The beauty of life lies in its pace that ensures that we are majorly absorbed in our present life issues – be it of professional nature, personal responsibilities, health issues of self and near ones, traffic woes, etc.

So, in this edition of the Adventures of My Official Life, I thought let me take you away from these official corridors, cubicles, cabins, and even colleagues and delve deep into that part of our personal lives that somehow has taken a back seat to accommodate our official and personal commitments. And so here I want to take you to the most innocent years of your life – Your Childhood.

During our childhood, how many of us have aspired to be in these corporate jobs – covered in these business suits trying to excel in Excel (I mean Microsoft, no pun intended) and be presentable for these presentations (Microsoft again!!)? At least I didn’t and I’m sure I can vouch for many of my readers too. We would agree that our childhood aspirations were very different from these corporate corridors ranging anywhere from becoming a cricketer to a pilot, an actor to an astronaut, or whatnot, especially when during those times, our thoughts and aspirations were not carrying any undue baggage with them, and sky used to be our limit.

And then we entered our corporate lives – A beautiful journey that led most of us a thousand miles away from our homes but played a vital role in shaping our careers, achieving numerous professional and personal milestones, and during this voyage, gave us awesome colleagues-cum-friends for the lifetime.

This time I’m writing about this incident that has almost no official connection but still it somehow created a beautiful bond between my personal and professional life.

Now, in this 7th edition, I’m sure most of you already know about my initial posting at Rajkot (a colourful city in the heart of Gujarat). Those were the days when I used to travel home a maximum of twice a year considering the geographical aspect involved. I used to travel from the western part of the country to the northern part to be at home, in the truest sense. With around 1,700 KMs from Rajkot to Jammu (my hometown), every trip was extremely eventful with the journey starting with a bus ride from Rajkot to Ahmedabad and then a couple of flights firstly from Ahmedabad to New Delhi and subsequently from New Delhi to Jammu.

This exhaustion of an almost 15-20-hour journey, however, never took any toll on me considering it was homecoming. I’m sure this must be a common feeling for anyone who stays that far from his/her home and such visits to home just bring a deep sense of calm and serenity.

The time spent at home is always special. Meeting friends and family, having Numerous close-to-heart conversations, eating your favourite street foods, visiting your hangout places, and finally spending some quality leisure time at home. Moreover, through these visits, I also got the opportunity to spend some time with my own self which used to take me down memory lane to those amazing childhood days. One thing I always did during such visits was go through my old stuff that used to bring back so many childhood memories.

I used to check on my coin collection, reading material (including my favourite novels, comics, and journals), and other stuff that used to stay in the same condition in my room always. I feel the child in me, somehow, makes me forget my professional self and relieves me of all my responsibilities.

While doing so, this time I stumbled upon an old brown wallet, a gift from my father. I never used to take that wallet out, but it was always the custodian of all my earnings, the sources include my pocket money, festivities, and those numerous 10-20 rupee notes that elders give to kids saying “Chocolate kha lena” (Have some sweets).

The wallet was with me for numerous years but this time I noticed something that had never caught my attention before. I was surprised as it brought an unexpected smile to my face. A different emotion emerged from nowhere as it read out the name of my Employer “Indian Oil”.

My father must have got it under some marketing initiative of the respective Retail outlet. However, as a kid, I never noticed this but today while working for this great organization, when I saw this, a sense of pride and joy, automatically, surrounded me.

In this visit to the past, I found something that is a part of my present and future too. In fact, while searching for my old memories, I created a new one. A beautiful feeling that has literally – “Nothing official about it”