Transience

It is said that enlightment comes to certain individuals in the blink of an eye – when they are busy meditating, or climbing mountains near their village. For me, enlightment, if I were to call it that, didn’t come in an instant, but rather gradually over many months and years; over many euphorias and heartaches.

While pondering over random memories, I realized that since graduating from high school, I have not lived in one house for more than 3 years. And I have not worked in one job for more than the same amount of time. I have always been on the move – across cities, across jobs and across beliefs. My subconscious has always embraced the fleeting and the transience.

And yet, the conscious me has always held onto the material and the tangible. I have held onto material possessions all my life – those old clothes, those audio cassettes, those still photographs. For as long as I can remember, I have held strong emotional attachments to objects, people, memories. There has never been a fear as great as the fear of losing them.

All this changed on the 4^th of August 2019.

That was the day I landed in Canada as a Permanent Resident. Permanent – a word that doesn’t quite go along with the vibes of this post, but let’s not get into the technicalities of that.

When I came to Canada first in 2018, I had planned to stay here for a year – two at most, and then return home. I wanted the experience to enrich my life when I would go back.

Due to unforeseen circumstances, that ambition of 1-2 years was cut short, and I had to leave after just 6 months. I was devastated. I had to return home still with something lacking, still with aspirations inside me.

But then, I was not the one to give up. I applied for my permanent residency and got it 3 months after going back. The initial jubilation of the news slowly gave way to deeper considerations. I realized that if I were to go back to Canada, it would be for a much longer duration – switching careers across two countries is by no means a joke. So a ‘permanent’ move it would be to Canada.  

Taking the decision to leave everything behind was not easy. Thinking of all the things to let go was as hard as gripping a piece of burning coal. The day before I was to leave my Home to come to Canada last year, I paid one last visit to the places, the people, and the memories. I bid them goodbye. I had to move on. And I have.

After coming to Canada, I immersed myself in a thousand activities – finding a house, getting my driver’s license, landing up in a job. But somehow these were not mere ‘distractions’ for me. Something inside me changed the day I left home. There was a silent voice inside my head which assured me that whatever was happening was for the good. There was nothing left for me back home now – I had left my old job, had given away my ‘beloved’ computer, and most of my friends had already moved to other places. There was no point in looking back. That ‘home’ was not meant to last. The memories looked at me with enticing eyes. I waved at them with a smile, and then looked the other way.

There have been incidents leading up to that point, and also some since then, that have strengthened my belief that nothing lasts forever. Nothing is constant in this universe – not our possessions, not our homes, not even our own selves. Even the stars and the galaxies are not fixed in the universal plane. Even the most robust of materials decay sooner or later. Day changes to give way to the night; the gloomy winter passes to let summer come forth. So is it worth holding on to our petty belongings in this world of transience? Even our own notions and opinions change. We are not the same person that we were say five years back.

Doesn’t it make more sense to enjoy every fleeting moment and welcome every change that comes along, rather than resisting the natural course of things? Doesn't it make sense to experience as much as possible within this short and brittle life?

I finally seem to have made peace with the fact that we are meant to lose everything we love and hold on to, as depressing as it may sound. Instead, I am prepared to welcome every change that comes my way with open arms. I finally seem to have aligned my conscious with my subconscious. I finally seem to have found the courage to raise a toast to the fleeting, and the transient.

A Tale of Two Cities: Part 2

March 2016. It had been a year since he had moved to the new city. He sat and brooded over what had happened in those twelve months. So many changes in life – filling his heart with a blend of fear, sadness, curiosity and joy. But all those milestones were seemingly placed on a curved path. As he had traveled that road, he had found himself in a similar scenario to where he was four and a half years back. Life had come full circle.

The city had seemed to welcome him with both hands when he had moved there. At first, everyone had seemed friendly. He had greeted everyone with a smile, tried to befriend every person he met. But as the days went by he realized that not every person in the city was how he portrayed him or her to be. There were hostile know-it-alls, sweet-talking backstabbers, selfish tricksters in this city as well – as there were in every other city in the world. They were just people, not angels sent from heaven.

