There are many chapters in a person's life, defined by various events that happen throughout their lifetime. There are numerous ways you could organize these chapters. However, I assume that the simplest way to look at these chapters in our lives would be as career events in their chronological order. For most people, this would be junior school, high school, college, your first job, then the next, and so on. In this post, I would like to talk about three incidents taken from three different chapters in the book of my life.
SASTRA University, Thanjavur, India -
I wrote a post over eight years ago, while I was still pursuing my undergraduate degree. It was about how I witnessed the newly graduated batch of 2011 leave the University, saying their final goodbyes to each other. Back then, I was apprehensive about the day (which was then two years away still) when I would have to bid farewell to all the friends I had made in those four years. The day came without fail, and it has now been six years since that day. What I would like to highlight here is that we all left that place at the same time, each going in their own direction. No one had the chance or option to remain there, for their purpose was complete. I went on to kickstart my career with Zoho.
Zoho Corp, Chennai, India -
More than the role, it was the people who made my career once I joined Zoho. From playing badminton in the early mornings to eating pani puris in the night, and all the work in between, I tried to make the most of every second to spend time with the friends I made in my workplace. Ultimately, after two years of work at Zoho, I decided to pursue a master’s degree in the United States and secured an admit, and so did my friends Neela and Santhanakrishnan. It dawned upon me that our days at Zoho were coming to an end, and our circle of friends would no longer meet regularly. Having seen and experienced many goodbyes in the past - the latest at that time was Ramakrishna and Aishwarya. They had left the company about 6 months before, I understood that the place was never the same once a person left. Because the three of us were quitting soon, I decided to make the first move to quit my job. By embracing the change before it hit me, I felt that I saw what was coming and saved myself a lot of the emotional baggage that I would have to carry ahead.
The University of Illinois at Chicago, USA -
Fast forward a couple of months to August 2015. I moved to Chicago and it was the days leading up to the start of my graduate program there. I remember telling myself that the two years of my masters would be over too soon, just like the last two years at Zoho. And that it probably isn’t a good idea to try forging strong friendships and expecting them to last. Little did I foresee that these friends would become my family for the next two years. Those two very hard, yet fun-filled years later, none of us shed a tear on the day of our graduation in May 2017. We knew that we were going to stay together for at least about a month from then.
But this time around, I could not be the first person to leave as I were to start my stint with Morningstar in downtown Chicago. These people - the ones that I laughed and cried with - found jobs in different cities and embarked on their own, different journeys. Week after week, a person would leave, and I was there to bid farewell to them. I did not have the luxury of saying the first goodbye this time, and the memories of these people continued to haunt me for the entire time I continued to stay in Chicago. Every road, alley, and building had something in it that would remind me of those two years. And till November 2017, when I finally moved out of Chicago, I steered clear of the Little Italy neighborhood and Taylor street, where all those memories were made.
They say that life comes a full circle, and yes, it did.
