Hi, I am a researcher at UPenn. I went to grad school in Pittsburgh, and do research in the area of health policy and statistics. I dig good food (as long as it didn't move - veggie here!), museums, local history, bars, and the arts scene in places I visit. My first Airbnb host reviewed me as 'an ambitious wanderlust' and I have been shamelessly using that on all my profiles ever since. I'm also somebody who loves taking those small detours from planned things - spontaneity and un-organization are highly underrated!

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

As a host, I am hoping to test my self-proclaimed hosting skills, and have guests (and hosts) sample and gloat about the awesome (vegetarian) food I make (ahem, I could use some modesty here!). I'd love to introduce guests to the local food-museum-history-bar scene. Being a researcher comes with its perks and costs - the latter being to do with school and research deadlines being a perennial factor, but I'll try to be as flexible as I can in showing you around.

As a guest, it would be about meeting new people and seeing the places I travel to from a local perspective.

On a more nuanced note, I feel the power of human connection is highly underrated and it is all the more needed today (look up from your phones, dear people!) I would love to use my and others' travels as a way to meet interesting people, learn and teach by engaging in meaningful conversations, and actively participate in our wider global community.

Interests

Food. Family. Politics. Policy. Yoga. Running. Dance. Not in that order.

I am a politics (and policy) junkie, and love to engage in conversations from a wide variety of perspectives. I have an activisity streak, but that comes along with making efforts to speak beyond the choir, and going beyond the 'bubble' that academia sometimes lets you in. Yoga, running, and dancing are my release, along with donning the chef hat every once in a while to lure my friends over!

• writing
• books
• fashion
• dancing
• yoga
• running
• politics
• public policy
• food
• bars
• museums
• hikes
• trails

Music, Movies, and Books

As much as grad school lets me go beyond the school books, I am into :
- Salman Rushdie remains a favorite - the sophisticated and flamboyant rusticity which characterizes his writing, betraying an innate Indian-ness without diluting nuance or grammar. Shalimar, Midnight's Children, The Moor's Last Sigh - I love them all.
- Non-fiction: James Baldwin, Arundhati Roy, Ramachandra Guha, Raghuram Rajan, Thomas Piketty, Pratap Bhanu Mehta, Jawaharlal Nehru, Amartya Sen.
- Fiction against a strong socio-political backdrop: Arundhati Roy, Khaled Hosseini, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Mohsin Hamid, Mohammed Hanif, Aatish Taseer.
- Finally, Wodehouse and Shakespeare - growing up would not have been complete without them.
S. Radhakrishnan's Bhagwad Gita and Tagore remain aspirational reads.

Latest reads: Sapiens (Yuval Noah Harari); The Underground Railroad(Colson Whitehead)

I also dig late night TV - addicted to the Colberts, the Meyers, the Trevors, the Bees, and the Olivers; and binge-watching 30 Rock, Seinfeld, SNL, The Office......

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

Make running a habit - ran my first half-marathon (1:43) in Pittsburgh summer 2018, and first full marathon (4:16) in Philly 2019! Kind of a big deal for me, especially as someone who grew up completely averse to any form of sports (for context, the only sport I would participate in middle school was in food-eating, and yours' sincerely kicking a ball in a soccer field was a one-time event and a sell-out event).

Countries I’ve Visited

Canada, India, Japan, United States

Countries I’ve Lived In

India, United States