Who Am I (Genuinely Asking)

This is a strange question to answer on your own website. It feels like writing your own eulogy, except you're alive, and nobody asked.

Here's the CV version: 27, Dehradun, shipped 100+ products, runs DappaSol, writes Urdu poetry, played Aladdin in a theatre show, chased northern lights in Iceland, once rode 1,200 km on a Royal Enfield in three days.

But that's what I've done. That's not who I am.

Who am I?

I don't fully know yet. And I think that's the honest answer. I think anyone who tells you they know exactly who they are at 27 is either lying or not paying attention.

Here's what I do know:

I'm someone who believes the universe is paying attention. Not in a religious way. In a lived way. I've tested it too many times. Moved towards things that made no sense, and they made sense later. Followed the gut over the spreadsheet, and the spreadsheet caught up.

I'm someone who builds things for a living but lives for the things you can't build. The feeling of a sentence that lands exactly right. The look on someone's face when they hear a poem that hits. The moment a plane breaks through clouds. The silence after a good conversation.

I'm someone who bridges things. Tech and design. Logic and poetry. The practical and the romantic. Most people pick a lane. I never could. Tried to. Can't. Won't.

I'm someone who writes 1,000-word Instagram captions at 2 AM and sends 12-minute voice notes and controls the aux cord on every road trip and recites Faiz at parties and gets away with it somehow.

I'm someone who once wrote "her love was ugly scribbles, her hatred a masterpiece" on a blog that 50 people read, and meant every word.

That's what I know so far. Ask me again next year. The answer will be different. It always is.

-I.R.