Dreaming With My Eyes Open!

It’s December 2009, 28 years since I was born, 5 years since I landed my first job and 2 years since I got married. I’ve had pretty much the text book life of a Maharashtrian boy with a strong focus on academics. Schooling, Junior College, Engineering, MBA and the last 5 years in the Banking Industry …… it’s been pretty much the tried and tested route to what they call a good life. But this is not how I dreamt of my life when I was a kid …. 12 hour work days, crunching numbers, implementing technologies, spending sleepless nights over sloppily done PPTs …... I do enjoy it and on some level find it fulfilling, but frankly in the long run ……. I do not want to be recognized as the CEO / CTO / COO / CFO of a Bank but as someone who made a difference in a field which I consider my calling.

Now that I have started giving thought to it, I have always dreamt of holding elected office, and basis whatever little exposure I had in my student days, I thought I was effective at it as well. In VJTI where I did my Engineering I held different posts in the student bodies, in IIM Lucknow I was part of a prestigious Placement committee where the stint was controversial but was fun none the less and I learned a lot from it. For me, there has always been something enigmatic about representing people on a larger scale.

I look at holding elected office as nothing but a profession, something I think I would be good at. When I started off in the Financial Services Industry I had no relevant experience nor did my employers ask me about it. It is something I have built over the last 5 years, so it should be the same with politics where I am a novice with no backing and background. It is something that can be worked out over time ……. and if you know the effort it takes, and if you are ready to give it your best shot there should be nothing stopping you.

That is what this blog is all about, putting my thoughts down, organizing them, shaping them up, reacting to things, finding out new things and effectively dreaming with my eyes open that one day a few years from now I can be elected as an MLA and proudly walk into the Maharashtra Assembly representing the people of Mumbai, my hometown. I am trying to look down as far as possible at a road I want to take, a road I may not be able to take right now, but will definitely try to in some years. Like a mountaineering trek the preparation begins long before the journey.

So with heaps of optimism and lots of hope … I will start preparing!