Celebrating a milestone. Just a milestone...

I am just back from a trip to my native place (Thirunageswaram) to pay my gratitude to our family deity (Kuladevi). As I superannuated from active service on 30th June, I felt it would be logical to connect the two dots – one, my traditional tonsuring (Mundan) that was done at this temple on my first birthday and the other being a logical point of completion of my professional work life, the Vanaprastha. While, as many suggested, I will continue to engage myself in some intellectual pursuits to keep my body and brain healthy, I thought there should be a pause at this critical milestone of my life so that I can reminisce, relish, and celebrate this close to 40 years long phase of my life. A new life may start but not without looking back at those years, not without picking a few nuggets of insights, and not without counting my blessings.

The term ‘retirement’ has a French origin meaning to withdraw or retreat – an action that I wouldn’t like to be associated with. The etymology of the term ‘superannuation’ - which has its origins in Latin - on the other hand, has a more offending meaning. It means incapacitated, obsolete, or disqualified from active service. ?Well, too disappointing to know these meanings after a stupendous send-off that my colleagues gave me in the office, singing paeans about my great work. However, I have always given the best results when the odds were not in my favour. ?And here again, these syntactical meanings and usages, howsoever intimidating they may sound, will only challenge me to prove them wrong. There is still a lot to learn and much more to deliver. But we need to find an appropriate word for this forced renunciation of youngsters who are just entering their 7th decade in life. ?

Around 40 years of work-life will naturally have zillions of memories. From your first day at work to the first set of colleagues; the places you served and the cities you lived in; the team you led and the Managers you reported to; the lifelong friends that you made and the life partner who chose you at one such workplace to the not so friendly acquaintances who you couldn’t get along well with. Some of these memories were stored in pixels but many more were just etched in my mind.

Over these years, I have had the privilege of working in 3 large and reputed organizations. ?My entire personality, my thought process, my life philosophy, and my value system are influenced by these great organizations. And an organization is made up of individuals, who define the culture of the organization. And, therefore, I owe it to all my colleagues who have been part of my life across these 3 organizations to have shaped my character. I will remain thankful to them for what I am today.

As many of my colleagues mentioned in their farewell speeches, I owe it much to my family as well. From being a doting and omnipresent husband and father in their lives, I didn’t know when and how my wife and my daughters learned to manage their lives on their own, without any help from me. It is just not the proverbial ‘woman’ behind a man, it is the entire family that adjusts and aligns with the life of a man. If I could deliver my professional responsibilities conscientiously, the credit should equally go to my wife and my 2 daughters who allowed me to be what I could be.

As I walked past the exit gates of my office on the 28th of June (the last working day of the month), with a few close friends and colleagues in tow, I realized that it would be the last time the turnstiles would respond to my biometrics. And the ID card hanging on my neck would have to be surrendered. The card that I so proudly hung around my neck for the last 24 years, I wouldn’t have liked to part with. For a second, I was swayed by a few friendly advice that came my way – suggesting a few ‘jugaad’ methods to retain the card. But then the lifelong lessons learned inside the very same organization came to my rescue. Having lived and embodied the highest level of ethics as part of this organization, this one aberration at literally the 59th second of the last minute of my association, howsoever, tempting it might be, wasn’t worth it. And I stoically handed over my ID-card to the security officer and just moved ahead – towards a new chapter in my life.