Architect · Writer · Creator · Nomad
I love to create things: software architecture, code, watercolors, prose. Wandering has been part of the deal since my teens.
I grew up in South India, studied engineering management at BITS Pilani in Rajasthan, then moved to the UK for work, followed by a few years in California, where I worked and got a Masters in Computer Science (UCSC, 2002). Since 2010 I’ve been in the Netherlands, Amsterdam-based but rarely staying put for long.
By day I’m a software system architect at ING in the Netherlands. I built Log4Health, a health-tracking app for iOS and Android, because I needed something for wholistic health tracking, while other apps out there were nit-picky food logging.
I gave talks at GOTO Amsterdam and Women in Tech, both on YouTube (link below).
Art
Drawing started in childhood – copying cartoons and caricatures from The Hindu: Scotty, Donald Duck, political caricatures of Brezhnev and Chernenko. I was teased mercilessly for drawing a lion with the face of a girl. This did not discourage me.
Through my years at BITS Pilani, I stayed close to art – mural projects, 3-D constructions in steel wireframes and papier-mâché, a peer group that taught more technique than any class. Art at BITS also forged some of the closest friendships of my life. A signature mosaic style emerged from those years. Inspired by a senior I idolized: colors placed next to each other without blending, an overall gradient creating the illusion of light and form. The other developed later – shapes revealed through color differences, interiors filled with freehand pen designs.
During my time in the UK, I discovered David Bellamy, a great nature painter whose work I admire. His book on landscape watercolors is the foundation that still shapes my technique.
Other shorter influences include a few months of watercolor lessons with a local artist in Pune, and some community college drawing and painting classes in California. In 2008 and 2009, I held my own exhibitions in Pune.
Watercolors are my first love – the blending of colors and the translucent beauty feel simply magical. These days I dabble in acrylics (still unlearning some of my watercolor habits!) and have also started exploring digital art with a Wacom Intuos Pro Medium I received as a birthday present a couple of years ago.
The full body of work – the mosaic pieces, the penwork, the nature studies – is coming soon to greenibis.art.
Travel
Seeing places, capturing memories – these were my father’s great passions, and I inherited both. Travel has been part of life since early childhood. My parents’ work involved conference travel across India, and they took us along whenever possible; back then a family vacation was a rare, carefully planned thing, once in two years. My father documented everything – black-and-white photo albums covering not just destinations but everyday life, friends, milestones. Those albums are part of my inheritance too.
The travel writing here spans decades: Sahyadri and Himalayan treks, Dubrovnik in winter, the Moorish cities of Andalusia, a 1997 rail journey through Italy.
Writing
The travel writing is the most active thread: essays from recent trips sit alongside a longer-form project, retrospectives drawn from letters written in real time to my parents, only now finding their shape as proper drafts. Egypt, Italy, Peru, years in England – I publish when I find the time, drawing from the present or reaching back into the past.
The prose pieces resist neat categorization, which is probably why they live under “Prose”: a short story, a piece asking whether a project is still art when the creative aspect is only a fraction of the work, observations from my BITS reunion, and various shorts that are neither poetry nor prose, under the name of liquidprose.
Photography
I started out with a humble Canon point-and-shoot, later moved to a Canon SLR, and eventually a Nikon D3300. These days I use the Nikon more selectively, since high-end phone cameras do a great job for everyday shots. For the middle ground, I also keep a Panasonic Lumix with a Leica lens and mid-range zoom.
Wildflowers are a recurring subject – a fascination that took root during my years in California and has followed me since, from Yellowstone meadows to Dutch roadsides.
Gardening
I’m happiest when surrounded by flowers – wild, potted, or blooming in my garden. Winters in the Netherlands are tricky, but I’ve learned to keep a few blooms alive year-round. And I’ll always have a soft spot for flowering trees. 🌸
The botanical obsession has its own home at koolbloom.net.
My young adult kids keep me on my toes and make sure I never lose sight of a Gen-Z perspective. When they were younger, I read to them, and played their favorite digital and board games. Now I connect with them through watching TV shows together, and on the rare occasion painting with my daughter.
~Nomadsiv