Then there were conflicts he had not imagined before, and situations he would not have found himself in earlier. New variables had come into the equation of his life, and he was not at all prepared to deal with the dependencies and responsibilities. Answering one question posed another, and burying one hole opened up many more.

When he had visited his college, there was no trace of the serenity he remembered. The reality was not even remotely familiar with the image that was embedded in his memories. The trees around his old house had all been cut down. Gone was the playground, replaced by more concrete buildings. The tea-stalls and small dhabas he used to frequent had all been supplanted by Café-Coffee Days and chained restaurants. He couldn’t recognize the teachers, and the students came across as arrogant and cavalier. That was when he had realized that it was neither the playgrounds, nor the dhabas that he missed, but the friends who had helped make those ordinary places special.

He had built an image of the city from the viewpoint of the twenty year old boy. The sandcastles of his ideas were built during  those small intervals of time when the tides have receded - his brief visits to the city during the past few years. But the thirty year old man understood that there was no such thing as perfect in this world. Perfection is like that mountain peak you can only admire and aspire to reach, but you never can. It only drives you to make the journey, to put in the effort – that is its sole purpose. If someday you did indeed manage to reach the top of the mountain, instead of the magnificent view you had envisaged, you will only find your vision blocked by the shrouding mist, and your body frozen in the bitter cold. That is when you will understand that it was your perception of the place that made it perfect, not the place itself.

It then dawned upon him that it was he who had changed, and not the city. The city was where it was ten year earlier, and may be where it will still be a hundred years from then. But he had moved on. His beliefs and take on life had changed. And that change was irreversible. He could not go back to being the twenty year old him again. As he pondered on, he could not help but remember the lines from a movie - one he had heard for the first time, ironically, in the same city, as a twenty year old:

"How do you pick up the threads of an old life? How do you go on... when in your heart you begin to understand... there is no going back?"

A Tale of Two Cities: Part 1

It was the 31st of December – New Year’s Eve of 2016. At a time when every one of his friends would have been busy gearing up for a great night, here he was, reminiscing about his past with dreamy eyes. His thoughts went back a year – how things had changed in such little a time.

That year had easily been the most happening year for him in a long time. He had changed jobs, switched cities. He had got his own house, his own car. And then he had become a father to a beautiful and healthy baby. Not many would be able to boast of so many accomplishments within such a short span of time. But there was still a void within his heart; an uneasiness too difficult to comprehend, and even more tedious to explain.

He had been living away from his homeland for five and a half years. The City of Dreams had awed him at first with its vastness and complexities, had then made him fall in love with it with its enchanting modernity and lifestyle, and had finally disgusted him with its squalor and hostility.

He had then moved to a neighboring city – a beautiful place – the perfect combination of flair and tranquility. He had taken to the city like a fish takes to the water, and everything had seemed so impeccable at first. But slowly but surely, the realization had crept in that nothing’s perfect. The city had its own share of shortcomings. Little by little, his had dissatisfaction grown, and then one day he had finally decided that this could not be the place he could settle down for life. He had longed for his homeland, nostalgia of his graduation and post-graduation days taking hold of him.

For the next four years he had looked for opportunities for coming back home. But luck was not on speaking terms with him. His line of work didn’t offer many conductive jobs there. Towards the end of 2012, he was presented with one of the most difficult decisions of his life – an option to choose between a high paying job in the same city and a low-paying one at his preferred location. For reasons he understood much later in his life, he had chosen the former, and stayed where he was. He had regretted it like anything in the initial days. But then he had made peace with it, before finally accepting it as destiny. He knew that the chances of getting a good job in his homeland were remote, and had lost all hope of getting back.

Then, on November 13th, 2014, the unthinkable happened. He got a job offer from his previous employer, and his joy knew no bounds when he saw the work location as the one he wanted. The next one and a half months was a blur – muddled in resignation formalities, joining formalities, closing out the lease on his current house, getting a lease on his new house, packing up household things accumulated in four years, transferring his vehicle and so on. But amidst all the chaos, he was happy as ever. God had finally answered his prayers. A new life was set to begin in 2015.

