Remember to Live

I was in my early 20s when I landed a job with Merrill Lynch in London. I was young (still am) and very naïve (not so much now). My first day on the job was spent on the floor where all the trading took place. Human beings stared at multiple screens, numbers flashed in various colors on these screens; phones’ rang without a pause and everyone somehow was impeccably dressed and seemed in control of the situation. I knew the moment and I had both arrived.

I wanted to learn and be good at what I was chosen to do, not what I had chosen but what had chosen me. Everyone I went to high school with was amused with my choice of career – banking. My track record with Mathematics was well known in almost every social circle I was a part of in my teens in Calcutta. By that I mean – I was absolutely hopeless. I could stare at numbers for hours and wouldn’t know what to do. I somehow found it impossible to understand the use of Algebra in everyday life. And, now that I think of it – I haven’t used Algebra today or for that matter yesterday and I highly doubt I’ll use it tomorrow. But, I assume it’s important for every student to build a foundation and all that.

Summers and winters came and went, Arsenal weren’t winning anything, we went and learned how to camp in a music festival in Belgium, ran into Arsene Wenger in a dim sum restaurant in Hampstead, fell in and out of love, made the most amazing friends, bumped into Marcus Mumford in the loo, traveled more than I could’ve imagined but I was still in a job that had chosen me. I couldn’t get around that. Was I going to spend the rest of my life on the tube between Baker Street and St. Paul’s? Or Farringdon that way I didn’t have to change lines.

My best friends mostly live abroad and they’re happy – they’re very good at what they do, banking and consulting and to be fair they’re hugely successful but unlike them I wasn’t interested in finance or numbers or banking. We were friends because we grew up together, we loved football and music and literature and theatre and food. But, when we were at our work places we were different people. That’s when I knew I had to chase something I was good at and more importantly – cared about. I knew I had to move away from the city that made me the man I am today and the friends that became family, I had to leave London.

On a cold October morning in 2011, while others read The Financial Times on their way to work, I was probably reading Murakami or Salinger or Amitava Ghosh and as St Paul’s came closer, instead of getting down at my stop, I kept sitting on my seat. A sea of suits descended onto the platform – St Paul’s, Bank, and Liverpool Street. I waited only to go to the very end of the route. It was time to chase the dream, it had to be done. What was the dream? I hadn’t the faintest idea but it wasn’t what I was doing for 4 and half years in London.

Three years later, I am in a place called Sonipat in Haryana. I wouldn’t have imagined being here in 2011 not even if I was paid a million dollars. But, I don’t need the million dollars to be paid to be here now – I am happy being here. I chose to be here. I live amongst some of the finest educators and thinkers of our time, incredible students and wonderful support staff. People that challenge my actions and thoughts, support and question my beliefs and rely on the hope that dangles on a string (every now and then).

The last three years have been spent traveling across India, collecting stories, working in rural spaces with farmers and building platforms where dialogue is imperative. Empowering students and observing first hand – the leaders of tomorrow. And through it all it was clear that the real dream was and is to write, write, write.

Here’s something the philosopher Alan Watt’s said in a lecture that became a rage on YouTube and an excerpt that I keep in my head:

What do you desire? What makes you itch? What sort of a situation would you like?

Let’s suppose, I do this often in vocational guidance of students, they come to me and say, well, "We’re getting out of college and we have the faintest idea what we want to do". So I always ask the question, "What would you like to do if money were no object? How would you really enjoy spending your life?"

Well, it’s so amazing as a result of our kind of educational system, crowds of students say well, we’d like to be painters, we’d like to be poets, we’d like to be writers, but as everybody knows you can’t earn any money that way. Or another person says well, I’d like to live an out-of-doors life and ride horses. I said you want to teach in a riding school? Let’s go through with it. What do you want to do?

When we finally got down to something, which the individual says he really wants to do, I will say to him, you do that and forget the money, because, if you say that getting the money is the most important thing, you will spend your life completely wasting your time. You’ll be doing things you don’t like doing in order to go on living, that is to go on doing things you don’t like doing, which is stupid. Better to have a short life that is full of what you like doing than a long life spent in a miserable way.

And after all, if you do really like what you’re doing, it doesn’t matter what it is, you can eventually turn it – you could eventually become a master of it. It’s the only way to become a master of something, to be really with it. And then you’ll be able to get a good fee for whatever it is. So don’t worry too much.

The scenery has changed, outside my window and otherwise. In other rooms and other wonders. I know you’re reading this and I am writing knowing you are.

(Arjun Puri was born and raised in Kolkata, back when it was still called Calcutta. As a young child he spent time in Mumbai, Chennai and Bengaluru – before their names changed. His last long-term home was London, and he fully expects it to call itself something else soon. Arjun graduated from the University of St Andrews in 2007 and worked as a banker for 5 years, before he realised it was not for him. Arjun now lives in Delhi and works in the education sector. He loves books, sport, people and travel -- and most of all, Leyla, his German Shepherd.)