Mumbai · Goa · Sydney
Family & Extended Family
The people behind the person.
The people behind the person.
Every connector needs an anchor. Mine is this family. Nomita, who has been beside me since Bhavan’s College. Aniket and Kunal, who grew up watching their father build things and then went and built things of their own. Rachel, who married into the family and brought a creative force with her. Carlon, my brother, who started at SAM7 and ended up at the Commonwealth Bank of Australia. And two boys in Sydney — Phoenix and Vihaan — who carry the next chapter.
This page is for them.
Nomita Iyengar. Always the most elegant person in the room.
Sampath and Nomita. Adalaj, Ahmedabad. Still exploring together.
We met at Bhavan’s College. Both studying BSc Physics. Neither of us knew then what the next four decades would look like — the businesses, the communities, the cities, the stages. She has been present for all of it.
Nomita is not someone who stayed in the background. She co-founded Systems and Services with me in the early days — teaching DOS, Lotus, WordStar, and dBase when personal computing was still a novelty in India. She built her own career in parallel, moving from corporate training into education, earning a Cambridge Diploma, and landing at JBCN International School where she has been teaching IBDP and IGCSE Mathematics since 2015.
Her students call her precise, warm, and demanding in the best possible way. I call her the reason the house still works when I am off building things.
Her late mother Darpavati Singh’s kachoris and mango achaar are still made in our kitchen. Some things you protect.
“Always grounded. Always growing.”
Sisters: Sunita Singh (Frankfurt, aviation · husband Mahendra Singh) and Rita Singh (Bangalore, retired from education · husband Rakesh Singh).
Kunal Iyengar. Cream suit. Brown Oxfords. One shoe on, one shoe off. Completely his own person.
Kunal and Rachel. Garden portrait, Goa. Before the ceremony. Completely at ease.
Kunal heard music differently from the beginning. While his father was learning to network, Kunal was learning to listen — to what a scene needed, what a moment was asking for, what the silence between notes could carry.
He studied IT Engineering at Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Technology, then did a diploma in Music Technology and Pro Cinematic Techniques. He has since scored films, television series, advertisements, and title tracks that most people in India have heard without knowing his name.
Bawaal. Ram Setu. Bellbottom. Merry Christmas. The Diplomat. Katha Ankahee — 241 episodes. Sultan of Delhi. The Samsung advertisement. The Game ON title track.
He also co-founded The Indian Networker with me in 2014. The apple does not fall far.
Kunal and Rachel. Goa. Matching red. Hands raised. That says everything.
The D’Costa family. Bharati, Alwin, Rachel, Kunal, Neil, Roma. Ahmedabad meets Mumbai.
Rachel married Kunal and brought with her an energy the family did not know it needed — direct, creative, and completely unafraid of a blank canvas.
She runs two businesses. Phera Tales handles weddings — every detail, every moment, built around the people at the centre of it. Bum in the Butter is a creative agency and production house doing branding, digital, motion, social, film, and packaging. Their description of themselves: “A loud little rebellion. We build brands that look sharp, think smart, and feel like something.”
She fits right in.
Rachel’s family, from Ahmedabad: Bharati D’Costa (mother), Alwin D’Costa (father), Neil D’Costa (brother) and Roma D’Costa (Neil’s wife).
Aniket Iyengar. Moving fast. Building things.
Aniket grew up watching his father talk to everyone. Somewhere in there he absorbed the instinct — not the networking, but the underlying skill: understanding what people need and figuring out how to get it to them.
He studied Mechanical Engineering at VIT Vellore, then did his MBA in Marketing at NMIMS. He has moved fast since — from the family ecosystem at Neuralmaven to HT Media, ITC, a stint in the VEVE NFT platform across North America and Europe, Varun Beverages as a Young Sales Leader, and now Senior Manager at Urban Company.
He is building a career at speed. Watching it happen is one of the better things about this chapter.
Sampath and Carlon. Mumbai airport. Same starting point, different continents.