Being an emotional person, he had expected that he would feel at least a bit nostalgic to be leaving a city where he had stayed for the past four years. But to his surprise, there was absolutely no trace of any emotion, not a semblance of wistfulness. There was nothing in this world he had wanted at that moment than to leave that accursed city. And when time came, he left for good, swearing never to come back.

Now, a year later, he was in reverie, dreaming about New Year’s Eve of 2015. It had been one of the greatest nights of his life. A last memoir of the life in that city. Since then, so much had changed. Friends had come and gone; and he had been left in solitude in the very day that no one wants to be alone. It was then that he realized that that city had ingrained something within him – something that could be taken away by neither place nor time. In his haste to leave, he had not gotten closure. He had slammed the door on her face and run away, instead of kissing her goodbye. That day was the first time in a year that his mind had wandered about the place lost in time; about moments buried beneath the bones of fleeting joy; about memories forgotten amidst the chaos of life. It had taken a whole year for him to miss the city. It had taken him seemingly a lifetime to be reunited with nostalgia.

Unanswered Questions

It was the last day of college. I was sitting in my convocation attire with my one hundred and twenty other batch mates. Listening to the speeches of the so called eminent guests had gotten boring one and a half years back. But that dullness had reached its zenith on that particular day. The countdown to the final moments of college life had reduced from the scale of days to hours to minutes over time. The students were desperate for the monologues to end, so that they could receive their degrees and share their last moments of celebration within the campus. It was written on their faces – each and every one of them. Yet, so challenged were the speakers in their understanding of non-verbal cues that they simply carried on their rants unfazed and undeterred.

As I was staring at the flex on the wall behind the podium, I used that time to reflect on my life over the past couple of years – especially the past few months. How tough it had been in the initial few months, how I had gradually gotten used to the hectic lifestyle, and how I had even begun to enjoy the chaos in my daily life. Six months back I had not even contemplated that this day would come, so caught up I was with trying to keep up with time in a race I knew was never going to win. But the day had finally come, and there was no way to wind the clock back. The best times in life were over, as a friend had put it, and only hardship and toil awaited on the other side of ‘today’.

The music of joy had grown to a crescendo over the past few weeks, and the hush that would come would follow suddenly, bringing about a deafening silence. The moments experienced would be gone, the laughter would fade away, and the tinges of apprehension about the unknown would make way to a profound sadness. I wished the sun would not rise the next day, that the night would stretch till eternity, that the moments would freeze in their places forever. Those wishes were intermingled with regrets that I had not lived these years to their fullest. My heart cried out as to why I had not done the things I had done in the past few weeks a bit earlier. And I was left with no answers but the drooping of my eyes and the fluttering of my heartbeat.

Why do we have to lose something in order to realize how much it meant to us? Why do we fail to appreciate something or someone we have, and take that something or someone for granted? Why do we assume that the person or thing will last forever and follow us till the end of days? Why is it that only when we are separated from it do we tend to look back on the mirror of the past, and realize how foolish we were to let it go?

Why is it that a soul's greatest cravings are born from separations? Why are the strongest longings preceded by goodbyes? And why are the most intense emotions those that arise from heart breaks? I will be pondering upon these questions forever...

Distorted Reflections

The digital clock on the bottom right corner of the laptop screen ticked to 11:30pm. There had been an announcement on the college notice board earlier that morning that the grades for the final paper of MBA would be declared that day. I had been staring at the screen for the past one hour, waiting for the mail which would reveal the final grades. I was both excited as well as afraid.

My grade point average over the past 6 terms and nearly half a ton of papers was hovering just below 6. And getting it to that number hadn't been easy. The first two terms in college had been tough and packed with extracurricular and placement activities, with little or no time for proper studies. After 2 terms, my average grade point was just over 5. And it was then that I had taken the decision to give it my all - to do whatever it takes to bring that to 6 by the end of the two years - a landmark relevant not just because of the wholesome figure, but also because many companies used to keep a cut off of a 6 grade point average for students in order to participate in their placement process. And I had done whatever it took - from pampering my professors, studying when all my friends were hanging out and partying, to cheating in exams over the next 4 terms.

