Whatever happens will happene happen

A reflection of 2020

When I lived in the Silicon Valley, I made a major decision to buy a home on my own, as a single woman. Unbeknownst to me, there was a silent expectation within myself that buying a home was something I was going to do with a life partner. So, as a single woman, I broke my own barriers and bought a 4 bedroom beautiful condominium by Eichler. To lighten the financial responsibility, I decided to take in women's room mates. One of my room mates said that she went out with someone who mixed English with funny Tamil phrases and that’s when she heard the phrase “Whatever happens will happene happen” and we laughed hysterically about the phrase. Somehow that phrase stayed with me all my life.

After spending over two decades in the US, moving on from being single to married to being a parent, we decided to move to India to experience a different side of our careers - of being entrepreneurs. When we first came to India, I felt as though I entered a foreign country. I am Indian and looked Indian but I was not familiar with the working culture in India. It was as though I had to learn a whole new business language. It was the simple day-to-day stuff that often stumped me. It was ok to break into your mother tongue at work; it was customary to delay meetings due to traffic jams and the list goes on and on.

The last decade of working in India has taught me resilience.

There were many months when we thought that we could not even make the office rent, let alone the salaries and we somehow not just survived but succeeded in creating a community of game-changers.

Just as we were settling, 2020 hit us and it was as though we combined all the ups and downs of the last decade and packed it in one year.

The first quarter ended with losing one of our largest projects; the next quarter saw us learning the communication of the new world methodology at an accelerated pace. The speed at which we pivoted from a complete live event organization to a virtual world was quite unbelievable.

The day the lockdown was announced, we launched an instalive show and recorded over 120 shows and co-hosted a large virtual event in two months. We launched leadership programs, storytelling courses and one of the largest tech conferences … all in the virtual world. We gave up our physical office space and became even more productive online. We made tough decisions – stopped doing iconic events, bid adieu to a few long-standing team members to let them pursue their individual dreams, invited new members to drive in new directions.

Between Mid March and the end of December, we transformed into a complete virtual entity with no physical confinement to our existence. It is so easy to feel defeated, dejected, shocked, tired and even be left clueless because NO ONE knew how to deal with what our world went through. We are still standing because we let the happenings around us continue their journey while we continued our journey to stay in sync. In essence, we accepted that “whatever happens will happene happen”.

Whilst our young personas made fun of the fool who did not even know how to speak English, our grown-up selves have come to admire the freedom with which that uninhibited individual adorned both cultures with no apology. Whether another unexpected blow brings us down or a much-anticipated award brings in success – we can always say “whatever happens will happene happen” and smile satisfactorily at the end of the day.

#newyear #insights #2020 #celebration