I was about 20 when I got offered a position of junior analyst at Goldman Sachs. I was in my final year of Mass Communication and Goldman Sachs had come to my college for campus placement and when I got selected and the offer came in I was pretty excited. They were offering me a fair amount of money, a chance to move to a big city and a chance at a real job. Until then I was just going through college as a typical teen, not having a clue of what I wanted to do, and not worrying too much about it either.
I was placed into the credit and mortgage derivate team right when the sub-prime crisis hit the US credit markets. So I was literally thrown into the deep end and had to pick up things extremely quickly. Companies were going bankrupt before I could say TARP. Days would fly by with me spending 15-16 hours in the office at a stretch. After a year it took a toll on everyone. With the exception of the bosses and the higher ups, everyone would be complaining about their work and their life. Everybody hated what they were doing but were still doing it because the money kept them hooked.
Two years later I was bored and depressed. Bored with the monotony of sitting at my desk 14 hours a day looking at excel sheets and calling clients and depressed because of the constant negativity at work. My father was insistent that if I quit it would only be to study further and by studying further it meant an MBA which depressed me even further. I struggled through the dreariness of another year and by then made up my mind that I would never work for a corporate again.
I quit my job after 3.5 years and moved back home to Goa. I took a break for about 5 months, travelled a little bit, learnt a bit of guitar and thought about what I truly loved and what I wouldn’t mind working for. I listed out football, automobiles, music, and reading as the things I was most passionate about. With my background in communications I thought my best bet to get into these fields would be to write about them. So I packed my bags, broke my fixed deposits and headed to XIC in Bombay to polish my writing skills.
Getting back to college was a completely new experience for me. Now I had some sort of purpose to be here and there was some faint path laid out even though it did get hazy at times. Being the oldest in a class full of new graduates also gave me a different perspective in terms of what I wanted to actually pick up and learn from the important classes and what cheap drinking hole to visit for the others.
Bombay is a good city to take a break and discover things. It’s the perfect city to bring you down to cold stark reality. I would be broke for weeks, struggling to pay rent, bills and afford food. There were so many days where I thought I had made a huge mistake and would wish I could be back in Goldman Sachs living off a comfortable salary. I would see my former colleagues travelling the world, going on fancy vacations while I couldn’t afford an auto to the railway station and had to walk to it. I was taking up random jobs for free or almost nothing just to have the opportunity to do something that I was passionate about.
But then Bombay also afforded you days when the city would give you a break and give you chances to do things that you’d never dream of doing. It was in Bombay that I got my first opportunity to go backstage and shoot a live gig for a band that I loved, it was in Bombay that I got a chance to write about cars for a national paper and it was in Bombay that I finally got my first job as a full time writer for a small magazine. I was getting paid probably half of what I got in Goldman, but by then I was happy that I actually got paid at all. I was pretty content at the magazine but out of nothing another opportunity came about which allowed me to manage independent bands. It was paying me even less than what the magazine did but gave me a chance to work with some of the finest musicians in the country. It also helped that I got to tour almost the entire country going for gigs and music festivals. I was constantly short on money but I was extremely happy. I worked with people who were completely into music, so passionate about what they do, constantly creating new things and teaching me so much. From a client risk manager at Goldman, I had become a band manager for indie artists.
Exactly a year later because of a few articles and stories that I’d written for my local football club in Goa (During the time when I was doing random jobs for free), I got a call to manage the media section for a new football agency. It was the toughest decision I ever had to make. Leave Bombay and my job that I loved or miss the chance to be part of the biggest football story in India. I believe opportunities are like a Bombay local, once it comes in you grab it with both hands and hang on for the ride, because if you’re indecisive, it’s gone. So now I’m back in my home state of Goa, handling media for an agency that has some of the biggest names in the Indian Super League as clients. Do I miss bits of my previous life, all the time. Do I regret anything? HELL NO!
Written By- Nathaniel D'Costa