I sometimes used to think that destination that we seek is death, or moving on to another world, and we just have to make sure we hold on just long enough so this journey is comfortable. But if you really believe that, then it would be an extremely depressing thought. You do everything that you do in life, just to die? If that is true, then the easiest way to speed up the journey is to commit suicide.  On the contrary, committing suicide takes away any chance that you may have to reach your destination, when you are really having fun. The time, when you have only hope, you only see good in people, you copiously encourage others, with conviction, because you have seen it work for you. Just because you are old and have lived through life, doesn’t mean that you have reached your destination. Those that have reached their destination can be of any age. When you run into people like that,  if you wish yourself to be more like them, that wish will come true, just get on the boat that says faith.

Yesterday, my son had a play date with a friend of his. They live a little far from each other and given the schedules of parents etc. it took long time to make this happen. His expectation was that he is going to come first thing in the morning. But he was late. My son was anxious and kept asking, every few minutes, whether his friend’s father had called and confirmed that they are on their way. Since I knew that they will come, I kept assuring him that they will come. But at certain points he had doubts, wondering whether he will really come.

I later reflected that it must be how god looks at us and smile when we keep worrying whether we will get to our destination.

After my brave venture into the world of entrepreneurship, I am back to looking for jobs and I am going through the same set of emotions above. I am grateful that I am getting a few calls, mostly with very senior people. However, a meeting yesterday, managed to depress me again. In the last several months I have tried to reconcile myself that work itself is really not important, it is a means to an end. As a corollary to that, It als0 means that prestige associated with work is not important either. When you are an entrepreneur, you feel differently. You can somehow feel proud of so called menial work, since at the end of the day you are the owner, and no-one can take that away from you. But when it is a job, you are essentially doing it for money and, for some people, the associated prestige. So if for some reason you are not enthusiastic about the job content, you got to have the mentality that you will show up every morning and do it, purpotedly, with enthusiam and aplomb. This is what I find very difficult to do.

I feel that it is unfair that after 2 years of a lot of hard work, sacrifices, I am going back to what I already had and maybe work with people (i.e.if I get to do it at all) that I had thought I had seen the last of. When you are having to eat humble pie, atleast from my perspective, I feel like whining and ask Why? Why does god want to humble me ? Why does god want me to do things that I do not want or like to do ? Why does god have to be a punishing, mean coach ? Now mark the term “coach” here. For, deep down, I do believe, he or she has a reason, a purpose to make you go through it. But instead I’d like to believe in the Bengali view of the god as the loving, caring mother.  Like my real mother, she would be angry if I did something wrong, but otherwise always caring and always loving and always encouraging. I would hope god would encourage by giving what you have worked hard for, like a mother does, a small award,  a praise. And this he would be through positive developments. When I water a plant routinely, I get flowers, of course it has be bloom time for it, but sooner or later it does. My complaint, and I think I have a right to it, is that I worked hard, I developed many many products, I watered, I fertilized, but no positive development. At least so far. Maybe the bloom time is not here yet. And given that I have to start earning again and with no indication or knowledge of when the bloom time is, I am trying to pick up the pieces and go out there and get back to a routine job, throwing away something that I truly found as exciting and appealing. God should know, this, what is good for me, what makes me happy and what is needed for me to meet my responsibilities. And that is why I get frustrated sometime. But I know I am not alone. Hardly anyone is out there that can say with conviction whether your will imrove or not. Because we all know, that with time, the human life adjusts and adapts itself to new ways and decides to carry on. Since the responsibility to make yourself happy is with you and therefore not with god ? Or when you try and make yourself happy, is god really working through you ? Or you are doing it yourself? Is there a separation ? If not then is there really a god ?

On the other hand if god is working through you then I guess he can only change what is within you, and may be not the circumstances that affect you, which is external to you.  So he is not like this master planner that is making all that is happening in the world, good or bad. That may explain why the destruction in the world happens and why it does not work like a vending machine, where you punch in your desires and it drops in your lap. So if you think that he is going to change your circumstances for you, by dropping whatever you want it in your lap like Santa Claus, then maybe that faith is ill placed.  So in that case this desire of mine to be happy by finding exciting, meaningful and financially rewarding work and the ensuing frustration of not getting it instantly cannot be blamed on god. One of the primary prayers in Hinduism, just asks for enlightenment.   An that is it. A prayer that is routinely repeated is for knowledge. There are no original prayers that was for wealth or strength or music or handsome husband. The prayer for enlightenment has the chance of working. I will explain my theory.

