A Personal Reflection

The pace of change. Decades ago now, I finished college in India and came to graduate school in the US. Landing at Chicago O’Hare for the first time, it would have been hard to imagine the changes we have seen since. I have been fortunate to watch and learn from so many along the way – I remember Porter’s strategy class, Packard’s new employee innovation coffee talk, Gore discussing climate change in our small group, Chambers declaring at our meeting that voice (VOIP) would be free, grabbing a beer with Brin at a Stanford professor's birthday dinner, Bush describing over dinner his car ride with Kohl the evening the Berlin Wall fell, Khosla pitching an EIR role, Modi reflecting on innovation by Indian Americans in Silicon Valley, and so many, many more interactions – and of course meeting my wife on a blind date, and the arrival our two sons - whom I still learn from every day. ?And even as I reflect on all this and everything since, it’s clear that the pace of change is simply incredible - and yet it is the slowest it will ever be.

Journeys and learnings.?But before all of this were to happen, I had just graduated from engineering college, and at 21, was boarding that flight to the US. At the airport to see me off, my mom looked me in the eye, fighting back small tears, and said please write to us every week. And so I did. For many years, till I was able to eventually afford overseas phone calls, and later got on to emails, and iMessages and WhatsApp with her. ?But because I wrote every week, I wrote of things that were at once silly at the time, and most important to me just right then – finding roommates and student housing, sorting out which classes to take, looking for part time jobs to pay for school, learning to cook and working out the difference between herbs and spices, trying out skiing and ice fishing for the first time, or working my first job as an intern over the summer - and of course how much I missed everyone at home.

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A journal from the past. Earlier this year, we were cleaning out my parents' apartment in India, and I rediscovered this stack of letters - every single one - in chronological order from back then. I brought them all back with me and read them for the first time since I had written them all those years ago. Like many of you, I speak frequently now, but don’t get to write a lot. And also as my closest friends know, I have a bad memory. So, it’s been just eye-opening to read my own letters, and reacquaint myself with what I lived through, and reexamine the way I thought, and the choices I made at the time. It’s gotten me to re-live that simpler, and eager for new experiences, phase of my life, and re-enjoy the amazing time I had over those years.?Most importantly, it's made me reflect on how the smallest things actually hold the greatest meaning in life.

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A gift for life. ?If my mom hadn’t asked me to write those letters, I probably wouldn’t have, and certainly not as regularly. I know she was thankful for that - it connected her with me and the life I was experiencing from afar - and so she kept them - and kept them safe all these years, through all of her moving around and downsizing homes since.?What I hadn’t realized is that she had also kept them for me.

We lost my mother a year ago, today. Even after she is gone, I feel she has sent me one of the greatest gifts possible – a reminder of who I am, who I was, and what I held core. And right in the middle of all this change and transition and transformation and evolution we are seeing the world over, I am left with a clear and solid sense of what defines me, a deep sense of gratitude for everyone that has touched me, helped me, and shaped my life, and a real passion for driving the changes to come.