One More Round

“It won’t happen”, “This is a too big a challenge to overcome”, ”Stop, you can’t solve this one no matter how many times you try”, “It’s just not possible”, “Why are you even trying”, “You are wasting your time”, “You are crazy dude” - well, these are not only what people say to me, but also the voices inside a part of my head asking me to succumb to the situation.

Why? Because it’s the easiest thing to do and it might seem like it will relieve us of all the pain and sufferings we are going through at the moment. Really? Let me give you all one piece of free advice on this: “ IT WILL MAKE THINGS PERMANENT ”.

Once we take that road called “GIVE UP”, the sufferings worsen, we lose our vibes as if all the energy we put into dealing with the situation goes out just like that at the snap of the fingers, regret sets in and the many more things go on…..The mind, which once said “Let me try” will now say “It was never meant to happen”.

But the most interesting thing to note is what happens when we refuse to let the situation break us, when instead of saying “I QUIT” we think like “You know what, I am already down on my knees, broken, tired and exhausted and I may pass out also, who knows, but let’s just hold on for another minute, another hour, another day….Let’s just see what happens.” The world will think of you as a madman, everyone will judge but we can succeed only if our vision is clear on what we want to do. No matter how trivial that matter can be to others, the reason should be big enough for you and you alone.

So what happens when we think to continue for another round? Let me travel back in time and share some of my own experiences.

Back to the time when I was in 3rd year of my engineering. One company came for recruitment not for the regular desk job, but it demanded some different roles and responsibilities. So many people weren’t comfortable to have a go. However, I gave it a shot to see what happens and hence took the very first interview of my life. Many people said it’s no use to choose that line of work, even my parents told not to attend the interview, but still the way I saw it was “Hey let’s just sit for it and have an experience, its ok if it doesn’t work out and if I crack it, it’s up to me to decide whether I would really want to pursue that as a career or not.”

Now most of you are probably thinking it might have went smooth. Frankly speaking, the interview not only went bad, but it made me realize one untold truth about life which is:

“The only people who will accept you the way you are in this world are your parents and loved ones. For the rest of the world, you need to polish and present yourself to merely just fit into it.”

There are many reasons to why this sudden realization came but some of the obvious ones are 1.I was extremely overweight and 2.I was an extremely pampered kid. I used to love eating during that time, I still do(laughing) but while taking bites at my cravings back then, I forgot 2 important keywords : “Balance and Compromise”. I never compromised on my food till the time I felt uncomfortable on the day I attended the interview with Ready-made formals.

I was so uncomfortable that day in managing myself that it gave an obvious impression to the interviewer and he was literally smiling and asking me questions and that too which I gave very childish answers.

Then and there I decided I need to bring a big change in myself and here’s where the negativity started. First thing I did was taking admission in a gym to get fit, because I thought it would increase my self-confidence(Because if I am not confident about myself, how will others have confidence in me?) so it makes the job a little easier. To my utter surprise and to the surprise of others, the moment I stepped on the weighing scale, it reached to 97 kgs.

Seriously? 97 kgs for a guy of 166 cm height. Even I got depressed seeing that and to add salt to the wound, the trainer gave such an expression as if I had asked him to sell his kidney. Then started the drama, “Son, do you know how much overweight you are, it’s a near impossible task to reduce this to normal” the Trainer said. Yeah, even I got scared at what I had done to myself, but still I asked him to register me and start training from next day.

People say like their parents, family members as well as friends motivate them. Well that was not my case. The moment everyone came to know about my situation, people not only started laughing but at the same time boldly stated “You can’t do it”. It kind of sucks when negativity tries to wrap you all around and to be truthful, even I didn’t see a way out to being a fit normal guy. But what I told myself was “I will see what I can and what I can’t, with time everything will be clear”.

And so gradually my training started with small baby steps. They had provided me with a diet plan which was too idealistic, so what I did was I modified it to my own terms. I mean, one thing to note here is that Doctors or Dietitians or Nutritionist, they don’t give the diet based on our daily work curriculum, they simply provide us with an idealistic list, which becomes very difficult to maintain day by day.

So in a matter of around 6-7 months’ time I came to around 79 kgs (18 kgs less than my peak). I gave a very bold and confident interview when I sat for my campus recruitment and cleared it with flying colours. I seem to have found a spark for fitness itself and I liked working out every day, somehow it gave me lot of motivation in life.

Well now I work in IT sector and I weigh around 72 kgs (By the way I went down to 68 also) but I am a way fitter and confident individual than what I was 2 years back.

