You've got to play the hand you're
dealt.
Almost around three months back when I was about to leave
Deloitte, the company where I had spent the first twenty one months of my
corporate work life. A lot of people including me wondered if it was worth
taking this giant leap of faith, I was giving up a guaranteed paying option for
something that I had not yet realized - an alternative job elsewhere or an
admission into a premier B school.
As my well read peers and the nouveau market smitten friends
- since they now have to meet the expected
standards of their management schools- would call it in the stock market
parlance I was giving up Federal bonds in hope for higher returns from what we
know as penny stocks. If you have seen the movie - 'The Wolf of Wall Street',
then you might already know that it takes a Jordan Belfort to actualize a dream
of this proportions and unreal probability, for starters I did not get my
Jordan Belfort.
But then thanks to destiny and what my family sees as a
paranormal assistance from some dude watching all over the seven billion of us
humans and the gazillion of other species with his single pair of tutelary eyes
I managed the turnaround and converted all the tiny number of calls I had from
business schools - a feat which is
dwarfed by the achievements of my friends and batch mates who had double digit
calls and an equally good conversion rate.
If you had asked me
some time back what odds I had assigned in favor of occurrence of this mean
achievement, you would have found me rather skeptical and disbelieving. During
this excruciating part of my journey I found an accomplice or rather a
co-passenger going through a similar journey but who was a tad bit more optimistic
and spirited.
As I look back now I feel that he was the most quintessential element in this stint, the one who infused confidence into me at the right times and was all ears when I needed someone to empathize. Of course there were others too but his was a contribution I could have not done without.
As I look back now I feel that he was the most quintessential element in this stint, the one who infused confidence into me at the right times and was all ears when I needed someone to empathize. Of course there were others too but his was a contribution I could have not done without.
Before people start elaborating more on our bromance, I will
put a full stop here and thank you, Sir Paahul Sikand for lending me some life
from your perpetual life stock. No pun here.
If you think that the dilemma for me ended at the call
conversion stage then you're mistaken, there was an even bigger problem; the
problem of plenty as they term it. Though in the truest of sense it wasn't
actually a problem of plenty but an issue with what I wanted to do
further in my life, Marketing or Human Resources Management?
Though initially I wanted to pursue business management in
Marketing just because I thought that I had a flair for it without even an iota
of working experience in such domain, but what I got first was an acceptance
into Human Resources Management at XLRI.
There is a human tendency that we tend to settle or for that
matter start telling ourselves that what we have is good and the same happened
to me, I started believing that HRM is what I want until I got Marketing at SP
Jain. And right then there was this Gordian Knot for me to unravel, which one was I going to opt for out of the two.
It is then when while reading an interview by Rajdeep Sardesai that I came across a piece of advice
given to Amitabh Bahchan by his father:
"Mann ka ho toh
acha na ho toh jyada acha” (if things happen according to your wish, it is good
and if not then it’s better). Amitabh asked him, "Mann ka na ho toh jyada
acha kaise ho sakta hai?". He said that it’s happening according to the
will of god and he will never want to do anything wrong or bad to you.
This led me to ask myself a question, since when did we humans
start knowing what is the best for us? Precisely for this reason then I trusted
destiny - I do believe in destiny but
not a believer in one man monitoring all our acts and then like the sorting hat
allocating heaven or hell - and took that giant leap of faith again.
Human resources
management, it shall be for the next two years. Reminiscing what Harpreet Singh Bedi (Ranbir Kapoor) said
in Rocket Singh - Salesman of the year, "Risk toh Spiderman ko bhi lena
padta hai ... main toh phir bhi salesman hoon", I think the decision
doesn't need a second thought now.
I know a lot of you would disagree and question my rationale
but I am imposing my faith in destiny. Even most of you naysayers owe it to destiny for making the right choice
for you at times. And Oh yes, I did flip
the coin, my heart did wish for XLRI- it does have the X factor.
Image courtesy : www.xlri.edu
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