After schooling in the small and peaceful yet modern town of Mangalore, got into St. Aloysius college....a great place! Towards the end of college, one fine day wisdom dawned on me and I realised that I was barking up the wrong tree....relativity, wave equations etc were not really my cup of tea! So began a journey into accounting and Finance as I started the long and arduous route to become a Chartered Accountant.....but then perseverance paid I suppose and finally the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India decided that I was worthy of being a member of their esteemed institute (that was in early 1994).
So armed with the CA certificate, the quest for a job began and a multinational company by name ITW Signode India Limited gave me a break in Hyderabad(a good one too!). 3 years of auditing, accounting, MIS (another word for the art of showing figures vertically, horizontally, diagnolly, as bar charts and pie charts!!). It was a great learning experience and the job paid well....more importantly that was the time when I met some of my very good friends in life.
In January of 1997, ITW decided that I was the 'chosen one' to go to the deep jungles of the Union territory of Dadra& Nagarhaveli to do the number-crunching for their new venture there. Nature being something I love, I was there in a jiffy.
Silvassa (the place where I was in D&NH) is a really beauiful place....the kind of place where you could go for a couple of days and forget the world entirely...you wouldn't have to try too hard because you would not get a Newspaper or see a bus for a long time. The jungles are thick and deep and one can often spot Chitals and Sambhar. It is also a place that the likes of Jim Corbett and Kenneth Anderson would have loved to be in. Thta is because there were a lot of tales of Man-eaters prowling about. Initially brushing it aside as village rumours, I finally accepted that as a fact when I saw the remains of a villager who had been mauled and killed by a man-eater, close to our factory.
Work-wise too, the Silvassa venture was good as I learnt the ropes of administering a location of the company, dealing with local bodies and statutory authorities. It was the time when I learnt to work and live in extreme conditions. Of course, the best part of that period was that I fulfilled one of my dreams...that of owning a car..!
By early 1998, I had reached a point in time when I felt that I could not go on with this numbers game anymore and that a routine job was something that did not give me joy.......there was this desire to get on to something more creative and challenging. When this feling creeps in, the best thing to do is pack your bags and start the search for what you've been looking for....and I did just tha one April morning. Having bid my employer goodbye, I drove down home..home to Bangalore.
The 'search' was a bit difficult, but then the best things in life don't come easy, do they?
Well, here I am; working with Oracle Solution Services (India), as an applications consultant. It is a great place to work in. I seem to find the kind of work that I was looking for...'A hopeful beginning' to a new chapter!
Meanwhile, I keep doing some of the things I love doing most...reading,writing, cricket (call this an obsession!). Would love to meet people with interests in writing.
So, all of you lovely human beings out there....do keep in touch ..