Following are some of the places where I have spent a significant amount of time of my life. Here I would like to introduce you about all those places.
Mumbai (Maharashtra, India): My birth place Amaravati (Maharashtra, India), is my mother's (Alka Ashok Warnekar) home town. My father, Shri. Ashok Shridhar Warnekar is from Nagpur. But soon after my birth, we shifted to Mumbai for my father got a job in Econimics Times (Research Bureau). My mother also got a job in Ruia College as a lecturer. Mumbai is the financial capital of India. Also, Mumbai is home of the film Industry of India, the Bollywood. The name mumbai comes from Mumba Devi a goddess. The name got changed to Bombay because the British people, who ruled India for around two centuries, could not pronounce the name Mumbai. One more intermediate name it had due to similar reasons was Bambai. Mumbai, being a port was very suitable for imports and exports, had become the financial capital. The biggest stock exchange of India, the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) is in Mumbai.
Seijosa (Arunachal Pradesh, India): My father as a young dynamic person wanted to work for the welfare of the society. Vivekananda Kendra gave an advertisement in the news paper calling the youth for coming forward to work in schools started by them in Arunachal Pradesh, then a very backward State of India. My father took the chance and joined the Vivekananda Kendra Vidyalaya in Seijosa. The school of Seijosa was located on the top of a hill a little far from the village Seijosa. It is located near the state boundry with Assam, near the town Tezpur (Assam). Seijosa being a very small village of East Kameng district is difficult to find in a map. However, Seijosa is famous for its Pakhui (Tiger) Wildlife Senctury. The famous Asian Mascot "Appu" was a gift of this senctury. My father left Vivekananda Kendra after two years.
Itanagar (Arunachal Pradesh, India): After leaving the Vivekananda School of Seijosa with a plan to start an institute for handicapped children my father reached to Itanagar (capital of Arunachal Pradesh) to meet the then Chief Minister Mr. Gegang Apang. Mr. Gegang Apang promising to think about the project asked my father to join a school Donyi Polo Vidya Bhavan started by him in the capital for the time being. The name "Donyi Polo" in the local language means Sun and the Moon. In Arunachal Pradesh Sun is considered to be mother and the moon the father gods. I started going to primary school in Donyi Polo Vidya Bhavan. In a short time my father was appointed the principal of Donyi Polo Vidya Bhavan. He served as a principal for around one year. During this time my sister Madhura was born. By this time Mr. Gegang Apang had nearly forgotten about the proposal given by my father about starting an institute for handicapped people and suggeted my father to stay in Donyi Polo Vidya Bhavan. But my father wanted to do some thing for the common and suffering people. Donyi Polo Vidya Bhavan was a public school where children of only rich people could study. It was a residential school. Finally, my father left Donyi Polo Vidya Bhavan.During his stay he composed the prayer for the Donyi Polo Mission.
Naharlagun (Arunachal Pradesh, India): After leaving Donyi Polo Vidya Bhavan we came to Naharlagun (old Itanagar). Since my father did not got any support for starting of the institute he initially joined Kendriya Vidyalaya School as a teacher for Mathematics and Physics. But within one year he left the school and started first private coaching classes for the CBSE 10th and 12th students in Naharlagun and Itanagar under the banner "Arunachal Youth Services". All types of students rich or poor started coming for the coaching as there was no compulsion on paying fees and no fixed amount as fees. My mother who had joined Kendriya Vidyalaya as a teacher continued there for two more years. That time the book shops in Naharlagun used to get the text books of the curriculam very late. The students used to suffer. They used to get the books only after about half of the year was already over. In absence of good library facility, my father also started keeping good reference books for studying in a small library started at our home. My father used to get the books from Nagpur. We used to visit Nagpur atleast once a year during the summer.
The name of the town Naharlagun comes from Nahar, which is a type of tree which has a natural conch shell shape. Naharlagun is a small town at a distance of around 10 kms from Itanagar and is a part of capital complex. I started going to 1st standard in Kendriya Vidyalaya school in Naharlagun.
Arunachal Pradesh climate is very unpredictable. You will never know when it is going to start raining and when the sky is going to get cleared with bright sun. Of an year more than half of the year is rainy season, starting right from April up to October. October to January is Winter. February and March is Spring season. In peak rainy season sometimes it continuously rains for 3-4 days without stopping even for one minute.
