When I started working, I had no idea what to do with my life (I think it gave my parents more nightmares than it gave me to be unemployed). Yes I had a flair for English, and yes I wrote some poetry off and on...but I had no clue as to where I was headed.

As I finished my graduation (thats undergrad in the US) it became apparent that education had left me with no skills that made me employable. Yes, I had a degree but that piece of paper was good for show...that's it.

The idea that I should do something media-related first came to me because of the dotcom boom (which eventually led to the dotcom bust). Heh! Talk about bright ideas.

As a trainee in Siemens, I worked with professionals whose job was to make briefs and give them to the media professionals in agencies. And yes, I thought I could write better headlines. But I was given the job of populating the Siemens India website - product pages - with relevant content. So visiting factories, talking to engineers who had a flair for making things complicated, talking to managers and executives who had a flair for jargon, visitng the press and sending out releases became the everyday routine. But the exciting part was to tackle problems like how do we put the products of 12 business divisions - online without making an encyclopedia of it? How do we make navigation simple?

And these were tough questions for a 22 year old trainee in Siemens MarComm.

After putting together the products and solutions page on the Siemens India website, I quit the firm to join a software company (my friend was in HR and we had fun going to work together...he eventually joined Siemens as HR...heh, my life has a strong streak of irony in it).

He quit a month after I joined. I quit a month later. Mostly because I wasn't a tech writer and the Director would hate me checking mail when I got to work.

This was the time I tried a lot of things...with no sense of direction where I was going. What gave me direction was a book - it was a big white book called The Copy Book by D&AD. Basically a series of interviews with the best and brightest copywriters from across D&AD..and it hit me like a freight train. So there I was 23, rocking with Megadeth and now with a sense of purpose. I would be a copywriter...writing copy, coming up with ideas...putting my feet up on the table and scribbling on a pad, taking long lunch breaks, and longer work hours - living life on the edge! :)

I told the guys at the company I had found a job at an agency..when all I had was the idea of getting into an agency. So I put together a book ... I photocopied ads and I rewrote them. And I went to agencies, showed them my book and they told me to get a better book. Heh!

Eventually I joined a small agency - where I worked for a year. I made friends with the art director, didn't get a paycheque for 8 months (but it was ok because I wasn't in it for the money and that agency gave me the necessary fodder to make a decent book..and they eventually sent me a cheque a year later :D).

After a year there, I left for MICA - the top communication school in India. This was a dream come true...to study in an institution where I could sleep on the lawns (that was awesome!) and where classes would go on at 2 am on the terrace of the building where my professors used to stay. He told us we were his children ...he would cook meals for us and use lots of cuss words when he saw our work... but eventually we did him proud! And I got a gold certification for my portfolio.

And from then on it's just been work, work and more work. I don't have that sense of awesomeness of what I do anymore, but after 7 odd years of putting up with clients, bosses, going back to the drawing board / blank page innumerable times, working with the some really awesome senior art guys and just general work nonsense, I still haven't lost sight of why I am in this profession.

I may not be in the books yet, but I am gonna be the guy who can wear a suit, put his feet up on the desk, take a blank page and start writing and keep at it until I get it right.

There's a magic to that image.

There's a magic to being a writer...stumbling upon one of the most demanding professions in the world - where everybody can become a judge and you set your own standards.

Looks like I'm not thaaaat jaded yet. :)