My Journey through Life

As a kid I never had high aspirations. While most of my friends aimed at becoming doctors, astronauts (what’s up with kids and astronauts) or successful people, I for one was as clueless as a... clueless person. By the time I graduated from college most of the people I knew went on to do their MBAs while I was stuck with multiple brochures in my hand and a gigantic question mark plastered across my life.

Luckily that’s the time I got my first gaming rig with a GeForce MX440 graphic card et al. I felt like the cat’s whiskers. Need for Speed: II SE and Blood II: The Chosen were the first two games I ever owned and I remember waking up early every morning just to race across the Australian Outback or slaughter hordes of creatures as Caleb, the Chosen. Little did I know but I was regressing slowly into a cocoon of sorts socializing only with people who shared similar tastes as mine. And as you can imagine, there weren’t too many back in the day.

And then one day I came across IGN.com and my life changed forever. I knew I had found my calling. The thing is that ever since I started gaming I had decided to work in the industry but sadly I wasn’t smart enough or inclined to learn the software necessary for game development. It was only after I started reading IGN on a daily basis did I realize I could enter the industry as a Game Journalist.

Unfortunately for me, India in the year 2002 didn’t have too many publications that reviewed games on a daily basis. But I had made up my mind and the next time my parents asked me what I wanted to do for a living, I proudly told them I wanted to be a Game Journalist. They looked at me like I was on drugs since my folks actually wanted me to become a Chartered Accountant (lol). But parents being supportive and all, let me pursue my dreams and thus started my long journey.

Initially it was really tough finding a job but luckily I landed a gig with a gaming magazine. Unfortunately their office was insanely far and I was looking at a two hour commute every day. Still I stuck to my guns since this was something I really loved doing and I put in nearly a year there before that distance finally got to me. From there I moved to another publication before I landed up at Tech2 and the rest – as they say – is history.