Sometimes the next chapter of your life begins in a place you never expected.

VaylArik started long before it had a name. In 2007, my parents bought a piece of land in my dad’s childhood place and built a small one-bedroom cottage as their personal getaway.

At the time, I honestly had very little interest in the place.

Then, in 2025, my mom saw a possibility — why not turn the cottage into a place where people could stay?

That simple idea changed the way I looked at it.

I began researching what it would take to make it happen, using AI and deep research to understand the licences, requirements and steps involved. Repairs, the rainy season and the decision not to accept guests before we were ready all became part of the journey.

This episode isn't about my past.

It's about what I'm building now and where I want to go next.

A place I once had no reason to visit is slowly becoming something deeply connected to my future.

This is the beginning of VaylArik.

🎙️ Beyond the Space – My Life Story
Stay inspired. Never stop creating things which you like.

My journey with technology didn't start with AI. It started with curiosity.

My dad introduced me to technology, and since then I've always wanted to explore new tools, understand how they work, and find ways to use them differently.

When I discovered ChatGPT, I quickly realised it could be much more than a tool for correcting grammar or improving reports. I started using AI for research, organising information, exploring ideas and eventually helping me create dashboards, websites and applications.

Along the way, I've also experimented with tools like Google Gemini and Google Antigravity. I never took a paid AI course. I learned by asking questions, experimenting, making mistakes and trying again.

In this episode, I share how my thinking changed from “What answer can AI give me?” to “What can I create with AI?”

For me, AI isn't about replacing people. It's about having a powerful assistant that can help us save time, explore ideas and create things we may not have thought possible before.

The technology will keep changing. The tools will come and go.

But one thing shouldn't change:

Stay curious. Keep exploring.

What happens when you still want to contribute, but the opportunities to do meaningful work slowly disappear?

In this episode of Beyond the Space – My Life Story, I talk about a period when my responsibilities at work became less and I started feeling disconnected from the people around me. Knowing that people were talking about me behind my back made me withdraw even more. I started spending more time on my own, doing the work I had and trying not to get involved in things I could no longer change.

But that difficult period also pushed me towards something new.

With the help of AI, I started experimenting with podcasting and created HelloKochii, where I talked about things that genuinely interested me — from new technology to cafés and places I discovered around Kochi.

What started as a way to keep my mind occupied slowly became something more important. Creating gave me curiosity, energy and a sense of purpose again.

This episode is about stepping away from things I couldn't control, discovering the joy of creating, and realizing that sometimes a difficult chapter can quietly lead you towards your next one.

I joined a gym thinking I was simply looking for a better way to exercise. What I eventually found was a place that helped me quiet my mind.

People who know me know that I can get angry quickly. Over the years, I tried different gyms and different ways of dealing with that. Then, while scrolling through Instagram, I discovered Boxxburn in Kaloor.

What started as another attempt at fitness slowly became something much more important.

Through boxing, kettlebells, deadlifts, Animal Flow and group workouts, I began challenging not only my body but also my willpower. I learned to focus, improve my technique and keep going when I wanted to stop.

But the workouts were only part of the story.

The coaches, the people I met and the friendships I made turned the gym into a place where I could leave the pressures of everyday life outside for an hour and simply focus on what was in front of me.

In this episode of Beyond the Space — My Life Story, I talk about how exercise unexpectedly became one of the ways I found peace, managed my emotions and gave my mind the space to relax.

Sometimes peace isn't about staying still.

Sometimes, you find it through movement.

Working with a professional digital marketing agency felt like the beginning of something positive.

In this episode of Beyond the Space — My Life Story, Season 2, I share my experience of working with WebandCrafts—from visiting their office and starting the partnership to seeing recruitment campaigns generate resumes and new digital ideas begin to take shape.

But gradually, the process became more complicated. Candidate follow-ups didn't happen as expected, content approvals became extremely slow, proposed blogs didn't move forward, and more people became involved in decisions.

Eventually, the momentum we started with began to disappear.

The experience taught me an important lesson: hiring a good agency is only the beginning. Digital marketing also needs trust, timely decisions, internal follow-up, consistency, and enough freedom for professionals to do the work they were hired to do.

