I turned 26 today.
Nothing happened.
I don't mean that in a sad way. No bad news. No drama. Nobody forgot to invite me to anything, because there was nothing to invite me to. The day started the way most of my days start — laptop open, a list of things to do, and my head already three steps ahead of my body.
Birthdays were never a big thing in my life. Somewhere along the way, I stopped expecting anyone else to make them a big thing either. No cake. No party. No group of people singing that song badly while I pretend to be embarrassed.
A few people wished me. Very few. Most people didn't remember, and I'm not writing this to complain about that. I don't remember most people's birthdays either.
But one person remembered without needing a reminder. My girlfriend.
She did more than remember. I'll come back to that.
For most of the day, though, it was quiet. And somewhere in that quiet, I started thinking about where I actually am.
Twenty-six. Not young enough to say "I have plenty of time." Not old enough to say "I've figured it out." Just old enough to notice that nobody is coming to steer my life for me.
A Person Who Keeps Walking
If I'm honest, I've spent most of my life in my own company.
Not because I wanted to look mysterious. I'm an introvert, and my own head has always been the loudest place I know. I think a lot. Too much, probably. About code. About money. About work. About where I'll be in five years. About conversations from years ago that should have left my head a long time back.
And I'm always planning something. A new project. A new system. A new business idea. A new plan for my career. A new plan to fix the old plan.
For years, it has felt like I'm running behind something. I just can't tell you clearly what it is.
I know some of the pieces. I want to build something of my own instead of always working on someone else's vision. I want to stop checking my bank balance before small decisions. I want a house that's mine. Someday, a family.
But "something of my own" isn't a destination. It's a feeling. And it's hard to run toward a feeling without getting tired.
That's the part nobody tells you. When you run without knowing where the road goes, it doesn't feel like progress. It just feels like running. Then one day you look down and realize you're standing in almost the same place, fighting the same things in your head.
The Years I Think I Wasted
People like to say no time is ever wasted. That everything teaches you something.
Maybe. But I think I wasted a lot of time.
Not because I did nothing. I did plenty. I dropped out of engineering, found my way into computer science, finished my degree and then my MCA, worked jobs, built software, fixed things at odd hours. On paper, those years were busy.
But inside my head, a lot of those years were stuck.
I spent too much time thinking about what other people thought of me. People whose opinions shouldn't have mattered that much. Some of them I don't even talk to anymore.
I spent too much time overthinking. Replaying old situations. Wondering why something happened the way it did, what I should have said, what it meant about me.
I let the past live in my head like it was paying rent. It wasn't.
And while I was busy with all of that, I wasn't doing the things I actually wanted to do. I kept waiting to feel ready. Waiting for a better time. Waiting for some kind of permission.
It never came. It was never going to come.
I don't regret everything. Some of those years made me who I am, and I'm not ashamed of that person. But some of those years could have been different. They weren't. I'd rather say that plainly than dress it up as a lesson.
Madurai, Two Years Ago
Not everything in those years stood still, though. Some of it moved.
Two years ago, a few days before I turned 24, I was in Madurai for work.
On the night of 11 September 2024, I was standing under the west tower of மதுரை அருள்மிகு மீனாட்சி சுந்தரேஸ்வரர் திருக்கோயில் (Madurai Arulmigu Meenakshi Sundareswarar Thirukkoyil), looking up.
The next morning, I was at the Kalaignar Centenary Library. I had come to fix the iSmartShelf there — a shelf where you place your library card, then the book, and the system takes care of the rest.
It was exactly the kind of RFID work I had been doing at 2CQR, my first company.
Then this one, at 4:44 the next morning.
A welcome sign. On the day I said goodbye.
That same day, I put down my papers at 2CQR. After about two and a half years, I was leaving my first company.
I learned a lot there. Much of what I know about RFID, IoT, and building systems that have to work outside a demo, I learned there.
Since then, I've worked at two different places. Each move felt like a turn at the time.
But here's the honest part. Changing the job didn't change the person doing it. I carried the same head into every new office. The same overthinking. The same habit of keeping people at a distance.
New desk. Same loops.
The Perumal Problem
Of course, life doesn't reward your realizations with sunshine.
Usually, the moment you decide to take yourself seriously, something else goes wrong. Just to keep you humble.
There's a Tamil line I keep coming back to:
காஞ்சி கெடக்குதுன்னு கடவுளுக்கு மனு செஞ்சா, பேஞ்சி கெடுத்துட்டியே பெருமாளே... என்ன பண்ண?
It loses something in translation, but the emotional spirit hits right at home: you look at your parched, cracked land in the middle of a drought, and you send a humble petition to God just asking for a bit of relief. And instead of a gentle shower, Perumal unleashes a relentless, destructive downpour that washes the whole field away. Now what on earth are you supposed to do with that?
You ask for relief because you're bone-dry and struggling, and life replies by drowning you in a flood and walking away.
Honestly, that line could be the background score of my twenties. Every time I thought things were parched and I just needed a little breathing room to survive, life dumped a monsoon on my head. Every time I thought money was finally settling, a new flood of expenses showed up. Every time I thought I had solid ground under my feet, the soil washed away.
For a long time, that absurdity made me bitter. Tonight, on my twenty-sixth birthday, it just made me laugh.
Because what else can you do? You wring the water out of your shirt, you find your footing in the mud, and you keep walking.
The Walls
I was never a people-pleaser.
