221st Page of A 300 Page Autobiography

And I broke into an effervescent laughter.
Wasn’t he right? Life was going to come around full circle. At 43, I had achieved milestones I had never dreamt about. The youngest Global Head in the Food&Beverages Industry was a brilliant title to possess at this juncture of my life.
A career spawning over a period of 17 years starting from my first job at XYZ International has been a completely intoxicating experience. The rapturous excitement on getting placed in Pepsi straight out of IIM makes me wonder about the valuation of happiness at various junctures of one’s life. At 24, it was about getting placed. At 30, it was about playing with my little daughter who was growing up. At 38, it was about appreciating the progressive social context that India was encapsulated in.
At 43 today, it holds a very different meaning for me. Today, happiness means feeling worthy, responsible for having a job done, and done well at that, for having achieved more than I had aimed, for having made a difference to the lives of people around me.
What more does one want out of life? An IAS husband who while reciting poetry is passionate about reforming bureaucracy and robbing it of its stigma and a daughter who doesn’t want to follow the herd into the 17th IIM inaugurated in the country but wants to start a school
Despite all this, there is something missing. A gap I need to fill in. Having changed the fortunes of the companies I worked with, I am hardly excited by the rise and fall of the share price.
I guess, it’s time to turn around. That’s why my husband laughs and calls me eccentric for now at 43 I am filling in a form yet again, like the night of 20th Sept 2010 I filled one for a company, and this time it is to get into University of Columbia to study Public Administration. Maybe we can….