When Mumbai was still Bombay; when Sanjay Gandhi was at the height of his mass-sterilization campaign; when Indian hockey had reached its nadir; when Bal Thackeray was better known as a cartooonist; in the dying days of the emergency; I took my first breaths in the world. The year was 1977.

I was christened Ravi. Since my parents originally hailed from Chennai (nee Madras), custom dictates that this is the only name by which I should be known. But in concession to Christian colonization of the world, I had to be given a surname and first name. Well, Ramamoorthi is my father's name. He goes by S. Ramamoorthi where S for Subramaniam is his father's name. I should be called R. Ravi, but ah well... This becomes even more complex upon the birth of my son, Tejas Ravi who takes my name as his surname (none of myself, my wife or my son therefore have the same last name)

I lived most of my early life in Bombay, except for a brief stint of a few years in New Delhi where I was too young to remember things clearly. After coming to the US for college, I spent four years each in Pasadena and Stanford. We now live in New Rochelle in Westchester County, a suburb of New York (having moved out from Manhattan in Feb 2008). I'm excited to be returning to the bay area in Jan 2009, to take up my new position at Berkeley.

Our residence in Bombay is 121, Buena Vista, opposite Mantralaya and close to Marine drive. While my father was Bombay Port Trust commissioner, I lived for 3 years (86-89) in North End, this gigantic bungalow. It was a fun place to live since the house basically functioned as a sports club, with Badminton and hockey outside on the grass, cricket in the space outside the front door, a table tennis table that we used every day, and an empty room that served as a converted squash court. The playground also had a slide and jungle gym. Besides this, we also managed to play some hockey indoors (it often pours outdoors during the monsoon) , and use the cannon for gymnastics exercises. This was interspersed by my mother's excellent preparations of idlis, dosas, and apple juice. I also remember spending a lot of time either playing games on or trying to write games for my ZX Spectrum home computer. I didn't really have any guidance in those days, so the games seem pretty childish now (including the ones I played).

Perhaps the biggest distinction of North End is that part of the movie Gandhi was shot there; it's the house of Jinnah in one of the final scenes. One can clearly see the doors and arches of the living room. But one does need to look for it; I wasn't paying attention recently, and missed it.

My sister Roopa worked at Bayer until recently and lives in Berkeley, California (one of the big motivations for my impending move was the family factor). She passed through Caltech as a graduate student in the Chemical Engineering department and received her Ph.D. in March, 1994. She's nearly 9 years older than I [She's old enough to remember the long dark December of 1971 as an extra-long Diwali]. My father is a (now retired) IAS official, while my mother was a housewife, before she passed away on March 14, 2003.

I have been in New York City, here at Columbia University since late August 2002 (until December 2008), beginning my career as an Assistant Professor of Computer Science. I spent the previous four years (98-02) getting my Ph.D at Stanford University. Before that (94-98), I was an undergraduate at Caltech, being a member of Blacker Hovse (hence a mole). We will be moving to Berkeley in late January 2009.

I was married on April 15, 2004 in Mumbai. Earlier, on April 19, 2003, I got engaged to Padmini Rangamani. I never realized that Spring on the East Coast could be such a lovely season.

The biggest recent development in my life is the birth of my son, Tejas Ravi in 2007. He weighed in at 7.5 lbs and a tall 21 inches. We recently celebrated his first birthday while on a trip to India.

Maintained by Ravi
Last modified on Sep 27, 2008.