The journey begins - 3

Looking back, I think I started normally. The immediate plan then was to continue with the activity I was busy with between 2001- 03 viz. track the impact of privatisation of government run-companies on civil society. This was to be done as a NGO, a registered society to speak which would be an interface between the industry and the public at large. Sounds good, isnt it?

It did for me. It still does, a cool five years later. Only that I did not understand or did not have the experience of visualising the painful phase of gestation/incubation of any 'smart' life-sustaining idea. The teething troubles, the tensions of growing up doing only what you set out doing... boy, that is indeed an experience to savour.

Somewhere in my earlier blog, I had said about my conflicting interests - interests which were supposed to be mutually repelling - the commercial and the developmental. I am tempted to end this line of thought by saying that probably I had filled in my mind with too much of woolly headed stuff and verbiage- something I am prone to. But it was not so easy to discard, especially when I had set out with my avowed objective of starting and running a NGO - which is due to complete five years of R&D-ish existence in May 2008!! Please note that I am not that heartless to call my NGO a still-born or something similar!!

Like any wannabe self-employed success, I too had my own evaluation tools. I had my mock assessments too! I encouraged rank outsiders in my system to ask me simple, elementary questions about what I was doing with my life, how I am going to propel my great dream forward and also the most important question - sustain it financially.

I fumbled and dragged on with my explanations as I encountered such blizzards - but I did have answers. I was having a corpus fund which I had saved/ partially financed from loans which I was rotating in the stock market ( well, this is a subject of a blog sometime later!!) and quite hearteningly the external auditors in my case were happy to let me go once I gave them a reply - the theory of cross subsidisation - where the proceeds from the stock trading will go on to sustain my NGO for a period of time till it becomes subsisting. Too good, is it not?

It can still work in the same manner, I am confident. But what happens when fence-sitters, gate-crashers and new friends who are part of the same profession come in and add their own dimensions to your dream? Friends, I encountered these visits and add-ons gamely because I was improvising on the act constantly.

You remember I had talked somewhere earlier about the Pied Piper approach... More of that later in the blogs ahead...

The journey begins -2

The fun element in being a blogger is slowly unfolding before me.

First of all, the narcissism part. I can see myself and my rapidly ageing profile so many times I want.

Also, I reckon there will be a connect between me and my target audience! ( where are they?) as they see me many times over. By the time I am through with a few more such blogs, I should be recognised somewhere on the road I am sure!

Seriously, I think I should let myself come up with looseners like the pace bowlers in cricket do - write out my first burst of creative wordage - before the speedy rhythm settles in, akin to the scorching pacers of modern cricket.

I have been happy with the initial rounds of comments I have got. As I was optimistically telling one of my local pals the other day - Look Boss, my blog is going to talk about the life of a 45-year old man, from the time he touched the dreaded 40s and once he is now in a mid phase of that age he should also logically talk about the next phase - the 50s.

Many, I am sure as I told him would identify with the life and times in the cyber and real world. There are so many out there, trapped in luckless careers and unprofessional working conditions and just cannot chuck it and go where they please. I atleast did it and barring a few pangs of helplessness once a while as I faced perplexing twists and turns , have been happy to be what I am.

Guys, this is the loosener I wanted to unleash on you hapless souls. The action will attain its normal pulsating speed from the coming posts.

Be sure of empathising scenarios and many such situations!!

The journey begins -1

You all know the first post is not actually that difficult. Once you are done with it, you revisit it and secretly marvel at your 'communicative abilities' and surely feel happy with your 'vocabulary' ,easily the best , this side of Suez Canal. Nothing short of that !!

The reality dawns when you see that invariably you have over committed what you want to talk on and surely the dreaded, sinking feeling surfaces within you - what if you under perform?

Never mind, I have already made my confession. So I can move on to make amends and justify the title of this blog - The journey begins..

The initial days were cool - no targets to be met , no meetings to be attended to - and the ubiquitious honeymoon phase too was on.

Honestly, one could have not undertaken this move without consulting the better half. I remember the day when I broke this news to her - after a mock rehearsal in the erstwhile office toilet - that I am planning to be voluntarily in a lay off phase for a while. In this case, just five years!!

Looking up at my face and matching my gaze, she just told me that it is your call, honey! Nothing melodramatic, sorry folks, if I am disappointing you all out there.

The kids too were told that Daddy dearest would take a break for some time. Innocent that they were, their assumption was that may be I would lounge around in the house for a few days and get back into the 'bread winning' mode soon. I remember even telling my kids- then all of 12 and 7 respectively- that I was seriously thinking of starting my own office and continue with my consultancy role which I was playing till then in my own line of activity.

The family still found it strange, neverthless. The kids were quite taken up with the fact that the eternal absentee of the house - the father - was around as they went to school and surprise, surprise as they returned from school. Hesitantly, questions were raised and answers sought - Appa, no office today?

I did it as I planned but then the conflict of interests, the revenue versus the sustainability model of one's own dream plans and how the Pied Piper approach of mine attracted its own gang of folks into my world, both professional and personal......

More of that later.....

The middle age blues

I do not know whether it happens to all 45-year old men and women. But it has happened to me.

What is so interesting you may ask?

Before I answer this, I would like to go back to the time when I turned 40. A good five years ago - March 2002 to be exact.

A wave of chronological highlights all through my working life ( about 20 years by then) began flashing in my mind. I was often lost in my mental world about where I was heading and what was the journey I had set out ,travelling on and on from 1982. Alternate emotions - often opposite- began hitting my system wherever and whenever. There were achievements one could be very proud and possessive about but overtaking them were blunders of the Himalayan kind about which one could not be too happy sharing it with anyone.

Dear friends, that is where my journey began. A special travel tale, if you want it to be announced thus!!

Call it foolish or a high-risk behaviour, as my work contract expired with my erstwhile employer in January 2003, I had decided that I would just not work for the next five years.

Simply put, I decided to follow my heart. The justification - not that anyone needed to certify my stance - was that I had put in a non-stop worklife of 20 years and more and that it is now time to see how I can do things all on my own....

In all these four years and more, what did I get from the time it all started in January 2003?

A host of real world experiences, grave and repeated pressures on my savings and financial reserves, constant battering of my professional worth and esteem and a conscience which always was in an evaluatory mode on whatever I set to accomplish. You know, the right or wrong approach....

So how do I see myself as the experiment era comes to an end in March 2008?

As part of my mental battles, I wanted to just evacuate my system many times over in many different forms and fora and expunge my mind from the stress that comes up when the world fixes its gaze relentlessly on you. Subconsciously, one plays the duniyadaari game and is on a daily parole from the jail of life....

Diaries seemed inadequate, both from the space and convenience point of view. You just wrote a diary or did not for extended periods of time, thereby losing the objective of keeping a record of your experiences. The writer in me, the entrepreneur in me or plainly the trader in me, just kept egging me on to put it down somewhere the present status of mine - Forty Five and Unemployable....

This is no sad story. Nor is it is a fable of a frustrated soul venting his spleen. It is a sum of my joys and sorrows, a miniaturised replica of what I went through in the growing up and consolidating phase of my life prior to this second innings. Surprising, that life patterns repeat again and again. Why is it so typecast one will never know...

I wish to just write in a loosely structured format about the people and places, pressures and pleasures of a man who just decided to follow his heart - if melodrama is your poison - then I will add - just dropping himself from a 9-to-5 routine and doing his own.

Guys, among the zillions of blogs, I am sure I too have a place under the sun.

Fasten your seat belts then.....