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My  snack of avocado, tomato salsa and ragi cracker from the Village Shop, Bandra, this evening
Back in ’97 in Calcutta, I had only heard of tomatoes among all these ingredients.

I could be wrong but there’s a strong possibility that I joined the corporate world twenty five years back from today. 

I am not good at numbers, but I am confident about the ’25 year’ bit. 

If memory serves me right, three of us from B School joined the market research agency office that had hired us from campus, on 17th June 1997. The agency wanted us to join on 1st June but we had to wait till the college exams got over. Hence the odd date.

While I cannot vouch for the date with full confidence, I do have a few memories of that day.

Those of waiting desperately to get a seat in an auto from Bansdroni to reach the metro. It was impossible to get into the crowded buses that whizzed by. “Come on, it’s my first day,” I pleaded to a higher power. I finally reached the Tollygunge metro, got off at Rabindra Sadan. Took a mini bus and reached Jhowtalla Road. 

The names of the stations have been changed since then. The office has moved address at least twice. I believe that the name of the company has changed too.

I finally reached the office building, only to find the GM (branch head), who recruited me from campus, waiting for the lift. I could not think of anything less dorky than, ‘good morning sir’ to say to him. I soon learnt that we were all on first name terms at work.

‘Eff eff eff! He saw me! Late on first day’, raced the thoughts through my mind.

I soon realised that this (1030 am) was the time at which he reached office everyday. He was also one of the last to leave for home.

What else? We met the admin head who briefed us on office rules, cracked a few jokes, took us from department to department and we were welcomed by a haze of many smiling faces. Not a single name registered that day,

Barring that of the elderly gentleman in white dhoti and shirt who ran the office canteen. Mesho. Maternal uncle in Bengali.

My classmates met their respective bosses and were put to work. The office was waiting for us to join, as I mentioned earlier.

Er, not all of us. I was in qualitative. A tiny minority.

My line manager was on pregnancy leave. She was replaced for the period by a consultant who came to office on a need to visit basis. She had delivered a few months back and was not ready to accept a full time job at that point.

So I had the two department computers to myself. I was the department!

My batchmates had none and shared those from the office pool to work on. Two computers, but no boss and no work. And a dedicated secretary to type out discussion guides and slides when the need arose. It was only when I moved to Mumbai and then to advertising, in 2000, that I had to finally type out my stuff myself. My immediate boss there monopolised the department secretary to get his typing done. We were the only two non computer savvy folks in department!

My second job. Mumbai. Possibly 2000.

Going back to my first day in Calcutta, I was given a photocopied copy of the Wendy Gordon Qualitative  handbook to read. Boredom levels after a day or two matched that of watching Boycott or Gavaskar bat for the third continuous day of a dead rubber test match on a dead pitch.

I was sent to Mumbai on training soon after.  This went on for longer that it was supposed to.  I was finally brought brought back after I called up my GM in Calcutta and bawled saying, ‘I want to come back’. I loved the newfound independence that living alone offered but the pace of work was too frenetic and chaotic compared to the pampered life of our Calcutta office.

I came back and worked with him directly till my line boss resumed work and I began to report to her. He called me to his cabin one evening when I was still boss-less and reporting to him and said, “look I stay late at office because I have work. You should not feel compelled to do so. I thought I should tell you this.”

A year later I went back to his cabin and bawled, “I want to go back to Mumbai. My friends have left the city. My line boss has left (she had moved to Chennai as her husband got transferred). I am tired of doing research on cigarettes.” 

The last thing to say the man who was considered to be one of the top cigarette (market) researchers in the world, some would say.

While it was typical of bosses to be territorial and not let go of talent (I was a male market researcher which made me coveted, even if not a ‘talent’), he facilitated my transfer saying, “if that’s what you want and if that is what the organisation needs.’

I was too young to ‘qualify’ for an office farewell. He threw an informal farewell for me in his house with the others in our team as fellow guests. Little wonder that he left a deep impression on me.

2019 50 year celebration of my first agency. With my first two ‘super bosses’ 
from Kolkata and Mumbai respectively

Did I foresee back then the direction that my career would take?

Nope. I was 23. Imagining how my life would be 25 years later was akin trying to imagine today how it will be if one was to live to be a hundred. A rather uneasy thought given what one sees these days

It would be wrong say that I had dreamt of being a market researcher from childhood. I doubt if anyone does!

I wanted to be an ice cream vendor and then an astronaut (!) when I was 8. I wanted be an author or a journalist when I was in medium school. A TV news anchor when Dr Roy and his World This Week hit our screens. Just your average Bengali kid life goals.

I did get a chance to live my dreams, straight after college, for all of 3 weeks. I joined a newly launched (shut long since) English newspaper as a trainee sub-ed after my final exams. 

