June 2025

To the one who is waiting to begin,

To the one who thought it was over,

amid the rust and through the dust,
to live your dream, you come here,
trusting the ways, proud and old,
until one day, they disappear.

December 2021. After spending the first year and a half of undergrad online — locked indoors by the pandemic — I finally stepped onto campus. Into college. And into the Robocon lab.

The ABU Asia-Pacific Robotics Contest — a dream for every college kid in this part of the world who loves to build robots. So was mine. I had waited for it all through high school, and here I was — recruited into the team by seniors online.

I opened the lab’s old wooden doors and breathed in rust and silence. Nobody had entered since the shutdown. A freshly welded steel chassis stood by the entrance, waiting for someone to finish its build. By the window sat a robot, pleading to move, its mecanum wheels cloaked in spider web. Drill bits and wrenches lay scattered like remnants of ambition and unfinished dreams.

The lab was speaking to me. I was excited. I had ideas. I had experience. I couldn’t wait to build.

But time passed. And so did our hope. Weeks turned into months as we waited — for instructions, for clarity, for a reason to begin. The seniors were silent. No one was building anything. And one by one, everyone who had been recruited alongside me started leaving.

The team felt abandoned. The competition season passed us by. I tried to stay hopeful — but the unease kept growing. Until one day, it spilled over.

standing alone where hope once breathed -
now shattered, scattered on the floor -
"what still remains?" you ask yourself,
what you came for is when no more.

My naïve optimism, stretched too thin, finally broke. I cried. For the dream I had chased for so long. For the team I never got to be part of. For the version of this story I thought I was living.

Disheartened and broken, with a stone on my chest, I too decided to quit.

But before I could, the team initiated one last thing: recruiting freshmen. I helped out, half-hearted and halfway gone — until I saw it: that unmistakable gleam in their eyes. A spark to build. A belief that we could be something great.

I saw in them who I once was.

And just like that, I knew. It was the beginning of a revolution.

---

Life doesn’t stop. Not when you're stuck. Not when you're waiting. You’re always walking a path — and if you didn’t choose it, someone else chose it for you.

That’s what the team had become — a path handed down, a name with no direction. We waited for signs from seniors who never came. We followed traditions we didn’t understand. And all the while, the dream — the one I came with — began to fade.

Until I chose to stay. To build something that didn’t exist yet — a system, a standard, a story worth passing on.

a whisper inside then screams at you
to see the future, sharp and true:
you'll build with love beyond your name
for those who'll build because of you.

Today, as I write this, I came across a video the team posted — their new robots playing basketball. Next month, they’ll take them to the Nationals. It’ll be the third time in a row. The first two, I led. This one, I’ll watch from afar.

And I smile. Because they’re no longer walking a borrowed path. They’re walking the one I helped pave.

That’s what I stayed for. Not just to build robots — but to build a future. One that would keep going, even after I left. And in the year since, two more student teams — in aero and rocketry — have emerged, each tracing back to the moment we showed it was possible.

But in a world that screams for your attention — pulling you toward every path but your own — how do you keep walking?

---

I don’t remember if the interviewer asked me why I wanted to join the Robocon team. But if they had, I’d have spoken of my love for building machines, my years of robotics competitions in school, and Robocon — Asia-Pacific’s most prestigious stage — being the natural next step. And I wouldn’t have been lying. But I would’ve missed the truth.

Because looking back, I wasn’t walking toward something. I was just following the signs laid down by others — mistaking momentum for direction. Everything changed when we brought in the freshmen. In their eyes, I saw what I had forgotten: that spark. That belief. That dream I had once carried in silence.

And suddenly, it wasn’t about experience anymore. It wasn’t about the résumé, the title, the path someone else had walked. It was about choosing.

I could walk the road my seniors left behind — or carve a new one forward. I could let the dream die again — or build it once and for all. I could listen to the voices shouting us down — or lead the team to a success so loud, their silence would say it all.

I chose the latter.

A motto was born: Engineer the Impossible.

That moment gave me direction — not just for the team, but for myself. And once I took that first step, there was no turning back.

so walk the path - you must - despite
its thorns and spikes to make you bleed,
for stronger than pain have you become,
now that you know why you must lead.

As you walk your own path, it’s not how you walk that shields you from doubt — it’s why you walk at all. It’s easy to get lost in the how — the tasks, the timelines, the noise. But don’t lose sight of this:

The where gives you direction — a vision of the future, even one that continues after you're gone.
The why gives you intention — the anchor that holds steady when everything else tries to pull you off course.
The where pulls you forward. The why holds you firm. And when you begin to walk — not blindly, but with both in hand — the path becomes yours. And the story, unforgettable.

Take a step back. Look ahead. Ask yourself, "Where am I going?"  Live with intention. Own your story.

---

For every dream that cracked but didn’t die,

Siddh

When you’ve found where you’re going, but the road ahead is foggy, and you’re not sure how to begin — read my

Letter to the One Who Fears the Unknown →