The interviewer asked me
“Why do you want to join this company? “ That’s when it struck me once again.
Why am I doing this? What do I want? What is the purpose of my life? These
questions are ‘pressure questions’. Questions that come to the mind when one is
under pressure. And when the pressure is dissipated the questions fizzle out. My
final year of college was full of pressure. Studying at IIT (for those who
don’t know IIT - it’s one of the best engineering colleges in India) and doing
well there, does create a lot of pressure due to high expectations -
Expectations of others and expectations of oneself.
Somehow I escaped the
questions once again and just took a path that was easy and that followed the
‘herd’ !I went on to do Masters from Europe. I had a nice scholarship. A fancy
degree name “Erasmus Mundus Masters in Nanotechnology”. I had everything a
student would want. And yet, I had no idea what I was doing and where I was heading!
I was just flowing with the expectations that everyone (including myself) had
set onto me!
By the time I finished my Masters. It was the time to face the same ‘pressure questions’ once again! This time, although I got a swanky job for myself, the questions didn't leave me!
I was seeing that even
with the job, I’m not going to head to what I really want. I’m not going to
head towards happiness or freedom. If I looked at people who had these kinds of
jobs and had been working all this while, their happiness didn’t seem to be
showing on their faces. Infact the people looked even more manipulative and stressed!
So, what am I doing? Where
am I heading?? What is the purpose of my life??? These questions were haunting
me! And honestly, I had NO IDEA how to deal with them!
One of my friends and
teacher of Art of Living told me. Go to villages in India and do some seva and
see. This sounded like a good plan, so I came to India before joining my first
job at Amsterdam with the intention to do Seva and meet my family.
A little time at the
Ashram and meeting with Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, and that was it! Of whatever life
I had seen and whoever I had met, I had NEVER met a person who would be so free,
who would be so happy, and who would be so much in the present moment. In whose
mere presence people would become so happy!!! I saw that if life is really
worth living, it’s only worth living with him, It’s only worth living for him,
It’s only worth living to be like him. If there is any direction that I want to
head towards, it’s the direction that HE gives!
I
feel so fortunate and grateful to get the opportunity to stay at the Ashram
since then. The more closely I get to see him/know him; I realize that there is
so much more in him that I had thought that I knew. And the more time I spend
around him/for him, the more contentment, happiness and freedom is dawning into
life.