Sometimes marketing isn't what's failing.

Sometimes it's the process behind it.

Beyond the Space — My Life Story | Season 2

A personal journey through work, technology, decisions, setbacks, and the lessons that shaped what came next.

In this bonus episode of Beyond the Space — My Life Story, I share the story of an IT system I built long before it became part of the way we work today.

It started with a simple problem: IT complaints were being handled verbally, with very little history or tracking. That pushed me towards open-source ticketing and, later, an IT inventory database that could replace multiple Excel files.

I spent days and nights building and updating that database. It was criticised, pushed aside, and eventually stopped being used.

But during an ISO audit, something changed. When accurate inventory information was needed, the database that had been questioned became the system I could rely on.

Years later, in 2026, I brought the same idea back — but this time with one important difference: I wouldn't build and maintain everything alone. The team using the system had to take responsibility for it.

This bonus episode isn't really about software.

It's about persistence, responsibility, ownership, and one lesson I learned the hard way:

A system can only survive when the people using it take ownership of it.

In this bonus episode of Beyond the Space, I step away from the main story for a moment and share a more personal part of my journey.

I talk about my son, who means everything to me, and why the time we spend together whenever he comes to Kochi reminds me that life is much bigger than work.

I also share the story behind Cozetto—an idea that began in 2025 when a friend wanted to start a café. I suggested starting smaller with a cloud kitchen, and that simple conversation eventually grew into something real.

While I was enjoying the freedom of helping create something new outside the office, my professional life felt very different. I increasingly felt that I had little freedom to explore, contribute or make decisions, even in areas where I had years of experience.

That contrast helped me realise something important:

I hadn't lost my passion for technology, ideas or creating things. I simply needed a place where I had the freedom to use them.

This bonus episode is about the people who matter, the ideas that unexpectedly become real, and finding purpose when one part of your life no longer gives you the space to grow.

Beyond the Space — Bonus Episode
Finding Purpose Outside the Office

Sometimes a new direction begins when you realise it's time to put your energy somewhere else.

In this bonus chapter of Beyond the Space — My Life Story, I share how my curiosity about AI and ChatGPT grew into something much bigger.

What started as experimenting with a new tool soon became a way for me to work smarter, help others, create training material, develop books, experiment with podcasts, and discover new ways of turning ideas into something real.

There were moments when I felt overlooked. Opportunities to share what I had learned disappeared, while similar ideas returned later through other people.

But instead of allowing that to stop me, I kept learning.

I kept experimenting with AI, exploring new tools, improving workflows, and building things for myself.

This chapter isn't really about being left out.

It's about what happened when I stopped waiting for someone else to recognise what I could do and decided to keep developing those capabilities myself.

Sometimes the opportunity isn't given to you. Sometimes you create your own.

At 44, I reached a point where I had to seriously think about what I wanted from the rest of my life.

I was still a director in our family business, but after years of working in technology and IT, I no longer felt that I had a meaningful role or the freedom to make decisions.

Instead of continuing to fight for a place where I felt increasingly excluded, I decided to put my energy into something new.

A simple suggestion from my mother led to the birth of VaylArik, a peaceful stay built around the idea of Stay. Gather. Unwind.

At the same time, I decided to bring Neovura back with a new direction, focusing on online IT support and AI consulting.

In this part of Beyond the Space — My Life Story, I talk about reaching 44, questioning my career, dealing with setbacks inside the family business, and finally deciding that other people's opinions would not determine what I build next.

Maybe I'm starting later than I expected.

But I'm starting.

And this time, I'm choosing my own path.

In 2026, I was given another opportunity to manage the IT department of our family business. I believed it could be a fresh start—a chance to use my experience and once again make a meaningful difference.

But slowly, I realised that having the title didn't mean I had the authority.

Decisions were being made without me. People would go directly to my brother for approval and only come to me afterwards. Even areas I cared deeply about, including technology, websites, social media and creative work, were no longer really in my hands.

I went to the office every day carrying the responsibility of a role, but without the freedom to actually lead it.

This episode is about what that experience taught me: a title doesn't always give you a voice, and sometimes being pushed aside can become the reason you finally decide to build something of your own.