It is difficult to say what defines me. From being a top level cricketer in school and college, having won All India U-19 and All India U-16 playing for Punjab, scoring a century against England U-19, to being a musician post college, it has been an interesting and eventful journey.Having played good cricket in the past, sports remains one of the top passions for me. While cricket has become more difficult to play now, tennis, running and fitness have become more the rule of the day… but it wasn’t like that until a few years back.
While I have been a sportsperson all my life, there was a moment of epiphany five years back. At 20-25 years of age, I could take myself for granted, but I realized that at 35 years, my body was changing and it wasn’t the same as before. While I have been reasonably good with my diet (being vegetarian and generally not eating too much of the bad stuff), there was an increasing need to get some strength and stamina back into my system.
At that point began a journey of some serious running and gymming. Running has become a stress-buster and ‘moments of reflection’ activity. Every few days, whenever I feel a slight decline in spirit, a run always helps me get back into the groove. Over the last three years, a couple of half marathons in reasonably good time have been the proof of my passion for running. These days, besides running, the focus has been to add strength to the body. Working with a personal trainer at the gym has clearly been one of the best decisions in my life. Over the last year or so, my resistance training, the gym routine and food habits have undergone a major transformation. Despite eating well, my unbalanced diet, specially lack of any level of protein in it, was quite an eye-opener. Today, my diet includes four eggs a day, whey protein shakes, quinoa, etc., every week. With the right food and training, I feel quite transformed.
Along with this routine, tennis remains one of my favourite sports. With my wife being a tennis coach and my kids playing tennis as a career option, playing tennis has become a binding glue for our family. Therefore, it was quite an experience to go to Wimbledon last year and get a feel of that place, all of us together!
All my life, it was always about doing multiple things. Besides sports, music and playing the guitar are the other big passions that I continue to follow. At one point in time, I was crazy enough to leave a great job at J&J and move to Canada to develop a career in rock music! While that didn’t go as planned, the desire to create my own music has always been a driving force. Over the years, the musical journey has taken me to develop music which has influences of Pink Floyd, Indian classical, 60s rock, etc., and I am still preparing and wait for the day when I can share my music with the world.
Moments of relaxation take me to my third passion, which is reading. The reading journey has been more through the worlds of spirituality, philosophy and science. A fascinating read has been a book on Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity and General Theory of Relativity. To understand and realize the enormity of Einstein’s theories and his most famous equation- e=mc2 has been one of the most joyful moments in the last one year. Ira Edgall’s treatise on Einstein remains one of the most simple and mind-expanding books that I have ever come across.