Then the MBA entrance results came out and the party central leadership (viz my mother) felt that an MBA would lead to a better paying career and so I left the job and joined B school and then market research.

I started writing this blog ten years into my working career thanks to my wife urging me to do so. Five years later I moved out of research and became a freelance writer, brand endorser, brand consultant, or as they say these days, ‘content creator’ in food. ‘Influencer’? Nah, not till I convince my wife and our elder cat, Baby Loaf, to have breakfast everyday. That is influence!!!!

I am a cat dad too but that pays in nose boops and cannot be considered as as a part of ‘work life.’ 

I have written a book, the Travelling Belly, published by  Hachette. Been a columnist for Femina, NDTV Food, the Indian Express, Scoopwhoop, DailyO and the TOI, for whom I curated and edited a property – the Times Kitchen tales. I guess one can call oneself an author and journalist of sorts after this. Apart from my blog and self generated social media content,  I am a youtuber, podcaster and subject matter guest expert for afaqs. 

Back in the day I would just say ‘I work for xyz, pqr, etc’ instead of all this. When you are a freelancer you need to really embellish the bio section. At least to get a visa! (Cue for K to say, ‘didn’t I tell you to apply for your British passport?).

It just struck me while writing this that I am finally doing what I wanted to ever since I was a kid. To be a writer. A storyteller.

Was this the form I had envisaged for the same?

No. I had thought I would write science fiction or adventure thrillers. Or be a political journalist. Or a  sports one. Not a food writer. Who had heard of such a thing?

The internet barely existed when I began working. Emails were accounted against job numbers. Only one computer in the office had the internet. We used libraries, newspapers clipping and magazine back issues to get data. 

Building a career enabled through digital and social media, as I eventually did, was inconceivable in ’97.

Would I have thought that I would be working out of home as I do now. At times on contract. Often not. Living the life of a freelancer. Not having a job in the conventional sense?

Definitely not. 

The boldest thing in the work context back then was the license given by an apparel company and its agency to wear khaki linen trousers and orange shirts to office on Fridays.

The most exciting thing in my life when I started working was being able to order mutton roll AND mutton cutlet AND anjeer milkshake from the fancy vegetarian joint downstairs and mishti from Mithai on the job number after 6pm. This was a big thing when you had just graduated from having to make every buck from your daily travel allowance count. 

This food largesse was a Kolkata thing and a reflection of our GM’s personality as I found out after I moved to Mumbai and was not mollycoddled anymore.

This evening I had an avocado, tomato salsa and ragi cracker as a snack. The only word which would have made sense to me from this in ’97 was ‘tomato.’ I still love mutton rolls, but my sugar scores would soar if I have them now.

In closing, I want to talk about something that struck me recently when I opened the latest issue of the UpperCrust magazine. The issue features the Home Chef Studio event that I curated with them and my report on it. My name was there among the list of contributors to the issue.

UpperCrust was co-founded by the late Behram Contractor and his wife, Farzana Contractor, who runs it now.

I remembered how in my second job, which was as an account planner in an advertising agency, I would kill time on slow days by reading Contractor’s Busybee columns on the internet on the office comp. 

Who would have ever thought that our names would feature on the same page one day?

Look ma. I am on the same page as Busybee! Literally. That’s all.

That’s when it struck me that a large part of my corporate career was spent in search of ‘’something better’.

I did not want to join sales, but no blue chip FMCG company came to our campus with marketing roles. Which is why I applied to the market research agency in Calcutta. Then I wanted to move to Mumbai. In Mumbai, I wanted to move to account planning. In account planning, I wanted to move to the client side. That did not materialise. I then wanted to move to managerial role and not be in a staff function, which planning was.  I moved back to research, which I never thought I would. Quant at that.  I enjoyed it for a while. Handling clients, leading a team, presenting papers internationally. The work did not really excite me to be honest. I switched agencies a couple of times and then once again to a qualitative role. Back to where it had all started.

“You should leave all this and become a food writer,” said many at work. Some truly believed this. Others were being sarcastic.

Things finally combusted… and I switched careers. Not out of choice at that point. With my wife standing by me like the proverbial rock of Gibraltar. “You must do what you are meant to do. I am with you,” she said. 

I clutched for straws, where none existed, till one day I was advised by someone whom I had known through my years in Mumbai, a fellow Buddhist, to figure out my purpose in life. The rest will follow, he assured me.

And it did. Since 2014 – bringing people together, being there for the Davids (the Goliaths had many to help them), trying to spread a little bit of hope and joy, helping my readers eat better – have been the goals that have driven me.

And I no longer wish that I was doing something else!

What advice would give to those who are starting out?

Search me. I look to you guys for inspiration!

Well, if you still insist. Here goes. 

Never skip lunch, no matter what and it never is the end of the world!

 

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