A decade...

It was a normal hectic Monday morning and my phone beeped,A sms from a very dear friend of mine all the way from Australia, congratulating me on completing a decade of friendship which began exactly 10 years ago at 11:30a.m when we entered the first RCMC General Body meeting in college. This made me nostalgic, and I said maybe this is a good time to walk back in time and reflect on the last decade of my life.

The last decade of my life has probably been the most eventful, flooded with lots of twists and turns.Apart from growing in age and probably by a couple of pounds I have also grown as an individual. I think I have become much calmer as a person then, what I used to be ten years ago, when I had just set my foot out of school, filled with illusions of the real world, but lots of dreams and aspirations


I do remember getting my passport renewed at the passport office along with Pa and my agent,who insisted that I should take the ten years passport instead of the twenty years, as I would definitely be married within the next ten years and I would anyway need to get the name changed. I wish he had allowed me to take the twenty years passport at least it would have saved me the current hassle I am facing to get my passport renewed at least for another decade.


Joining Rotaract
This was a real turning point in my life. Infact most of the friends I ever made in college were from Rotaract It was exactly today, 27 Aug 1997 at 11:30a.m that myself and Veena entered the first ever general body meeting of RCMC.We were both apprehensive about Rotaract, and honestly when we entered the meeting room, I just thought I was at the wrong place, everything seemed so different from my school world,where I was so used to being at the forefront of all the limelight because of the activities I participated in.
Making marketing proposals, Editing Bulletins,roaming around for sponsorships, getting closer to the college principal,Rupa Shah( what with the countless hours we would spend in her cabin to get her signature),attending other Rotaract projects as far as Neral, Ulhasnagar, Churchgate( thanks to Rotaract my Bombay geography is solid),dealing with all kinds of people from the south Bombay snob clubs to the pile on eastern suburbs clubs were just few of things that Rotaract taught me. But the icing on the cake was getting my first ever summer job with a PR consultant in Bandra. Most importantly because of Rotaract I made some really good friends,who have always stood by me in my moments of joy and sorrow till today.


NSS
Joining NSS was not something I had planned to do, but it just happened by chance, I think because of a pestering professor of mine Prof Rawal who was persistent that I join NSS and do some good work. This was quite interesting coz we did a couple of social service projects( I cant even remember what) but the turning point was when, I was given the opportunity to represent the NSS junior wing of Mumbai University at the National conference in Nanded, Nagpur along with other girls from other colleges and a Prof from our college.I think this was my real tryst with reality. We were staying at this accommodation which was nothing but a dingy classroom of a municipal school,where we did have all sorts of rats and creeps for company, there were no real toilets and I remember I was so desperate to go to even an Indian style toilet then I actually went to a house in the village close by and requested them to allow me to use the toilet and thankfully made a arrangement to use it till I was staying there.This was a real all India meet,where I meet girls and boys from across the country all doing great work but couldn’t speak English at all. Going back was a real terror,in spite of having reservations there was a mob of sardars who just blocked the entry into the compartment and we girls some how managed to get in. After that I never meet those girls again.I think the only advantage that NSS gave me was that being a college supported organization, it really brought me in the limelight in front of my professors and this was probably the reason I was awarded as the Best Student- Arts junior college.

Mountaineering society/ Drama club
Mountaineering society was something I just joined for fun, I just went for a couple of treks to Karnala and Kanheri caves and then never bothered too much about it. Drama Club was something, I was really very interested in, since our team was very strong, infact I had auditioned and had been selected so many times but I think I was not dedicated to rehearsals as I was too busy doing Rotaract or NSS work and I would drop out giving some excuse or the other.I have attended a couple of college festivals like Malhar and MoodI, Brouhaha to participate in some faltu contest or other, but never really won anything.


Moving from Bandra
This was one of the most heartbreaking event of my life.When we moved from Bandra to godforsaken Kandivali which I really hated and I continue to hate till today. Bandra was where I grew up, every single lane of this suburb was filled with memories of growing up, this was home. Although our first house where we moved in till our actual house was ready was quite spacious and comfortable and equipped with all the modern amen ties I truly missed my Bandra house. Infact after we left that house, I never had the courage to go and visit that house in the last 8 years. Kandivali was a complete new culture for me,it was full of the Gujarati, nosy clan which I had always dreaded to have for company. There weren’t even any nice restaurants or places to go to and to add to it traveling was a real pain. To attend my morning lecture at 7am, I would have to leave home at 5:45 walk to the bustop and then board the crowded train and walk again to the college, compared to a simple bus ride to college from my Bandra home. But yes Kandivali brought me close to my culture and my roots, Ganesh chathurthi, Diwali, Navratri, Holi were festivals celebrated with great fanfare and oneness in our buildings.