But guys, do you know where the fun fact lies? Every day we see so many people who were chubby and fat before but now have reduced their weight and look so stable. And with gyms and fitness arenas everywhere, it seems kind of easy to do that right? Huh, well it’s just the tip of the iceberg.

I remember the day when I started training and after completing my initial warm-up, the trainer told me to just walk on the treadmill for 10 mins. To my utter disappointment, I found that I could barely breathe after my 3rd min itself. But at that same time, one other guy had already jogged and ran for 15-20 mins and just went off. He was lean but judging by his loose skin, I understood he has also reduced a considerable amount of weight.

“He was also very overweight, but not as much as you”, a voice came from behind. I turned back to see the gym owner himself, a man in his late 60’s. “Now he has become completely fit, he does weight training also” he said. A question came to my mind: “He is no superhero and neither he is a celebrity, if he being an ordinary civilian can do it, why can’t I?”. And even in the moment when I felt breathless to the extent of fainting, instead of giving up I told myself “You know what, let’s not look at 10 mins, 3 mins I have already covered, lets hang on for 1 more min, then we will see”.

Here is where the magic started happening. By taking a round at a time, it became easier for me to focus on my target and it seemed more achievable day by day. So that fat old boy who could barely walk on the treadmill for 5mis back then is able to jog and run for an hour’s stretch and more nowadays(I am talking about me). And I realized this simple truth gradually that no one thinks of the entire road when they start their journey. For example our nation is a cricket maniac, so if you take any great batsmen for example Sachin or Virat or Dravid or Ganguly or anyone whoever it is, no one comes to bat thinking “I will score a century today”. Instead their thought process is like “Ok let’s face this delivery first, then we will see”.

Survival is the single most important thing in the world, as long as we are alive we can to do great and impossible things. So when the going gets tough, there no point in doing perfection at that time, the idea is to just say “Hold on dude, just hold on for another round, survive”. That’s what kept me going when I literally felt like fainting. Well I even experienced a near blackout recently while working out, it was somewhat due to irregular shifts and insufficient sleep, but I even managed to pull that off. Even more frightening than the blackout was the fact that I was staying outside all by my own, so if anything happened, it will involve a lot of people including my parents which I would never want.

This was a glimpse of a part of my life but it mainly covers the physical aspect of me. Let me share a glimpse of a part of my work also.

It was 4th year final semester of our Mechanical degree and everyone were busy in making their final year projects successful. I and my friend was under the supervision of a much esteemed professor from IIT. The project was on modelling and designing with the help of a software called ANSYS. However the concept and the implementation were very difficult to bring to life in that software. Still we were working day and night to make it happen. But the final results were not at all showing up and whatever was coming was not at par with the theoretical stuff. We tried like almost a hundred times or more by implementing various things but with no use. Finally one day me and my friend went and told the professor “Sir, we have tried it countless no of times, we are not getting any results. We are sorry but we won’t be able to complete the results”, I said this with a lot of disappointment in my face.

The professor looked at our analysis, heard our explanation but still wasn’t satisfied and said “I think you are missing out somewhere. Try something else and let me know what happens”. I was like “But Sir, we have already tried everything we can, what else can we try?”. However I couldn’t tell that to him as he had a lot of faith in us. So I went back again to our Laboratory. Everyone were almost done with their projects and here we were with nothing in our hands to present. I was mentally drained out but still somewhere in my mind that voice came “Try again and see, hold on, try 1 more time”.

I already knew how powerful that thought process was but still the failure of obtaining the results were too overwhelming. Still I managed to run those data again and again but to no use. I was like “Man, I give up this time, it’s not happening, it won’t happen” but at the same time I couldn’t ignore the possibility of success also. I tried around 15 times but to no use and got literally pissed off. I scolded myself “What wrong am I doing here, what different can I do?” and sat quietly in the chair gazing at the monitor. I was already fatigued enough to even try something else. So I started to change some things randomly and by mistake I increased the value of a particular entity drastically and ran the program. The results woke me up from my hibernation, suddenly I saw light among all the darkness and a great sense of optimism arose within me. I increased the value even further for a couple of times and Eureka!! I got the exact results which were predicted theoretically and now I could finish my project with sufficient time in hand. Suddenly when everything seemed not achievable, by just hanging on and trying again and again, I had did it.

