It’s Never Too Late

Ever since my post last week about applying to the Young India Fellowship at Ashoka University , many people have asked me the question: Why does a 47-year-old at the peak of his career want to go back to college? To which my reply is, why not!?

By the way, you’re welcome to go ahead and say, “Buddy if this is your ‘peak’ the years have not been kind!” It’s what I would have said.

In a comment on last week’s post I shared a link to a poem I wrote, that clearly articulates my approach toward life and why this college application is in sync with my values. In this note, however, I’m going to talk about why I’m really excited about the possibility of going back to college, why I’m deeply interested in attending this programme in particular, and why my decision should be of no surprise to anyone.

Reinvention is not new to me

I’m the son of a tea planter who earned an MBA degree from the University of Oxford and, after paying back his loans thanks to a consulting job in London, threw it all up to become a stand-up comedian. After 250 shows in 10 months for almost no money, I was forced to take on proper employment to put food on the table. So, I learned how to coach and worked with 50 blue-chips across the UK, Europe (now days you have to put UK and Europe separately), North America and Asia. The income from that allowed me to pursue stand-up. After 700 shows in the UK, in 2008 I moved back to India to do English language stand-up. The industry didn’t exist then, so I created it.

A few years in, when comedy was all joke-joke-joke, I wrote and performed my show Naked, a special where I spoke about deeply intense subjects and opened up my soul. 50% of audience members were often moved to tears. When Covid-19 came and the comedy industry took a hit, I focused on coaching again and worked with large organisations at the very highest levels, creating bespoke offerings to address their goals and challenges. I also innovated and created two signature modules based on stand-up comedy – Naked Leadership and A Comedian’s Guide to Communication & Storytelling Strategy. I’m also currently in the process of creating a new coaching module that explores how you can leverage humour for competitive advantage in life and at work.

I’m telling you all this for four reasons:

1. Reinvention comes naturally to me and I’m not afraid of risk or failure. I’m a professional comedian for God’s sake, and that isn’t exactly the choice of someone who relies on safe percentages.
2. I don’t need an external disruption to force me to reinvent. I’m happy to disrupt myself.
3. I don’t care whether it hasn’t been done before. That’s never going to stop me from going ahead and doing it. In fact, I think a key reason for my success in comedy was that nobody had ever told me that it was next to impossible to make a decent living doing stand-up. And because I didn’t know it was impossible, I just went ahead and did it.
4. Society’s definitions of success or how I ‘should’ life my life do not matter to me. My goal is internal growth.

I want to go to college

I did my undergraduate degree from the School of Open Learning at Delhi University, and during my MBA degree at Oxford, I was under immense financial pressure to land a job in the UK after the course. That, along with my limited financial resources at the time, also didn’t allow me to enjoy a full university experience.

What was also common between my undergraduate commerce degree and my post-graduate business administration degree, is that both of them were a means to an end. They were subjects I took because they would help me land a job that would enable me to be financially independent.

At this point in my life however, the learning is the end in itself. I want to go Ashoka because the subjects they teach on the Young India Fellowship deeply interest me.

What I hope to get from the YIF programme

I could write a thesis on just this. I’m excited about the multi-disciplinary curriculum stimulating different parts of my brain and eager to find out what new neural pathways are formed as a result. Leadership, poetry, the universe…the diversity of what the programme offers is just incredible.

As someone who grew up in a generation where education meant learning by rote and vomiting out what you could memorise, I’m also excited about being thrown into an environment where HOW you think matters more than what you think.

I know I will teach in the future and I can’t think of any better preparation for that than by being exposed to the teaching styles of a range of acclaimed professors, all experts in their respective fields.

The youth is the future of the world and even more so in my country, India, which has one of the youngest populations in the world. I can’t think of a more immersive experience that will allow me to understand how the generation that will go on to create our country’s future thinks, works and plays. The diversity of the student body at Ashoka adds even more flavour to this value-add.

I’m excited about the possibilities of co-creating with both students and faculty. I see potential books, workshops or teaching modules coming out of partnerships with faculty. From my classmates there is so much I have to learn and there may be so many ways in which I can add value to their lives as well. At my age I have access to resources and networks. Should I find classmates with good ideas, passion, commitment and drive, collaborating on a new start-up is not a far-flung possibility.

This will allow me to evolve

I genuinely believe that a year at Ashoka University is an investment that will allow me to create the next chapter of my life. It would be very easy for me to carry on cruising with life as is by doing and exposing myself to more of the same. But that comfort doesn’t provide a conducive environment for a step change in perspective or personal growth. ?

On Jan 1st this year I published an article I very arrogantly and in good click-bait style called ‘The most important article you will ever read’. It talks about what I believe makes a good life. A component of that is a psychologically rich life, which is something I value highly. So, my applying for college is nothing out of the ordinary at all as it is entirely in sync with my own values. And if I can’t practice what I preach then I’m clearly some kind of comedian. Oh wait…