Having always had a huge inclination towards numbers and statistics, it is no wonder that most of my current interests in computer science are topics that rely heavily on a strong mathematical foundation. One of them is quantum computing, the area in which I am pursuing my undergraduate thesis too. The major reason being that quantum mechanics can very well be dealt with as something to do with information, probabilities and observables. My interest in this field vaguely began when I was introduced to quantum mechanics at the Orientation-cum-Selection Camp for the International Physics Olympiad at the Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education in May 2010. Following that, I have had a couple of courses on this topic and taken up a project under the National Initiative on Undergraduate Science (NIUS) scheme too.

Other than that, Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing and Cryptography interest me quite a bit, majorly because of the mathematical modelling aspect involved in the first two and the number theory part in the latter. I am even pursuing a minor degree in mathematics at IIT Bombay and have done a couple of courses from the Applied Statistics Department, including one on the basics of Probability Theory.

I started out with sudokus when they first appeared in Indian newspapers, I guess it was around 2005-06. Though I had been fascinated by puzzles forever, these Japanese puzzles did catch my eye. I've been practising regularly ever since and am able to solve the toughest ones in nearly 5 minutes. My best performance in competition mode came in October 2013 at the SJMSOM Avenues Festival where I was able to crack 3 of them in a total time of 320 seconds. Apart from that, I have had the pleasure to meet the finest sudoku solvers in India via some contests like the Times Sudoku Championship and the annual ones held at Techfest. For any of you puzzle enthusiasts out there, the Logical World of Puzzles, a blog by our very own National Champion, is a must-follow. In March 2014, I conducted the Institute's first ever workshop on solving sudoku puzzles and their variants. The slides can be found here and the practice questions here (the first four are classics followed by a mirror, killer, thermometer and a giant killer).

I love to sit down and scratch my hair over good logic puzzles. At IIT Bombay, we have the Institute-wide Logic General Championship every year, which I always wanted to win so badly. In my fourth and final year, courtesy a fantastic team comprising of Nishanth, Ashwin and me, I was able to conquer the same (yay! I have a GC to my name :D ). Lately, I have also taken a liking to Kakuro puzzles, although I am nowhere close in terms of speed and accuracy as compared to sudokus.

Now, I distinctly remember my first ever quiz outside school - the Durga Puja Mela quiz in Sector IX, Bhilai when I was in class V. Although I ended up third, I caught the attention of a Shri Saurabh Sinha, the man who led me into this fabulous world of quizzing. He asked me to join Quest - a quiz club run by some enthusiasts across the city who would meet once a month in a 'battle of the wits'. I remember dragging my father to those quizzes, teaming up with him and then winning quite a few quizzes there once we were veterans. Towards the end of class VI, we came to know of a quiz contest by the name of India's Child Genius being hosted by Shri Siddhartha Basu, a man who I had never heard of but whom everyone at the club held in very high regard. No points for guessing, it was Saurabh Uncle who encouraged me to participate. Turns out he had been to the famous quiz show 'Mastermind' hosted by Shri Basu, one of the pioneers of Indian Quizzing. After a written round and a telephonic interview, I made it to the national top 320 - I was going to be on TV!!!! So, we travelled to the Eagle Studio, Film City, Noida and I ended up winning my East Zone preliminary round too. I ultimately lost out very closely in the national semi-finals, missing out on a chance to meet someone I had always idolized - Shri APJ Abdul Kalam, then President of the nation. Yes, I was definitely heartbroken but dad told me there was nothing I could do that would revert it and hence, there was no point repenting over how I had performed. I have never really looked back since then. I do consider this quiz as that moment in my life when I took off - the time I realized I had it in me to compete with the very best in India, that appearance on national television had given me a huge confidence boost - read more here.

I went on to quiz with the likes of Harsha Bhogle and Giri Bala Subramaniam too, and won laurels till class X. Then, IIT-JEE happened and I shifted focus. When I entered IIT Bombay and started attending quizzes here, I used to feel out of touch and hence a bit distraught. So, picture this: a national-level quizzer in his prime days takes a 4-year hiatus (~Jan 2008 to September 2012). Then arrive two pretty ladies (read freshies at IITB who also happen to be past school-mates) who insist on him pairing up with them for the Sweden-India Nobel Memorial Quiz in October 2012. Although he hesitates, they are willing to believe in his quizzing ability when he himself has lost faith. Anyway, as you would be expecting, it worked miraculously well, we finished third that day, enough to bring back my self-confidence and here I am, back to the quizzing world, hale and hearty.

