Life Story

I grew up in a small suburb of Mumbai. I was always a bright and curious chap. We grew up poor, but I had access to the school library and was friends with many kids who were rich and not ungenerous, so I could freely borrow lots of books and drink richly of this cup. I was not very athletic but enjoyed my games of cricket and competed well in track. But I found that academics came very easily to me – especially math and science. I was also multilingual and studied five languages in school, including Sanskrit. This academic prowess gave me a sense of self-worth, even though the stark reality of my family’s life was that some months we would find it hard to balance bills and make ends meet.

All through my school years, I was always the topper, the school captain, the inter-school competition winner and all that. Except in eighth grade. In eighth grade, I was beaten to the top rank in class by another student. This resulted in a somber family gathering, where I felt I was in the middle of an inquisition. A collection of uncles and aunts, and my dad, all of whom had probably been vicariously living through my exploits, gathered around to interrogate me and my reasons for this “failure.” It was probably the most disheartening moment of my life, and a moment that I still remember as the day I lost my childhood. In a startling moment of awareness, I realized that all these adults that had convened that evening because I came second in my eighth-grade class needed to grow up. That they were shallow. That they had reduced me to an abstraction. That my school rank meant something more to them than whether I truly learned something from my schooling or whether I had fun doing it.

It was probably the most disheartening moment of my life, and a moment that I still remember as the day I lost my childhood.

This began to change my feelings of self-worth. It was around this time that I began considering doing something with my life that was more humanistic, that was more “real,” and that touched the lives around me. In my young mind, one of the ways to do that was to become a doctor. I began dreaming of becoming a doctor and serving a village or some under-served community. I began researching what I needed to do get admission into medical colleges. I engaged seniors and teachers on how I should go about achieving my goal. The consensus was to get good marks in science and math in 12^th grade and then apply to admission to the government medical schools, since they were hugely subsidized. (Private schools were beyond my family’s reach). This meant going head to head with the top talent in the country, since competition was fierce. But despite the overwhelming odds, and the fact that I had limited resources, I was up for the challenge. Just a year back, on a whim, I had gone to the USIA (United States Information Agency) to research educational opportunities in the US. I then used up all my saved pocket money earned by tutoring young kids to appear for the SATs and applying to various schools for undergraduate programs. I achieved very high scores and gained admission to some leading schools including Northwestern, Brown (and, yes, Tufts). But my dad could not afford even the plane tickets and dismissed it all as my foolish fancy. However, the experience had given me a degree of confidence in my abilities and I gave the medical school admissions a good try. I ended up missing making the cut by 2 marks, and it devastated me. My dad rubbed it all in, and almost in a daze, I quietly licked my wounds and enrolled in a regular undergraduate program in Science.

I hung out with a bunch of ne’er-do-wells, smoking pot, drinking, listening to heavy metal music and reading Kafka and Castaneda.

I sleepwalked through three years of grad school and graduated with a BS in Physics. I was 20 years old, I had a basic degree and now I had no idea what to do with my life. I tried sales and quickly got sick of walking around with samples making cold calls. I began wasting time at home, much to my parents’ chagrin. I hung out with a bunch of ne’er-do-wells, smoking pot, drinking, listening to heavy metal music and reading Kafka and Castaneda. One day, my elder brother visited my parents’ house and took me out for a long walk. He told me that I was a very capable guy in the prime of my youth, and that I should not be wasting my time. When I countered him, he quickly cut me off and suggested that I enroll in a course for Advertising and Marketing, while I made up my mind on what to do with my life. He offered to pay the fees as well. So, I began my evening classes at this school and in a few months, I landed myself a job as a trainee copywriter at a small ad agency in Mumbai. I learned a lot and moved on to a bigger agency and found myself at a Senior Copywriter position in a short while. In a few years, I grew tired of the tawdry and ersatz world of Mumbai advertising, but I loved writing. So, I segued into journalism. I began my journalism career reporting on the advertising industry for a business magazine. Eventually, I moved on to run the web site of one of the leading afternoon dailies in the city.

Yet, I felt something missing. By this time, I was married to my college sweetheart, with my wife having embarked on a career in Biotechnology. She had been talking to me about pursuing her PhD in Biotech for some time. I had been thinking about transitioning into Broadcast Journalism and documentary film making for a while as well. After much thought and discussion, we both decided to pursue our options for graduate school in the US. We got our passports, got some study guides to prepare for the GRE and began getting our affairs in order. In about a year, our plans had borne fruit. We both had been admitted to a few schools, but I decided on the graduate program for Broadcast Journalism at NYU, while she settled on the PhD program in Biology at the University of Pennsylvania, since that was the combination with the shortest geographical distance between them.

We started school and our separate lives in a new country. Things were terrible for the first few months as we adjusted to loneliness and lack of money. I ate French fries one day and onion rings the next, since I couldn’t afford anything else. My wife’s situation was slightly better, since she had an assistantship and a teaching job. I worked for cash at the local photocopy store. But I enjoyed school immensely, met some great teachers and made some great friends. As I finished up and began my first practical training assignment, 9/11 happened. This changed the job landscape for me entirely. I had hoped to land some type of gig within the production departments of one of the news station chains, but quickly found that none of them would sponsor an H1 alien work visa on my behalf to hire me. My hopes were dashed again.

I packed up and moved to Philadelphia into my wife’s tiny dorm room and stayed home – looking for job openings, giving interviews every few days, only to be turned down when I mentioned the visa sponsorship. I remained unemployed for nearly a year.