I felt ecstatic and ran down to my professor’s room immediately with the good news. Wow, even he was delighted to hear and told me : “Souparna, whenever it seems like it’s not going to happen, you should try something different, lots of discoveries were made accidentally.” I thanked my professor for his support and ultimately we gave a very nice presentation on it later on.

I used to watch a lot of good and inspiring movies and particularly this Rocky series was like a great source of motivation. I knew most of the things which were shown in the movie were not possible, but still the way Rocky used to hang on one round at a time gave me a lot of moral boost and I really found that attitude to be helpful in my life.

1 more thing, I was very fond of musical instruments especially the guitar. One of my close friend was learning it for the past 8 months and one day I went for a visit and sat with that instrument for some-time. It was as if I had developed an emotional connection the moment I strummed the strings although it was not pleasant sounding. It made me think “I should probably learn this”. Even my friend suggested to learn. So I came back and told my parents about it. They were furious like a pressure cooker : “ You are in your 4th and final year and instead of preparing yourself for competitive exams, you want to sing and play music?” they said.

But I was very adamant on it and they agreed on 1 condition that I should manage my studies with that. My thought process by that time had changed a lot. I was like “Anyways every one of us will end up working somewhere, someone might earn a bit more, some a bit less, but I don’t want to have a regret in my life that I never tried this”. So I started learning it, and it really is an amazing instrument to say the least. I had found a sync in my life by balancing college, studies, exercise and music. After 6 months to everyone’s shock and awe I was playing much better music than my friend who was like 1 year 2 months experienced in that. Even he and others appraised me a lot for that.

Now it might seem easy to learn it but it’s not. When I started out, my fingers weren’t flexible enough to reach out to all the frets. And sometimes it pained and hurt so much that I stopped drastically and that too one day in front of my teacher. “I can’t play anymore today sir, its paining and I feel numbness in my finger-tips“ I said. Master was infuriated , he blasted at me saying “What do you mean by can’t? Are you dead? No. Are you bleeding? No. Then who asked you to stop? Play until your fingers bleed, that’s the level of commitment you should have else throw that thing away.”

I didn’t know how to react to that, mind filled with mixed feelings after hearing him. So, as usual I started playing not thinking to continue for our entire session but at least for some moment. Again I heard those whispers in my mind “Hold on son, keep going” and I kept playing to the best of my abilities.

When the shackles of pain try to hold us back, we think of giving up, we think maybe if we let it pass, we will have peace. Ok, you may have for some-time, but how many times in life will you let situations pass like this. I mean life itself is a challenge right? If we think we can’t win, at least we should not think of losing also. Instead we should just hold on and try to move forward, after all that is the purpose of life, to move on.

These are some of the important events which took place and after having gone through these, I felt “Yes, maybe I can deal with any situation now, mentally I have become tough”. “You are tough you say?” – Life smiled at me and it really had its set of surprises waiting for me.

So presently I am working in IT sector in one of the renowned consultancy companies in India (TCS). As I have told earlier I am a fit and confident individual now, people take inspiration from my journey of weight loss, they ask for tips, diet plans and I try to help them out to my best extents. And my advice came to help for many, not because I had achieved my goal successfully but because I had taken that walk alone. A few things, only if you do alone, you gain the strength to take your own stride, a few of you might understand the depth of this. And once you have fought that battle alone, then only you can help others in their programs.

Now coming back to present scenario, by the end of my 1st year, I was in my 2nd project in a particular account and was learning new stuff. I had went for a leave for my hometown for around 10 days and had spent some good time there. But I had never thought I would have a bag full of surprises waiting for me once I re-join office.

Immediately I came to know that the entire team had been shuffled and it was split into 3 different teams. For my team, I was the only offshore member and remaining 3 associates were there in onsite and the applications which I would be handling going forward were totally different in terms of technology and use. On top of that, I was a Mechanical Engineer by profession. I felt uncomfortable after a long-time because now not only I was out of my comfort zone now, I didn’t have any clue on what to do and how to do.

However my leads and team members arranged for a Knowledge transition programme and I got to know about my onsite leads and others. But still, it wasn’t effective at all and I had no idea how to complete my daily task every-day. Situations became even stressful day by day as I was not able to deliver that well. My onsite lead was already ready to provide information but was never willing to manually help me complete my job and hence I started feeling a lot of heat from all sides. Morning I never wanted to wake up from my bed those days, because I didn’t knew how I would exhaust my 9hrs of duty without anyone’s assistance. My team members tried to help to the best of their abilities, but still I was lagging behind.

