For Chris Storey
जन्मदिन की हार्दिक शुभकामनाएँ · janmadina kī hārdik śubhakāmnāẽ — heartfelt wishes on your birthday.
Everyone needs a partner, right? I've started the tradition of marking the birthday of people who made an impact on my life with a page. No better person for the second edition than you, Chris. Today is your birthday — and I wanted to mark it properly.
— coming in shortly —
It doesn't always happen cleanly, when two people find each other at work. We certainly didn't understand each other on day one. But we had something: similar passions, a shared background enough to keep at it — and, it turned out, genuinely complementary wiring. I was passionate about engineering. You were passionate about the things engineering organisations tend to under-invest in: project management, delivery rigour, budget discipline. Until you, I had no real model of what a great PM looks like in practice.
What followed was years of Travelopia together — accelerating the tech journey of the brands we worked on, driving transformation, building delivery capability from the ground up. The innovations, the programmes, the pace we managed to hold: I genuinely don't know how I would have done it without your partnership and support. Starting from 2019 to today — so much done, so many things to be proud of, and your fingerprints are on all of it.
The ability to hold the whole picture while keeping it moving. To maintain a budget without letting it become a ceiling. To be the voice in the room that makes delivery actually mean delivery. To work with a partner who isn't always easy — and not just survive it, but make something worth being proud of.
And now there's chrisandsree.blog — our next thing. A series of blog articles, eventually a book, maybe a coffee table book. I'm really looking forward to that. More to do together — and I mean it.
I hope you're taking the day off today. Celebrating with your friends and family. In the Indian style, let me issue this wish properly: may you live long, healthy, happy, and prosperous. Wishing you a very happy birthday, an amazing day, and an amazing year ahead. Thank you, Chris, for our partnership.
Today is a Monday — and in Jyotish, Monday belongs to the Mind
Your birthday falls on Somavara — Monday, the day of the Moon (चन्द्र Chandra). In Jyotish, the Moon doesn't just rule the tides and the nights: it rules the mind itself. The quality of attention you bring to the room. The emotional intelligence that reads a team before it speaks. The capacity for memory, for pattern, for holding many threads at once and knowing which one matters. The Moon is the karak of the inner life — and of partnerships: the planet that binds minds together, the one that makes two people start completing each other's sentences.
And the number: the 22nd, which in Ank Jyotish — Vedic numerology — reduces to 2 + 2 = 4, the number of Rahu. Rahu is the unconventional builder, drawn to systems and technology, drawn to foreign partnerships and cross-cultural work. Rahu finds a better route through when the obvious path is closed. Rahu does what hasn't been done before and then quietly makes it the new normal. If you've ever worked alongside a PM who fits that description…
And the quiet coincidence: June 22 falls the day after the summer solstice — the peak of light has just passed, and the year begins its quieter, inward turn. A birthday right at the hinge. There's something fitting in that: a moment of reflection right after the maximum, a pause before the harvest season begins.
दीर्घायुष्मान् भव
May you be long-lived, ever well, and surrounded by the people who matter most.
Happy birthday, Chris.