And then I saw it. The mail for which it seemed I had been waiting for half a lifetime. My hand automatically shifted to the touchpad and my fingers instinctively clicked on the link. The next page that lay before me gave me joy which I had not felt in a long long time. I had done it! I had raised my grade point average from 5 to 6 in four terms! I was a hero! I danced around my room and congratulated myself over and over. I had achieved my life's dream! If someone had killed me at that moment, I would have died in peace, without regrets or remorse.

Today, when I look back on that day, I cannot help but laugh at myself for my actions. I was that dog which runs after cars barking behind it, but does not know what to do when the vehicle finally stops and the man steps out. The grade points had not really mattered during my placements in the end. I had been placed along with 11 of my batch mates in a Bank, and it is safe to assume that my grades had played absolutely no role in that. Till date, no one has ever asked me about my grades in college: not even a single person.

But still the grades had mattered then. It had given me a target during my MBA years. The figure of 6 had acted as a flickering light on a dark night, guiding the ship of my aspirations and pushing me to try that much harder. But sadly, somewhere down the line that determination had given birth to an obsession. That obsession for grades had made me miss out on many experiences I might otherwise have had in college. And that obsession today has finally given rise to feelings of amusement and guilt in my heart.

The past is like a funhouse mirror. When we look back on our memories, we see them as distorted. Memories often lack the intensity of the real experience. The reason is not because memories fade with time, but because our own attitudes and ways of thinking are often transformed over time. The emotions we feel from a certain stimulus tends to change as we grow older. Our reactions to the same event changes as time goes by. And so the resultant image of our feelings from a past experience or event is distorted - mixed with humour, shame and awe - ingredients arising from the difference in our inclinations and approaches with respect to time. As I write this down, smiling at my stupidity in running after grades in a past life, who knows how I might feel when I read this blog post 5 years from now? 

Of Happiness and Suffering

“The burden of happiness can only be relieved by the balm of suffering.” – Shantaram

The above line from one of my favourite novels got me thinking today. Throughout my life I have always been fascinated by the abstract and the intangible. The philosopher in me has always searched for the answers to questions concerning matters like love and hate, good and evil, life and death. The emotions set upon opposite polarities, it may seem, are nothing more than the two sides of the same coin – one not being able to exist without the other. The definitions of each adjective and each quality seem to be coupled to their corresponding qualities in the other extremity.

The golden question every single being in this world supposed to ask itself is – “what do I really want from life?” An assortment of clichéd answers like success, power, prestige, money, love etc. will emerge. But once one delves deeper into those answers, once the layers of lies and false notions are peeled from them, the ultimate truth will reveal itself like the morning sun shining bright amidst dark rain clouds. The one thing, one simple thing everyone wants in life is happiness. Everything else – wealth, travel, friendship, love – is just a vessel for happiness.

And yet, that same relic has eluded humanity since time in memorial. The pursuit of happiness has always been in vain. The sands of bliss have left the fists of people no matter how hard they have tried to clutch at it. Maybe happiness is not something that can be captured or possessed. Maybe it is something that comes to you. Or something that emerges within one’s own self. Or maybe, it can only be attained by virtue of its own opposite – suffering.

As I write this I am forced to rewind the clock back 5 and a half years. I was in Mumbai, the City of Dreams, staying with my friends at Marine Drive – arguably the poshest location of the city. I had moved in there three weeks back, shifting from a paying guest accommodation in a drab and unclean neighbourhood which I had taken up hurriedly when I had first arrived here. The furniture in my possession had increased from an old bed and a broken steel almirah to two sets of expensive royal cushion sofas, a multi-tiered wooden cupboard, a bed with one foot thick spring mattress, kitchen accessories, a refrigerator, and two wall mounted LCD TVs. My daily office commute had reduced from an hour long struggle of walks, standing in jam-packed trains and two hundred meter long bus queues to a mere ten minute bus ride along the coast between the gates of our house and offices. And last but not the least, my mood had changed from excited to dejected.

