I didn't plan to be in HR. It happened the way most careers do — through a door that was open when I needed one. I walked in, found I was good at it, and kept going for 22 years.
Cognizant, Wipro, Synechron, and eventually Sr. Director HR at Intelliswift, where I built cultures, designed performance frameworks, and sat across the table from founders at some of India's most ambitious companies. I was good at my job. What I didn't see was that I'd become exactly the kind of person I was trying to help.
"For twelve years I was performing well, moving forward, convincing myself I was happy. But something was hollow. I just hadn't named it yet."
In 2011 — midway through that career — I organised something that had nothing to do with HR.
For our second wedding anniversary, my wife and I led 28 people to Everest Base Camp. Not a professional expedition. Not a guided tour. Friends, colleagues, people who had never trekked seriously before. All 29 of us reached the top. The Nepali organiser told us it was the largest single group that had ever gone together.
I didn't know it then, but that expedition was the first time I had designed an experience entirely around one question: what happens to people when you remove everything comfortable and ask them to do something that genuinely requires them? The answer turned out to be the foundation of everything I do now.
In 2013, I attended a workshop where a trainer asked: "If you were an artist, how would you paint the masterpiece of your life?" I had no answer. That question haunted me for two years. Then I painted it — literally. A badly drawn picture of the life I actually wanted, stuck on my bedroom wall.
Left side: the reality I was in — a nagging boss, long hours, a question mark where my purpose should have been. Right side: the life I wanted — speaking on stages, a team around me, the specific feeling of being fully alive in my work, not just competent at it. In the middle: three arrows. Three bold steps.
In 2020, I wrote a book. Inside it, I declared publicly, in print: "I will retire by 45." People who read it thought it was motivational language. It wasn't. It was a target.
In late 2022, I left my last corporate job. Moved from Pune to the Himalayan foothills of Dehradun. I crossed the 45-year-old mark before the move was complete.
The painting happened. Precisely. On the timeline I had set, toward the life I had drawn with my own hands in 2013. That's not a motivational story. That's proof.
