I have spent thirty-two years inside a refinery. The work has been satisfying — technically demanding, operationally consequential, and deeply tied to the energy story of modern India. But a refinery is not the whole world. And as I approach the final chapter of a long career, I find myself wanting to put some things into words.

This website is the result of that impulse. It is, in one sense, a professional record — a place where my career at Numaligarh Refinery Limited (NRL) is documented for anyone who wishes to understand what thirty-plus years in petroleum industry projects, procurement and warehouse management actually looks like. But it is also something more personal: a platform for reflection, and eventually, a blog.

The Unexpected Collaborator

There is something fitting about the fact that this website was built with the help of artificial intelligence. I am not a web developer. I have no background in HTML or CSS. Yet here we are — a complete, functioning website with a live news dashboard pulling from seventeen sources across six categories, built through a sustained conversation with Claude, Anthropic's AI assistant.

This experience has made something concrete that I had previously only read about: AI is not a tool for specialists. It is, increasingly, a tool for anyone with a clear intent and the willingness to engage. The barrier between an idea and its execution has collapsed in ways that will reshape every profession — including the petroleum and engineering sectors that I have worked in for three decades.

I intend to write about this more. The implications of AI for material management, procurement, warehousing and SAP-driven enterprise systems are profound and underexplored. Someone who has spent their career building deep domain knowledge in these areas has something to contribute to that conversation — and I plan to do so.

Vedic Astrology: The Other Half of My Thinking

If AI represents the forward edge of my intellectual life, Vedic astrology represents its roots. I have studied Jyotish — the ancient Indian science of light — for many years. It is not a belief system I hold uncritically; it is a framework I have tested against lived experience and found remarkably accurate in its broad contours.

My own chart carries configurations that, when I look back honestly, explain a great deal — a career of public duty, periods of intense transformation, and a quietly persistent philosophical undercurrent that I did not always recognise while I was living through it. The chart, as I have come to understand it, does not dictate outcomes; it describes tendencies and timing.

I will write here about planetary transits and what they mean in practical terms — not as fortune-telling, but as a tool for timing, self-understanding and perspective. The quality of certain periods in life becomes far more comprehensible when viewed through this lens. I want to document those observations honestly.

What Else Will Appear Here

I follow cricket devotedly, particularly Test cricket — a format that mirrors life more closely than any other sport. The patience required, the reversals of fortune, the importance of character under pressure — it is all there in five days of Test match play. I will write about that too.

I care deeply about Northeast India — its development, its cultural richness, its relationship with the rest of the country. Assam's story is not yet told as fully as it deserves to be, and I have lived inside it for my entire professional life. The expansion of NRL, the petrochemical corridor, the connectivity projects along the Bangladesh border — these are stories that matter and that I know from the inside.

And I will write about the transition ahead. Retirement, when it comes on 31 January 2028, will be a significant change. Moving from Numaligarh to Guwahati; from the rhythm of a refinery to something more self-directed. I imagine that process will generate its own reflections.

A Note on Tone

I have no interest in performing expertise or writing for approval. What I can offer is direct observation, accumulated experience, and honest engagement with ideas. If something is uncertain, I will say so. If I have changed my view on something, I will say that too. The best writing I have encountered over the years has been frank — and I intend to write in that spirit.

Welcome to this corner of the internet. I hope you find something here worth your time.

— Pankaj Kumar Saikia, Numaligarh, June 2026