writing

I have been thinking for a while about why dating today feels so hard, and how the apps are not making it any easier. Neither are the forced "*-clubs", which often start as groups centered around an activity but quickly turn into yet another dating pool. While I began thinking about this mostly from a dating perspective, I now think there is a deeper issue underneath it all.

This is not just about dating being difficult. It is about how differently people approach imbalance. Imbalance in skill, in effort, and in emotional bandwidth. Let me explain.

the act

I have made an active effort to live a more physically active life. One of the choices I made was to play more racket sports. The motivation was simple. I wanted to move my body more often and use muscles I otherwise would not. This also meant accepting an inconvenient truth. I am not very good at these sports.

I picked badminton and squash as my sports of choice. They are fast paced, require endurance, need only one other person at minimum, and an hour of play can completely drain me. Sports like pickleball or table tennis, and to some extent padel, do not quite hit the goals I have for myself. They require skill, yes, but they do not align with what I am personally trying to get out of this effort.

Over time, I built a few friend groups around these activities. These groups barely overlap, except for me. To make things concrete, let me talk about two friends.

friend a

Friend A is good at sports. Badminton, basketball, squash, he is competitive and naturally skilled. He does not enjoy playing casually and prefers every game to be competitive. He does not like playing badminton with me because my skill level makes the game feel too easy for him. He is new to pickleball.

friend b

Friend B plays better badminton than me and has been learning as a hobby for a few months. He enjoys the game, wants to improve, and still cares about getting a meaningful hour out of it, even if the skill levels are mismatched.

the incident

I asked Friend A to play badminton. He said no, and suggested pickleball instead. His reasoning was that since both of us were new, the game would stay competitive. We had played badminton a week earlier, and I was far from being able to play a real match with him. During that game, he gave me tips, but also kept smashing at me for points.

I then asked Friend B to play badminton. This was the first time we played together. After the first game, he quickly realized that I was not ready for an actual match. Instead of switching sports or stopping, he adapted. He asked me to play half court while he used the full court. He told me to focus on placing shots and making him move. We played a few games like this. I still was not great, but he was patient. After that, he made me practice net shots and kept giving pointers throughout.

zooming out

What stood out to me was not one of them being right or wrong. It was the approach.

Friend A optimized for having a good game that day. The easiest solution was to avoid the mismatch entirely. Friend B tried to work with the mismatch and see what could be improved within it (maybe better for a longer horizon).

I do not think either approach is right or wrong. But when I look beyond this one situation, I notice these same two approaches everywhere. I personally work better with the latter. With people who try to engage with the problem rather than bypass it.

drawing parallels

In dating, I see the same split.

There are people who want an almost exact match across multiple dimensions. Energy, communication style, availability, ambition, emotional expression. And there are people who look for someone who checks the basics, and then see whether something can be built together.

If you fall into the first category and find someone who aligns perfectly with you, that is exciting. But it is also rare. Even in a group of ten people (my friends) playing a single sport (badminton), skill levels vary widely. Dating evaluates far more dimensions than a sport ever could. When you scale across all those axes, expecting a near perfect match starts to feel statistically unlikely.

I usually fall into the second category. I am comfortable with some imbalance if there is mutual willingness to adjust. But I am also aware of how this can be perceived from the outside. The common critique is that this looks like "settling". It is always easy for a third person to comment on a situation they are not in. Often those comments come from people who are in an equal or worse position themselves.

the cost

Being in the second category often means putting in effort early. Sometimes more effort than the other person. This is where things get complicated.

To one person, this effort can look like care. To the other, it can feel like pressure. This is not because either person has bad intentions, but because their energy bandwidths are different.

I want to explain this with something outside dating.

I enjoy cooking. When I invite friends over, I often cook elaborate meals and spend hours in the kitchen. My friends feel guilty watching me put in so much "effort". They offer to help, which is kind. I usually decline because I genuinely enjoy cooking myself. Even then, they still carry that guilt and try to make up for it by cleaning or doing extra chores.

These are friends I have known for over a decade. People I have shared embarrassing moments and deep history with. And still, effort creates imbalance.

Now imagine this dynamic with someone new.