When it comes to teaching, my first experience was as a Teaching Assistant for CS-101 under Prof. Deepak Phatak in Autumn 2011. Although it was a good experience, being part of a big group, having some responsibilities and getting paid too ;-) but it was more about me going to the labs and many a times pointing students towards google search for their doubts, something that didn't really need a TA. So, in spring 2012, I decided to shift to blackboard teaching and hence took up Modern Physics, a course that I had topped a year ago. Now, this was a new challenge for me: I had been given a batch of 40-odd colleagues from the Metallurgy Department and although initially a bit intimidated, I did manage to settle into it quickly. A major turning point came around the first week of February when in a tutorial session, I somehow had a complete black-out on a particular question. I had the solution right in front of me but couldn't figure out how I myself had derived it a day ago. Believe me, that is one of the most embarrassing moments I have ever had - one that did make me a better TA later on.

In autumn 2012, I took up tutorial-teaching for a freshmen course for the first time - Physics again, and I rate this as one of the finest experiences of my life so far : a 50-strong batch, with 8 people within the top 50 in JEE-2012. Even the others were no less though and in an otherwise 'dull' semester (yeah, i am not a fan of the systems courses we do in CSE), this one hour slot on Wednesday afternoons was something I used to eagerly look forward to. Having taught physics for a year, I switched to my first love - mathematics in spring 2013, this time taking up Numerical Analysis for a bunch of sophomores. Although I enjoyed this too, the non-response I used to receive at times made me go back to teaching freshmen again last semester (autumn 2013) in a new avatar of Modern Physics, namely 'Quantum Physics and Applications'. Now, I must confess that this wasn't exactly a stellar batch but they did extremely well (did I tell you they beat the CS+Elec average in the midsems, yes, they did!!) - a TA's delight :)

In my last semester, I had multiple offers - Numerical Analysis, Programming Paradigms, Linear Algebra and Automata Theory and chose the last two. I handled a batch of 42 bright freshers that contained 10 of the top 75 rankers from JEE-2013 and the entire sophomore CSE batch, which also had a few people from my most amazing TA experience ever. This was one hell of a challenge, something I enjoyed to the core. Some of the freshmen I taught this semester were the most brilliant and amazing people I have come across at IITB. It all ended in a bliss when a tutee wrote a beautiful e-mail expressing his gratitude and sentiments, bringing me to tears (even all the valfis and departure of batchmates failed to do that!)

8 semesters gone but the story doesn't end here. I got another chance to teach at the ISTE Coordinators Workshop on Computer Networking in May 2014. The students this time were professors from all over the country. This turned out to be a one-of-a-kind experience, interacting with and training people who seemed to have very good theoretical knowledge but lagged behind when it came to applying it to experiments, something that we have been trained to do very well at CSE, IIT Bombay.

On the whole, I guess it boils down to this - Give me an audience that is either willing or forced to listen to me and give me a blackboard to teach or something to advise on and I'll make sure I bore them to death :P

Yes, you got it right! As with all JEE high rankers, even I was invited to various places to conduct live seminars, to interact with future aspirants and to clear their non-conceptual doubts. But I ended up taking a liking to it. Word spread and I do still get quite a few e-mails/messages asking for advice. While I do try to reply to most of them, my 'sometimes busy schedule' has forced me to skip many lately. Among the seminars that I have been to, the ones that stand-out in my memory are the ones I did for FIITJEE in those huge auditoriums in Delhi right after the JEE results, 4 awesome 3-hour long ones and the one when I was invited by the District Administration of Jagdalpur, a town in the naxal-belt of my native state, Chhattisgarh.

With all the mentoring and writing, I did come in touch with people in the media and that landed me a lead role in Tata Sky's advertisement for their Active Vedic Maths service which was aired during the summer of 2013. You can watch the ad here. My association with the team that produced the advertisement then got me an invitation to be a part of a day-long shoot on Jan 22, 2014 for an episode of the second season of Satyamev Jayate.

In June 2014, while staying back in Mumbai for the US VISA, I delivered a lecture on "Motion in a Straight Line". The audience was a few hundred listeners scattered all over India and it was a good first experience at online teaching for me.

