The Number 17

Disclaimer:  All thoughts expressed here are author’s personal views and no mockery is anywhere intended. I am responsible for what I say and not for what you understand.

So, it has been 1 year since the gullible girl got out of the gobbledygook of books and ventured into the real world. I have been meaning to write about my experiences but the cobwebs of the corporate world caught me up and I have been neglecting my introspection for long. But not anymore!

Before we begin, let me give you a bit of trivia. Everybody is aware that financial year starts from April 1^st and ends 31^st of March. But can we have a longer financial year? The answer is yes.

Here is an excerpt from the Companies Act, 1956 (sec 129 of Companies Act 2013) for your reference - 

"Financial Year means, in relation to any to any body corporate, the period in respect of which any profit and loss account of the body corporate laid before it in annual general meeting is made up, whether that period is a year or not the period to which the account aforesaid relates is referred to as a 'financial year'; and it may be less or more than a calender year, but it shall not exceed fifteen months; Provided that it may extend to eighteen months where special special permission has been granted in that behalf by the Registrar."


So my year in the blog is going to start from January 2017 and last till April 2018. So we are still talking about Financial year 2017-18. (I am just justifying my inability to write my year-end blog, as my tradition has always been, by using CA jargon. :P)

Oh, what a roller coaster ride this year has been!

It began with my result last year in January.  CA results have always been a jittery affair. Primarily because they say that it would be announced around 2pm but they never publish the results before 4pm. Can you imagine the state of the student during these two hours? One can almost cook rice, such is the pressure in the head. I remember my IPCC results came out at 11pm; 9 hours of torture! CA final was even worse. The website crashed around 4pm and then a gazette reached me via whatsapp! It felt incredibly foolish to believe a whatsapp saying that I was now a CA but for a few magical minutes I was blissful. And then, a friend finally uttered sense – whatsapp gazette is false! Darkness shrouded my mind and I was gasping for breath. Then finally when I could see no way out, I dialed my favourite SharmaJi’s number (she is now my brother’s wife, such an eventful year this has been! :D) and requested her to confirm my result – her father is in ICAI, you see. Sharma Uncle confirmed my result and I heaved a sigh of relief! And then I did what I was dying to do since the inception of CA odyssey, I texted my father “All my life I have been known as a CA’s daughter. Now, you are going to be known as a CA’s father. Debit equals credit ”

Hallelujah!

A perfect ending to the CA journey. Ending, did I say? It was the beginning! Inception of the hard road that lay ahead! But before that, I had a few moments of relief and fun – GMCS 2. I met a variety of people- a few assholes, a few really good friends and a few forget-after-the-gmcs people. In a nutshell, it was an eye opener. It told me what kind of people I would meet ahead and the types of challenges that were going to ensue. I sat for one off campus interview at Deloitte which was a fiasco. Big 4 never really tempted me but as every person preached me that it was stupid not to sit for the interview so I went ahead. After waiting for 3 hours, I finally entered the room. Technical sucked. HR went good. Then I was asked if I had any questions. I asked the interviewer how had his experience been with Deloitte. He began in his monotonous tone that life was okay. (okay? OKAY? He told me that I would need to work 16 hrs a day and for what? An ‘okay’ life?!). Sometimes in my not-so-sane moments, I feel that all these big corporate companies are actually a secret organization and their aim is to plague the world with frustration. Frustrated people recruiting more guinea pigs to suck life and turn into zombies.

Anyway, so then came the campus placements! The interview could not have been more different from the previous one. The interviewer was COOL, there is no other word for him and I was laughing so hard by the end that I had to apologise! So I was selected as an Internal Auditor in the company. I was on cloud 9. I was a CA, I had a job… I needed no other thing in life!

How very wrong I was.

