Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Missed Opportunities

During over a year of travelling, thinking and vagabonding, I have come to realize that every time you make a choice to do something, you are also making a choice to not do many other things. The question I am faced at the end of any period is 'Did I make the right choices?' This is not an efficiency tirade. So, I am not discussing whether I made the most efficient use of my time. Its just a question of whether I did what I would have liked to do and whether I was good enough to overcome inertia and try out things I wanted to. Looking back at my 'independent life', which I would count as having started from 1999, when I was 17 and joined Bachelors in Engineering, a lot of opportunities have come my way. 11 years and counting to be precise. Each second of these 11 years, I have made choices to do something or sit idle. How have I fared? What have I missed? Below is a laundry list of things I could have done but did not do (and this is much shorter than it should be because I dont remember most of what I missed). I am sure if I think hard, I can find reasons (read excuses) to justify why I did not do these but thats beside the point. The opportunity was there, I was around, the time was right and I did not do it. This list will hopefully serve as a reminder of how much have I missed versus how little have I really done.

  1. Life in graduation - joined 1999, ended 2003 with a B Tech in Electronics and Communication
    • Missed learning French/German - course was on offer, I attended one class and gave up.
    • Missed travelling around - was young, did not care about comforts, could have seen the length and breadth of East India but chose not to. Was anyway not attending lots of classes.
    • Missed being a good engineer - poor attendance, lack of interest in general.
    • Missed playing badminton - was good at it but never did it regularly enough. Played once for college but did not follow up.
    • Missed listening to new music - had people from all states of India, all listening to their regional music plus lots of them listening to English music. I just stuck to what I liked and only added some to my PC when I liked them. Never tried anything new out of the blue.
    • Missed drinking - had a mental block (or whatever) against drinking. The one opportunity I had to try everything and be silly, I missed.
    • Missed Bengali food - had converted to vegetarianism a couple of years before I joined and continued. Missed the brilliant bengali fish preparations and lots of other non veg food.
  2. Life in Post Graduation - joined 2003, ended 2005 with a PGDM
    • Missed studies - yet again!
    • Missed drinking and non veg yet again - Lucknow had the best selection of non veg joints and the brilliant Awadhi cuisine and I had none of it. Mistake repeated from Bengal!
    • Missed learning new sports - had good sporting infrastructure, could have tried out tennis, volleyball but never did it for long enough to really learn.
    • Missed partying - there was a weekly party at the institute, drinking, dancing, fooling around et al and I had none of it.
  3. Life in Chennai - worked for Citigroup for about 21 months
    • Missed travel - hardly saw anything except local Chennai. South India was beckoning and I was sleeping.
    • Missed local food - for a while till I was veggie, I missed Chettinad cuisine. Had the sense to convert later.
    • Missed learning swimming - was earning well enough to pay for lessons but never did it.
    • Missed learning anything - outside office, I learnt nothing new.
    • Missed staying fit - transformed into a balloon.
    • Missed meeting friends - was too 'busy' with work.
  4. Life in London - worked for Citigroup for about 27 months
    • Missed travel - travelled about 4 countries, could have done much better.
    • Missed drinking - of all things, missed drinking while in London. The breadth of offering was mind boggling but my mind was closed.
    • Missed making many new friends - dont ask why, I dont know.
    • Missed historical sites - went to quite a few but missed many more.
Have you ever thought on these lines? What are the opportunities you have missed? Please feel free to post in comments.

9 comments:

  1. Call out the nerd in me - but I see a pattern here ... and one thing I could think of is this will look best in an excel sheet (as a matrix) with life milestones as rows and missed categories as columns (travel, nonveg, drinking) :-D

    Another thing - "Missed Bengali food" especially our Mess Fish and "water daal" is something you should be thankful for. Yeikes!

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  2. @ Dhruva - get your point, thanks for pointing out. Maybe I should rename the blog to 'nomadic alcoholic'. :)

    @Panduram - thanks for suggesting. Maybe once I try smoking, I will add that to the missed list as well. :)

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  3. Missed finding this blogspot before.

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  5. I loved reading this entry and can relate to it a lot. It reminds me of the "sunscreen" song. Most of us realise what we have missed only when we are around 25 plus (some even later and some never!) and feel that time is running out and there is a long list of things we would like/love to do. But I'm glad I converted to a non-veg just in time to enjoy good bengali fish and mutton curry, chettinad, coorgi and hyderabadi cuisine.

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  6. Lost opportunities are hard to reconcile to eh. I have a few too, but I keep trying new things and that makes up for me. Also, a terrible memory means I forget what I missed :)

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  7. In your list of "missed things in life", i have one more to add: you were NDA, Rank-1, so could have been India's no.1 fighter pilot today. Add it wherever you find it suitable in the list above.

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  8. Loved your post and your breaking free ..Yes we pass so many opportunities in life in the name of making better choices. Sometimes ,not always , I am aware that what ever is is now and what choice you make is not as important as listening to yourself without doing mathematics.

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