And now for something completely different...

A lot has happened in the past fortnight. After spending nearly three and a half years there, I quit Yahoo!, bidding farewell to a lot of good friends, a great team, fat paychecks, nice food, free transportation, diverse lunch-time conversations, Friday evening cricket games and Sunday morning soccer. I do take with me lots of learnings, many friendships and this really thoughtful farewell gift.

Beginning this month, I joined ICTPH to lead the technology roadmap here. I was looking forward to the changes- both professional and locational- with nervous excitement. Bangalore is the only city in India I've called home and I did grapple with doubts about moving to Chennai. The change has been surprisingly smooth. My hosts, with their so-good-they-could-teach-it levels of hospitality, and my office location, overlooking the awesome IIT-Madras campus, have both played a part in easing the transition anxieties.

As it turns out, I will be spending most of my time in the small town of Thanjavur, a little over 350 kms from, and a few years behind, my hometown. I've been doing my best to surround myself with at least a few of my regular kicks; I've transported my car and bicycle, and have got myself acquainted with a basketball court and a watering hole here. Professionally, too, I've stretched my wingspan over a wider range (if not depth) of responsibilities than I'm used to at a given time. As I familiarize myself with the domain, I'm drafting my goals and starting to chart my course. Things will get clearer over the next couple of weeks, but during a meeting with the founders of AirJaldi, I latched on to a sentence that I thought wasn't a bad end to strive for, "You folks are aspiring to do to health what Arvind did to eye-care".