Career Decisions - 2

When I re-read the previous part, I felt that I had been a bit too unfair to my parents. After all, they had suggested a course of career which they felt was right, and about which they had knowledge. It was my lack of strength or will-power that did not make me put my foot forward strongly for the stream that I thought I was cut out for. Perhaps, I am only finding a hook to hang by overburdened overcoat of failures.

Anyways, the job rollercoaster ride began. I wasn't exactly a rip-roaring success in the corporate world, but I was not a denizen of its nether-world either. Like my marks in school, I was average. I lasted four months in the first one, and four years in the second. But failure was just round the corner.

The company was in doldrums. Retrenchment began. I got the axe. Five months I was without a job; five months of a harrowing experience, wherein the parents' sympathies crystallised into an uneasy bitterness. The soles of my shoes rubbed against the heated Delhi roads as I made the rounds of various consultants. I was sacked, I couldn't tell them. No one would believe that it was not due to my fault, but just because the company wanted to shut off and was slowly shedding off expensive burdens. But it was still a company that existed, and if I was the first lot to go, I must surely been a bit too of a burden. So, I fed stories which were not even convicing to myself.

Five months of hell, I got a job; in a prestigious bank. Looking back, that was the time I could have made a career switch; I was young, more idealistic, and less cynical. I did not , because the desperate tag of being retrenched stuck its tongue out at me with disdain. The bank was good, it had name, and it would never shut down. But it was the same line, the same work, the same product. I grabbed the opportunity.

Things were not hunky dory; the bank had weird and stringent policies that could get itself nowhere in the cut-throat Delhi market. People who had joined with me started dropping out; I also thought of doing so, but did not for the simple reason of being overtly lazy, and given to the inertia of carrying on with the flow; fresh blood came in; suddenly, the weather changed; and I found myself as a sort of a 'veteran' in the scheme of things (despite being only a year or so into the job. Being the oldest in the team, and having the experience of seeing the initial policies, and giving vent to build fresh ones, I was in a coveted position. There were changes in the top management also, and they relied on me for providing them inputs. I gave all that I knew, and through them got the changes done that were required. The team grew, and as more new people came, the more senior I became.

A bizarre idea was sounded off; but I saw a spark in it. When officially offered to me, I took it up. And began to give it shape. Before I realised, the new concept was working. The numbers grew every month; the profit figures looked neat; the team was happy in my leadership. I had the freedom to do what I wanted, and clearly the results were showing. My bosses were pleased, and those were the two years that I thoroughly enjoyed in my entire ten years of career. The late nights, the extended weekends, the thrill at the tingling numbers gave me a hitherto-unknown adrelanin rush. I was at a peak, I was invited to top-management functions and discussions; I gave trainings to fresh management recruits; the head of the bank knew me by name; colleagues from the department envied me; other departments praised me. I also got the slot in the coveted Six Sigma project - a foregone conclusion. I was satisfied, I, even lost touch with my writing. For nearly three years, I did not pen anything, not even a letter-to-the-editor for Filmfare; and I was not missing it either!

But then, things snapped. It was like a giant wheel ride that had started slowly, and gained speed, but it did not stop at a steady pace, it just simply went on to a dizzying pace. I was giddy. With everything that was going correct, something had to go wrong. I had trusted my luck too far. It did. What goes up, has to come down, and my downhill tumble began.

Things began to fall apart.

At first they were small, and I ignored the signs. But they began to pile up, and I was burdened under their weight. The going that was great, began to grate. The motion gave me no emotion. Everything looked odd and strange and hurtful and hateful. Also, in the corporate world, when a project gets unwarranted success, everyone wants to be a part of it. Suddenly, I found thwarted by mindboggling policies and procedures. Approvals were required at every small step. The very basis of the success, my freedom, was chained. Approval for rates, approval for recruitments, approval for advts, approval for sales-promotions, approvals for this, approvals for that...and yet, the responsibilities were all mine. Anything wrong, it was my neck that got jammed. That was one part; but the bigger one was, I lost interest, I lost the will, I lost the inclination. How and when, it is difficult to decide, but it just snapped. Kaput!