Why was I not happy in spite of all this? I asked myself this question while returning from office one day. I sat on the brocade separating the sidewalk from the Indian Ocean and pondered. And it was the sea that provided me with the answers.

Before moving in to the new house, I had gone to Bhubaneswar for a week. Once there, the memories of my XIMB days, which had been suppressed due to the daily struggles of Mumbai, had come rushing back. I was reunited with many of my close buddies who were also visiting Odisha at that time. We had roamed around the campus for many hours, nostalgia gripping me as the waves of my thoughts drifted down the shore of memory lanes. I wanted to stay back there, to escape from the blaring horns and glaring lights of the Mumbai life. On my return flight, I went as far as wishing that the plane would crash, and death would save me from the clutches of India’s biggest city. But that was not meant to be. I was told to die another day.

I spent the next weeks thinking about the 2 years of college life, weaving my dreams of smoke and dust. I wanted to relive those days – the days of joy and recklessness. I didn’t care where I was – as long as that place wasn’t XIMB. It made me oblivious to the comforts surrounding me. My diet receded and I suffered from anaemia. That reinforced my hatred of the city and I tried desperately to cling onto the past.

As I sat before the sea that evening, the truth of life dawned upon me. I realized that everything in this world is relative – good and bad, light and darkness, happiness and suffering. Nothing exists as an absolute. Interpretations vary with situations and perceptions. I was suffering inside because I was comparing my current state with my college days, when I should have been contrasting it with the previous 4 months in Mumbai. The happiness of the XIMB days had become a burden on me, and the balm of suffering inflicted by the local train rides and soggy nights in the days before were the only way to heal myself. It was then that I decided to let go of my past, and live for the moment. It was from that day that I started appreciating the glamour and splendour of Mumbai.

Today I think about the days in Mumbai with a smile on my lips and a twinkle in my eyes. And yet I am faced with a dread. I fear that someday, those days themselves will become a burden. When that day indeed comes, where will I look for the balm?

The Underdog

Underdog

/ˈʌndədɒɡ/

Noun

A competitor thought to have little chance of winning a fight or contest.

When I was preparing for job interviews during my college days, we were given a few example questions that are usually asked by the panel and were required to prepare answers in advance. There were lots of my fellow batch mates who did not seem to posses the necessary communication skills in order to deliver proper responses. The placement trainers did not have the time nor interest to develop those required skills in them. So they took the easy way out. They asked us to mug up those sample answers so that we could promptly state a reply without any hesitation or fumbling when the appropriate query was presented before us. And so we did.

One of the many questions whose answer we had to prepare in advance was ‘describe yourself in one word’. I had prepared some fancy response like ‘patient’ or ‘resilient’ – don’t remember which. I wish I had been as mature at that time as I am now. If only I could have garnered my subsequent experiences at that point of time. If I am asked the same question today… you might have already guessed what my answer would be.

Yes – Underdog. That would be the perfect word to define me, my character. The definition has already been mentioned in the beginning of this write-up. Only in my case, the opponent is the world; the contest – life.

I don’t exactly recall when I was labeled thus. It seemed to have started very early in my childhood. I was born nine years after my elder brother, and did I have big shoes to fill! My brother seemed to be the perfect role model for any kid. He was smart, an out and out extrovert. He excelled at sports, topped exams with very little or no study. He had been awarded the prize of best all rounder in his school. He was gifted with the charm, the charisma. He made friends wherever he went, won hearts of whoever he talked to. I was exactly the opposite. A skulking kid, afraid to go to school, breaking into tears the moment anyone raised his or her voice at me. I decimated people’s expectations. I was a termed as a disappointment compared to my elder sibling. And that is how the underdog was born.

To make up for my social skills, or lack of them, I did with utmost dedication what children in today’s world are taught to do – I studied. I filled out pages and pages on my notebooks, committed each and every historical event to memory, solved every possible mathematical problem there was to solve. I topped my class with ease. But initial impressions made on people are not easy to erase. I was termed as intelligent, but not smart. I had the dedication, but not the presence of mind. And so the underdog persevered.

