Top memories of past decade

1. Preparing rice field under June Sun, transplanting rice in muddy waters, breakfast on the field with soiled hands, cuts while weeding and then seeing the first grain emerge – Practical Crop Production course - 2000. Sunil, Surjit and gang for company. Ishwar - you proved that not size but the fight matters.

2. One semester extended by University for 1 credit worth of required policy deviation, even with precedents. Beaurecracy at its height - 2002

3.Landing up unawares in Ahmedabad, with Jassi and Himani, the morning after Godhra carnage and seeing the curfew at Anand with burning shops and tyres on road - 2004

4. First trimester, first paper in marketing at XIMB gave the belief.....and the next two years, passed like a dream NFS race with company of Prashant, Asad, Pradeep, Manju, Amita and Raju(My Fab 6) and of course 'Father' Sarit. Wearing the Gold medal at Convocation made for a perfect ending of this beautiful 2 year memory: 2003-05

5.Atop the water tank near Nageshwar temple, Gujarat - during a heavy thunderstorm - on one of the heaviest downpour day for this region of Gujarat-alongwith the amazing MTgang of Aditi Dahiya, Asad , Divya Shankaran, Reddy, Raman, Prashant Chandrana, Anand bhai, Kanan gupta, Samrat Mukherjee, Swapnil shirodkar and Tarun Dhamecha - 2005

6.Lifeline project at Babrala with Prashant Reddy and Mayur - spreading healthcare and cheers amongst UP villagers and earning lot of blessings. 18 hour work days, 2 hours of night cricket with doctors, nurses, cooks and other volunteers and lovely contributions from rustagi aunty (& her halwa), banaerjee aunty, mathur aunty amongst others– 2005-06

7. Landing with a coach full of relatives in Kerela, for engagement 2005 and then hosting my in laws at Pantnagar, for marriage in 2006 – the fun being, Manju was the only one who can understand Hindi, English and Malayalam to cross communicate. Thanks Asad and Anju, for standing thorugh it all.

8. Himalyan Trekking trip with a gang that comprised of old warhorses of Haldia, young blood of Mithapur and gutsy girls from Mumbai. Asad being there made the trip all the more wonderful - Scaling darwa pass was fun and reaching Darwa top was achievement.

8. TAS selection process, thank you Aditya Khera and Bharti Nagar – and the overwhelming love received from top to bottom of Tata chemicals - 2008. Without your support and cheer from Aditi, I would not have been here.

9. Taj Stays dring TAS induction / India tour along with KoYo talks – Thanks to Komal and Yogesh, Gagan and AP - without you, the trip would have been half the fun - 2008. You guys rock!!

10.Struggles of Mumbai local from Vashi to Fort and later Vidyavihar to Fort – The memorable Tata Power days with the best of friends to share the house and office with – Manasvi, Krati and Vineet - 2008

11. Trips in and around Johannesburg including the Kruget Safari along with Anurag and Archi, 2 amazing persons and lovely friends and every moment in South Africa before and after that trip - 2009

12. Birth of my daughter Aashi – landing out safe and sound. Thank you Fortis for the extremely wonderful care of the mother and child- 2009

At Crossroads - Lessons in Employee Engagement

There comes a stage in life.......so often in life of those who choose to not tread the entrepreneurial way (or atleast that's what I think).........when one finds himself at the crossroads of Life and Career.

• On one hand is Stable Job, Settled family and letting everything run as it is
• Second road lead to destablising the existing run-of -the -mill job to do something 'better'(will come back to this better aspect)
• Third one leads to 'greener pastures'
• and finally the fourth leads to 'Self Actualisation'

Let's take a closer look at these four options and try to identify which is the best route to take in such scenario. But before that we need to understand, why one reaches such a crossroad at all.

Its to do with disenchantment from the existing work and my observations over 5-6 organisations that I have seen closely says that the disenchantment bug can bite you if

a) you are 'too creative' for the job you are currently doing or

(b)you feel undervalued / unrewarded for the work you are doing or

(c) you don't have a friend at workplace or worst of all

(d) you don't feel you are contributing enough

These four are often overlooked scenarios of employee disenagegement and need to be duly addressed by HR. Since this is not a HR manual, I leave this discussion here itself and come back to original topic of 'Life's crossroads'. So these are the four reasons which pulls you / drives you towards that crossroad. Now, with this understanding let's look at the four roads available.

Route 1 : Leaving the leaf unturned: The easiest of the routes to take as it requires absolutely no efforts. But is it really that easy because the very fact that you reached the crossroads implies you need to act now - lest you'll not just erode your own value, go into depression slowly but also will slowly make the organisation think of getting rid of you, if the reasons are a or d . The only reason you should take this route is if you reached the crossroads because of c. If b was your reason, than you still can take this path but need to 'do things better' and need not yet look for 'doing better things' which brings us to Route 2.

Route 2: Rocking the Boat: This is the most effective path. Effectiveness coming from net of result and effort. So, this path in bring in maximum risk free benefit with least effort and hence most evvective path, once you have reached the crossroads for either of reasons a,b or d. However, taking this path require some inherent skills as well as a well thought out strategy. Steps to follow this path are 1) Write down various things that you want to really do; 2) Identify who is currently doing that and because of what reasons he is into that position; 3) Acquire those skills or go back to step 1 and cut this option and start afresh. 4) Know who is the power centre in the scheme of things 5a) Active mode - Make the right noise at the right platform in front of the power centre 5b) Passive mode - Having identified what you want, keep an eye on and wait for the opportunity to come for the desired profile. 6)Make the move.

Route 3: Greener Pastures: Looks like an easy route but quite risky as the saying goes - to everyone, grass looks greener on the other side. Route 3 Path to be adopted in scenario a, b, d after trying Steps 1 to 5 of Route 2. However, if the alternate pasture chosen is the right one, this could be the best thing to have happened to your life and career. So, take a deep breath, think and then take the plunge.......remember, this has life changing power.

Route 4: Self Actualisation: Most risky route, most difficult route but at the same time most rewarding route. Identify your passion and become an entrepreneur. If the 'passion' is real, nobody can stop you from succeeding and this cross road is a blessing in disguise for you - a tipping point. However, if you can't be true to yourself, if 'passion' is for out of anger+frustration+fashion..........then you are doomed for a failure - Stick to path 1 only.

To conclude, I myself at the crossroads right now........let's see, which path do I take.