Misamari (Assam, India): After a few years, for my sister's admission in Kendriya Vidyalaya my mother had to do B.Ed. from Dibrugarh University and again had to join Kendriya Vidyalaya. This is because Kendriya Vidyalaya used to give first preference to children of Central govt. employees and there was no other good school in Naharlagun at that time. But as there was no vacancy in Naharlagun school we had to shift to Misamari. My father continued his coaching in Naharlagun. For around one year we were in Misamari. Madhura got the admission and soon my mother left the job and we came back to Naharlagun. Madhura and myself got transfered to Kendriya Vidyalaya in Naharlagun. Only one thing in Misamari I remember very clearly is that during winter we could see a snow covered mountain peak in between two green mountain peaks from our window. Misamari is a small town and an Indian Army base camp in Assam The nearest major city from Misamari is Tezpur in Assam.
Parvatipur (Assam, India): After returning from Misamari within a very short time we shifted to Parvatipur in Assam. In Arunachal there are a lot of restrictions for other state people. People from other states cannot start any organization or institution in there own name or cannot even buy any kind of property. Everything is in control of local people. This was causing problems for my father to start up a social organization. Finally we bought a piece of land (about one acre) just two kms outside of Arunachal Pradesh in Parvatipur village.
This is a very small village, in North Lakhimpur District, with a population of around three or four thousand people. There is no electricity in the village. The people in the village are very poor some of them not even being able to manage to have two time meals. More than fifty percent of this population was non-assamese. This was the ex-tea-garden labours community. During the British rule on India the British people forcefully took these people as labours from all over India to work for initial establishment of the tea-gardens. After the initial work was done one generations had gone. These people had nearly settled in Assam. But now there was no requirement of so many people for maintainance of tea-gardens. More than half of this populations had to come out of tea-gardens. Some of them got some small peice of land which was not even sufficient for producing enough grain for one family for one year. They had to look for other sources of income like wood picking and had to work as labour required for truck loading and unloading at construction sites. But this was not a permanant job. The education of this society was very poor. During the interaction with group of people in the village we came to know that none of them had any idea about how big this world really is. Very few of them actually knew about places outside Assam. They had only heard of places like Rajasthan and Kerala and Bihar from the businessmen coming from those places. The elderly people knew that they belong to some place in say Chota Nagpur, or Bihar or Orisa, etc. But no one actually knew where are these places.
After knowing about this situation of the village my father decided to settle there and work for upliftment of this society. He along with my mother started Bhaskar Sanskar Kendra at that place. Bhaskar Sanskar Kendra was a school cum vocational training. We continued to go to Nagpur every year during summer. Along with us we used to take two or three villagers with us to train them in a few more skills. The school was run in two forms. There was a morning primary school for children of the village. And then in the night there was a school for teenagers who used to go on work during day time. Primary school was run on the C.B.S.E. syllabus. However there was no fixed syllabus taken for the night school as the students were already grown up and had no patience in studying the regular syllabus taken up by other schools. For them my father designed a condensed syllabus of information which is required in daily life. Stress was given on understanding and byhearting things rather than taking notes. Methods like Vedic Mathematics were used in teaching mathematics. This helped them in solving big equations mentally without use of Pen paper or calculators. They had byhearted names of all states in India along with there capitals. They had also byhearted names of more than fifty major countries along with their capitals and currency names. Geography was taught to them only verbally. Science was explained to them using day to day experiments.
I continued my education in Kendriya Vidyalaya Naharlagun. Naharlagun was about 25 kms from this village and we used to catch some private bus to reach the school. During rainy seasons there used to be landslides on the ways to our school. Many times the roads used to get blocked and me and Madhura had to stay at some friends home as trasportation was cut off due to landslide while returning from school. There was no mean to inform our parents about this. They had to assume about the situation. Due to the adverse conditions my parents decided to keep Madhura in Nagpur after 5th standard. She stayed with my Paternal uncle. I continued in Naharlagun till my 10th standard.
Nagpur (Maharashtra, India): After 10th standard I also shifted to Nagpur for higher education. I stayed with my grand parents. I completed my 12 Standard from Dharampeth Science college. Nagpur is famous for oranges all over the world. The oranges are exported out of country from Nagpur region. Nagpur is also the second capital of Maharashtra. The Winter assembly of Maharashtra state government takes place in Nagpur. Nagpur is centrally located in India. The "zero mile" stone from where the measurement and milestone placement was started in India is in Nagpur. Recently Nagpur Airport has been declared as International airport. Proposal is to develop Nagpur airport as International Cargo Hub.