I had harbored my dream to have my own business for as long as I can remember, but I have this pathological dislike of selling and doing cold calls. I knew that no matter how great my ideas are, I needed someone that would shake the hands, do the shmooze. On the other hand being a hardworker and being somewhat of a risk taker, I was always sure that I had what it takes to build a business. But it took me long time before I took the plunge, mostly because  I had to take care of several of my family responsibilities.

I took sweat equity in a software services business that I had advised for a long time.  This company was doing OK and had some steady customers but lacked serious sales team. I had my work cut out for me in this company as I took stock of the situation that the company was in. I got to know this person almost as soon as I joined the business. He came to me as a client. I met him at his home, a luxurious multi-million dollar home. He wanted us to build a copy of a Legal Services website owned no other than Lee Bower of  The Secret fame. He and his partner had tried, unsuccessfully, to get equity in the business and then decided to build a copy instead. So he came to us. For some strange coincidence, instead of sending an Analyst, I decided go myself and meet him, as I had just started and wanted to do all that I could to get my new business going. When I met him and his partner, I was shown the existing site and told that they owned this solution and but wanted to build a different version that would be more useful. And thus started my introduction to the world of deceit that was in the fabric of American business and that exposed it to the world during the meltdown starting September 2008.

I have to admit, that though I think I have what it takes to make wonderful products, I do not have the street smarts that is needed to succeed in the world of deal making and business. I lacked any previous exposure to legal and accounting aspects of running a business. For those that are starting, you do need to really understand this or partner with someone whom you completely trust who understands this.

This person was a salesman, without any doubt. And on reflection, I was the gullible village idiot. In the journey between the airport and his home, he managed to convince me to put $10,000 on my credit card for a membership to a Golf Course, that will be returned to me but I could keep the membership. I later on realised the scheme, that would be the hallmark on how , he (and I am sure he learned this from many before him) looked at business. He was working as a consultant to the owner of the Golf Course where he had claimed to raise money for his expansion. To show that they had committed customers as well as initial funding, they were taking money from people like me and showing that to third parties. Luckily, after several follow ups, this time around I got my money back (less the finance charges) but I never got to see the membership papers. At this point, though I understood, I considered this as the cost of running the business. Meanwhile he started introducing me to a lot of “awesome” business people, that would love to use my company’s services. I was thrilled. I finally had found someone that would fill up the gap that I always had. I also liked him as individual, who came to my house, made friends with my Parents, went all the way to India, where I am from and where a part of my business was. Our families went to vacations together. This was all happening within 2-3 months of knowing him.

Apart from building the product together, we decided to become partners and started a new company. He took all the intiative to incorporate it etc. and what I thought was normal at that time, started applying for business credit cards in my name. I started seeing a lot of cards coming in the mail. He told me that having these lines of credit and running expenses through them will allow us to borrow money. While this was happening I went on an extended stint to India, primarily working a lot on his project, for which, by the way, I was not charging him any fees. We were partners after all.  Meanwhile we agreed on staffing up the new company for which he was going to bring in work. Since the staff was housed in my new business, we were paying the salary.

After about 5 months with this person, the balance sheet was like this, He had taken money from me,  had got his software built, had us hire people whom we were paying, but nothing yet from his side. There were no sales or business and so far no payments for the project or the people that we hired. Meanwhile we started working on another project for him. This was an idea that a associate of his came up with. Many months later, I found out that this was actually quite a close friend of his and quite a nice person. He asked us to give a very high quote for the project, and in his own words “So that I can negotiate a larger stake in the company”, and he would pay us what would be a good rate for him, since he was a business partner. Then the troubles started, we started asking for money. Initially he tried challenging the hours and then quality etc. After many follow ups, he paid the first installment of consulting fees. This was also followed by a trip to India. As is the norm, we gave him and his partner a warm welcome. Even doing a fully paid up trip to Taj Mahal, keeping them in the most expensive hotel in Agra.

  cd <existing_project_dir>
  git init
  touch README
  git add README
  git commit -m 'first commit'
  git remote add origin git@github.com:joydiph/<project_name>.git
  git push origin master

With git set and connected, I added the existing files and pushed to the git repository

 git add .
 git commit -m 'initial upload'
 git push

It took several minutes before the files showed up in the git
repository