I was 22 when I finished my MCA. I had plans — the kind you make when you still believe a degree is a promise of something. I believed in the straight line. Graduate, work, build, grow. I did not plan Singapore. I did not plan Sydney. I did not plan the long years of silence that came after.
My first job was in IT in Mumbai. I was good at it — not in the way people say to be polite, but in the way that meant I understood systems intuitively, could write clean documentation, could explain the technical to the non-technical with patience. I worked from 2005 to 2008. Then I got married.
I want to be careful here. Marriage itself did not end my career. What ended it — or rather, what repeatedly interrupted it — was the assumption baked into the structure of our life that my career was the portable one. The one that could be paused. The one that could follow.
“There is a particular kind of loss that comes from watching your professional self become someone who used to work in IT.”
Singapore was four and a half years. I worked there for a year — and then my husband’s client project concluded. The next chapter was Sydney. The break simply continued across geographies. Sydney was a different kind of interruption — I found writing work, unpaid, for an NGO. I was good at that too.
Back in India. Bangalore since 2017. Children in 2018. And then 2024, finally, a school administrator role. For one year. Then that ended too.
What fifteen years of starting over teaches you is this: the career you build in your head during the gaps is more real than the gaps themselves. Every interruption was also an education. Every city was a class I did not sign up for but graduated from.
I am writing this in 2026. I have an MCA, international experience across three countries, education sector experience, and finally — finally — a voice I am willing to use publicly. None of this is what I planned at 22. All of it is what I have.
I am starting over again. But this time I know something the 22-year-old did not: starting over is not failure. It is just the next chapter. And I have always been a writer.