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Ditthi's painting, 2025: a cat sits on a stone path between two cliffs, looking out at a sunset over the sea, with flowers in front and birds overhead.

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My story

Kolkata, Doha, Abu Dhabi, Charlottetown.

  1. Kolkata to Doha

    Leaving Kolkata

    I'm two when my parents pack their bags, hold my sister's hand, carry me, and leave Kolkata to start a new life in Doha. My sister is three and a half. My mother has just lost her grandmother, and my father is recovering from a road accident.

  2. Doha

    A house key in grade one

    My dad works at a camp far away, an engineer some years and a project manager others. My mom teaches at a school and takes tuitions right after.

    Some days I don't see her at all: she leaves before I wake up for school, and I'm asleep before she gets home. So my sister and I learn to cook, and from grade one she carries the house key.

  3. Doha

    Quarks before ten

    We have a PC at home. I watch educational videos on it for fun, and when something breaks I troubleshoot it through the Windows options.

    There's an Ask Me Anything book in our mini home library: deep underwater creatures, far away stars. Nothing fascinates me more than space and the physics of it. I know what quarks are before I'm ten.

  4. Doha, then Abu Dhabi

    Odissi, then Kathak

    My mom puts me in Odissi classical dance classes after seeing my flair for dance.

    In grade 5 we move to Abu Dhabi, for a better opportunity for my dad. I join Kathak for two years to keep a classical practice going. I also get an iPad. I may be an iPad kid, but I use it for drawing and for more educational videos.

  5. Abu Dhabi

    Teaching my mother

    Teaching fills up with more technology than my mom can easily keep up with, and I already have an intuition for it. With my help she gets better. Then she tells me to look into data science.

  6. Abu Dhabi

    Swapping biology for computer science

    Science is my favourite subject. I love biology, but I don't see myself in that field, so I take the science stream with maths and swap biology for computer science. I want to try my luck.

    Two years of Python and MySQL later, I'm in love with coding. Logic that works feels the same as solving a puzzle.

  7. Abu Dhabi to Charlottetown

    Options

    My sister is at UPEI for biotech, so we decide I'll go where she is. UPEI has no astrophysics program, but I know computer science applies to any field. I love having options, so I take it.

  8. Summer 2024

    North

    My first summer, I travel with Actua to remote communities in northern Canada and teach STEM to Indigenous children. I learn more about Indigenous knowledge from Elders than reading any book could teach me.

    The North story

  9. Halifax

    Still looking up

    I go to Pulsar Launchpad in Halifax once, and my love for space hasn't died. I'll always be looking for ways to apply my skills in that field.

  10. My first dream

    My first dream is to retire my parents, not so they stop working, but so they only ever work because they want to.

Small things

  • I'm obsessed with One Piece.
  • I've cat-sat three times and dog-sat once.
  • Four newborn kittens turned up under my dad's car. I looked after them for a week before they went to a shelter.
  • When there's time, I paint, dance contemporary, and I'm learning to sew.

Ditthi's painting, 2025: a cat sits on a stone path between two cliffs, looking out at a sunset over the sea, with flowers in front and birds overhead.

The painting

I painted this in 2025: a cat on a stone path, looking out at the sea at sunset. It isn't any cat I know. Cats have a special place in my heart.

The world my story walks through is built from it. The grass, the flowers, the rock, the sea and the sky are cut from this painting and laid over a 3D scene. The painting gave me a place to tell my story in.

The cat is “Cat” by J-Toastie (CC BY 3.0, via Poly Pizza), repainted dark with faint tabby stripes and posed for this page.

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