Further Discussion

After that letter and many more conversation, I decided to commit to Saathi for a period of 3 months. It must be understood that a commitment made to an NGO is singly important as it involves gaining the trust of underpriviliged people. Once a commitment is broken , it results in causing the underpriviliged person to distrust further contact with individuals from the NGO.

Once the commitment was made, I was called to visit the Saathi office in Mumbai.

The Pursuit of Happiness

Here is the gist of the letter I said I'd display. Have omitted the ending though.

"To Roabin,

You left me with a lot to think about after our final conversation last night. You’d told me about the importance of quality of life and how that takes precedence over most other things in the West. I believe that that is indeed how it should be. So you’ll understand when I say that what you talked about was something that has been driving me crazy for quite some time. I’ve called it the “happiness” factor and what we’re talking about is famously known in the USA as the “Pursuit of Happiness”. I’ve always wanted to be one of those people who love doing what they do, so that, to me my work would be my source of happiness. However, I’ve since been told that one can’t really ensure or work towards happiness by flitting from one career option to another, at least not in our country. There is too much competition here. The scope for re-inventing one’s self in our country is low because the moment one thinks of moving on to something else at a later stage in life they’ll find that they’re competing against people younger, fresher and more energetic than themselves. They’ll probably find that there is, essentially, no place for them in this new arena. I’ve been told that one cannot just sit down at some point in his/her life and measure happiness. Happiness is something that can be understood over the long term i.e. by living life and looking back later to see if you’re happy with what you see and whether or not you’re glad you took the decisions you did. And I may not completely disagree.

People in the west can afford to concentrate on achieving that quality of life because, as you said, they have financial freedom. The mature economies of their respective developed countries provide them with economic certainty and thus permit them to do so. I was watching this documentary called Two Million Minutes in which Vivek Paul (former CEO off Wipro technologies) said that students in India, China and the USA were now competing on a level playing field and that while the Indians were motivated to work harder by economic opportunism, the Americans needed to find other motivation because they had economic certainty. Yesterday you told me that this financial freedom is coming here to India as well. I was a little confused by this statement because although economies do support a person’s financial freedom, I always thought financial freedom was finally an individualistic thing. So then if financial freedom is this individual thing then many people do not have it to back them up in their search for quality of life. However great their economy may have been, the USA has always had people who’ve invariably just made ends meet and people who’ve had to slave to do so. They may be fewer in number, but they do exist. In India our gargantuan population gives this problem different dimensions. Our economy is strong and growing. Though recession has shown its effects we continue to march forward. All the same India has large numbers of people motivated by their desire to achieve economic certainty. As a result there isn’t a moment to lose. Some say that life becomes a rat race.

Then there are the things you spoke of- The unique and precious personality traits of every person that the industry tries to omit in an effort to mould them into just another block in their organizational structure. I agree with you there...."

The letter continues a little bit more but the matter that follows would be irrelevant to the blog readers. Hope that was an interesting read.

Will post again soon. Ciao.Tschüß.

Discussions

I considered various ways of moving forward to engage myself in some of the great suggestions made by the Taj regarding pursuits for the next 3 months. It took me considerable time because I do tend to vacillate before committing to something. Finally, I got in touch with Roabin. He was someone who I knew was associated with an NGO. Roabin Mazumdar is a founder member of the NGO known as Saathi as well as a director of The Inheritance India Land Conservation Company. Once we began to talk, we had a series of conversations (which were quite thought provoking). I believe that through our conversations he tried to gauge the kind of person I was and I too, in exchange, learnt quite a bit about the NGO world. We discussed my likes, my abilities, "quality of life" and lots more. Throughout our discussions, Roabin sought no long term commitment from me (until I was ready).

For my next post. I intend to display a letter I wrote to Roabin. It'll bring to light, partially, the substance of our conversations.

Bye for now. Auf Wiedersehen (until we meet again).

An Introduction

Hello. My name is Nishant Philip. I come from India.

Hallo. Mein name ist Nishant Philip. Ich komme aus Indien.

Okay. I’m sorry. It’s just that I’ve just started a German language class with Inlingua, and learning a foreign language is pretty exciting. So I just had to do that (introduce myself in German).

Now before I start a whirlwind of blogging, I’d like for the readers to know how exactly this blog came about. For the past three years I’ve been a student in the field of hospitality at the Institute of Hotel Management in Mumbai. Thereafter I was selected, by process of campus placement, in the Taj Management Training Program which was due to commence on 3rd August 2009. However, due to certain unforeseen circumstances the program got delayed and was rescheduled for December 2009.

Although my reaction to the deferment of the Training program was markedly one of discontentment, this view changed completely within time. I received some excellent suggestions from the Training Department of the Taj, which listed pursuits like working for an NGO and learning a foreign language among other things. That is what sparked my association with Saathi and Inheritance India Land Conservation Company Limited.

Comments and suggestion for all forthcoming posts are welcome (in fact they are much needed).

Ciao!