I was about 5 ½ -6 years then… I distinctly remember this one incident of my life very clearly. I was in Madras (the now Chennai) during my holidays (what holidays I had not even started schooling then, it was vacation for my sister who is 2 years elder to me).

A big family of ours including my grand parents, my uncles, aunts, their children and my parents, my sister all went on a family outing and as is the usual practice of any normal middle class bramhin family in madras, we wanted to end our day long outing with a visit to the famous Kapaaleeshwar temple, Mylapore.

Any one a bit familiar with Tamil Nadu will definitely know about this temple. We had a great darshan inspite of the huge crowd and feasted on the prasadam. All of us ran in different directions to wash hands before we went home. I ran to sit on the elephant statue standing tall and after couple of minutes of the stationery elephant ride, I decided to go back to my family. I looked around and could hardly see them in the crowd, I ran a little bit here and there but found no traces of finding them. I was for a minute panicked but I said to myself “I will find them soon” .5 mins passed, 10 mins passed and almost 20mins passed, still no trace of them. Then a brilliant idea struck me,“If they don’t find me, they will want to give a police complaint, and if they have to complain they have to go out, go to the police station on the scooter (which is owned by my uncle),so why not go and wait there. So I ran out looking for TN 97 1084 and stood there waiting for them.10 mins passed and they had not reached there yet. While I started thinking, if my idea was not the right one, I pleasantly encountered my uncle walking towards his scooter. What a relief on his face to have found me..Soon he hugged and kissed me, and went running inside carrying me to tell others in the family that he found me.Instantly everyone in the family labeled me daring and dashing heroine, very spontaneous with ability to think under pressure.

All my life I have grown up being under some pressure or the other and working out ways to get out of it…With this incident and by her very nature my mom is a very protective mother, she was very particular about my friends, about my going out or rather not going out……The life that I knew of till I was married was Home-School/College/Office (at some point)-Home. Literally nothing else, no friends, no movies, no lunches, no treats, no outings..Anyway back to the point, ever since I knew, may be 4-5 years onwards, I had always dreamt of being a lawyer.All my years I have grown up standing in front of the mirror and arguing cases and winning most of them.Added to this was my family always talking of my great sense of judgment and fairness But when I completed Class X, somehow I changed mind and wanted to become a Chartered Accountant (blame it on my cousin who was my role model then), and thought to myself once I finish my CA, I will do Law.

With the kind of upbringing I had in terms of a protective environment, something very strange happened when I was 20. I fell in love with a man whom I never saw, I never met, or never knew.At the very first sight I decided he is the Man of my life, no matter who he is or how he is… Before I met him or realized what was happening to me, I was married to him by the time I was 21 and even before knowing what happened to me, I was a mother at 22. By then I knew nothing about Computers, except the spelling.At 22 plus or early 23 iridium Interactive happened to me. It is a very interesting story how the idea of iridium Interactive was conceived. May be I will post another article in the blog.I clearly remember we then had around 2 people working in the office. Then in 6 months, we grew to 8 and since then we have been only growing.

Initially I had no clue what I had to do in the office.I started off taking care of the accounts and administration with the help of Mr.Vinod.When I look back I wonder how I have managed to play so many roles from being a Co-founder of an Interactive Service company and especially with being a total computer illiterate till then. That reminds me of a very funny incident between my CEO and me. “I don’t have the fear of losing you” said my CEO one day at lunch. Perplexed, I asked him “Why?”.“Bcos, you would anyway not get a job anywhere else”, he said smiling sheepishly.I was quite shocked. He said “Over a period of the last few years, you have done such a variety of work that, people would never be able to bracket you in any job”, he said assuringly..That set me thinking on what all I had done in the last few years. Over the last 10 years I have got a chance to do so much work, got so much exposure, got to learn so much from my Job (Oh I never realized what I was doing was a job) that people can hardly imagine.I never ever even questioned why I was doing what all I was doing and what was in it for my career. In my 10 years I have never asked “Why should I do this?” or “What is my role”. I did all from Admin, Accounts, Finance, Design, eLearning, Instructional Design, Client Management, Sales, Marketing, Legal Advisor, running a Non-Profit, Creative writer…I think I will stop with this..

I think being in iridium has given me a life time experience. Now I can confidently say I can take up any challenge thrown at me. It is not easy for a person at my age (honestly 31 years) to get so much learning. To be able to handle pressure of finances from being a start up company to a company in the thick of growth phase, to sign cheques worth crores, to plan to pay salaries on time.The role where I am I say is the hottest. The initial days were so messy, no funds in the bank but had to confidently give a picture that guys would get paid on time, be it employees or vendors..I sometimes envied my colleagues.Look at the Sales guys for eg, they can say we put in our best efforts but lost a deal. Oh man!! We will all feel bad, have couple of coffees, fight out saying how we could have done better, plan for more meetings and forget it even if targets are not metLook at delivery guys, some project is screwed up, we can always blame it on the grouchy customer or better, may be scope creep, client being too demanding. We have several cups of coffee, some meetings and more meetings to discuss the learnings and say forget it, lets write off this client.Look at the Marketing guys, in any case I never knew what these guys do (just kidding, we can always blame it on the volatile market, US Economy blah blah)Look at the Enterprise IT, any server crash ,and the blame goes to not having state-of-the-art technology, to some UPS issue or some outstanding issue with the vendor.And look at me, I sit tall in a chair from where guys are ready to push me out any moment. 1 conveyance bill not passed on time, I get stinkers from all miscellaneous, and sundry, one error in any payslip my team is bombarded with mails, 1000 follow ups and 10000 reminders. Can I for once give any excuse and get away from what I do???? I wonder if it is possible.Lot of pressure, but for the kinds like me who enjoys each and every moment of life, the kind of work and the kind of challenges thrown are what are the most satisfying moments of life.You need to know how to enjoy life is what I tell my folks at home, who keep cribbing about me sweating blood out in the office…

I guess my first experience at 6 years of handling pressure and coming out with solution has been helping me whenever I find myself in a concernful situation.What is life without this fun and excitement, I often wonder, and still love going to office every morning religiously at 8 am , bcos I don’t do it as a job, I live iridium as my life.……..

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