My marriage came and went. The divorce added to the sense of directionless. The final straw was the fraud that happened in my department. I reached the nadir of hopelessness.

I decided to jump off this giddying giant wheel ride. To a close friend I offered partnership in his business. He agreed. I jumped off that giant wheel, and what a jump it was! The bruises are still blue, the pain still continues, two years after the time I resigned from the services of the bank.

The partnership was a disaster from the word go. Good partners might be good friends, but the vice-versa is not always true. Before long, I got sucked in a quagmire of deep shit, coupled with a waist-load of debts. The partner did not help, the friendship disintegrated; money, which was never discussed between us, became the centrifuge of shouts over irksome telephone calls. I was slipping into the quicksand faster, and there was no rope in sight to pull me out.

When the rope did come, it pulled me out; and it pulled me out so harshly that I came out of the quicksand but did not land on my feet; instead, I fell headlong into this country. Though I cannot thank my present employers enough for trusting me with this job and giving me an opportunity to regain my lost ground, still, its a job that I have no clue about. Yet, I cannot leave for the money it provides; slowly, over the months, I have wiped out a huge burden of debts. If I last a bit longer, I might even start saving some money.

Ten years have passed; now I am on a higher rung in the corporate ladder; switching is tougher. And switch to what? Does that small germ of journalistic ambition still survive within me. I cannot say. I cannot decide. Decisions are painful for me. Everytime I take one, the other side assumes greener hues.

Though I do get a lot of appreciation from the readers of my blogs, but where it matters the most, has always given me the 'rejection slip' time after time. I know there is a saying 'try, try and try again till you succeed'. It's a good one. It helps you sail through.

But, why can't I get a lucky break, on the own! Why can't I get through and perhaps give the hard work once inside, instead of rubbing off my ass just to get through, and probably burning myself out once I am in!

When I read interviews of some of the successful people that, 'a chance meeting with so-and-so gave me the break', I wonder, why these chance meetings do not happen to me. Why doesn't by chance a publishing house honcho read my blogs (the other one, especially), and decide to print my stories?

What triggered off this post today, after ten years, is an incident. I have been waiting for an important deal to strike through. It seemed a cakewalk. Till the time negotiations began. I sailed through that, and the commercial angles were smoothened out. But, now it is stuck at a legal step. As bouncers after bouncers are thrown at me, I do not know how to bat them off. The heat from the head office is growing; everyday, impatiently, my boss shouts about the deal. It is not in my hands, seriously. It is with the government of this country. They have their own bureaucracy, their own lethargic speed, their own way of things. Yet, everytime I talk to my boss, it seems as if I have not followed it up correctly or thoroughly. He asks me to take them out for dinner; I admit, I am bad at that. How do I tell a senior person in a department to come out for dinner? I mean, it looks odd, and strange, and that's where I curse my introvert nature. I have been to the higher levels, and tried to convince them. Today, I was to get a call on the same. It did not. So, I called up the legal personnel. He avoided the phone for two hours. Now, when I finally got through him, he has thrown the fiercest of googlies ever, and I am dumb-struck. I was sure of the deal to fall through today. I had given hints to my boss about it too. I was to go back to Delhi for a meeting, which I cancelled due to this call. And now, I am stuck with an empty hand. Another problem. Another issue. And this time, I don't think there can be any solution to it. I dread tomorrow, when my boss will call asking for it. I do not know what to say. It's another failure, another let-down!

This is where I wanted GOD to step in, and provide that lucky-moment. This is where my work finishes off, and providence takes over. But the baton is not passed on to Lady Luck; it slips, and falls, and it lands thunderously on my feet. There is not much to show by way of successes to my boss, this was one thing that I could have showed off, and strutted about! Please, GOD, Please Help Me!

And as I had waited for the call to come in, the entire career life had relayed itself on my mind's silverscreen, each failure sharply etched and each falling clearly visible.

Till a few days back, I would have dismissed the following lines as an ode to self-pity. Today, especially now at this moment, I feel these words, and the pain that they carry:

Jag ne chheeena mujhse, mujhe jo bhi laga pyaara
Sab jeeta kiye mujhse, mai hardam hi haara...

I am a failure in life! Absolute failure!