Cut Throat Competition

I remember my Dad telling about his childhood and how he started his career. He started working with the Government services after finishing his B.A with a second class. He is still in the job, continues his successful career and enjoys a respectful position in the society. Anyway this discussion is not about my father. This is just my perspective on the changing times, the reality.

Today can we ever dream of a successful career (yeah, success is very subjective but you know what I mean) with a second class under graduate degree in hand? (I know you start frowning if I tell any degree apart from a professional one). From the moment a child starts walking, he is put to all kind of pressures. Even a nursery kid needs to clear aptitude test and interviews (At least I didn’t have to sit through all this).

Once my senior told when I was in 7th Std. “If you are able to score well in 10th Std. then you are through.” Hearing that you try hard and ‘hard’ means really hard, you score 90% in CBSE, and there you see more like you and many more in front of you. At that moment you realise, this is just a beginning. If you aim for higher studies, again it turns out to be a disaster. You feel the whole world competing with you wherever you go. Let it be CAT, GRE, GMAT you see and feel yourself in a deep shithole. Lots of people pointing fingers at you, that mystifying looks, that half-hearted console during your failure (With less than 1% chance to get through the CAT, you are bound to fail many times). These times I feel this nation is too crowded, over populated (I know, my marketing friends don’t agree to this. For them this country is the biggest possible market and everyone is a prospective customer).

After moving to a job, you begin to work hard (‘hard’ has attained a new meaning by now), work day and night, work from home and from office, and work on weekdays and weekends trying to get into the most coveted slot of top 5% among your colleagues in the rating scale. If you fail, you are looked upon as an ordinary and believe me; each and every one of us doesn’t want to be like that. Everyone wants to prove they are extra ordinary. The truth is if all earns for it, the bar is raised higher. You feel tired, you feel like giving up, and you slowly start losing. No one needs you. You are ousted and thrown out. Is this all we can get? Can we have little more space to breath? Can we get little more consideration and respect? (C’mon guys, we are humans at least!!).

If we are like this, how about the next generation? God help them all.

A Reality Check

What are my interests? What’s my ambition? These questions always troubled me from my college days (I guess no one has asked these questions in my school) when I was trying to prepare the resume for the placements. And it continued to trouble all the way throughout my job and even during my MBA. I am literally confused. It took 29 years for Gautama Buddha to look for the self realisation concept, am just 24. Long time left for me to go. But were there competition during that time? With no MBAs, no summer internships, no recession, no IIT grading and no ranking at any places he had the luxury of waiting till 29 years. Anyway let me try to find the answers to these questions. Let it be a reality check - a humble effort to reinvent myself.

People don’t get convinced easily with a truthful answer. And no one expect it to be in that way for the above questions. I am crazy about watching movies (everyone in the world likes that), I like blogging (with less than 10 blogs how can you tell that?), trekking (oh..poor boy..less than 5 treks), swimming(still unable to complete 50m stretch in one shot ah?), sleeping (no one wants the element of truth), eating, online gaming (hey! Are you listening?) – People frown at me for these replies and promptly counter me with their next questions. These interests changes with time. I believe I have moved a long way from a boy who liked Prince of Persia to NFS Undercover.

Ambition is another loggerhead. I really wanted to be a police man when I was young (may be the cap or the whistle might have played the trick), then I wanted to be a driver (cool job, at least you can visit lots of places), it changed to air force pilot (serving the nation factor), then to some job where I can earn more and become rich. At some point of time I even wanted to become the President of India (thought I will get whatever I want). This list went on and on. Later the options were converged to two – doctor or engineer (socially accepted norms which later the family enforced on me) on which I am an electrical engineer (hated to be a doctor as blood puts me off), worked in IT services sector, with domain experience in telecom with more knowledge in Java than in power electronics. And here am trying to reinvent myself and chisel my ambition plans by doing MBA (yeah...I know I haven’t answered the question yet. I just wanted to be successful, rich and famous. Am I asking too much?).

Sounds like a defective product? Am I the odd one out in the crowd? Don’t know. But that’s what I am.

The Let it go Attitude

Let it go - he told. He was a very nice friend of mine and was in a dire attempt to help his buddy; and this was the suggestion he gave. It was the moment when I had done fairly bad in the job interview. The advice was not at all a surprise to me, atleast am hearing it for the umpteenth time.

Whether it be the moment of performance appraisal where the company failed to give a fair evaluation (atleast that's what we feel all the time), or it be the time you scored pretty badly in any examination or interview (yes, as always the bad luck attributed towards this), or the times when you have a bad relationship, this advice is nothing new.

But how long? and for what this sacrifice? Are we losing away the power to fight back? Or are we so complacent to give away things like that? Life is never that easy. Where happened to the inspiration we gained from the great success stories during our childhood? What made us change? Are these things too simple and easy to let them go off easily? Are we too simple beings to accept these failures by trying to put the blame on the so called fate? It hurts really badly when you lose something in life you cared the most or you loved the most.

The frustration it develops in letting the things go in their own way, the inability at times when you can't change the destiny or fate of yours, the sheer sense of failure when things get out of our hand, all these accounts for sculpting out the so called professional and career success. How well you adapt to these changes, these uncertainties the life throws before us or how better you anticipate these outcomes-it all depends on the self evaluation of oneself.

Life is never an easy journey. Challenges always wait at the next corner.