In the early stage, I learnt Kathak dance, represented Gujarat state for Kabaddi and Cricket as a lead player and drawing portraits. After my graduation, my association with performing arts and sports remained weaker and search to know and understand human endeavours grew stronger which I strengthened with educational qualifications and skills development. I did my post graduation in Development Communication and then in Linguistics, leading to PhD in Rural Studies.

By middle of 1980s, my search for well-being and better quality of life for all in the universe took a shape with a research and publication on ‘Unnatural Deaths of Women in Gujarat’, which was though a burning issue but less noticed and lesser worked upon. I continued working on less trodden path with research aptitude and skills and 1990s onwards my publications covered different issues and situation of the disadvantaged, marginalised and vulnerable communities such as widows, salt workers, pastoral, deprivation of dalits in various spheres of life, land alienation among tribals, employment needs of the marginalised communities and situation of human rights and legal action.

Simultaneously I was active as a member of the groups that were engaged in preparing alternative drafts for forest rights, women’s right to land, right to rehabilitation and resettlement (R & R) of the displaced population and so on. This work has helped in developing lobbying, advocacy skills and strategic planning for promoting rights of the deprived sections of the society. I could also contribute media productions (print, audio-visual) and conducting evaluation studies of government and nongovernment organisations (NGO) run programmes as part of team during last two decades.

Knowledge seeking was enhanced with my involvement in teaching ‘development issues’, ‘development strategies and planning’ and ‘development communication’. As a teacher, the cycle of translating social knowledge into social action and communication was empowering. With teaching, the analytic framework - caste, class and gender – had grounding with deeper theoretical understanding; interactions with students and social activists and field visits brought me closer to the ground realities. I could strengthen my academic interests with developing pedagogy to teach ‘development sociology’ and generating educational materials.

My association with civil society organisations and state level issue based networks continued for 25 years; of them SETU: Centre for Social Knowledge & Action, Ahmedabad and Behavioural Science Centre (St Xavier’s Non-formal Education Society) have played greater role in my grooming.

As a director of Behavioural Science Centre during 2007 and 2010, my eyes were opened up towards institution building and organisation development and its various aspects – knowledge generation – action – publishing; resource mobilisation; alliance building; human resource development and preparing planning, monitoring and evaluating (PM&E) frameworks. As Jesuits organisation, its feet are grounded with academic engagements too and thus running academic courses with St Xavier’s College, Ahmedabad and Indira Gandhi National Open University has provided an exposure to academic institutions.

In comparison to my body of work as ‘development sociologist’, my engagement with Tarot reading and use of cosmic energy for well-being of people are lesser known.

Many organisations have invested energy, time and resources for research, publications and conducted academic courses and several people have contributed to these processes and outcomes. I pay due credit to all of them with gratitude.