If you have had the tenacity to come to this point, you would have realized that I love to just keep blabbering on and on and on. So, no brownie points for guessing that I write too. I used to write for someone, but I won't get into that here ;-) My past laurels do make me eligible for authoring newspaper articles on topics that relate to competitive exams and undergraduate education in India. Following is a series of articles that I authored for the Mail Today newspaper a few months before IIT-JEE 2012:

1. Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics for Competitive Exams - 6th, 13th and 20th Dec 2012, respectively
2. IIT-JEE vs AIEEE (now called the JEE advanced and main papers) - 27th Dec
3. Mechanics - 10th Jan 2013
4. Chemistry's common ground with physics - 17th Jan
5. Way out in maths - 14th Feb
6. Capitalise on prep leave - 21st Feb
7. Preparing for D-Day, 6th March

The IIT Entrance Exam is an article that appeared on Priceonomics, an American blog that featured quotes from my dialogue with them during my stay in Palo Alto in June 2013. PS - too long, search for Singh to look at my quotes.

I also used to participate in debates prior to class XI. My mother happens to have saved one of my speeches on some Hindi debate on transparency. I'll just put it up here for the interested reader.

In late 2010, I had started blogging but no longer maintain it. Here's the link to a blogpost on IIT-JEE preparations: Self-Study Maketh a Rank, Practice Maketh Perfect. Parts from this post have been cited in various sites/blogs all over the internet, so I suppose it's quite a good one :D

These days, I have taken to Quora as I find it to be a good platform for people to ask more direct questions and it is a good source for a lot of knowledge and trivia.

Lawn Tennis is my favourite and I am an ardent fan of Roger Federer. I have been following this sport ever since the last few slams of Pete Sampras (around 2001) and inspired by my love for this sport as well as the fact that my friend, Nishanth happens to be IIT's best at it, I learnt the basics in March 2013 :)

I do enjoy swimming and running, just for fun and to stay in shape. I am used to finishing a good 15-20 minutes behind the winner in our 6km crossy races at IIT Bombay, but never mind.

Among other sports, I enjoy watching formula-1, beach volleyball (who doesn't :P) and a bit of soccer and cricket occasionally. People/teams I follow and support are Mahendra Singh Dhoni; Liverpool (now don't start trolling me) - they have Gerrard after all; and Kimi Raikkonen. One thing you will note is that all individuals listed here are ice-cool, certainly a trait that I admire a lot.

I vividly remember being a huge fan of the movie Border, I used to watch it on every Independence Day and Republic Day when I was at home, ah.. those good old days. I've watched 477 movies (not 1 more, not 1 less - remember, statistics enthu, so I keep track at watched) since I entered college. I find Tom Hanks to be a very versatile actor and hardly miss out on any movies of his. Also among my favourites are Nicole Kidman and Mark Wahlberg.

Music bands/ singers that I usually listen to, along with my favourites among their songs are:

• Adele - Rolling in the Deep, Skyfall, Set Fire to the Rain, Someone Like You
• Backstreet Boys - All I Have to Give, Incomplete, Show Me the Meaning of Being Lonely
• Coldplay - Clocks, Viva la Vida, Fix You, Paradise
• Enrique - Bailamos, Rhythm Divine, Somebody's Me, Addicted
• Imagine Dragons - all of their songs; this band is just awesome!!
• Linkin Park - Leave Out All the Rest, Numb, In the End, Iridiscent, New Divide, Burn it Down, Somwehere I Belong
• Natasha Bedingfield - Unwritten, Angel, Pocket full of Sunshine, I Bruise Easily
• One Republic - Marchin On, Good Life, Say (All I Need), Secrets, Everybody Loves Me

Other one-off songs that I like a lot are Astronaut (Simple Plan), Californication (Red Hot Chilli Peppers), Firework (Katy Perry), On the Floor (Jennifer Lopez), Boulevard of Broken Dreams and Wake Me Up When September Ends (Green Day), Bring Me to Life (Evanescence), Stereo Love (Vika Jigulina), Zombie (The Cranberries), Summertime Sadness (Lana Del Ray)
On my mind these days - Clocks, Viva la Vida, Demons

TV Series that I have watched: Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead, House of Cards, Hannibal, Arrow, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Masters of Sex, The Big Bang Theory, Homeland, Sherlock, Suits, Coupling (this is paradise for lovers of non-veg puns), Breaking Bad, How I Met Your Mother, Spartacus and Dexter. I am eagerly awaiting the next Homeland season and was indeed disappointed, like all other Dexter fans, by the way it ended.
Notably absent: Friends - I gave up after watching 2 seasons :-/