Once I joined, I realized that things were not so rosy. Firstly, my place of reporting was Gurgaon and I simply detest Gurgaon. All the tall glass buildings copied from the west by DLF irritated me (You put up glasses all over the building, leading to greenhouse effect and then install centralised air-conditioning to beat it and then fret over huge power bills and pollution!) and the traffic was/is/will always be crazy in Gurgaon. Shuttle rides gave me sore muscles and back ache. I felt like I had aged 20 years in just 20 days. But I met this wonderful lady here who turned out to be Virat Kohli’s cousin! (I did not believe her till I saw her picture with Virushka at the grand celebrity reception last year! I openly admit that I was green with envy, Kohli is the love of my life after Harry Potter.) After the introductory few days at the new company, we were sent off to its various branches for conducting the internal audit and then reality hit me – it was nowhere near the audit I had envisaged.  I was supposed to visit the customer place and confirm our company’s services and controls were in place. The heat and exertion from long travel hours soon took toll on my health and I resigned within 2 months mainly because of the safety factors – these customers lived in the JJ colonies, since my company was into micro finance, and I was supposed to visit these areas with a salesperson on his bike!

And I was back into what-am-I-going-to-do-in-my-life phase. I started analyzing my strengths and weaknesses, interests and available options. Thoughts like ‘did I do the right thing by resigning; who is stupid enough to leave campus placement which is so difficult to get through; maybe I should have persevered’ kept plaguing me. Thanks to some wonderful people that God has bestowed me with, I could get out of it and got my next job in OBC after successfully clearing the written and interview. The month of darkness was soon forgotten just like a bad dream.

The number 17 continued to rule my stars. My CA result was announced on 17^th Jan. I joined my first job on 17^th of April. I joined my subsequent job on 17^th of August! And this is just the tip of the iceberg. ;)

The week-long induction training was my first experience in hostel and it was a memorable one. I realized why all hostelers kept cribbing about bad food – food at the mess was  extremely oily but the dessert always made up for the bad taste.

Obviously, I slept through the lectures but was wide awake during our badminton matches at night. And again, I met a variety of people – a bunch of idiots, some nice friends, a few I-don’t-even-remember-their-names and one adorable lady needs special mention here - Shraddha! She is one of the most hardworking, polite, sensible and decent women I have ever met!

At the end of our training, we were all given our postings. I was posted at Head office (Gurgaon, will you ever leave me?!) in large corporate credit department- I had to deal with the big fish, loans above 50 crores.  The next few months were horrendously challenging – I had to learn all the new stuff about loans, policies of the bank, RBI guidelines and more importantly, how to deal with people and how to coordinate between various departments I needed to rely upon for information! I tried my best but my pace was slow. I got scolded again and again. Again, some people who I call Gifts-from-God, helped me through each difficult day. Some days were so bad that I went home resolving to never be back but got up the next morning to face all the challenges.

Meanwhile, my brother got married. And a wedding, as enjoyable and wonderful and sacred thing may be, is a stressful affair! Shopping is as time consuming as it is financially-depleting. I tried one dress after the other till I settled upon this beautiful black-golden gown and a golden saree. It cost me my entire month’s salary but the look and the compliments overshadowed the monetary aspects.

After fun-filled 4 days wedding saga, it was difficult getting back to work. But what options do we have other than slogging our asses off for organizations who replace us within a fraction of second?

Just when I started to get a little hang of my work, life threw me a curve ball again!

I was transferred to the Accounts department! Out of the blue. Just like that. Personal grudge of the bosses? Or was it my slow pace? God knows how many times my mind berated me till I was shown sense (again by the good people!) that

•  Things don’t work like that in professional domain. Transfer is as ubiquitous in banks as chaai
• I need not blame my slow pace since I was a newbie and I was given 2 years to learn and train myself. Nobody catches bullet trains in 6 months, every body rides a bullock cart.
• Change is good. Change is inevitable. Moreover, wasn’t I so stressed and unhappy in that department so why not give the new department a chance?

And so I entered the Accounts department. So far, so good. My father worships Accounts, by the way. So he showed me all the positive (N.B. sarcasm detected!) side – balance sheet is the lifeline of any company’s finances, GST is the future of India, IFRS is the in-thing. He had said the same things about the credit department also… that credit department would lead to my holistic  learning as it would involve processing of balance sheets, application of tax laws. I have lost all hopes that I can ever be as much in love with CA stuff as he is.

Amongst all the anguish, I found my solace in fulfilling my travel dreams that I nurtured since childhood. I have covered Rajasthan, Shimla and Goa so far; sand, snow and sea. I fell in love with the sound of the sea. You have no right to be alive if you can’t take out time to watch the sunrise and sunset. Sunsets in Goa are proofs that not everything that goes down is sad and melancholy; it taught me to stay still and just be in the moment… the realization dawned on me that a higher power looks upon us all and I could feel all my stressed neurons slackening as the force of the mighty sea hit me. Nothing mattered anymore and I learnt just to be… in unison with my soul… at total peace.