You meet a person, feel a connection, and see potential. You put in extra effort to protect it. To keep it alive. But the other person is not operating at the same energy level. Not because they do not care, but because life is already heavy. Work, stress, obligations, exhaustion.

Instead of feeling appreciated, they begin to feel guilty. They feel like they are falling short. Over time, that guilt turns into pressure. And eventually, distance.

Ironically, the effort meant to make things easier can become the very thing that breaks it apart. Sometimes too much care, offered too early, feels suffocating rather than supportive.

final thoughts before I overcook this

I do not think there is a clean conclusion here. I am not saying one approach is superior. Wanting ease is not laziness. Wanting to build is not nobility. Both come with tradeoffs.

What I do know is that I understand the problem better now. Dating is not just about compatibility. It is about how people respond to imbalance. Whether they try to avoid it, tolerate it, or work through it.

And sometimes, even with good intentions on both sides, the timing, energy, or bandwidth just does not line up.

That does not make anyone wrong. It just makes the situation human.

A year ago, I almost didn't make it. Today, I live differently.

It has been 365 days since it happened, a full year that feels both distant and impossibly like yesterday. In that time, I've begun a new life, one built on presence rather than plans. The idea of a grand, long-term goal still sounds nice in theory, but after what I've lived through, I find peace in the now.

the act

November 9, 2024. A Saturday afternoon in Miami, around 4 p.m., at South Pointe Beach. I was with two friends, S and P. I had actually just met P that day. The three of us were out in the water, laughing, floating, and riding waves.

After about forty-five minutes, S stepped out of the water. It was just me and P. Then, out of nowhere, a big wave hit. I lost my footing on the ocean bed. Before I could recover, a second wave came in harder and pulled me in. That's when panic took over. I tried swimming back, but every stroke seemed useless. The more I tried, the further I felt from control. In that chaos, my mind started to process what my body already knew I was in trouble. P was next to me, and somehow, he stayed calm. He tried to help me steady myself, to keep me level with the water. I grabbed onto him, and in that instant, my life literally depended on him. When I looked back at the shore, it was far way farther than it should have been. That's when real fear hit. It's a terrible feeling, realizing that your survival comes down to whether you can keep trying for one more second. If I stopped swimming, if I stopped breathing, that would be it.

There was a brief moment when everything went quiet inside my head. I remember thinking, this could be it. That single thought has stayed with me every day since.

Luckily, the lifeguard had seen us by then. He reached us, pulled us in, and before I knew it, we were back on the sand. Alive. The first thing we did? We laughed. For two straight minutes, we just laughed, shaking from adrenaline and disbelief. All I could say was, "What the fuck just happened?"

initial emotions

Originally, I wasn't even planning to go to the beach that afternoon. The plan was to head there later in the evening. I wasn't supposed to meet S and P there either. The lifeguard could have seen us a few moments later. I could have given up. Ifs, buts, and variables, this story could have ended very differently, maybe even been told by someone else.

After all the chaos, I sat on a bench watching the sunset. We got ourselves popsicles, I picked peach orange. I remember calling my friend R right after and telling him what happened. He laughed at first, then reminded me why he always says "be safe" instead of "have a good time" whenever I travel. Later that night, I called my friends back in India and poured my heart out. The next day, I gathered the courage to tell the story to the friend who's unofficially my mom. Of course, I got schooled. I deserved it.

Everything around me felt sharper, slower, heavier. Every small thing around me carried new weight. Gratitude wasn't just an idea anymore.

I never planned to tell my parents. My mom has already seen two of her brothers pass away at a young age, and I don't think I could ever make her relive that kind of fear. They don't follow me on X, and thankfully, I haven't been stupid in the last year.

big moves

My people. My work.

The week that followed was unexpectedly eventful. I received an Outstanding Paper Award, and S won Best Paper at the same conference. From there, I went straight home for a close family wedding. My emotions were still running high from everything that had happened the week before, and suddenly I was surrounded by the people I love most. It felt grounding, almost healing, to be held by that circle of warmth. I didn't tell anyone about what had happened, I just sat quietly, saying my thank-yous in my head.

