Some Personalities Are Acidic & Some Alkaline

A new family environment with a stringent set of rules. This is what my mother came to after her marriage. The situation may have been bearable for her alone, but the possibility that those rules might act as a deterrent in the growth of her children was difficult to accept for her. In retrospection, I feel very proud to say that we (my siblings and myself) have received the best possible education and exposure necessary for our all-round development. My mother was the permeable wall which only let good thoughts, love and blessings pass through her to reach us and stopped anything which could have affected young minds, preventing negative impression create roots. Today when I have the periscope to look at different faces of relationships, I realize how perfect an example of balance she is, who strikes just the right chords, keeping everyone in harmony. I hope that I have inherited this personality and will be able to create a perfect solution, gelling well with the base wherever I go – just like she does.

 Keeping the same values intact with me, I stepped out of the cozy environment of my nest for the first time and entered the dreamy world of graduation college (I would blame Bollywood for creating this wonderful image of college life in my mind.) Putting an icing on the cake of my dreamy world was the fact that I soon became very popular. Undoubtedly this attracted envy of few. But little did I know that some people will have no work other than directing all their energy to disturb my life! Suddenly people started having many wrong notions about myself and I soon realized that it was the doing of none other than those who called themselves my friends. That realization left an acerbic taste in my mouth. A little salt is required in every dish but too much of it can sometimes make the food poisonous. This experience led me to think that people are not what they seem to be and taught me the most caustic lesson in life – to prevent being eaten from the snake, one has to become the eagle!

 Once bitten twice shy! This is how I saw the outside world after few bitter bytes from the pie of life, taking every step with caution. On starting my journey as a B-School student, I presumed that people, especially those who have seen the world, could be wiser and crafty. This belief system changed my demeanour unknowingly, of which I am still not sure if it was a good thing or not. But contrary to all my apprehensions, I found the saying by St. Kabir applicable here “bura jo dekhan main chala, bura na milya koye. Jo mann khoja apna, to mujhse bura na koye!” The way my peers encapsulated me as an integral part of that world, with an intention of mutual growth, it made me shed away all my previous inhibitions!

 We always aim to see the good around us, however,  just like the continuous crest and trough of a wave, life also is a series of continuous highs and lows. An essential part of everyone’s life today, the corporate world could be the quintessential wave like experience. Though a relatively short stint so far, but my corporate journey has given me ample flavors of people management & different types of personalities. People say that one finds true friendship only while young. But I am lucky to have found some gems along the office corridors & work desk. Over the course of time I have realized how these few people have been making this coarse journey seem easy and enjoyable. Right guidance to steer properly through one’s career is critical and I was lucky enough to come across a few great leaders, who have always worked to bring out the best in me. Acting as the catalyst in professional growth, they are the ones who work on you and lift you up the ladder. But then there are those who will want to pull you down, every time they see you take one step up the ladder. I am pretty sure that one cannot skip encountering these hurdles and I am no exception. Generally popularity plays a big role in creating an image of a corporate. Efforts on soiling that image to fulfill one’s own motives, direct/ indirect attempts on denigration, are rife in “office politics”. Dealing with these highs and lows of the sine wave of corporate life is probably what is known as people management skills and the higher number of years you spend working, the more you realize the importance of these skills. 

A pearl is developed in its shell over a period of multiple years. These mixed experiences over the years have honed me as a person. The maturity to understand the grey areas of life and the ability to rise above the binary classification of good and bad, comes only with experience. There will always be those pungent and erosive agents in our lives who will contribute to corroding our beautiful surfaces which makes us outshine them. It is our responsibility to identify, and then hold on to those basic elements who help maintain the much needed balance in our lives. It is easy for a tree to spread its branches horizontally because there are ample number of well-wishers of the well-to-do. The difficult part is to fix the roots properly in the ground and grow from a sapling to a tree for that is when people try to create hurdles. With this learning in mind and those that hold my roots to the ground looking over my back, I try to walk the roads less traveled by, and that shall make all the difference!