All in all, this year was all about what they call as blooming and budding; making mistakes and learning from them; getting out of my comfort zone and most importantly taking note of my happiness and dreams.

Oh Darling, Let's Be Adventurers!

I'd have admitted that my blog posts have become as recurring as service tax returns but 2017 meant subsumption of all indirect taxes into one umbrella tax of GST so my CA-brand joke is a complete malarkey. (Service tax returns were half-yearly unlike GST returns, got the PJ now?)

Anyway, philosophers and successful people might say that only losers give excuses but I think that I deserve to justify my absence before being tagged as a loser!

So, my brother decided to get married to his beloved this year. We also undertook a totally mind-consuming (not to mention financially-depleting!) job of renovating our home this year. I had my personal goals to meet - CA and campus placement. With all the hullabaloo going on, my blog got relegated to the sidelines. Anyway, now I am here to rant again!

My aversion to everything that spells intimacy is universally known, be it love or wedding. Before all of you judge me heartless and evil as the villainess fairy Maleficent, I want to clarify that I am THE HAPPIEST person alive that my brother got married.

Personally, I believe, a wedding is a cockamamie concept. It drains you mentally, emotionally and FINANCIALLY! One's head resembles a Prestige Cooker (ironically, the tag line says 'jo biwi se kare pyar, wo prestige se kaise kare inkaar') steaming off at 250 degree F out of stress; relatives who taunt you and get upset for anything and everything at the speed of light; and your 10 years or 20 years of savings go into a sewer for throwing a themed wedding or a destination wedding respectively. Agreed, you are happy to finally be with the love of your life but why invite a clan of 500- 1000 people that you barely know and spend a million bucks entertaining them instead of just those few you can count on fingers who truly, genuinely care about your happiness? And it's just not about the money, the whole wedding saga is a torture in itself - I considered the saat pheras to be sacred before I saw all the people sleeping and snoring during the ceremony. Anyway, I can never run out of arguments against getting married so let me focus on what this post was originally meant to be about - 

How I could use all that money to give solace to my restless soul... by travelling far and wide...
Now that I have a steady source of income, I have started thinking about fulfilling my travel dreams. What appeared like a soap bubble to me earlier, now seems realistic. I have gradually begun to understand why exactly I run away from the idea of relationships and marriage - it is the thought of being settled, of getting into shackles of societal obligations and above all, of being chained to one place or routine, that haunts my nomadic soul. I keep pouring over articles and blogs that talk about places to travel in a budget, how to save for travel and what not. This blog post is my first step, symbolic of my promise to myself that from now on, I live to turn my dreams into reality... This is going to be the reminder in my frustrating moments that there is light at the end of the tunnel, so keep moving...

While the above mentioned rosy thoughts might motivate me to hit the road right away, my sane mind rings the bells - Surbhi, you need the funds! So here is how I plan to save for my travel goals -

1. Create a  travel corpus.
Call it your 'Adventure Account' to own a  'Dream Debit Card'. Remember, good things take time. It is a marathon, not a 100m sprint. Go steady but stay committed to saving for your cause. The best way is to set your salary account on auto-debit mode for some TDs (read travel deposits instead of term deposits!) because the only real life equation I understand is Income- Saving = Expenditure. Set aside some savings first and then expend the balance in a wise manner.

2. Cut down on wasteful expenditure
Once you have saved a portion of your income, focus on allocating the balance in such a manner that you are able to increase your savings by 10% p.a. Instead of draining your money on a Starbucks Coffee with a bunch of spendthrift friends, you could convince them for a Delhi-Darshan while sipping away a local cup of chai while soaking in the local culture. Or you could curb on your weekend outings to malls and cafes. The idea is to do away with everything that comes in way of your dreams; your peer group might start mocking you but be ruthless about your priorities!

3. The Great Indian Sale by Amazon
All of us are aware that Amazon is the biggest e-commerce company in the market and its revenue roots from people like us who shop away our salaries at the click of button. What I mean to say is that you need to keep your shopping tendencies off the table, if you want to savour the cuisines in the various parts of the world; that one GAP dress can cost you your trip to Grand Canyon. Either own that Louis Vuitton or go visit St Peter's in the Vatican City. Your fashion-crazy friends will definitely make fun of you, might call you 'aunty' because of your good old attire of jeans and t-shirt but we shall see who has the last laugh while watching the  Northern Lights in Norway.

