing this, no other risk would feel big in the future, and that has been partially true). You jump without fear ( but a lot of adrenaline ) from a cliff, and let gravity and the inertia of your motion guide you, oh, and you enjoy the view. Once you are safe at the bottom and safe again, all you want to do is try again.

I think my master represents exactly that. I am trying to do the most moonshot thing I can imagine other than opening my own startup ( for which I don’t have a cofounder or an idea I want to spend 3 years on ), and it’s also something I have regretted not doing a lot of times over the last 4 years. Is it the best financial decision? Definitely not. The best career decision? Probably not. A decision my parents are happy about? Nopes. A decision I am happy about? Kinda.

The kid inside me has always wanted to study in a nice college in the US. The kid inside me also finds robots to be cool and wants to be a mechanical or electrical engineer. The kid inside me loves AI, but not LLMs. The kid inside me is also obsessed with the US, having watched unhealthy amounts of History TV 18 in my childhood. The kid inside me also just really loves to study and do research. The kid inside me also loves college and wants to escape from adulting. Master’s in Robotics at CMU is the kid taking over the reins for a little while, kicking the startup tech bro Ayush outside for a while.

I guess I will turn 28 whether or not I go for a master’s. My life will have some plot regardless, and knowing myself, it won’t be straightforward. Might as well try to increase the entropy of the universe while I am at it. If I have one guiding rule over the years, let it be — Just do it for the plot 😛

Originally published on Medium.