Year of CONSOLIDATION

Transformation

Rising

Making

Realization

Blossoming

Is there a pattern that you see? This might be the journey of a branch on a floral tree through different seasons and stages. For me it’s more like the story of the various stages of my doctoral studies. Blossoming included the start of my new job at IIM Indore. These are also the themes around which I lived my years as I led my life into a new phase altogether. Having completed five years of the journey I look back with satisfaction and some sense of achievement and loss. Satisfaction, I feel because I am satisfied with what I set out to do and what I achieved. Yes for satisfaction no one else but only me and those very very near and dear to me matter. Achievement I feel a little because moving in the mainstream while being different is not easy and I have survived so far. My experiments with life and my own convictions have not left me lacking good stead so far. There is also a sense of loss as I have made compromises on the time and togetherness I could have shared with those who matter to me. Economics it seems is more important in life than anything else as I realize. TANSTAFL – There Aint No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. Well especially if you’re on the receiving side.

Here starts my learning, if you got to create free lunches. First get to the giving side.. give some free lunches and hope that more people may start giving. The surety is never there but this is the only way to have a probability.

So I start another new year.. trying to create change trying to put together the wide variety of experiences and learning that I have collected through my travels in geography, demography and sociography. I am consolidating my learning and experiences to make better sense of them. This year I also start my new job at the Centre for Management of Agriculture at IIM Ahmedabad. (http://www.iimahd.ernet.in/faculty-and-research/research-centers/cma.html). This sets up the need to and also enables me to consolidate my professional leanings and focus on being most productive to creating change where it is needed. Professionally this is clearly a year of Consolidation of the blossom in the last season.

Personally, Mridul is set to complete her thesis and we start our true journey of life together ( at least a new phase of it) as a couple shifting to officially one city of residence and therefore we also consolidate our life together. I also want to reconnect to the people and friends and individuals who have mattered and who inside the deep of my heart do still matter to me. A start has been made but much more needs to be done. Hence at a personal level also this looks like a year of consolidation.

So with folded hands and faith in my heart .. I welcome the YEAR of CONSOLIDATION.