I’m from Tamil Nadu, at the southern tip of India. I studied at a government school and finished a B.Sc., then did what millions of young people from small towns do: got on a bus to Chennai. The city took me in the way it takes everyone in. At first everything amazed me. After a while it was just home.

In 2011 I started as a software engineer at a private company in Chennai. Somewhere along the way WordPress stopped being a tool I used and became a community I belonged to. I translate it, I’ve had small patches go into core, I organise meetups and WordCamps, and I’ve written a handful of plugins that people actually use.

Most of what I know, someone taught me for free. Ramanujam sir, my chemistry teacher, taught me discipline in a government-school lab, which had nothing to do with chemistry. The WordPress community taught me the rest, through code people gave away and answers people wrote for strangers. This site is my attempt to do the same for whoever comes next.

Outside of code

I’m a husband to Prema and a dad to Rohit, who likes to show up in my video calls without warning. I write in Tamil about politics, society, my village and the books I read. Those posts are under எழுத்து. Home food, slow mornings and a walk through a city I haven’t seen before are my idea of a good day.

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Want to say hello? I’m rajanvijayan on GitHub and rajanit2000 on WordPress.org and Slack, or use the contact page.