Not cloud-hosted. Not rented from someone else's server.
Fifty-seven years compiled on local hardware —
the kind that survives power cuts and monsoons
and thirty years away from home.
No version control for the early builds.
Just trial, error, and the dialup screech of learning
in a Fujairah villa,
assembling the machine nobody helped with.
The commits are all there if you look:
a father's one quiet sentence,
a student with no job and a slow connection —
taught online until he found his footing,
and came back to Kerala just to say thank you.
Fifty-seven pages. Some of them dog-eared.
Some written in Gulf dust, some in Kerala rain.
The architecture is not perfect.
But the fingerprints are real, and they are mine.
Still pushing. Still building.
The watchtower stands in Eravipuram —
though Thekkumbhagom, Chavara
never lets me forget where the roots actually are.
Still being treated like a pravasi.