When I was preparing for my 12^th exams studying at home, the sons and daughters of my parent’s friends were attending coaching classes, going to multiple tuitions for the same subjects. My parents lost all hope on me. I was destined to lose even before I could start the fight. I responded by finishing amongst the top 400 students from my state in the engineering entrance examinations from over 2 lakh candidates. That is when people started raising eyebrows. I had gotten society’s attention.

I had the option to join a good college in my hometown and live in my parent’s house during the course of my graduation days. But I needed to see the world outside the gates of my home. I chose to join a college in the state capital of Bhubaneswar. I had to stay away from home for the first time in my life. I had to say goodbyes to my friends who chose to study in my hometown.

That was one of the toughest times in my life. The hostel environment was chaotic to say the least. I was surrounded by over smart know-it-alls who hardly ever missed a chance to demean the other guy. Ragging sessions were conducted by guys from the senior batches – fear and humiliation were at abundance. I had never been so overwhelmed in my life. This was no place for a homely individual like me. I dragged myself through the lectures, waiting to get back to the hostel to take a shower – for that was the only place where I could get a bit of privacy; I only place I could cry my heart out. I asked myself why I chose this college, this city! I contemplated going back home on more than one occasion. But I could not; I dare not. The challenge was like none other I had faced before. The underdog had to endure.

I somehow made it through the first year. By then I had made a few close friends and we decided to take an individual house on lease near our college. We left the hostel for good. Life improved dramatically. I felt at ease amidst my friends. Two more years passed by, until it was time for placements.

A mock interview session was being organized in our college by some HR professionals with the aim of preparing us for the real deal. I went to the interview, oozing with confidence. But fate played its part – for better or worse and my name ended up at the bottom of the interview schedule. I waited outside the interview room for I don’t know how long, and by the time my turn came to walk inside, I had spent all my energy in waiting. The interview was a disaster.

I was shaking like frenzy, forgot all my prepared answers and ended up mumbling gibberish to most of the questions. Once the interview was over, the interviewer tried to encourage me by pointing out whatever strong point she had noted, which were of course, very few. But her eyes had betrayed her. They were screaming out the words “isse naa ho paayega” (this guy is beyond all hope). I went over the entire episode on the way back to my room. It hurt a lot. That was the last and only interview I flunked.

In the month that followed, my sole focus was to build up my confidence and communication skills. I even took to conversing entirely in English with my friends on a daily basis. Some of us organized mock interviews amongst ourselves and helped each other out. By the time the first company came for placements, I was ready. I cracked the interview on the first chance. As those of us who had gotten offers hugged each other and danced at 3am in the night, I thought I had silenced all my critics.

Over the next few days, I no longer saw sympathy or discontent in people’s eyes. I could even see a touch of respect in some. But there was still a long wait to go. I had gotten a job offer from arguably the most sought after IT firm in the country; but so did one hundred and thirty other students of my batch. Software engineers were being produced as if from a factory’s manufacturing unit. I could not settle for this. I had to set myself apart from others.

With a job already in hand and not many papers to take in the final year, I decided to try my luck at pursuing an MBA. I started my preparations just 3 months before the CAT exam, while others around me had done so almost a year earlier. I was criticized by random people for wasting my last days in college studying when others were out partying. Even if I made it through to some Business School, I was told it was not worth it to spend two year’s worth of fees, time and lost salary for a fancy degree. Four months later, I had been selected to join XIMB, one of only three people from our batch. That was when several people realized an individual such as me ever existed in their batch.

Finally, graduation was over, and I readied myself for XIMB. My new college was no cakewalk. Having done little extra-curricular activity during graduation, I was desperate to prove a point. I joined as many committees as I was allowed to, and tried to involve myself in everything that I saw useful.