I didn't grow up trying to make everyone happy. When people hurt me, or when things got uncomfortable, I didn't fight. I didn't beg. I just stepped back.
And I built boundaries.
At first, they were good boundaries. The kind you need. The kind that protect your peace from people who don't deserve access to it.
But I kept building. Every disappointment added another layer. Every bad experience made it a little higher. Eventually it wasn't a boundary anymore. It was a wall with no door.
I locked myself inside, threw away the key, and then wondered why nobody could come in.
That's the thing about walls. They work. Nobody gets close enough to hurt you. But nobody gets close enough to know you either. You start treating kindness like it comes with hidden terms and conditions. You keep waiting for the catch.
Very few people got past that.
My girlfriend is one of them.
She didn't break the wall down. She didn't ask me to explain every part of myself at once. She was just kind. Patient. Consistent. She kept showing up without asking for much in return.
Slowly, the wall started to feel less necessary. Not gone. I'm still me. But when someone is kind to you for long enough without wanting anything for it, you start to feel a little silly guarding the door so hard.
She didn't fix me. That was never her job. But she made me see that some of what I called protection was just loneliness with better excuses.
What She Remembered
I said nothing happened today. That isn't completely true.
My girlfriend surprised me.
First, a brownie. My favourite.
No cake, remember? This is better. And yes, a corner was already gone by the time I took the photo. I'm not going to explain that.
Then a book: கள்ளிக்காட்டு இதிகாசம் (Kallikattu Ithikasam) by Vairamuthu.
Some time ago, I had mentioned this book to her. I'd been looking for it and couldn't find it in the library. It was one of those things you say once and move on from.
She didn't move on from it.
There's a small joke in there somewhere. I once travelled to another city to fix a library's smart shelf, and I still couldn't find one book in a library. She found it for me.
And there's a second joke. Kallikattu Ithikasam is the story of a dry farming village that struggles for water, and is then swallowed by it when the Vaigai dam is built. Drought first, then the flood. It's the Perumal line, stretched into a whole novel.
And inside the book, there was a letter. A long one. In red.
I'm not going to share what it says. Some things are allowed to stay inside the walls.
A New Turn
I don't believe in birthday transformations.
I'm not waking up at 26 as a different person. I'm still stubborn. I still overthink. I still have the same ambition, the same flaws, the same habit of planning ten things and starting three.
And I've realized that's fine.
I don't need a completely new life. I need a new turn.
The line that keeps coming back to me is: Doctor Doom. New mask. Same task.
The mask changes. The person underneath doesn't.
That's where I am right now. The task hasn't changed. I still want to build something of my own. I still want stability, freedom, and a life I don't have to apologize for.
What has to change is the mask. The way I approach things.
Two years ago in Madurai, I changed my surroundings and kept the same approach. This time, I want to keep the same goal and change the approach.
The old mask was defensive. It waited. It overthought. It cared too much about what people would say. It kept checking whether the road was fair before taking a single step.
The new mask doesn't need the road to be fair. It just needs to move.
That's the real turning point for me. I'm going to stop living according to the version of me that my past created. That version was built to survive. I want to build something now.
What I'm Chasing Now
I want to be clear: I haven't achieved any of these. This isn't a list of wins. It's a list of things I'm running toward.
- 12 LPA. I want financial stability. Not for show. Money buys breathing room. It lets you think about the future instead of only the end of the month.
- Bude Global and Bude Made. I want to build things that belong to me. Working on someone else's vision pays the bills. Building under my own name is what I actually think about at 1 AM.
- The PhD at PSG CAS. This is one of the biggest turns of all. Anyone who has read my earlier posts knows my academic road wasn't straight. Starting a PhD doesn't mean I've become a great researcher. I've only just started, and somehow I've already been asked to give a guest lecture, which I'm still not sure how to feel about. It's another road I've chosen to walk, and another chance to find out who I am when things get difficult.
- A home of my own. Built from the ground up. A place where the walls are there to shelter people, not to keep them out.
- A family, someday. Not today. But someday.
- Someone I respect. Probably the hardest one on this list. I want to become a person I'd actually respect if I met him from the outside.
Some of these will take years. Some might not work at all. I know that.
The Next Turn
I still don't know exactly what I'm doing.
I don't know how long the salary target will take. I don't know how many times Bude will need to be rebuilt before it works. I don't know what the PhD will ask of me over the next few years, or whether I'll be any good at it.
But maybe for the first time, I'm okay with not knowing the entire road.
I only need to know the next turn.
For most of my life, I waited for clarity before moving. I kept asking myself, and sometimes other people, what I should do. Again and again, until the question itself became a place to hide.
I'm done with that. Not because I've found the answers. Because I've realized nobody else has them either.
So here's what I'm promising myself tonight. Not the world. Just me.
I'll keep working toward 12 LPA.
I'll keep building Bude Global and Bude Made.
I'll keep going with the PhD at PSG CAS.
I'll keep trying to build a life that's actually mine.
I'll make mistakes. I'll probably overthink again. I'll probably get stuck again. Maybe next week. Maybe tomorrow.
But this time, when I get stuck, I'll get myself moving again. I'm not going to wait for someone to open the door. I threw that key away years ago.
Fine. I'll build a door.
Twenty-six came quietly. No cake. No crowd. One brownie, one book, and one letter in red.
That's enough to start with.
New turn. Same person. Different direction.
Written on 15 September 2026, my 26th birthday.