Got a chance to finally catch the much talked and discussed about 127 hours last night and must admit was blown away..I was a bit anxious at the beginning, what with people comparing it to everything from the Blaire Witch Project to the Wrestler and a host of others fainting and having a heart attack. I steeled myself mentally to cope with any gore on show and with a heart of steel, settled into the comfy seats at PVR.
What stayed with me even after the movie was though, definitely not the gore but the mental turmoils of a man faced with imminent and slow death. While with my infinite girth there is virtually no possibility of being trapped between a rock and a hard place and definitely not canyoneering in any sense of the word, the often psychedelic hallucinations that the protagonist experiences is something that could be related to. He apologizes to his mother for not returning her call, he rues over the fact that he didn’t share his plans with his co-worker, he chides himself for buying a cheap, China-made knife thingy and for not bothering to look for his Swiss knife enough, he dreams of getting a final sip of chilled beer and even humorously remarks that his pee would settle in a few days and begin to taste a bit like Sauvignon Blanc. Despite his adventurous, wild child ways and free spirit, the protagonist at heart remains like a lot of us. And as with a lot of people, only when faced with the prospect of losing his life, does he realize its true meaning and what are the most important things to him-his family and his loved ones. There is a moving good bye message he records that will definitely choke you up.
And like a light bulb , he finally comes to the conclusion that everything in life happens for a reason. Every step he took, every breath he took and every decision he made in life was done so that ultimately he could end up with his hand wedged beneath the boulder. And it was the divine purpose of the boulder, ever since it was a tiny meteorite that fell from the sky millions of years ago, to wait till he came along, looking for the Blue John canyon, to fall on his hand. This philosophy has guided me throughout my life, giving me hope when things have been bad. Aron Ralston, at his moment of realization, finally learnt to see the big picture and lived to tell the tale. How many amongst us have the luck to gain that kind of wisdom and live an entirely productive life by it? Sad, that some of life’s best lessons are learnt only when death stares at you in your eyes.

Not much of a corporate veteran myself, many of the lessons I have learnt have been the hard way. I consider myself fortunate that God gave me the opportunity to work with some of the most horrendous and evil people that walked the surface of the earth. As a junior level consultant I had worked with seniors who have not only been callous and selfish but have also resorted to every nasty and mean trick in the book in order to get ahead in their career. Often, the lowest person in the rung becomes the proverbial scapegoat and safe to say, I have adorned the position on more than several occasions. What prompted this posting was the emotional outburst of one such goat yesterday. She was obviously upset at the bad treatment meted out to her and needed a shoulder to cry on. And that’s when I offered her my two bits on how to survive the wham-bham of the corporate world.
1. Repeat to yourself-my colleagues are not my friends, they are just people I work with. This must be the mantra that guides every interaction in the office space. Getting over friendly or too sympathetic towards a colleague is just not called for. You don’t need to trust them with your secrets or the fact that ‘the last week when I had the flu, I had just been to goa on vacation’. Too much information is not good information.
2. Learn to not take things to heart. People will do anything to get ahead. You just happened to get in the way. Don’t take it personally.
3. Don’t expect people to like you-You aren’t their spouse, parent, uncle, aunt or child. Not even the indulgent grandparent. Unconditional love and worse, friendship, outside of these relationships, is only an urban myth.
4. Love yourself and be confident-Nothing matters like confidence. If you don’t take yourself seriously, no one will. It is not a mere coincidence that the office bitch is usually your boss.
5. Keep your eyes and ears open- Helps to understand people, especially when you are new. Also helps to identify weaknesses and play to them.
6. Never display emotional weakness-if there is one category of people who get massacred in an office environment, it is those who have displayed emotional weakness. Sobbing or worse having an angry outburst is fodder for gossip and perpetrating a less than desirable office image.
7. Blend in- This is vital. Try to blend in as much as possible, be it in terms of dressing, behavior or work ethics. Being your own self is fine but as long as you are not viewed as the resident jack-in-the-box.
8. Network- Absolute essential. Be it your boss’ secretary, the sweeper, the IT guy or the other vertical’s boss you met in the cafeteria. Networking ensures visibility and visibility equals top of the mind recall during appraisals. Being friendly without being too familiar is an art that takes a lifetime to perfect for some and comes naturally to others.
I hope the few points on top would help at least some of the other lambs out there who are trying to get a foothold in their professional careers. Roughing it out in the first few years is vital to ensuring that you come out unchanged and values intact. And above all, it is important to remember that neither does your professional self necessarily define your personal life nor is it required to be an extension of you. You spend over 80% of your time with people who hardly matter in the larger scheme of things. It is just what you do to put food on the table and a roof over your head. Remember this the next time you have a bad day at work.

When I reflect upon the last 27 years of my life, I am forced to take stock of the various circumstances wherein I have been stumped by bad luck or placed favorably due to good luck. What is this elusive mystery, luck, I want to ask? Why is it said that luck favors one person and another person always seems to get the rough end of the stick. Luck is such a pervasive word in our modern vocabulary these days. Children say ‘lucky me’ when they find free candy, grown-ups yell ‘lucky me’ in ecstasy when they win the lottery and older people ‘lucky me’ themselves when their blood reports come out. So case in point is that the word ‘luck’ is fast becoming the most over abused and under understood word these days.
What I want to say is that, very often what one puts down to good or bad luck effectively just a sum total of the choices is made by a person leading to the specific circumstance. For example, the person who gets promoted over and above others is undoubtedly ‘lucky’ in front of peers. But that should not take away from his blood, sweat and tears. Even unconsciously, every single day we make choices that affect our lives. Driving from work, we choose to take a route from several alternatives. This choice may be driven by past experiences, hearsay or even just gut. But it is this choice which will determine how long we will be stuck in traffic that day.
Rather than sitting back and letting ‘luck’ rule my life, I would like to believe that the lives of human beings are influenced by an amalgam of luck and choice. I could choose to work in a job that gives me more creative satisfaction and work life balance than pay but lusting after the career of a high flying investment banker and calling him lucky ain’t gonna cut it. I could choose to go on a sabbatical when I had a baby and that choice could have had a detrimental impact on my long term career prospects. But blaming poor old “Luck” for that? A tad unfair, don’t you think?
At the end of the day, like the Bhagavad Gita says, we mortals have to simply continue doing what we were meant to be doing and just not be bothered by the consequences or its overall impact in the scheme of things. If ‘Luck’ is to favour ,it will favor the brave who make intelligent and informed choices. Making brainless choices and hoping ‘Luck’ comes to the rescue every time is just plain stupid.