Who’s Akshan outside of work?
I'm a 90s kid who grew up in various towns and cities across India. I moved to Munich, Germany in 2014 for a 6 month internship. The internship turned into a job, the job gave me my life partner, and now we live here with our son not too far from the river that cuts across the city. We love long lazy Sunday brunches, riding our bikes everywhere, taking long walks together and going to visit the squirrels in the beautiful old cemetery nearby that serves as a convenient place for both play and pause, depending on the day and the mood.
I’m a child of government bureaucrats. It made for a peculiar childhood. That gave me early exposure to people across the socio-economic spectrum of society. It made me privy to a life of privilege and access, but most of my friends were children of the cleaners, cooks and the drivers. I saw in those around me the feelings of power and status, but also empathy and service.
I grew up with cassettes, dial up modems, video games, and chat rooms. As a teenager, I smuggled books into the bathroom so I could read sci-fi instead of rote-learning complex math and science stuff. I downloaded rap music on Kazaa and wrote rhymes in the back of my school textbooks, and then used my mum's phone to get online and posted those rhymes in south asian rap communities that lived on Orkut. Music has been a monumental part of my life for as long as I can remember. I used to pretend to play the drums in college, and now I pretend to play the piano as an adult.
Most of what I learned about the world was through computer game demos that came as part of Chip and Digit magazines. Those subscriptions were one of my most prized possessions growing up. I fell in love with basketball in 2001 when I was introduced to it through the NBA Live game series. I eventually started playing the sport in real life, and can still shoot with decent accuracy.
I’m a child of government bureaucrats. It made for a peculiar childhood. That gave me early exposure to people across the socio-economic spectrum of society. It made me privy to a life of privilege and access, but most of my friends were children of the cleaners, cooks and the drivers. I saw in those around me the feelings of power and status, but also empathy and service.
I grew up with cassettes, dial up modems, video games, and chat rooms. As a teenager, I smuggled books into the bathroom so I could read sci-fi instead of rote-learning complex math and science stuff. I downloaded rap music on Kazaa and wrote rhymes in the back of my school textbooks, and then used my mum's phone to get online and posted those rhymes in south asian rap communities that lived on Orkut. Music has been a monumental part of my life for as long as I can remember. I used to pretend to play the drums in college, and now I pretend to play the piano as an adult.
Most of what I learned about the world was through computer game demos that came as part of Chip and Digit magazines. Those subscriptions were one of my most prized possessions growing up. I fell in love with basketball in 2001 when I was introduced to it through the NBA Live game series. I eventually started playing the sport in real life, and can still shoot with decent accuracy.