Sunday, September 20, 2009

Long time pending update

A long overdue post. Long, long overdue. It should have come out eons ago, and it has taken a combination of illness, fatigue and Peeya's trip to up north to get down to writing this. It is difficult to live through nine days, in a house, alone, without having to hear the chirp through the duration of the day, that one is so otherwise used to.


Amazingly difficult, something that I realised in the past week or so. The illness may have added to it, but it was the first time I did what I did, when I called mum over to stay with me because I found it difficult to manage. The least I can say about my mum's reaction is that she was stunned.


Anyways, the post is not about that though. (That was only to make Peeya feel good...okok...kidding!)


It is about my previous three months. The three months I completed on the 12th of September. Three of my first months that I took a decision that I should have probably three years ago. Or even thirty - had I been alive then. The future may have a different story written, but the scriptso far can be described in only one word.


Exhilarating.


Probably two; add accelerating as well.


Never. Never ever could I have imagined this in my very first quarter of the pendulum shift that I had decided upon. But to think of it, even without my explicit knowledge, the pendulum had been shifting all the while, and unlike a real clock, it was going around in all directions. Picture this; an electronics engineering graduate, who wasn't sure about what after college, but was most certain about one thing; never would I get near a software firm.


And what happens next? Company M comes on campus, I clear the aptitude round, the group discussion and the interview to get selected. Incidentally, M is a software firm. I agree to join. Forget the GRE of a near 2200, forget MS in the US of A, just wanted to join M. Those who know me up close know how dreadful I felt about anything that remotely sounded like code.


So then, I spend three years in M. Decided to go for an MBA after that. Probably because everyone else was also doing the same. But the specialisation can never be Marketing - am not born to sell. Could not negotiate to save my life. Yet, at the end of the first year, marketing it was! Not surprising eh?


End of two years. End of MBA (glad riddance I must say, and for more reasons than one, which I will not go into in this post, that is for my autobiography - as they say, khaaya peeya kuchh nahi, glass toda baara aana!)


And where do I get work again? Software! Company called A. Makes me a Business Analyst. Holy shit; what a designation. And good pay as well. Pappu pass ho gaya; with a near seven-digit pay. The profile was exactly what I wanted two years back, and I had managed to join those few 'elite' of the crowd who wanted a profile on the first day of their MBA and got exactly that. There was almighty.


Except, that when I started - or restarted after the post-grad - it wasn't what I wanted to do! Not for a day, not for a hour, not for a minute. Not for the minutest iota of time.


I wanted to live my dream. A dream that had always existed but knew no vent. A dream that had been flamed by every incident big or small that could flame it. A dream that told me it was now or never.


The last three months are about that very dream. Yes, I quit the Business Analyst profile. Oh hell, I quit the company three months back. I must add that it was much to the chagrin and shock of my boss, who always - rather ludicrously - thought that I had the potential in software. (no dirty thoughts about software or hardware here please!) That was probably because I hadn't told him about my fetishes. Bid my farewells and started what I always wanted to do right from the time I remember not understanding the rules of test match cricket as an eight year old. (funnily, as an eight year old, I thought that test match cricket had to finish five times in five days, once at the end of every day and if it didn't, that day was called a draw!)


Oh and yes, it has been only three months. A really short time to gauge or appraise success or failure. But enough to talk about how not a single Monday morning has been associated with the word 'blue'! Speaks volumes, ain't it?