The two Iyengar boys. Flora Fountain, Mumbai. Still standing.
Carlon and I started in the same place. St. John the Evangelist High School, Marol. Then, years later, he joined SAM7 as Senior Network Support Engineer in 1997. Two brothers, one starting point.
He moved on to Wipro — 13 years across Mumbai, Pune, and Atlanta. Then to Sydney, managing the Wipro Technologies Service Delivery for the Sydney Water account. Then to the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, where he is now Operations Delivery Manager for the IT Service Desk.
He is the one who took the SAM7 instinct and applied it at a completely different scale. Saved Wipro $200,000 through asset optimisation. Moved 1,000+ IT assets without a minute of downtime. Won the Excellence in Customer Orientation award.
Different continent. Same work ethic.
The younger one. Grey suit, brown boots, completely relaxed against a staircase with a relief sculpture behind him. Just as composed as the name suggests.
Sydney. Already dressing better than most adults. The Iyengar name is in good hands on both sides of the world.
This section belongs to the people who are no longer here but whose presence runs through everything on this site. A Goan Catholic and a Tamil Brahmin. In the 1960s that took courage. What it produced was a household full of curiosity, warmth, and the belief that every problem was just a project waiting to be started.
Father and grandfather. Andheri. Two generations at the same table.
R.K. Swamy was the first person who taught me that every summer had to mean something.
He was a VJTI-trained Automobile Engineer — from the first pass-out batch of that programme. Photographic memory. Voracious reader. The kind of person who remembered everything he had ever read and connected it to whatever was happening in front of him.
He was also a professional photographer as a hobby — and his muse was almost always Laudina. Around 80% of the family photos are of her. A man who saw the world through a lens and chose to point it at the person he loved most.
He was a true experimenter — every time he came back from Qatar to Mumbai, he would bring a project. Wallpaper throughout the Andheri East house. Changed all the electrical wiring to square-type UK fittings. Then the plumbing — the entire house replumbed by his own hands. He would say: “Let’s do this, Chiku.” Chiku was his pet name for me.
His career took the family across the world. MES Kandivali → Digvijay Cement, Sikka → Dubai: Al Mulla, McDermott, Gulf Fleet International, IMS → Qatar Navigation (1982–1989).
A crane went over his leg on a job site. The doctors at Sion Hospital told him he would never walk again. He walked again. He did not make a story of it. He just walked.
He passed away in 2003. I miss him till today.
Laudina Iyengar. The constant through every city, every move, every chapter.
Laudina was from Goa. R.K. Swamy was a Tamil Brahmin from the south. A Goan Catholic and a Tam Bram — in the 1960s, that was not a common combination. It took courage and love to make that work in that era.
She ran the home through every city, every move, every school change, every career pivot. Dubai. Jamnagar. Mumbai. She was the constant. She was his muse. She is in almost every photograph he ever took. The warmth in those images is real.
Dad, Mum, Carlon (Tweety), and Grandpa Ramanujam. Taj Gateway, Mumbai. The whole family at the table.
Chief Personnel Manager at the Indian Naval Dockyard. Then Registrar at NITIE. Then Graham Firth Steel Products.
A true Tam Bram. The English ethics, the precision of language, the value placed on education and conduct — these came from him. Whatever is articulate about the way I think and speak — that grammar was set by my grandfather.
R.D. Singh. A life in Indian aviation. Remembered with love.
R.D. Singh spent his career in Indian aviation — Indian Airlines, Vayudoot, Jet Airways, Sahara, SpiceJet, Airworks. Associated with the Cosmopolitan Education Society.
A man who kept India’s skies running across four decades of change in the industry. No longer with us. Nomita carries his discipline and his warmth in equal measure.
Darpavati Singh. Nomita’s mother. Her kachoris and mango achaar live on in our kitchen.
Her kachoris and homemade mango achaar are still made in the Iyengar kitchen. Some recipes are not written down. They are remembered.
Her warmth lives in Nomita. Her recipes live in our home. Some things do not leave.
