>> About me

Hello and welcome to my personal pages. Now that you’re here I’ll bore you with a brief introduction of: me, my family, and my place. I'm Ashutosh Nandeshwar. I was born (1st July 1979) and brought up in Nagpur, Maharashtra, India. I have attended following schools and colleges in Nagpur.
— 1st - 4th Grade- Somalwar Primary School, Khamla, Nagpur
— 5th - 10th Grade - Somalwar High School, Ramdaspeth, Nagpur
— 11th - 12th Grade - Hadas High School and Junior College, Nagpur
— B.E. with major as Industrial Engineering - Ramdeobaba Kamla Nehru Engineering College (RKNEC), Nagpur
I completed M.S. from WVU in Industrial Engineering and currently, I'm doing Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering at West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV and working full time as an Institutional Research Information Officer at Kent State University. Visit my department's home page RPIE. You can see my resume here and my contact information on the contact page. Read about my primary school days here.

>> About my family

We are a big family of 12 members. Raj S. Nandeshwar, my father (baba in Marathi), after 32 years of service retired as an Asst. Commissioner of Revenues, Commissioner office Nagpur in 2005. Raj means King. Kalpana R. Nandeshwar, my mother (aai in Marathi), is a teacher in Saraswati High School, Shankar Nagar, Nagpur. She started teaching just after I was born, i.e. 1979 and she has quite a few years for retirement, but she is bored and tired by the monotonous job and wants to call it quits. Kalpana means imagination.

Yatish, my eldest brother, is following baba's steps and started his career in government service. Yatish is not a common name and it means Lord of devotees. Leena, my sister-in-law (Vahini in Marathi) got married to Yatish in 2000. She works with the Nagpur Mahila Nagri Sahkari Bank Ltd, and completed her M.A. in Marathi and B.Ed. from Nagpur University. Leena means light or illumination, and devoted. Yatish and Leena have a cute, wonderful, and naughty son Advait. Advait was born on 30th March 2001. Advait means not two or unique.

Amit, the middle son, my elder brother, is currently working with American Express, Mumbai, as a Vendor Manager (his resume). Amit means unlimited. Amit got married to Gautambala in 2001. Gautambala is a practicing Lawyer and her specialization is environmental laws. She completed her Master of Law (LL.M.) from Mumbai University. Gautambala means daughter of Gautam, and Gautam was last name of prince Siddhartha who later became the Buddha. Amit and Gautambala also have a naughty and cute son, Arhant. Arhant was born on 12th December of 2003. Arhant means the fully awakened one. It is a Pali word meaning "one who has attained liberation by eliminating the karmic tendencies and dissonant emotions which give rise to compulsive existence in a cycle of death and rebirth." - copied from nashvillebuddhistfestival.com. It is a stage before a person becomes the Buddha, the enlightened one. I'm also planning to give the pronunciations of all the names in an audio file. Let's see if I can do that soon. To know more about me, please see my blog.

I got married to Utpalvarna on 25th of June 2005 in Nagpur and Utpalvarna is accompanying me here in the U.S. She has done a Bachelors in Civil Engineering from Nagpur and an MBA from Mumbai. Utpalvarna means color of lotus. Long time back there was a Buddhist monk named Utpalvarna.

We have two new additions in our family. Utpalvarna and I are proud parents of Asanga (boy) who was born on the 25th of April 2007. Asanga was a great Buddhist philosopher and founder of consciousness only school of Buddhism. Second addition is of Maitreya, son of Amit and Gautambala, born on the 28th of April 2007. In Pali Maitreya means compassion. According to Buddhist scriptures, a Maitreya Buddha will come in this world to teach the world about compassion. There is story about Asanga and Maitreya: read here.

>> About Nagpur

Oh! Nagpur. My wonderful Nagpur. To sound very clichéd, Nagpur is also known as Orange city. Vidharbha region, which includes following districts, Akola Amaravati, Bhandara, Buldhana, Chandrapur, Gadchiroli, Gondia, Nagpur, Wardha, and Yawatmal, is famous for its Oranges, especially Nagpur.

Some important info about Nagpur
Total Area - 9892 sq. km.
Total Urban Population (2001) - 26.07 lakhs or 2.6M (1 lakh = 100,000)
Literacy Rate (2001)- 84.18% the second greenest city of the country
10th richest city in the country
Sixth highest number of "crorepatis" in the country ( 1 crore = 10M)
114th largest city in the world - citymayors.com
Geographically exact center of India - "Zero mile" - the dead center of the country has this pillar made of stone (see this pic at tariquesani.net)

Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, a great social movement leader and father of the constitution of India, embraced Buddhism and left Hinduism, along with millions of his followers at Nagpur. The place where the conversion took place is known as Deekshabhoomi. The site is regarded as a pilgrimage centre for Buddhist and this place a great Stupa is built.

Nagpur has all to make it a really big city, it's just matter of time that everybody will recognize its wealth and resources. MIHAN a multi-modal international airport is coming up in Nagpur, with Boeing's MRO facility and India's leading IT companies are signing MOU's, Nagpur will soon be a top destination for IT and aviation industry. Have a look at this pdf file to know more about Nagpur. (Size: 600kb)

Nagpur has a touch of an old and new city. It also has all kinds of people, of all religions and all languages. That makes Nagpur very unique. People from Nagpur, a.k.a. Nagpuri people, talk about three things in Nagpur, heat, greenery and the roads. Heat; because the temperatures in the summer can reach up to 48 deg C or 118 deg F. Greenery; because there are lots of trees all over the city and from the sky it looks all green, did I mention the second greenest city of the country? :) The roads are really nice, due to efforts of Dr. Chandrashekar (ex-Municipal commissioner of Nagpur).

Also, Nagpuri people have a very different slang, a kind of Hindi and Marathi. Very few people actually speak Marathi in public, even if its their mother tongue, most of the times its Hindi. I've created a webpage to list the Slang, and it received a good response from my fellow Nagpurians. I've also posted some pictures from my recent visit in 2004 of Nagpur Visit.
Sites for more info of Nagpur:
http://nagpur.nic.in/
http://www.nagpurkhoj.com/