Beyond Security
Life and ideas outside the security perimeter — music, service, travel, and things worth writing about.
Embedded Files
Travels
Travels
Work has taken me to a lot of countries. 40+ countries. Every trip a reminder that the world is far larger, stranger, and more beautiful than any perimeter can contain.
Travel across 40+ countries — documented here through passport stamps up to 2013 with AI (scanning images and converting to HTML), when I became a US citizen. Since then, the electronic borders of the EU, UK, and much of the world have quietly stopped stamping. The journeys continue; the ink has not. I also track my travel through this wonderful website: https://beeneverywhere.net/user/7680
Community & giving back
Community & giving back
Three organisations I give my time and energy to — one rooted in music, one in service, one in the pursuit of stillness. All three reflect the same conviction: that a full life reaches beyond professional achievement.
Three organisations I give my time and energy to — one rooted in music, one in service, one in the pursuit of stillness. All three reflect the same conviction: that a full life reaches beyond professional achievement.
Antarnaada
Co-founder & Director · Austin, TX
Carnatic music has been a constant in my life — first as a student, then as an organiser. Antarnaada is our attempt to ensure that this ancient tradition thrives in Austin, not just as a nostalgic memory but as a living, breathing community.
We run house concerts, recitals, workshops by renowned gurus, annual Tyagaraja Aradhana and composer day celebrations, and the ASYA programme supporting young Carnatic performers.
If you are in Austin and love Carnatic music — or want to discover it — come join us.
Sadananda
Co-founder & Director · Austin, TX · 501(c)(3)
Sadananda was born from a simple belief: that the good fortune of living and working in the US carries a responsibility to those who were not as fortunate. We are a registered US 501(c)(3) non-profit supporting underprivileged communities in India.
Through our partner Anandam in Chennai, we provide free homes for senior citizens without family support, education assistance for children, and community welfare programmes at the grassroots level.
Donations are tax-deductible in the US. Every contribution makes a direct difference.
Blossom Foundation
Retreat Volunteer · Graham, TX
The Blossom Foundation is an entirely volunteer-led organisation at Sacred Grove in Graham, TX — a centre for Yogic studies and exploring consciousness guided by spiritual teacher Sri M.
I volunteer at their retreats — Kriya Yoga intensives, Upanishad study programmes, and courses on Yoga and Sanskrit. These retreats are unlike anything else I know: serious, quiet, and genuinely transformative.
Run entirely by volunteers. If this resonates, consider attending a retreat or joining as a volunteer.
In memory of Dr. C.D. Rao
Dr. C.D. Rao Memorial Endowed Scholarship · Austin Community College · Engineering
Dr. Chandragiri Dinaker Rao — everyone called him CD — came to the US from India in 1972. He earned his PhD in Chemical Engineering from UT Austin in 1978, and went on to teach engineering at both UT Austin and Austin Community College for over a decade. I knew him as a mentor and a father figure. He had a particular love for his ACC students — he saw in them what he saw in himself when he first came to America: driven, resourceful, willing to work harder than anyone expected.
When CD passed on September 5th, 2020, I established this endowed scholarship in his memory at ACC. It supports engineering students with financial need who are pursuing an Associate of Science in Engineering — students who remind me of him, and of the kind of determined learner he always championed.
If you know a student at ACC who might be eligible, please share this with them.
Music - Carnatic classical vocal recordings — a personal archive of music from concerts, practice, and celebrations in Austin - here.
My first Love - Physics
My first Love - Physics
My journey to cybersecurity was unplanned. I came to the United States to pursue a PhD in Physics at the Non-Linear Dynamics and Chaos Center at UT Austin — one of the most exciting corners of theoretical physics at the time. Destiny had other ideas. A Cisco internship introduced me to network security, and I never looked back. But Physics never fully let go. At IIT Kanpur, a summer internship at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences in Chennai introduced me to the world of spin-waves — and to the humbling reality that not every problem yields a closed-form solution. Learning to find the right variables, rather than forcing a neat answer, turned out to be the most transferable lesson of my scientific training. That paper has since been cited, which is a tiny, quiet pride. With quantum computing reshaping the boundaries of cryptography and threat landscapes, I still hope the two worlds — Physics and Cybersecurity — will one day fully converge for me.
Exact Non-Linear Spin Waves, Physics Letters A, Volume 237, Issues 1–2, 29 December 1997, Pages 73-79, Citations
Page updated
Report abuse