I grew up in a farming family in a village in central Kerala. As a kid I didn’t have a clear dream of what I’d become. I was introverted, and talking to people — especially confrontation — made me anxious.
My father is a farmer. Even then I noticed how he thought. He often found another way into the same problem, another door the rest of us weren’t looking at. That habit influenced me more than any speech could have.
School was hard. I dealt with a lot of discrimination, mostly indirect — the kind that hurts and then pretends it didn’t mean to. My academics suffered.
For a long time I kept to myself. Being alone felt peaceful in a way that’s hard to explain to someone who wants company. It also meant I could try things and fail without an audience. My father’s way of flipping a problem helped me see that: the quiet wasn’t only isolation. It was space.
Computers were still new around me then. I liked that machines don’t judge you. They follow rules. That made them easy to learn with. So I spent a lot of childhood closed in with machines, the internet, books, experiments, teaching myself.
I also learned what breaks learning: distraction. People were the hardest distraction. I didn’t have much of that then, and I’m glad.
I got interested in logic — rules, instructions, the base of programming. Machines, whatever the language, are basically “when this, do that.” Later I noticed minds aren’t that different: messier, but still hungry for structure.
College
After school I needed a college path. I didn’t know what career I wanted, and I didn’t have anyone guiding me. I needed a degree that could lead to a job. That led me to hospitality.
I studied at IHMCT&AN, Chennai. In my final year I was selected for Club Mahindra’s (MHRIL) management trainee program in housekeeping. First posting: Udaipur, Rajasthan.
I cleaned rooms and mopped floors and stairs. Fifteen to eighteen hour days, seven days a week, no weekly offs at the start. Hotel work is tough early on. Once it becomes routine, you get a kind of stamina corporates don’t always teach. Discipline was the real gift.
Goa, then Coorg
I moved to South Goa — Varca — as a supervisor. I still like housekeeping as a subject. It’s detail work: art and process together.
Then Coorg, with a different brief.
The SEWA Chronicles
Mr. Prakash Aranha, who handled corporate L&D for resort operations, handpicked a small group for a project. He wanted something the company could call its own around SEWA — Service with Empathy, Warmth and Attentiveness — real service stories in illustrated form, as employee appreciation. He asked for ideas. I answered. We talked. He asked if I could do it. I said yes.
Club Mahindra already logged strong customer-service stories in an online portal. I went through those logs from the beginning of the company, picked ten that mattered, and only kept ones where the employee was still with us. I called each person without saying why at first, and checked with managers and colleagues so we weren’t celebrating the wrong story.
About three months later we printed the first volume of The SEWA Chronicles: ten stories from seventy-plus resorts. It did well — less because of how it looked, more because the stories had been checked. Early creative project: my design, his direction.
Marriott and Concentrix
I stayed with Mahindra until an Assistant L&D Manager role opened at Courtyard by Marriott, Mahabaleshwar. More responsibility on the learning and HR side. That stretch shaped a lot of how I work now.
I wanted to treat learning as a craft with a method — instructional design. Next stop: Concentrix, where I still work, building learning that has to hold up with real people.
Entertrainer is this site. Elevate is where the essays live. Same thread as the floors and the phone calls: make something someone can actually use.
— Naveen