Today 6th of August 2015 I left Cognizant. I felt like I got independence a week ahead. Why did I do that? Well, there are a plenty of reasons, but the main reason being that I wanted to et out of the rat race.
A bad decision you might say. I don’t know. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. I traveled to Bangalore (now called Bengaluru) 7 years ago to get an engineering degree. That was the dreamland for every aspiring engineer in Karnataka, even for India to some extent. Eventually after the degree, I got placed in one of the best MNCs in India. Worked there for 3 long years and left it today. If I step back and ask myself, why did I do all that or why did I move to Bengaluru in the first place, the answer would be money.
No. I don’t have any of those. How much money did I save in 3 years? None. Actually, I was in debt. Education is costly you see. I took a loan of about 2,00,000 to complete the degree. So what’s the point of all those years? Did I just waste 7 years of my life for nothing? No. Not really. I made friends, built a small business and got the knowledge of how to run a business from scratch.
Has any of the things I learned in Engineering classroom helped me in any way? Nope. Not so much. I haven’t used 90% of the things I learned in Engineering. I don’t think I will ever use Calculus or Fourier Transforms in my life.
The work I was doing in that MNC can be learned in 6 months in Treehouse for $50. Now compare Rs. 3000 to the loan amount Rs. 200,000! That is not the only amount I spent to get that degree. I have spent at least a 1,00,000 more. If I knew all this before, I wouldn’t have pursued Engineering in the first place.
Unlike American dream, an Indian dream is either becoming a doctor or an engineer. Any other profession is looked down upon. My parents were not any different. They wanted me to be an engineer. They didn’t ask me what I wanted to become, they decided it for me.
What the f*ck, right? I wanted to be an astronaut. No one bothered to make me one. It’s not their problem you see, they did not know where to start to make their son an astronaut. In India, everything starts after you finish Engineering!
If money was the only thing I was running behind then I think I can stop now. These days I make more than what I was earning in the MNC. I don’t work 8 hours a day. I hardly work for 3 hours a day. I have set up an online business that earns a good money for me.
My passion is my job now. I liked chess a lot. I play it a lot. And now I’m glad that I was so into chess. I teach chess to kids. I like it. I see my students performing really well in tournaments. In a way, I influenced some kids to do something they are happy about. I’m proud of that.
Finally, I will be writing about my life here. Stick around if you want to know more.