At this crucial time, one day my lead came and gave a very priceless advice. He said “Now you are struggling to cope up right? Do one thing, start working apart than your normal business hours, sync up with onsite and extend for as much time you feel you need to for the initial few days. Once you gain knowledge, I promise you, you will be able to leave office earlier than your stipulated time. For now just grab the things.”

He was a great person and an equally good associate, so I listened to him and started doing that and yes, he was right. Even my onsite lead got amazed seeing my willingness to not give in. I used to stay back and work with him hands-on, when probably everyone were enjoying their dinner at home. But gradually after around 1 and half months, finally the day came, when I had done my job and was leaving early for the day. My lead smiled at me and said “See I had told you right, I am happy that you have become this efficient now, go and enjoy your day.”

I felt a great sense of satisfaction that day seeing that again I had withstood a tough situation and came out smiling. Really by that time I understood very well, there’s no point of thinking of winning every-time but at the same time, we should not lose our ground. The most important thing is to hold on and keep fighting back. But still there were further things waiting for me down the line.

Next year a change of project happened and I jumped into a different type of work. This time the work was much smoother than what I had already gone through and it was manageable. But it was like a constant surveilance work and so required lot of focus and speed to work on Dual Monitors with multiple pages open at the same time. Now came the fun. Night Shift. First time in my life that I had worked full night long and was going to sleep at morning 9. It’s awkward to say the least, but people manage it for few days or a couple of weeks. However that was not the scenario for me. It was 3 staggering months of continuous night shift and that too the entire night starting from 10 to morning 7 or 8 o clock. It broke my entire body into pieces. I couldn’t sleep properly, couldn’t eat properly, digestion was not proper, headache, stomach pains and so on. On top of that, few medical concerns were persistent in my family and even I was going through some personal issues. In the midst of the 2nd month, things became worse, few days I slept for only 1-2 hrs and finally 1 day came when I really felt like “This is the day I will fall, I think I might not be able to hold myself together this time”. My entire body was behaving odd, even after taking a cold shower, I was sweating as if I just ran for a min and came. My hands became a bit shaky, eyes drowsy, and head started feeling very light.

I went in front of the mirror, saw myself and told that day “If I have fallen from the 2nd floor of my apartment and have survived without breaking anything, If I can be the university topper for a semester and even survived a backlog, If I managed to pull off my final year project, If I managed to work properly in my previous project, then I won’t submit myself to this situation now.”(And yes in my 8th standard I fell from the 2nd floor of my apartment but luckily nothing broke, some major cuts were there.)

That strong feeling of rage came inside, I got ready and simply plugged my earphones with soulful music and started for office. I was not willing to give in at any cost, but my body was not that much responsive. So I took it easy that day and went by a comforting cab ride with soothing music in my ears. And just like that I did my office job with perfection and that scenario also passed away. I overcame that situation and am still functioning normally as usual.

My friends ask me that how was I able to do continuous 3 months of that graveyard shift in that kind of situation. All I say to them is “Guys, its better if I don’t explain” with a smile. Because smiling is way easier than explaining the situation to others.

We all know how life is nowadays, there is very little happiness and peace in whatever most of us are doing. But at the same time, we should not forget to complete our daily responsibilities as well as we should find time for us also which is very important. And if the situation becomes tough, should we just let it pass or fight it? I mean you can call it a day, but for how long? How long can we keep avoiding thinking that the good times will come? The good times won’t come, unless we go to the next level and improve our current situation. For that, the least thing we can do is to keep fighting and holding on. Let’s break the scenario into small steps and like boxing, take it round by round, one step at a time, one round at a time. That is the way I deal with life now and I am still alive and healthy and hungry for more challenges to come.

And other than my regular work I spend time with friends, family, guitar, singing, cooking, writing, music, gaming, fitness, sports, learning new stuffs and so on. Whatever I feel like doing, I try to make time for that. But whenever i feel like learning anything, i give my entire efforts to learn it fully. I like maintaining perfection in every single thing in life, what I feel is like: "If we are really into something and we are passionate about it, we should aim to stay until the full end or we shouldn't go at all''. Quoting someone: "I would rather aim for the moon and not get it, rather than not aiming at all."

These were a glimpse of some of the incidents that took place in my life and there are many more to keep going. I hope people who are fighting their battles alone find some inspiration from this.

So before I end this I would like to quote a line made by Sylvester Stallone in Rocky 4 which I really appreciate: “Going that one more round when you don’t think you can-that’s what makes all the difference in life”.