In May 2020, I published this article on LinkedIn to celebrate Asian Pacific Heritage Month at Microsoft.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/bringing-all-me-i-do-rahul-upadhyaya
My unedited entry was much longer. You can read this here:
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Do what you love. And love what you do.
This may sound a cliché. And not many people may be lucky enough to have the luxury of fulfilling this aphorism.
However, at Microsoft, I have been able to live this dream.
There comes a time in everyone's life when they have been able to achieve everything that they had planned to achieve when they started their journey. However, do we all see it that way? The answer varies widely.
For some, if we have achieved everything, what's the point of waking up tomorrow. For others, one should aim so high that it is effectively impossible to achieve. And for some others, goals are moving targets.
To each his own. For me, achieving financial freedom was first and foremost goal.
I grew up dirt poor in a remote village in India's central state, Madhya Pradesh on tropic of cancer. Inhabited with about 150 homes built with clay, mud and cow dung. With thatched roof on top. Primary modes of livelihood is agriculture and raising cattle for dairy products.
There were no schools. No doctors. Just a temple, a post office, and a bus stop. Buses would run every hour from dawn to dusk. They would take you to a nearest train station, Ratlam, 12 miles away, which can connect you to the rest of the world.
This 12-mile journey would take an hour. And the town and the village were almost a world apart in terms of opportunity and a path to grow and succeed.
I had seen poverty firsthand. I was born at home, since there was no hospital and no doctor in the village. Father was working as a teacher at a school some 40 miles away, and would not see me for another few days.
We had no running water at home. No electricity. No bathroom. We took care of our daily chores at a stream flowing nearby filled with water from a dam nearby.
Having grown so poor, I knew value of money. Money that can provide for basic needs. Not for luxuries. I did not see a piece of furniture until I spent summer holidays with my uncle who was a railway station master. Government had provided him a furnished house built with bricks and concrete. I loved the chairs so much that I would combine the two chairs and use it like a bed to sleep in the space I had created.
Furniture was not part of my basic needs. It was just food, shelter and clothing. Even a chair would be a luxury.
With that goal in mind, I wanted a decent education that can give me a decent job with decent salary to pay for my basic needs.
However, coming from a village, I was not fluent in English. I failed in 9th grade in English, and Math, which was taught in English.
This was a huge setback. I had to repeat the grade. Loss of a year. On other hand, there were bright kids skipping grades.
However, this failure turned out to be a blessing. Now, I was determined to learn. Not just pass the grade. But know the stuff.
This opened up a whole new world to me. Synergy of desire to learn, made me learn more and more.
Before you know, I had graduated from Indian Institute of Technology, Varanasi, finished MBA from University of Cincinnati in US with full scholarship, and had been offered to teach at Franklin College Indiana, as an Assistant Professor of Computer Science.
I worked at various companies for 14 years before moving to Seattle to work for Microsoft. Within 3 years, I bought a home, mortgage free.
I had achieved financial freedom.
I was free to explore the world. I worked at a startup in Bellevue and ended up working at Microsoft again.
I realized Microsoft is so vast with variety of roles in a variety of organizations that one can choose to do what you love, and love what you do.
I have been fortunate that leaders in my organization has always found a project or a role that was a good match for my skill set and passion. Reorgs after reorgs, I have found myself in yet another engaging work, that is rewarding and fulfilling.
I have been heavily influenced by the simple lifestyle of my Grandfather, father and Mahatma Gandhi. From them I learned how to focus on basics, be frugal and how to stand up for your own beliefs.
For example, we had one family rule. We never ate at a restaurant unless we were traveling. All the places I have lived, I never went out to eat. Mumbai, Kolkata, Delhi, Varanasi, Meerut. Homemade food is always much healthier and tasty. It also leads to financial independence.
I love cooking. I watched how my mother would prepare food and picked up on it. We are from the tristate area in Madhya Pradesh, very close to the Rajasthan and Gujarat borders. So our cuisine has heavy influences of Gujarati and Rajasthani cuisines. It's spicy, with garlic and onion. Plus we love to add savory world famous Ratlami Senv as part of the meal. It's nothing but chickpea flour blended with salt, cloves, black pepper, asafetida and made into a paste. Which is then passed through a sieve and deep fried like French fries. But these are much thinner.
I make my own food in the morning and bring it to work. I never bought lunch at the cafe.
No one in our family smoked. Or used alcohol. Or ate non-vegetarian. Till today, I am same. In addition to saving me from bad health, I have developed a strong character.
Everyone in my family was concerned whether I would start doing drugs once I left home and joined IIT, Varanasi.
They were glad to know that not only did I not do drugs, I did not even drink a cup of tea or coffee, which is kind of free flowing at hostels so that students can stay up late cramming for exams.
Even at work here in Redmond, I don't drink any beverage. Except for plain water. I don't need any caffeine to keep me going. People wonder how you kick start your day. I am wide awake when I wake up. I also sleep like a log, within a few moments of hitting the pillow. I can sleep in any bed. I have no concerns about firm or soft or whatever.
I love walking. My grandfather used to walk 18 kilometers from one village to another when there was no other transportation available.
I picked up this habit from him. I walked to work every day when I lived in Sammamish. A distance of 6.2 miles. And then I walked back home in the evening. A total of 12.4 miles. It used to take me 2 hours each way. I had all the time in the world to do this. If you have the right priorities you can squeeze in any activity in your lifestyle.