4. Supplement your income
Find ways to boost your income. Just to illustrate, I keep participating in writing contests and have won 7500 bucks apiece.I know people who earn through online selling on amazon or through digital marketing. Every person has been given some skill or the other. Discover your talent and monetise it!

5. Be practical in your approach
Start with simple things like doing away with double expenses - people carry multiple sim cards and keep paying multiple expenses. If you don't watch TV, you could cut away your cable and save on a lot of money annually. You could car-pool or use public transport to save as well as contribute to environment.

6. Keep your eyes on the goal
You would often be tempted to stray away from your goals - friends and family would call you miser, stupid, crazy... but don't deter. I keep reading and looking at travelling blogs and pictures to keep myself motivated and focused. 
Here, have a look -

• The-50-most-beautiful-places-in-the-world
• Beautiful-places-in-india-you-must-visit
• 20-Places-In-Indian-You-Can-Visit-With-Just-10000-Rupees

And just to pique your interest, here is a compilation of some of the most picturesque places around the world - 

1.Christmas Island, Australia

2. Plitvice Lakes, Croatia

3. Glen Coe, Scotland

4. Valley of Flowers, Uttarakhand

All the beautiful places in India and the World, here I come !

C.A. - Conundrum Ad-infinitum

Conundrum : A confusing problem or question
Ad - infinitum : For ever and ever till hell freezes over

सुकून की बात मत कर ऐ ग़ालिब

बचपन वाला  Sunday अब नहीं आता...

And that is pretty much the story of my life these days.



Everyday, even before the rooster is up, reluctantly leaving the warmth of my quilt, I drag myself out of the bed [Okay, I admit it is only after I have snoozed off the alarm for about 5 times!], to get ready for my coaching.

Packed from tip to toe, braving the cold and fog, I reach the metro station only to see my quarry leaving me behind to wait for the next metro that is scheduled after 10 minutes or so.

-sigh-

I am late again.

The quintessential Surbhi Makkar behaviour.

I pace around the platform watching the fellow passengers, wondering, what in the name of Lord Voldemort, did I do in my past births to have earned this sort of cruelty.

No, I don't mean any offence to ICAI, but what on earth they were thinking while devising such a gruesome manner of butchering students, is a mystery that I have always failed to understand.

I mean, see...nobody, except a valiant CA pursuant, has to go to office AND attend coaching (twice a day, everyday) AND study side by side for the exams so tough that it gives nightmares daily not just because the course is unimaginably vast but also the fact that under the veneer of high standards the institute deliberately sets the papers that spell out : Did-you-think-that-you-would-get-a-degree-you-are-a-fool-We-want-you-all-to-fail...

And I am not even mentioning the harassment that sometimes articles have to face for attending the classes (as if the early morning classes are really a party that we all look forward to)

My firm, thankfully, is flexible enough but there are people who have to leave the class midway to reach office in time...what is the point of paying 25000 bucks...what is the point of making me undergo the training if you don't want me to study and be a CA...what is the point of all this new Companies Act hullabaloo and the amendments that you bring about at the speed of light if you don't fucking give me time to prepare for the exams !??!

and if that wasn't enough, you introduce some crappy mandatory advance IT training, for which you don't have the requisite infrastructure and you make students go all the way to AnandVihar from Dwarka, which we have to do right before our exams.

Oh God, I don't even have the energy to vent out my own frustration, my anger at the harsh provisions, or my fears that I would flunk...why is everybody trying to make my life miserable? :|

There are days when I simply feel like running away from everything. To hell with career, to hell with every damn person...to hell with life.

My train of thoughts is interrupted by the arrival of metro train. I see DR boarding the same metro and I find myself laughing that at least I am not the only one who is late :P

AC's coaching got over already else I would have been accompanied by yet another latelatif :D

I feel really happy when I see somebody who is latelatif-er than even ME :P

As the metro runs, my thoughts too come running back in my mind...hovering over my mind like an eagle waiting to swoop over its prey, the negative thoughts (read worry + frustration + jitters, exacerbated by sleep deprivation) wait to find any crack in my Patronus and make way inside me. But having slept badly at night, I drift off to an uneasy nap.

