Kalyan was born in the United States to an Indian father and American mother and grew up between Wisconsin and his father's native country.

Each one of Kalyan's works is about the destructive nature of the human condition. He is hard but empathetic with the message. He says, "The great men we have killed, the environment we have destroyed and the lies we tell ourselves are terrible things. But we are supposed to hate the sin and love the sinner. And the sinner is everyone who looks at my work. And the sinner is me. Because we are all human."