Hyderabad Days

Name: Hyderabad Days
Author: https://www.simonandschuster.biz/authors/Ravi-Vedula/257703412
ISBN: 9798999755070

The code we lived by before we coded

By Ravi Vedula

PRICE MAY VARY BY RETAILER

Rave and Reviews

About The Book

A nostalgic, big-hearted memoir of a Hyderabad colony in the 80s–90s—and the unwritten code of community that became a foundation for a life of software engineering and leadership.

Hyderabad Days is a tender, humorous, and deeply nostalgic memoir of childhood in 1980s–90s middle-class India, told through the eyes of a boy growing up in a Panjagutta colony. With vivid storytelling and a cast of unforgettable characters — from cricketing legends of the lane to sari-clad sisters who led in silence — this collection of slice-of-life chapters paints a world of shared TVs, Gold Spot bottles, kirana-store diplomacy, and friendships that defied caste, class, and religion.

But this is more than just a return to dusty lanes and colony cricket. It is also the story of how those chaotic, joy-soaked years forged the instincts of an engineer and, later, the perspective of a leader. The resourcefulness of stretching ten rupees for a cricket ball became the foundation for innovation. The diplomacy of settling gully cricket disputes became a lesson in mediation. The solidarity of colony life became the bedrock of resilience and humanity that guided a career spanning global teams and glass-walled conference rooms.

Written by a senior technology executive looking back on the roots that shaped both his childhood and his leadership, Hyderabad Days is a heartfelt tribute to a way of life that has all but vanished — a time when childhood was local, laughter was communal, and every setback or success carried the quiet lessons of character.

For fans of: R.K. Narayan, Ruskin Bond, Sudha Murty — and, in its own way, The Soul of a New Machine — blending nostalgia with the blueprint of how engineers and leaders are made.

About The Author

Ravi Vedula

Ravi Vedula is a lifelong engineer, storyteller at heart, and a Corporate Vice President at Microsoft, where he has spent over 25 years building systems, services, and data platforms that quietly power the modern world. But long before the meetings, the metrics, and the cloud infrastructure, Ravi was a barefoot boy chasing cricket balls down the dusty lanes of Panjagutta, Hyderabad.

Raised in a middle-class colony brimming with flavor, noise, and unlikely friendships, Ravi’s earliest lessons came not from textbooks, but from paan-stained walls, shared festival sweets, and late-night chats under flickering streetlamps. These experience of inclusion, innocence, mischief, and memory form the heart of Hyderabad Days, his deeply personal debut.

Ravi, a heart-transplant survivor, now lives in Seattle with his wife, navigating a different kind of weather but still holding close the rhythms of the monsoon, the echoes of colony loudspeakers, and the wisdom of elders who never needed PowerPoint to be heard. When he's not solving complex engineering problems, he loves to travel, reflect, and chase stories that connect the past to the present.

This book is a return home—for him, and perhaps for anyone who remembers a simpler world that shaped who they became.

Product Details

Publisher: 8080 Books (March 31, 2026)
Length: 384 pages
ISBN13: 9798999755070

Browse Related Books

Raves and Reviews

“Ravi always had a gift for articulation. His stories are our stories too. In reading this book, we got to live our childhood again. Precious!”

– - Vamsi Mohan Thati, President, Barry Callebaut Chocolates
Former President - China, The Coca Cola Company

“Ravi Vedula’s Hyderabad Days is an elegantly written memoir about the “code” that he—like many other Indian-American software developers—learned in their colonies, or neighborhoods, as kids before they learned to code for computers.”

– - Greg Shaw, Editor, 8080 Books;
Co-author of Satya Nadella

“My younger brother Ravi resurrected the memories that comprised our childhood in the chapters of Hyderabad Days so vividly. He writes with heart, humor and honesty, as he tells us of the things that became part of our inner core as children and later evolved into a durable foundation for facing life. The book made me laugh, cry, hope, smile, and re-live all the elements that made our family.”

– - Nagender Vedula, Senior Vice President of Engineering, ScienceLogic,
Ex Microsoft and GoDaddy

“As someone who works closely with Ravi, I immediately recognized the values in this memoir—empathy, grit, humor—because they’re the same qualities he brings to his leadership every day. Hyderabad Days is as moving as it is inspiring.”

– - Chris Harig, Senior Director of Program Management, Microsoft Corporation

“Ravi took me down nostalgia lane, pleasantly reminding me of all the little things we’d forgotten in our busy lives—the very things that shaped who we are today. His humor and storytelling, wrapped around such vivid details, are as engaging now as they were on our walks to high school four decades ago.”

– - Madhukar Reddy, VP Central Engineering, Maxlinear

“Hyderabad Days is a beautifully crafted memoir that blends vivid storytelling with timeless insights. Ravi takes us inside the rhythms and gullies of a community — where friendships, family rituals, and everyday challenges quietly shaped character and leadership. It’s a narrative that feels personal yet universal, reminding us that the foundations of resilience and empathy often begin in the humblest of places.”

– - Steve Clayton, Vice President, Microsoft Communications