On the Tenth Anniversary of Quitting
On June 25th,2003, after months of intense deliberation, I took one of the boldest steps of my life. I quit my plush job in the valley, sold every single possession I had acquired, gave up my H1B visa, and left for the unknown shores.
Having been born in a modest middle-class family in Kolkata, India, my job in the valley was earning me more in a month than my Dad would earn in two or three years. I had been recruited right out of my college in Kanpur, India, placed in an intensely rewarding technology team, was helped in every aspect of my move from one country to another. At the age of 21, it was the most one could ask for.
During my three years in the US, I travelled far and wide. My friends and I would often embark on incredibly long road trips. From the stunning beaches of Highway 1, to the arid desert-scape of Death Valley. From the mountain treks in Yosemite, to the hot water springs of Yellowstone. From the striking Crater Lake in Oregon, to the glitz and dazzle of the Sin City. We saw it all and we did it with the gusto of the young and free.
It wasn’t all just fun and games, of course. We worked insane hours, and often were dealing with ‘release candidate bugs’ in the weekends. The valley taught us how to work, to achieve perfection and take pride in it. As an incredible melting pot of various nationalities, it showed us the quirks and nuances of different cultures, and how to creatively coexist and produce.
Yet, despite all that I had, I could sense a growing conflict within me. I often found myself staring at the next few decades of my life. Fast-paced career growth, long-weekend and ‘ten day’ holiday travels, a few long and short relationships, a possible marriage, a suburban house, couple of kids, perhaps a startup of my own one day. The various possibilities lay like pieces of lego, and it was up to me to permute and combine and create something unique out of it. A path that would be peaceful and harmonious, with ample riches and rewards, with a future that would make my parents proud.
Simultaneously, however, I would wonder about that other possibility. The ‘what if’ question. What if I did a startup in India and could use technology to solve a real human problem? What if I could explore the maze of factories in China and could witness the production lines up close? What if I could wander in the streets of Rio as a pilgrimage to the mecca of football? What if I could sleep under the stars in a beach in Asia, listening to the mesmerising sound of the breaking waves? What if I could find myself lost in the forests of South East Asia, rediscovering the world of Apocalypse Now and Heart of Darkness? What if I took up filmmaking as a profession? What if I documented the efforts of social entrepreneurs on the ground? What if…?
I realised that I was staring at a fork in life — a choice between the somewhat Known and the completely Unknown. That was really what it came down to. The rational brain wanted to choose the former. And a seemingly irrational voice wanted the latter.
I often blame my grandfather for giving me the ‘wanderer’ bug. From my seventh birthday onwards, he started gifting me books about far shores, about travel, about distant cultures. He made it a point to play the ‘Lord Harry’ (from The Picture of Dorian Gray) for me, influencing me with his view of the world, of what he thought really mattered. He would often tell me stories of his own dramatic personal life, his trips to the post-war UK and his thoughts about future Europe, his travails while setting up a business in Bengal and subsequent downfall due to worker-union riots, his repeated attempts at pulling his poor relatives out of the poverty-stricken villages surrounding Kolkata. On my ninth birthday, he gifted me ‘Chander Pahar’ (Mountain of the Moon), one of the most important adventure novels written in Bengali literature, chronicling the adventures of a Bengali boy in the forests of Africa. I read that book more than twelve times, and I still have that copy.
Gradually, through the first half of 2003, the choice became clear to me. The bug had grown inside of me and found a voice of its own, and there was no way of killing it.
Driven by an itch that I couldn’t tame, I managed to reduce my life to two big bags, sold or gave away everything else, and landed right into Bangkok in the middle of the night. I remember feeling mortally terrified through the flight and right after landing, a feeling of free-fall without any safety net. But then I met a couple of Brazilian surfers, and we headed straight for the first pit-stop: the infamous Khao San road. And so the journey began.
In five days from now, exactly ten years would have gone by since that fateful day. And yet, the ride is still on. Looking back, I realise that I got exactly what I asked for: uncertainty. Through the three different startups that I have been part of, the two films that I ended up making, my extensive travels through the nooks and crannies of Asia, parts of middle-east, Brazil, completely unpredictable personal life highs and lows, I somehow found myself in incredible situations meeting fantastic souls. I made deep life-changing relationships, and explored new worlds through the eyes of the other.
I realised through the last decade that exploration doesn’t necessarily imply travel. It simply means traversing new territories, and it can even be a journey within oneself. It can be through startups, or through projects. Through people, and through ideas. Through cultures and through cuisines.
The only constancy is a choice to never repeat, to attempt newness at every chance one gets.
Of course, the ten year ride has not been easy. But it has always been incredibly interesting. I never again made as much money as I was making back then. Neither did I ever again buy a car or even a music system. I continue to run away from acquiring anything ‘heavy’, one that I cannot move with. People in my life sometimes have a hard time dealing with my wanderlust, mostly due to their worries about my future. There have been times where I lost direction. Then again, new paths emerged from somewhere, showing me interesting new realities.
Yet, there has not been a single moment where I repented my choice. I learned skills that I would never have had, discovered my boundaries and tested my limits, lived in the moment without a care of the future. I went through a lot of the ‘what if’s, and I am glad that I did.
Most importantly, I saw life up close in ways that I would never have had.
I am 35 now, and I wonder what the next decade would bring. My thirst has only grown, that wanderer bug inside now all-encompasses my being, I truly see the world as my bedroom and living-room, the kindle as my library, the bags as my wardrobe, the macbook as my office, the internet as my life support system. Metaphorically speaking, anyway. Life, as an organic journey through various unknowns. While my meanderings till date have been wide-ranging, it would be interesting if I could spend the next decade in going deep. But, only time will tell. All I know is that my future remains unknown and uncertain.