KS calling...KS calling beeps my mobile...and I know that it is 6:45 already and the class has begun and I am late...again...as usual.

I finally reach the auditorium.

As I enter, I am greeted with a sea of bespectacled students (It is perhaps a fashion to wear specs if you are doing such a demanding course...I wear one too. :P)

From east to west, from north to south, from every nook and cranny of the auditorium, I see about 500 students categorised into following :

1. The Geeky ones taking notes furiously and sparing me a reproving look that says : shame, shame, I know your name...you latecomer girl so lame.

2. The Carefree ones who are busy making aeroplanes in the class.

3. The fashion models - these girls look ready to go to a party. Hats off, pretty ladies. I mean the class begins at 6:30am and it takes a hell lot of time to doll up!

4. The lazybones - mostly boys, they look as if they have come straight out of bed without a shower.

5. The sleeping beauties - those who have paid 25000 and get up at 5:30am to come to the class and sleep.

6. VIPs - people yet to come...I mean, they swagger in really, really late.

7. The DPK people - SK, CJ, CG, GS, JA, SG, JG all of them grinning at me.

8. KS - The girl in lustrous black hair, smiling broadly as I enter.

9. DR - the latelatif from Dwarka walking behind me :P If his friend picks him up from the metro station on his scooty (both of them without helmets :P), he reaches earlier than me :P

10. SM - the showstopper : I, Me, Myself, Surbhi, Surbhi Makkar :D The greatest CA the world would ever see :P

Munching over the eatables that KS brings for me, I look around only to find people (except category 1) looking drowsy. Category 1 people alone have the enigmatic Hermione-Gene to resist the soporific power of the teacher.

I sleep half through my class too, the sleep deprived soul that I am...I suffer from insomnia which magically gets treated during the class :| :P

There is a cute side of CA too. :D

The course is so long and demanding, the classes so many that people get a lot of time to spend with each other :P They get to know each other well and end up being together for lifetime. My cousin keeps telling me about her friends who tied the nuptials after being CAs in the same attempt...so the girl/boy who happens to sit with you during a class merely by a lucky chance  might be the beloved you are destined to be with ! But not everybody is that lucky...there are also cases when Madam meets Sir during CPT...both of them clear the entrance...Madam proves to be a distraction for Sir...She clears the intermediate, Sir could not clear even the first group...Madam clears the final, Sir has still not cleared his first group...ultimately, CA madam breaks up with CPT-cleared Sir who then breaks up with ICAI and drops the course.

so Sirs and Madams, tread very carefully :D

Sometimes, I chide myself for not paying attention..not that I do it deliberately but two classes and 3 hours of travel and the consequential fatigue renders me incapable of understanding the fact that I am really going to regret not listening to the teacher attentively...A LOT.

But then this helplessness at getting caught in the quagmire of so-much-to-do-so-little-time-left engulfs me...Even this blog post is written out of frustration...A sense of hopelessness enslaves my mind and my already overwrought mind pleads me to let it shut down for a while...but something inside me, a little voice fights back and says - it is so easy to tune out, to shut down the systems, to close my eyes and lie back and wait for everything to end...but this is not what life is all about...life is about fighting back to victory.

And with this thought, I keep going day after day...I persevere in hope that I am soon going to reach my goal and turn my dreams into reality -

Ek Pal Niche Nazar hai, Ek Pal Upar Nazar Hai.

If you really sincerely want something, nature grants you- I'd heard a lot of people bandying about this philosophy but never could relate to it till last week.

Having reached my nodus tollens (The realization that the plot of your life doesn't make sense to you anymore—that although you thought you were following the arc of the story, you keep finding yourself immersed in passages you don't understand), there was always an unfamiliar frustration building up inside me. The insane questions like 'why am I here' or 'what am I supposed to do with my life' kept bugging me ALL.THE.TIME.

As you get older, you find that life begins to wear you down. Doesn't matter who you are or what you do, it happens. Experience, time, events - they all conspire against you to steal away your energy, to erode your confidence, to make you question things you wouldn't have given a second thought to when you were young. It happens gradually, a chipping away that you don't even notice at first, and then one day it's there. You wake up and you just don't have the fire anymore. When your mind keeps hankering about the past, it gets stuck in negativity and begins to rot...and that was what I felt was happening to me..

