Freedom - Five Years Old

12:00 midnight isn’t exactly the time I would have expected a call from my friends. But like most people under the influence of alcohol, my friends cared two hoots for logic and decided that they needed to share their moment with me. We had all just completed five years of our professional life and it certainly was worth celebrating. Now I’m certain you are wondering how, many of us had completed five years together. That’s because around forty of us had passed out of college together and being recruited directly from campus, all of us had the same joining dates. During our days in the campus together, little would we have predicted that this is where we would be today. With our Work-Lives becoming the frontrunner among all priorities and not an iota of time available for private life, the bliss of pre-professional life is nothing short of a fantasy today. We also argued about who had done better than the other and had to mutually agree that all of us weren’t a lot different from how we had started off. Our wallets were empty then and it was no different now (most of us are actually neck deep in the quicksand called credit card debts). Most of our other classmates must have done quite well for themselves though. I’m certain that most of them would be leading a high flying life in some big corporate. In all probabilities they would also have a fast growing belly and an equally fast receding hairline to match the picture of prosperity. After all five years should certainly have made some difference in people’s physical self as well. Five years!!! The realization did give me a kick. This in spite of the fact, that the boys at the other end of the phone were the ones drinking. Without the slightest warning whatsoever, I lost control and spent the rest of the night on a nostalgic trip down memory lane.

It all began on the 1st of September 1999. That was the day I first went into work attired in smart formals; a brown stripped Vivaldi neck tie and polished black shoes included. It certainly must have been one of the happiest days of my life. I had probably been dreaming of a day like this ever since I had realized the value of those crispy notes with Gandhiji’s smiling face on it. The thousands of things I wanted to do and buy after I had started earning are still vividly clear in my head. After years of waiting, the day I would start to be financially independent had finally arrived. Only to immediately realize that the ‘Financial Independence’ which I was chasing would always remain as elusive to me as an Olympic medal to an Indian athlete. However I have traveled quite a long way from that memorable Wednesday morning. If only there was a means to convert time into distance, I would have traveled nothing less than a few billion light years. My CV for the last five year is nothing short of being intriguing. Starting of as a service engineer repairing CNCs and Robots, I have done things as varied as Product Designing, Network and Direct Marketing, Project Consultancy, Telemarketing, Recruitment Consultancy, Setting up a Back Office Service.... This apart from the couple of months spent at home bearing with Mom’s constant nagging to get a job, even as I whiled time watching our Men in Blue squeezing a victory out of the invincible Aussies. I had even contemplated writing a book ‘Thousand ways to dig your own grave’. But then my cousin Nikhil had been the one who had thought of this title for his own adventures and I dared not take a risk of digging an additional grave for myself by copying his idea. I got into all these ventures because I wanted to make a lot of money and that too faster than anybody else. I also had this crazy dream of buying a Harley Davidson before my 26th birthday. My 26th Birthday just flew by and all I have is a Bullet. But then didn’t somebody say that Bullet was the Harley Davidson of Indian Roads? The last year and a half has thankfully been quite steady and I certainly hope it remains this way. But as I look back, I always convince myself to have absolutely no complaints. After all, don’t all dark clouds deserve a silver lining? When you end up burning not just fingers but the entire arm in six different business ventures, you obviously need to claim that there have been shit loads of learning. And that’s going to be my alibi. Nostalgia need not always be pleasant, Right?