To begin with, I’m very lucky that my parents did a fantabulous job at raising and educating me – I can’t thank them enough. However, looking back, my childhood was a bit different from that of an average kid. Today I am not ashamed to accept that I spent ~6 important years of my life struggling with BDD. Having decided to leave the past behind, I picked up hip-hop music which brought me peace of mind.
First Job: Sales Officer
I started my career as a bath-accessory sales representative. I had to travel a lot for the job and I would make use of the travel time to make rhymes in my mind and write them down on my notepad.
I learnt a lot about the streets of Kolkata as a sales rep and made around 3 big sales in 9 months.
However, I wanted to work on my music, so quit my job to write and record some songs and make a music video. At the same time, I was looking for a job in the advertising / branding sector because I liked it more than working in sales.
Music + Graphics Design
Promoting my music led me to creating a profile on MySpace. There I wrote my first lines of HTML and CSS. Anyone remember Tom Anderson? Soon after, I produced my first animated music video titled Don't Tell Me What which helped me land a job as a graphics designer.
I love writing scripts, doing storyboards and making videos.
I learnt PhotoShop, Illustrator, Premiere, AfterEffects and Corel DRAW – I was quite satisfied, until I recorded a demo album and decided to make a website to promote my music. I changed my line of work to become a programmer, however, my brother is now a graphics designer and I think he does it much better than me.
PHP Developer
In 2009, I made a website to promote my music while learning PHP and JavaScript from various online resources. I had learned some GW-BASIC, C and C++ at school, so learning PHP was easy and fun. Having seen my vid and website, a friend Rahul and his business partner Manuraj gave me a job as a web developer at Xgenmedia Solutions. I used the opportunity to the fullest to improve my programming skills and built a wide variety of PHP and JS applications.
Greenpill Productions
While doing jobs, I realized that at the heart I wanted to be an autophyte. In 2013, I started my little multimedia solutions shop named Monstamouth Entertainment, later renamed to Greenpill Productions to make it more “formal”. I ran Greenpill with my brother for around 3 years and enjoyed every bit of it, putting my business administration degree to the test.
The first thing I built in PHP was a CMS called WebSrc. Later, I built 2 more CMSs in PHP which added to my knowledge of database design, OOP and architecting scalable, extensible software.
During my Greenpill days, I spent a lot of time building a product – a site-building platform named Natty for which I wrote a tonne of code. However, in 2013 I learned about Drupal and I’ve mostly been working with it since then. At Greenpill I built a good quantity of Drupal 7 websites.
¡Viva Colombia!
Ever since I had turned 16, I wanted to move to somewhere outside Kolkata and start life anew. In 2014 I got a taste of it when I went to KL, Malaysia, thanks to my aforementioned friend Rahul. Finally, in 2016, I decided to pull the plug on Greenpill Productions and took a step back – going from a proprietor to a job-holder. I moved to the beautiful city of Bogotá in Colombia where I improved my Spanish. There, I built web services for a mobile app while working for a huge software shop named Imaginamos. However, my project ended soon and I was left looking for a new adventure.
Montréal, QC
Being a language-enthusiast, from amongst Spain, Italy, Germany, China and Canada, I chose the french-speaking Canadian province of Québec in search for a long-term home. For this, I thank Alex and Suzanne from Evolving Web – a cool web agency located in Montréal from where I'm finishing this article after my work hours.
The multicultural and multilingual city of Montréal has been quite nice to me. I feel glad every time I converse in French.
For a minute, I'll forget that the sub-zero temperatures damaged my cell phone. Temperatures reach down to -35°C in Québec but luckily, it hasn't affected my life negatively.
This concludes the story of this decade of my life. I mostly spent it discovering myself, building a bridge over the river Kwai in hopes of getting back to music someday. I haven’t yet realized my dream of speaking all 6 official UN languages – I’m trying my best though.
10 Things I Learned
Having shared my story, here are ten things I learned during these years:
- A rock is shaped by the waters that flow around it. Choose your company wisely because it can change you for the better or worse.
- There are people who will never acknowledge you and even look down at you! However, if you ascend, they will eventually look up to you.
- Climb not the mountain because the others do – Climb the one you want to climb, when you feel ready.
- A rock can only be broken, but never be moulded. Never bother giving feedback to a person who is not open to change.
- As long as you believe that you're superior, you cannot learn from others.
- If you're not improving, you've reached stagnation. Be better than you were yesterday – everyday.
- Absolute knowledge is beyond a mortal's reach. So know what must be known and ignore what can be ignored.
- Don't be a YES man – learn to say NO.
- Take care of yourself and ensure good health. Don't say that you've no time to maintain the car because you're busy driving it.
- Work to live, don't live to work! These days, one can become a workaholic without even realizing.
Thanks for reading! Looking forward to writing my next (non-biographical) article soon. May good be with you.
