Geographically: I was born in India in 1976, lived in Yemen from 1983 to 1992, studied college in the US (Arizona) and India (Madras) from 1992 to 1997, and then lived in Massachusetts from 1997 onward. I consider Massachusetts to be “home.” On May 19, 2011, I became a naturalized American citizen in Worcester, Massachusetts. Therefore, when people ask me where I am from, I insist that I am from Massachusetts.
Religiously: I was born to an orthodox Hindu Brahmin family (but my mother was a Nair). I was raised in an orthodox Sunni Muslim country. I became an evangelical Christian in Boston in 2000. I left all three modes of evangelicalism in 2006. I am currently a member of the United Church of Christ, but I consider myself a non-denominational Christian.
Linguistically: I grew up speaking Tamil with my parents at home, English with my sister, Malayalam with my mother’s family in India, Arabic with my friends in Yemen, and Hindi with the few other Indian expatriate kids I knew in Yemen. But I first learned how to read and write in English. I therefore claim English as my “first” language — even if it feels ironic sometimes that I am working on my doctorate in English.
Vocationally: I was educated from middle school onward for a career in science and engineering. I studied engineering in college and went on to get a Master’s degree in engineering from Boston University in 2000, specializing in signal processing. I then worked for 8 years as an engineer at The MathWorks, a major mathematical software company located outside Boston. But teaching and language were my major passions even as I enjoyed my engineering career. In 2007 I began the transition back to academia but in a different field entirely, and in 2008 I “retired” from engineering to begin a new career in the humanities. In 2011, I got my second Master’s in Communication from UMass Amherst, specializing in performance studies and autoethnography. It still feels a bit shocking for me to see my two Master’s theses on the same shelf, side by side — the two could not be much more different.
Family: My wife Alexis and I met in 2005 and were married quite quickly thereafter. Our daughter Eliana was born in November 2009. We currently live in Amherst, Massachusetts.