I packed up and moved to Philadelphia into my wife’s tiny dorm room and stayed home – looking for job openings, giving interviews every few days, only to be turned down when I mentioned the visa sponsorship. I remained unemployed for nearly a year, until I began volunteering for free at the local PBS station. After a few months, they agreed to hire me part time, provided I paid for my own lawyer for the visa paperwork. During this time at the TV station, I began teaching myself how to encode videos, how to set up web sites and various other aspects of Information Technology. Since this job was part-time, I also freelanced as a videographer/cameraperson for various documentary film makers and movie makers, wrote for a bunch of web sites and networked a lot. One of my acquaintances urged me to move to Virginia for a full-time job in IT, at a junior position. After discussing it with my wife, I decided to give it a try. I moved to northern Virginia and began working for a defense contractor. My domain appeared to be videoconferencing and collaboration, of which I had no previous knowledge or experience. I had to travel a lot for the job, and I learned everything I needed to on the job. I used all the time I had on the road to learn more about how everything interconnected and began increasing the breadth and depth of my knowledge.

In a year or so, my wife finished her PhD and moved to Virginia to be with me. She began a post-doc assignment at the University of Maryland, while I began polishing up my resume – with the specter of the work visa and the tough path to permanent residency hanging over my head like Damocles’ sword all the while. I finally caught a break as a contractor to the United States General Services Administration, with a work visa for three years. My employer also agreed to file for a green card if things worked out. I thought things were finally working out.

But around the same time began my tryst with pain. It started as a dull ache around my hips. At first, I thought it was a sprain or something muscular – maybe I had pulled or tweaked something. But it persisted and just wouldn’t go away. When it began bothering me constantly, I sought medical help. They thought it was a runner’s ailment and advised me to cut out road-running and do some stretching. Stretching seemed to make it worse. Now the pain was beginning to shoot up and down my legs – but was decidedly much worse on the left side. X-rays didn’t reveal much, and I was prescribed some pain-killers. The pain soon became so bad that I began to have trouble sleeping at night – every time I turned in my sleep, the pain would jolt me wide awake, sweating and moaning. I had just become a father, and this made me feel even worse, since I felt like I was not being very useful around the house or with the baby. I was depressed and miserable – and very confused as to how life could have so quickly taken a turn like this.

The pain soon became so bad that I began to have trouble sleeping at night – every time I turned in my sleep, the pain would jolt me wide awake, sweating and moaning.

I kept plugging away at work and at home and was loath to openly admit how bad the pain had become. I was afraid that people around me would be unduly alarmed and that would make things even worse. By this time, my gait had changed, and I began using a cane during the day and pain-killers at night. I had even started drinking heavily to get some relief from the pain. But I knew that things had reached a point of inflection, and I could not continue living like this. By this time, we had moved to Boston for my wife’s new job. The drinking had gotten worse and I knew that things could very quickly spiral out of control. I kept making my rounds of the specialists in the hope of finding some answers and eventually, when they did MRIs, they diagnosed that I had avascular necrosis or AVN, which was just a fancy medical term for young man’s arthritis. It had developed to a point where it was bone on bone in the hip joints – much more so in the left hip. I had two hard choices – go under the knife and get a hip replacement or continue taking pain-killers and drinking until they both overtook me. So, I finally bit the bullet and underwent a total hip replacement on the left side. Two days after the surgery, they sent me home and I did some physical therapy over the next few weeks as part of my recovery.

As the surgical pain subsided, I began to experience a tremendous clarity of thought. I marveled at small things like the sunlight filtering in through the curtains or the birds chirping mellifluously outside my bedroom window. I realized how big a toll living with constant pain had taken on me, both physically and mentally. It was as if a part of my brain that had been solely engaged in managing my life with pain had been gifted back to me. This filled me with gratitude and gave me a better perspective on my life. I quit the job that I was in and stayed home for a few weeks recalibrating my plans. In hindsight, it was one of the best things I did. I pivoted and found a different job. More importantly, I sensed a new-found balance between work and life. I took great pleasure in embracing the simple pleasures of life – the crisp smell of an Autumn morning, the casual call from an old friend, the loving gaze from my better half, the warm hug of my son. I became, for the first time in my life, happy – at peace with myself and the world at large.

I began to use tools like the serenity prayer, meditation and my sense of gratitude for a new-found outlook on life. I learned to become more mindful and self-aware. All these years, I had been estranged from my dad, whom I blamed for a lot of my life’s missed opportunities and unfulfilled childhood dreams. I forgave him unconditionally, and in doing so, lost one of my biggest sources of anger. In reconnecting with him, I was able to reconnect with the parts of my life that I had repressed and use them anew as a source of strength and perspective.

I moved into a new job that challenged me in newer ways than merely posing technological problems. I began to develop remarkable insights into both my behavior and of those around me. I found myself developing hitherto unknown qualities such as compassion and empathy. My thoughts now constantly began to return to how to best translate these new insights into something meaningful for the folks around me that I find to be hurt, miserable, suffering and lost. I decided to enroll in a graduate management program at Tufts, ostensibly to learn some business skills but really with the idea of developing my humanistic perspective on leadership and life. I figure that anything that helps me grow into a leader of substance, would better position me to provide the benefit of my experiences and insight to the people in my team, in my business unit, in my cohort, in my peer group and all the lives that I touch. Looking back on my life, I can see that there is a lot that I have accomplished, but a lot more that I didn’t. Achieving a level of inner peace and balance has taken a long time, with a profoundly physical and mental struggle. Yet, I feel grateful that I was able to get somewhere at all and not remain angry and lost, like the young man of my youth. I feel stronger and deeper, with a clear understanding of the What and How, and have begun the journey towards finding out Why. I now realize that the goal is the journey itself. There is no way to predict or truly prepare for how life turns out. It is what it is, and the only real change that you can achieve is within, not without. And the process is continuous, without a start or end.