And when it reached the apex, when I could not handle it alone myself, I surrendered..I asked for help...and it was showered on me by The Almighty in a jiffy.

My office people planned for Maa Vaishno Devi Yatra...It is believed that nobody can undertake the yatra until Maa wishes him/her to...but what I didn't know was that She hears the plea instantly before even you voice it out...in my case, She definitely did...

Situated at a height of 5300 ft. the site is located inside a cave a midst the folds of the Trikuta Bhagwati hill in the state of J&K. This cave temple is at  distance of 61 Kms from jammu and the last 13 Kms of the yatra have to be walked on foot. Once at the entrance to the cave, the path turns into a narrow tunnel with Charan Ganga running through it. The pilgrim has to wade through this to reach the sanctum sanctorum.

Each step that I took for the arduous yet beautiful journey, each drop of sweat that fell while walking,dancing the way up to the top of the hill felt heavenly...because bit by bit, it was relieving me of my frustration, my eternal restlessness and negativity...It was like somebody was untying the knots inside , opening me to my own self...yes, my muscles ached, my legs screamed to simply stop and sit down but something also kept me going...I don't know it was the hum of "jai maata di" giving me energy to keep going or the Maata herself pulling me towards bliss...

As I walked step by step, I was reminded of my my favorite verses of one of the poems by Harivansh Rai Bachchan - 

एक कोने में हृदय के आग तेरे जल रही है

देखने को मग तुझे जलना पड़ेगा ही मुसाफिर

साँस चलती है तुझे चलना पड़ेगा ही मुसाफिर

The whole journey epitomises faith...If anybody doesn't believe in power of faith, he/she ought to undertake this mind-boggling yatra...Everybody and anybody you meet on your way towards bhavan says "Jai Maata Di". There are dholwalahs playing dhol and everybody just joins in the celebration of "Jai Maata Di", the travelers on a cosmic journey,swirling and dancing in the whirlpools of infinity who have stopped for a moment to encounter each other, to meet, to share this joy.

It is sheer bliss..You feel that people,circumstances, events suddenly matter no  more and all that is there is the pure truth of this enigmatic higher power which is guiding you, supporting you, giving you a hand...

Since lakhs of devotees visit the place, the old cave is generally kept closed. But this universe is big,vast and complicated and ridiculous. And sometimes—very rarely—impossible things just happen and we call them miracles. When we reached the bhavan, the old cave was opened for the pilgrims..It was so so overwhelming...All my mental and physical fatigue suddenly disappeared...All my worldly worries seemed to be vanquishing by the power of faith...The Charan Ganga soothing my sore body and the grace of Almighty soothing my aching soul, it was an ineffable feeling. All that I could manage was a heartfelt gratitude.

There are umpteen number of memories associated with the journey for which words won't suffice even if I tried articulating them. But I learnt one mantra which this Yatra taught me - Just believe in Almighty, Know that He is there and He will take care of everything for you.

Next we went to PatniTop and NathaTop. And it was a dream come true...I always fantasized about walking down narrow roads of a mountain with snow on both the sides.

It was such a filmy scene...from top to bottom, from left to right,wherever I looked, I saw cotton-like snow...So silent, so beautiful...clear blue sky on top of me, bright white snow all around me...Utopian beauty...whoever says heaven doesn't exist, should visit this place...It left me in awe with beauty that God has created around us...It silenced my mind to the core, it gave deep rest to my soul which I was yearning for so many years...I felt in harmony with nature, with myself.

We spent hours sliding and mindlessly playing in the snow...Climbing on top of the mountain and then sliding back together was indescribable fun...

I finally understand what Ranbir meant when he said - "Main udna chahta hoon, daudna chahta hoon, girna bhi chahta hoon ... bus rukna nahi chahta"

P.S.

1. I want to thank my Sir because of whom the plan of this trip got accomplished without any hindrance...and also for being so understanding and patient and bearing the nuisance that all of us were and also want to apologize on behalf of all of us if we caused any trouble unintentionally.

2. I want to thank my friends who made this trip memorable for me. The time that I spent with you all is something I am going to cherish for lifetime. Chirag Grover and Shubhangi Kapoor need special mention here for it was on their insistence that I went for this trip.