I never took to Chennai. The weather was harsh, the city never quite felt like home, and its energy didn't sync with mine. My closest friends were in Bangalore and Hyderabad, so I'd grab any excuse to head there. After that experience, I started making the trips more often — Friday night buses, Sunday night returns, straight to the lab Monday morning. It wasn't efficient by any stretch, but it was an optimization for the heart.

Maybe it's okay to admit this at 25: my work defines me. Everything I am today has been built through it and through the people I've met because of it. Over the last couple of years, I've cared for my work more deeply than anything else. Sometimes too deeply.

A few days after the wedding, I returned to campus. The first question someone asked me was, "Why were you gone so long?" They didn't have the context to know why that question stung, but it stayed with me. It set off a wave of reflection. What am I doing? What does my work really mean to me, or to anyone? Who am I publishing these papers for? Am I happy doing this? Do I want to do this forever? So many questions, all at once.

By then, I had spent more than four years in the lab, working on different projects. I had always been supported, guided on ideas, execution, and direction. But in my head, I'd set myself a challenge: before finishing my PhD, I needed to take one idea from start to finish, entirely on my own. No hand-holding. If I could pull that off and get it accepted into a conference, I'd be ready for the world. That time came sooner than expected. I picked an idea, did the work, and after one retry, it got accepted. (I still had people helping me along the way and honestly, fuck yes, there's no shame in that.) That was my quiet victory proof that I could stand on my own.

There was another big decision along the way. In mid-2023, when I was still fairly new to the field, I had the chance to join Sarvam. But I passed. I wasn't ready yet. I needed to learn, to fail, to build confidence in myself first. Two years later, that feeling changed. I called Rahul and said, "I'm ready." (Dramatic for effect, but close enough.) And honestly, it's been nothing but fun since.

My coping mechanism in life has always been adrenaline. When things get hard, my instinct is to chase something that jolts me back, something that forces me to live entirely in that moment. I'm not sure if it's healthy, but it works. It's the same feeling I get when I'm deep in my work, when everything clicks, when hours disappear, when I'm knee-deep in thousands of lines of code and nothing else matters. I wish more people could feel what I feel in those moments. (surprisingly, not many people feel that way and that's okay. You don't have to. Everyone draws their own lines between work and life; I just happen to blur mine more than most. I've also come to believe this: if you're spending 8–9 hours of your waking day nearly a quarter of your life (45/24*7 = 26.7%) doing something, you might as well love it, or at least learn to.)

I know I have more work to do on the people front. I don't take that lightly. But for now, this is where I am standing somewhere between gratitude and ambition, trying to live, work, and care a little more every day.

highlights

1. Traveled to Europe three times this year and trying to squeeze in a fourth before the year ends
   1. Fun fact, I have a google sheet with metadata of every flight I have ever taken
2. Saw snow for the first time - French Alps, March'25
3. Bought a Ferrari Lego set in the airport duty free because impulse purchases are my thing. Now sits on our coffee table as center piece
4. Moved into my first real house — farewell hostels, hello slightly more adult chaos.
5. Bought a bike I'd always wanted. Walked in, paid cash → little stupid in hindsight, could've made some credit card points
6. Jumped out of a plane (with a parachute, obviously) because my coping mechanism is vertical risk.
7. Got gloriously shitfaced at a friend's wedding. People still have nightmares when Jäger and I share a room.
8. Became more social → discovered an underused superpower: embarrassing myself in new groups. 10/10, would recommend.
9. Made new friends. I actually like having people around.
10. Made new enemies. Balance is important.
11. Took on bigger challenges at work. Not fully solved yet, but we're close and the coffee is helping.
12. Gave a talk at Google I/O Connect and collected fancy photos to prove I left the cave.
13. Learned to swim (duh!) — need more practice, but I can now float with dignity for at least twenty seconds.

mild regrets

1. Called friends and family more often — confession: my call frequency tanked in the second half of the year. Sorry, people I love.
   1. Rohit — yes, I will call you back. Consider this public promise
2. Stayed longer in Vienna left too soon and still dreaming of one more beer.
3. Wanted to punch a guy in the face, resisted. Society won this round. (Barely)
4. Committed more code to GitHub (I'm actually serious)

Grateful to be living a life that lets me do all this — the highs, the chaos, the Jäger, the code, and everything in between.