Sreekandh Balakrishnan

A partial list. The full one would be a book.

1980s

Born into the Balakrishnan family. My elder brothers gave me the two halves I still carry — Sreeram opened computer science to me; Sreedhar opened the path inward.

Teen years

Prakash Anna, my spiritual brother. Nair Uncle, my first astrology teacher.

2002–2008

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar — to stay grounded, to breathe.

2008

Met Priyanka. Sripriya is the spiritual name her master gave her.

2011 onward

The Laxminarayana brothers — Abhishek and Parik — opened the professional door. Abhishek welcomed me into tech; Parik taught me business ethics and how to run and scale a global business. Yogen in the early Enchanting Travels years.

Last decade

Mike taught me to be calm and composed. Chris taught me that Rome isn't built in a day — patience, the right thing, one at a time. Thomas at Equal Experts showed me you can run a company without OKRs or weekly meetings, simply by focusing on customers.

Many more whose names belong in their own essay. Pranams to all — known and unknown, this lifetime and the ones before. Gratitude always.

Two children — Krish (2015) and Neeraja (2019) — who have shaped me more than any book or framework has. My partner Sripriya runs Aevam, a yoga studio.

We made the slow move to Auroville — the experimental bioregion near coastal Tamil Nadu. Slower life, deeper roots. (The full story is in the essays.)

The shift from buying AI tools to rebuilding how we work. Digital coworkers as a serious organisational claim, not a slogan.

Co-authoring on the human side of AI adoption — the part of the change curve no roadmap captures. A small podcast of unhurried conversations (Kanika Kohli, Anil Grovor, more coming).

Building Kaalapurusha — a modern Jyotish toolchain in Python on the Swiss Ephemeris. Sidereal positions, dasha timelines, classical yogas. And the daily practice itself: yoga, mantra, the steady work of paying attention.

Swabhava · Swadharma · Swatanthratha One's own nature · one's own duty · one's own freedom

• BuildingAstrology 101 Companion — foundations of Vedic astrology, with Vikram Devatha.
• Building · betaLiving in Auroville — a calm reading layer over community announcements.
• Writing · story 01From outside the fence — how we came to Auroville, with a comic strip.
• WatchConversations on camera — the podcast, interviews, one TED talk.
• SignalsVoices worth carrying — senior leaders whose thinking I carry.
• From my networkBuilders I'm rooting for — people back at the frontier.
• Charity · liveDr. Shankaran's Monsoon Drive — 26 years of school bags and umbrellas in Palakkad.
• Read · featuredTravelopia's big AI experiment — in Raconteur.

For a long time, I hated social media. Then came Orkut — do you even remember it? It barely exists now.

I've created and deleted my Instagram account ten times. Installed and uninstalled the app a hundred. LinkedIn was the one I needed for work, so I lived there. Around 2010 I had a thousand-plus contacts and no real connection with most of them, so I deleted the account and started over. The rule since: only add people I've actually met in person and can recall by name.

And then — slowly, over the last year — my build mojo came back. The new-age agents made it possible to ship things I'd carried in my head for a decade. The dreamer finally caught up with the doer. I'm alive again.

Studying astrology this last year showed me something I'd been side-stepping: I gain energy when I'm visible. So this whole site is in some part an experiment in showing up. Wish me luck.