My horrors started two months into the first trimester, when the placements for summer internships began. I had no prior work experience, and nothing much to show in my resume apart from good grades during graduation. I ended up getting rejected during resume screening for each and every company. I begged for a chance at an interview. A typical day for me went like this – getting up at 8am, attending classes till 5, attending pre-placement talks and waiting for resume screening results till 9pm, having dinner and doing committee work till 4-5am in the morning, then going to sleep, only to wake up after two hours. The nightmares from my initial days of graduation resurfaced. I thought about dropping out. I was the underdog yet again.

Finally after two months of torture, I got the internship – but not before 90% of my batch mates had already done so. The committee work lessened dramatically post the college’s annual fest. Life was back to normalcy. The rest one and half years at XIMB were probably the best years till that date.

But fate, as it would have it, took another turn. I landed up on a job at a place I had dreaded the most – Mumbai. My inhibitions about the City of Dreams had begun when I had visited the place with my parents during graduation. Overwhelming like no other, the city had the power to crush the amateur and the weak-willed visitor. And I was to live there on my own – on a meager salary of Rs.30000 per month. People saw through me into the fears haunting me. I wasn’t capable of surviving in that place.

Getting pushed down from a crowded local train on my first day in the city did nothing to lessen my fears. The best accommodation, I was told by an agent, was to share a room the size of a typical kitchen with two other persons for Rs.8000 per month. I was helped out by my father and we settled on a single room as a paying guest for Rs.10000. Eager to pay off my student loan, I took to paying off about Rs.15000 as EMIs, leaving me a with an amount as big as Rs.5000 for my monthly expenses.

Over the next few weeks, many other friends of mine joined their respective firms in the city, and I was fortunate enough to move into a luxurious apartment at one of the most posh locations in Mumbai with three of my friends. The next nine months were a breeze – until circumstances made us leave the house. I was back on the road, searching for a place to stay. Back to square one. I had no other option but to share an ordinary apartment with a friend’s friend. But that was the least of my problems.

I was the only employee aged less than 40 in my team. My work was as mundane as it could get. There was no scope of utilizing the things I had learnt during my MBA in the company. My employment was contractual and I could not have carried on the way I was forever. I was already one year into the job, and no other firms had even given my resume a second glance. I started having nightmares that I would be stuck in this place forever. But one thing I had learnt thus far was to be resilient. I kept at it, and got an offer from a reputed IT firm in Pune. I left Mumbai for good.

Just when everything was sunny, a piece of news struck me as a bolt from the blue. I was to get married. I was anything but ready to take up such a responsibility. I sought sufficient time to prepare myself from my parents. All I got in response was a date of marriage eight months down the road. When I broke the news to my friends that I was to get married at the age of 25, it was met with shock and mockery. Word got around that I was committing a criminal offence for doing ‘bal-vivah’ (child marriage). People did not refrain from instilling my brain with horror stories of marriages gone bad. But she was beautiful, seemed understanding and caring. I agreed to marry her, not knowing fully the responsibilities that marriage entails.

What I did know was that I will have to get into a lifelong commitment, manage a household and leave my reckless bachelorhood behind permanently. The transition wasn’t easy. It took me a lot of time to get adjusted to the new life. I had frequent fights with my wife over issues as trivial as a little overcooked rice. And I was to blame for many of them. For a moment I thought my friends were right, and I was not ready for marriage. But I could not jeopardize so many lives over selfish thoughts. The underdog endured once more, and it paid dividends; for I subsequently realized that there were few women that could understand me better than her.

Now, life has thrown another challenge at me – the challenge of fatherhood. The realization that I am to be a father at 29 years old hasn’t been easy. I have again faced disdain at the hands of others for the possibility of not becoming a good parent at such an early age. My capabilities have again been questioned.

The odds are stacked against me once more. I have to prove myself one more time. But from what I have faced thus far in life, I know I will win the fight. The reason the underdog wins is not because of luck. It is because of his resilience, and the overconfidence of the opponent. I will do what I have done right so far, and wait. For when the dust is settled, all the critics and the judges will be the ones sinking in the mire, reaching out with their arms , begging for someone to drag them out, and the underdog will be standing there, with a smirk across his face, having the last laugh.