I met Akshat, my senior from college, this weekend. It was a planned meet up. We were seeing each other after twenty two long years. Not that I had seen him a lot during college days. He was a popular guy at grad school, whom everyone knew and adored. I was a nobody those days, leading an inconspicuous and insignificant existence. Yet, I was excited when the invite for meetup, from my senior, landed in my LinkedIn inbox. Reunions are pleasant and nostalgic, enabling us to reconnect with our old self, I thought, while accepting the invite. I hadn’t caught up with any of my college friends or acquaintances since decades. So, I wasn’t too sure how this experience would turn out to be. Nevertheless, I signed up. Akshat is the CEO of a successful startup specializing in robotics and having tentacles across the globe. I am a Senior Engineering manager at the Bangalore R&D center of a US-based healthcare organization. He had found me through LinkedIn, a space where my writings proliferate.
It was a 30 minute connect, scheduled at a coffee shop, in Akshat’s locality. I arrived at the venue 10 minutes late, braving the perils of Bangalore traffic. Akshat was waiting for me, after chit chats with few other buddies, whom he had caught up after years, just like in my case. He told me that, he practiced the habit of making new or rekindling old friendships with 6 people every day. “What an unusual and audacious goal!”, I thought. After the initial customary greetings, we embarked on a trip down memory lane; his memory to be precise, as I hardly knew or remembered any of the names Akshat threw in front of me. He seemed to know everyone in his batch and mine, professors and administrators alike. I was stumped. I had to search for excuses every time he asked me who else from my batch lived in Bangalore, that I was in touch with.
The conversation moved on to the work each of us did in our professional spheres and the paths we had traversed. Akshat spoke at length about the five startups he had founded in the past sixteen years. He reflected on how these experiences strengthened him with valuable learnings and transformed him into a seasoned leader. He recounted the eight year long arduous journey of building the current startup and leading it to success. All this while, I listened attentively, with awe and admiration. Here was someone I knew, from a similar educational background, who went onto build not one but five big empires on his own. I was blown away by his grit, perseverance and down-to-earth nature. It also felt good listening to the narrative of a CEO, in person. It is not every day that one gets to sit with CEOs and hear their stories.
I gave a quick recap of my career and my current initiatives at work and outside of it. I didn’t have big numbers to boast about. It was an ordinary tale of a typical software professional. No fancy, no frills. My professional life is a boring khichdi of power struggles, petty politics, peer pressures, pent up frustrations and whatever else that a corporate career is made of. I did not have scars of success to recount or reveal. When Akshat asked me what my future plans were, all I could manage was a faint smile, as bleak and uncertain as my future. I told him that I had been exploring different paths and that I was preparing myself for any or all of these. Clueless, in other words!
All through the conversation, I stuttered and fumbled for words. I had prepared for this meetup. I knew my lines well. But, the script had changed mid course and I had no time to react or renew my learning. I hadn’t quite anticipated that I would be subjected to the stardom of an individual who had spent four years in the same college as mine. I was not prepared to meet a stalwart of sorts; rather, I had never been acquainted with this breed. I interacted with only the ordinary; people like me, or perhaps, people who liked me. Here I was, face to face with an icon who brunched with CEOs and celebrities, at the drop of a hat. His stature diminished me. His friendliness stifled my soul. His candor reduced me to a miniscule. I had not achieved anything in life, reached nowhere and had no kingdoms to conquer. The truth danced before my eyes.
Reunions, I had thought, were heart warming reminders of who we were, once upon a time! Now I learnt that, reunions can also be painful and devastating. They can show us the mirror and question our very existence. They can shake up the foundations of the present and destroy the dreams of the future. A reunion can cause ripples in the waters of our life and rupture the chambers of our heart. This reunion had pressed the “reset” button in my life. I may have to restart and rebuild myself grounds-up, the way Akshat had built his numerous startups.
This isn’t the first time these thoughts pervaded me. Self doubt and self deprecation have been my companions since childhood. I sat down in deep thought, fighting back the tears welled up in my eyes and reflecting on the incongruent life I was leading. Perhaps, I was being too hard on myself. I was comparing apples to oranges. Akshat and my lives were starkly different. I was one of the very few in my family to have done engineering after grade 12, where as Akshat came from a family of engineers, doctors and bankers. He had well wishers to show him the path of Masters at an Ivy college in London. My parents forced me to learn ‘type writing’ and take up a clerical job, after graduating from REC (NIT, as it is called now). My life has been laden with struggles — to find a job at the peak of recession, to pay my hostel fees, to be financially independent, to resist the array of marriage proposals that my parents kept bombarding me with, to prove myself as a valuable employee at work. While Akshat counted the number of businesses he founded, I had only the number of times I walked in and out of depression, to recollect.
It has been a long winding journey of finding myself, amidst the dirt and din of life. I have braved countless rejections and traumatic phases, all along. Today, as I chew the cud and reminisce the past, I am proud of the battles I have fought, within myself and with enemies outside me. Veni, vidi, vici. I have come a long way, seen a plenty of hardships and conquered many a kingdom in my personal and professional lives. I know that, I have miles to go before I sleep. I am determined to travel these miles and conquer destinations far and wide. I will become a unicorn one day, just like the startup that Akshat is passionately building.
This story is inspired by the 100 day storytelling initiative by Your Story Bag. This is my story for day 21/100 of #2023TheStoriedWay
