My Story
The Person Behind
You may be interested in knowing who the person behind these words is. It is a natural question. We usually begin a story with a name, a face and a few details that tell us where to place its author.
Well, I have chosen to introduce myself as just A SOL—a Student of Life.
Why the anonymity?
I do have a given name—a name given to me by my family, by which I am recognised in everyday life. That name carries a history. People who know it may already have an opinion about the person behind it.
Here, I have consciously chosen to identify myself as A SOL—a Student of Life—with the knowledge and wisdom I have gained through living. I would like you to discover this identity through what I share, without first viewing it through the lens of my earlier identity. Hence the anonymity.
My Story will share experiences from my past: what I thought, what I chose, what happened, and what I came to understand. Some decisions may appear sensible. Others may leave you wondering what I was thinking. Looking back, I sometimes wonder too.
I have held strong views, made choices and lived with their consequences. At times, I understood something only much later. There are also experiences whose meaning I am still trying to understand.
Perhaps you will recognise something of yourself in an incident. Perhaps you will disagree with my response. Perhaps something I share will prompt a question about your own life. That is enough reason for me to tell the story.
These accounts will be drawn from memory. They will carry the limitations of recollection and the perspective from which I now look back. What I understood then may differ from what I understand today. Where I am uncertain, I will say so.
I will withhold names and identifying details, including those of other people whose lives intersected with mine. Their privacy deserves respect. The choices and consequences that belong to me will remain mine to examine.
I do not claim that everything I learnt is universally true. You have your experiences; I have mine. You may draw a different conclusion from the same incident, and that is something I can respect.
Whose story is this?
For these pages, it is simply a Student of Life’s story—still being understood by the person who lived it.
— A SOL
My Childhood
The world I first knew.
My father was a doctor, my mother a housewife. We were three children—an elder sister, myself, and a younger sister. A middle-class Indian family, with all its drama in the 1960s.
That was the world in which my story began. I knew it as a child, without the understanding I bring to it today. Here, I will gradually revisit those early years—the people, incidents and impressions that have stayed with me—and reflect on what I now make of them.
My Adolescence
Most of my adolescence was spent in an all-boys residential school. It gave me a quality education and a period of life I enjoyed. Looking back, I also see an imbalanced upbringing: limited contact with the world outside, idealistic military-style conditioning, and little understanding of the physical and emotional changes I was experiencing.
My Young Adulthood
My young adulthood included graduation from a residential military training institution. Here, I began to understand the SYSTEM—its rules, its unwritten practices, and the people who interpreted both. A setback cost me six months of seniority. It also made me examine willpower, ego, and the value of a life that could still move forward.
My Adulthood
Adulthood brought professional achievement alongside a continuing conflict between idealism and pragmatism. I served as a commissioned military officer, then chose to build a civilian career. The training helped me enter unfamiliar fields; the conditioned thinking travelled with me too. Through repeated rises and setbacks, I began questioning what success, failure and quality of life meant to me.
My Middle Age
Middle age brought the experience of losing everything, stepping away on a sabbatical, and travelling as a digital nomad. Gradually, I began to understand life differently. This was the period in which I consciously chose to be A SOL—a Student of Life—and gave direction to the time still available to me.
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