Of Wodehouse, Vedanta and Long Distance Runs Part I

Nearly six months after my last post of any note, I revive my rusty literary brain again to think blog for a few minutes. Thanks Tahseen .. you have ensured that my New Year resolution goes unbroken… at least for the time being :)

My first instinct when I start this piece is to give an excel sheet-by-excel sheet description of all the interesting bits of consulting I have done over the past six months, but what the heck… don’t think that my readers will be interested in the intricacies of the Poisson Distribution and Spiked Demand anyway :D

When I chose consulting, my choice was heavily influenced by a nebulous concept of work-life (im?)balance…Oh, and by the way, I have a very Indian, and in fact, very Mumbaiyya concept of work-life balance – as long as I leave at 8.30 AM and am back by 10 PM, I consider it a nice, relaxed day … damn those weekends! :P

Jokes apart, life in consulting has been good. How can I crib when an Optra comes, picks me up and drops me back at home and work five days a week most of the time? And what more proof of adaptability do I need when the client thinks that I am an engineer, completely oblivious to the fact that sine waves, lognormal distributions, Fourier transforms and the nth law of thermodynamics are as obviously intuitive to this Chartered accountant, as Tamil is to an Egyptian?

But then folks, there you have it. Consulting is the ultimate test of adaptability – of the capability to learn new things. And if you have won the trust of the client through your knowledge of the subject and an understanding of the practicalities of his/her situation, you have won a friend for life, and probably a bit of repeat business as well J.

One thing consulting (and I am sure this is true of every job that a WIMWIan lands up as well) makes me really ponder about is ‘the meaning of work’ and ‘the meaning of life’ . Remember Frankl’s “Man search for Meaning”? I am DEFINITELY not saying that today’s corporate life, however striking the resemblance is to a rat-race, comes anywhere close to the horrors of a concentration camp. But it does force us to lead lives where we are forced to run without knowing why we are running. Notice the use of the word ‘why’ instead of ‘where’ (I believe I have answered the ‘where’ part sufficiently for myself. My duty (thanks to the Gita) has been fixed as the search of excellence in my chosen profession. Wherever it leads me I am happy to go!). What do we achieve by doing whatever we do?