Working
Almost towards the end of my First year in degree college, I started working with a PR consultant in Bandra. So every day after college I would go to office. In my 2year stint with this consultant I learnt quite a bit.I picked up the business, and my boss was so happy with me that she actually left the business to be handled by me for 2 months when she was away on a vacation. Work wise life was very good, my clients were happy with my work, I had a good rapport with the lifestyle journalists and also the job gave me the opportunity to work with some interesting people like Shatbhi Basu, NRCI, Anil Dharkar. But yes I often missed not being able to sit in the canteen aimlessly like some of my friends and go out and watch movies or just roam around.

Final year in college
This was a true landmark year in my life.I still recollect in November,I was taking a break from work to concentrate on my TY studies.It was also my first cousins wedding at our native place in Nainital and this wedding proved to be one of those rare occasions where all my fathers siblings came together.The wedding was truly memorable, it was grand family reunion, so much so that for some reason I had tears in my eyes when we were all leaving from the venue. This was also a beginning to a end which, I could never even anticipate in my wildest dreams. After we came back Pa`s health started deteriorating, he had already made couple of trips to the hospital the previous year but now the visits got more frequent. Finally in mid-December under serious circumstances we moved Pa to a big hospital and when he left the house that day in the ambulance, he some how knew he wasn’t coming back. I couldn’t believe this was happening to me, I wanted to believe that it was just a dream, but it was reality that I was facing for the next seven days,where every single day, Pa in spite of his pain, in his humorous style told me that he was going leaving me to look after everything.I wish it was just one of Pa`s jokes, but it wasn’t a joke anymore,when one Saturday afternoon, after singing one of his favourite songs he was gone and all I could do is see his diminishing heart beats on that machine outside that room. On that day, life seemed like a huge challenge.I just knew that I had a huge amount of things that I needed to sort but I didn’t know how I would do it. Although Pa was gone in person, but his sprit was alive in me , and that’s what helped me to slowly and steadily sort out everything.But at that time, I really wished, I had an elder sibling who would take care of everything for me.


Post college
The day I finished my final exams, the only thing I wanted to do was to get a proper job for myself in a company. Finally I applied to a couple of PR agencies and managed to find myself a job with Percept Profile. For the first couple of months I was quite lost, and wasn’t to happy with the way things were at work, but about 10 months later my ex boss called me for an exciting offer with someone she knew. This is where I learnt to negotiate, I negotiated my salary and started working on Channel [v ]. Channel [v] was undoubtedly an exciting client and I had a great time working with my new boss. The new company Vaishnavi was good, and the people there were nice too. It was almost like a family. Professionally things were good for me, but I just couldn’t concentrate on my law studies. I had enrolled for a degree course in law but law needed a lot of time for research in library and lot of mugging up which I couldn’t do in my cramped time, and I realized that this was not something I really wanted to do, coz I wasn’t enjoying it so I left my law studies. As time passed by I had the opportunity to handle new clients, new challenges, I walked up the corporate ladder.
After almost 2 years monotony creeped in and I decided to take a break, and this is where I took my first single backpack trip to Kerala where I could sit and think about what I wanted to do in my life.

Sabbatical
Sometime in February after I came back from Kerala,I decided that if I wanted to try out something different and explore the opportunities this world has to offer, this is the time to do it so that ten years down the line I wouldn’t regret not having given myself a chance. I applied for my US- visa, shocked the world by quitting my job, without any assignment in hand. Luckily I got my US visa and I decided to go the US and explore the work, study opportunities that country could offer me.
My 3 month US trip was fun, I traveled a lot, met lots of interesting people, visited colleges, universities and concluded that US was not the greatest place for me to begin my career at this stage, as it would require a lot of time and funding. So I came back and started job hunting. Obviously I could have easily gone back to Vaishnavi, but I didn’t want to do PR, I wanted to do Marketing communications. I actually wanted to work for a media house but I ended up working with one of the leading life insurance companies ICICI Prudential. I have been working with them for close to 2 years now


New interests - Travel, Food, Reading & Children
Over the last ten years I have discovered the four things that I really like to do. I never realized how passionate I was about traveling until I took my first backpack trip to Kerala. Since then I have taken ever single opportunity to explore places in India and abroad.Travelling in Amtracks, Jamutavis , general compartments of long distance trains, state transport buses,staying at nominal home stays and exploring the local flavour of the regions I visit are things I just love to do.
Although I am a vegetarian, I love to discover new cuisines and food joints.In fact I am also in talks with a food site to pen a column on food.
Reading was something I was never to fond of, but this is something I have picked up over the last couple of years. I love reading Indian fiction.
I was never to fond of children, but I guess because of the sheer time I spent with my young nieces and nephews in the US that I started getting very fond of children. I look forward to the day, when I will have my own children


I know this is a very long post, and probably not everyone will be able to reach till the end, but ten years is a long time and 2000 words isn’t enough to document it.

Cheers to a decade !