Gondia (Maharashtra, India): Gondia is a small town around 150 kms from Nagpur. This is where I did my B.E. in Computer Technology branch, a four years course. I was living as a paying guest here. Here, I made best friends of my life. The time I spent in Gondia was the best time that I will always remember. Gondia is very famous for its bidi factories. Now Aviation Ministar Praful Patel is from Gondia. The college I studied in was started by Praful Patel's father Manohar Bhai Patel. The name of our college is Manoharbhai Patel Institute of Engineering and Technology (MIET).
Pune (Maharashtra, India) [CURRENT]: I completed my B.E. in year 2000. I got my first job in Pune in Concept Integrated Technologies as a DSP Engineer. Here I worked on Speech and Audio Codecs. This was where I got for the first time introduced to subject Digital Signal Processing (DSP). I was good in C programming. But here I had to work in Assmebly language for different DSP processors like Motorola, Texas Instruments and Cradle. At a later point of time our company got split into two different companies, and I remained part of company whose name was changed to Conquest Integrated Technologies India Pvt. Ltd. The other company was named Concept Embedded Systems Pvt. Ltd.
After spending around 11 years in Bangalore, now I have shifted back to Pune and am now working for Cadence Design Systems as a Design Engineering Manager, working in Tensilica audio team (which was acquired by Cadence).
Cadence is an EDA software and engineering services company with headquarter in San Jose California USA. It acquired Tensilica Inc in 2013. Tensilica was an IP core company known for its Xtensa configurable processor cores suitable for data intensive processing (audio, communications, image/video).
Pune is called the cultural city of Maharashtra. Here people speak very pure form of Marathi language. They often used to laugh at the Marathi language that I used to speak. However people from Nagpur make a lot of laugh at the way Pune people speak Marathi. Nagpur people are proud of the Marathi they speak and Pune people are proud that they speak the purest form of Marathi. India's Film Institute is situated in Pune. Many great actors in Bollywood industry have come from this institute. Pune also has the National Defense Academy (NDA). Pune is home of many famous artists. Pune is among the first tier cities of Information Technology (IT) in India.
Bangalore (Karnataka, India): My last project from Conquest Integrated Technologies, Pune, was an one year onsite project in Centillium India Pvt. Ltd., Bangalore. After completion of project, all four of us from Conquest who were working on the project got an invitation to join Centillium as employees. And all four of us decided joined Centillium. I joined Centillium as a Design Engineers in December 2003. Meanwhile, I got married on 25 December 2004 and now am father of two (my son Hrusheekesh and daughter Sanika). Centillium was a leading provider of broadband Access Solutions and its products include mixed-signal integrated circuits and related hardware and software applications for Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) and Optical Networking equipment deployed in central offices and customer premises, and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) products for carrier- and enterprise-class gateways and consumer telephony. Centillium started its India development center by acquiring an Indian company vEngines India Pvt. Ltd. vEngines was a leading developer of Voice over packet single chip solution. Centillium sold out its DSL business to Ikanos Communications in February 2008. Centillium got acquired by Transwitch Corporation in August 2008. I left Centillium as Senior Design Engineer in April 2008.
From April 2008 till June 2013, I worked as a Senior Specialist in Systems Business Unit, under DSP (audio) division in Tata Elxsi Limited, Bangalore. Tata Elxsi Ltd. is a Bangalore based design company with its focus areas in "Embedded product Design", "Industrial Design", "Visual Computing Labs" and "Systems Integration".1
Bangalore is the IT capital of India with many multinational companies having there development centers in the city. India's prestigious institutes based in Bangalore are "Indian Institute of Science", Indian aviation companies like "Hindustan Aeronautics Limited" and "National Aeronautics Limited", "Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO)", "Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL)", "Bharat Earth Movers Limited (BEML)", "Hindustan Machine Tools (HMT)". Bangalore is the third largest city of India.
The government of Karnataka has announced to rename Bangalore to its Kannada name Bengaluru. Bangalore is known as "Garden city of India" because of its climate, greenery and presence of many public parks.
Sunnyvale (California, USA): During 2011-12, I have been to Sunnyvale several times with a total stay period of around 7 months. That is why I am including this place in the list. I was staying in Sunnyvale for Business visits.
Sunnyvale is situated in the heart of Silicon valley. Companies with headquarters situated in Sunnyvale, including LinkedIn, Amazon Lab126, Yahoo! Inc., Juniper Networks. Sunnyvale has consistently ranked as one of the safest ten cities (for cities of similar size) in the United States according to the FBI's crime reports.