Passion Vs Profession

They show this bollywood movie '3 idiots' many a times on TV... watched it yet again. I won't talk about the movie as such, but about the idea the movie tried to communicate. One of the idiots, Farhaan (Played by Madhavan), says to his father.. 'Rancho bahut simple si baat kahta hai daddy, us cheej ko apna profession banao, wo kaam karo...jisme tumhe maza ata hai, man lagta hai...fir kaam kaam nahi lagega...khel lagega!' This idea has been of many...that there is nothing better in this world than having your passion as your profession! You never feel tired or bored pursuing your passion...there is no chance you would complain about lack of job satisfaction when your passion is your job!

But easier said than done...there are many questions in my mind....can we really do that...can we really leave everything aside and pursue our passion? I often wonder how many of us do have a real passion for something? They say it's never too late to go for your passion...but is it really true?  

First of all, how can we define passion...and how can I identify what my passion is? Does passion derive from hobby? Don't know.....let me explore hobby and passion out here...!

In layman's terms, I would think a hobby is something, which I like doing the most. Something I can do all the time, 24 hours a day, and 7 days a week..yet can't get enough of it..can't get bored of it. Something I enjoy doing the most...Something that always makes me curious...Something I want to know more about..

I think a hobby would become a passion when you start feeling that this is your life....this is what you are born for. This is what you want to be known for (..if at all you bother about what others think of you!). You can live without your hobby...but I wonder if same can be said about your passion..! - Probably that's the difference between 'just a hobby' and 'passion'!  But come on....who thinks or talks like that...? All this 'funda'...and language is used by Philosophers, spiritual guru kind of people...isn't it??

Let me think what my hobbies are...which I would love to call as my passion (or are those already my passions?),  well, it took 30 years, to realize that there are two things in this world that give me immense joy & satisfaction...that fulfill my sense of creativity...that make me at peace with myself and also with the world....and those are: Music (to be specific - it's Singing...to be more specific - it's singing Gazals!) and Writing. Nothing gives me immense joy and peace other than singing a Gazal of maestro's like Jagjit Singh, Ghulam Ali or Hariharan, Talat mahmood, or Mohammad Rafi. Same joy and peace flows in and out of me, when I am able to write down my thoughts..when I am able to express my views & feelings in written words!

But what is my profession right now? For the past 8 years I have been known as IT professional, and have enjoyed the life as such without many complaints...going to onsite trips.. roaming around the world, having a salary which can't be termed hefty, but enough to lead a comfortable life...let me frame it as 'upper middle class' life in a metro city. Am I used to all this ease & comfort now? If I were to go for my passion now, lets say music, then I can see what lies ahead  - Some real hard-work in terms of learning the nuances of formal classical music and then the struggle in the music industry to carve out a career..I'll loose this consistent supply of a monthly salary I am so used to of! No surety that I will be able to establish myself as a successful singer or composer...there are millions who come to Mumbai to try their luck!

So going for the passion seems to be like taking a plunge into unknown...into uncertainty...! 

I am sure everyone of us has thought about living their passion at some stage in their life...but only some have the will and strength to go for it.


May God give that strength to the rest of us! - Wishing everybody a Happy Diwali!!

Tribute to Jagjit Singh

Jagjit Singh ji is no more....a loss to Gazal gayaki and sensible music. As it happens with me always....I didn't realize what does this loss mean to me? Though I got the news and said to myself and friends it's sad etc etc...but as such I was unaffected...I was busy with my normal daily routine..going to office...coming back and so on...suddenly one day while on-route to office in the bus, when I switched on my iPod and selected a song from 'Samvedana', an album by Jagjit where he composed for Atal Bihari Vajpayee's poems, it struck me that this person is no more in this world..whom I am listening to right now..! I am not going to see him again...! (it's not as if he was my neighborhood friend and I used to see him daily..but still) I used to attend his concerts in Mumbai, as & when I got a chance...and although off-late I used to get a bit disappointed with his singing in concerts as he used to experiment too much...but yet his uniquely deep & sensitive voice always used to enthrall & amaze. Often I have craved for his earlier concert singing...especially when I listen to some old concert recordings...like 'Duniya jise kahte hain' , 'Fir usi rah guzar par Shayad', 'Shola hoon bhadakne ki guzarish nahi karta' etc. I often wished I was there to attend his concerts when he was at his prime!


For me, he along with Ghulam Ali has been a great influence....I grew up in a family where hindustani classical music was the most played music(till we arrived on the scene! :-) ) my father & grandfather both knew playing Tabla & Sitar respectively. But we children.. were hardly impressed by classical music and looked at it as boring stuff. :-) Though now I appreciate classical music much more.


I remember listening to Ghulam Ali first time when I was a child and my father would often play his cassettes. Then later on I was introduced to Jagjit Singh by my elder brother when he entered his engineering 1st year. That was the time when a musical program called Saregama had also started on TV with Sonu Nigam as an anchor. For me, this program really generated an interest in the old Hindi Film music and other non-film music genres such as folk & gazals and even classical music...otherwise till then, for me music meant the then trendy hindi film music with numbers like...'tu cheez badi hai mast mast'  :-).  So from there on, I got attracted to Jagjit's deep voice with his unique small vibrations (harkatein). Jagjit and his wife Chitra  made a really great singing pair...their contrasting natures of voice (While Jagjit's voice is deep & at lower octave..kind of outside-in, Chitra's is at higher octave...inside-out) seemed to complement each other's singing.


I have associated different phases of my life with one or the other Gazals of these two maestros. So whenever I recall past..the associated gazal comes first in mind! - That's the kind of attachment has been with Jagjit Ji & his gayaki, for me. But I often think that.....that's the beauty of these legends...they have left a legacy..they have given the world which will remain there even after them...even after they have passed away...the music..the compositions created by Jagjit will always be there with me...with other fans!


To conclude with one of his composition.. this is what he means to me - 'Jate jate wo mujhe achhi nishani de gaya.....Umr bhar doharaunga..aisi kahani de gaya.'

Power of Compounding

I came across this article about ‘Power of compounding’ in DNA money, Oct 5^th 2011 DNA newpaper’s financial and economic news section. I found it very interesting and thought you too would like it and may benefit from it, so reproducing the whole article here:

Power of Compounding:

“In the book, ‘Once upon a Wall Street’, Peter Lynch, one of the most successful mutual fund managers that wall street has ever seen, narrates a story.

Consider the Indians of Manhattan, Who in 1625 sold all their real estate to a group of immigrants for $24 in trinkets and beads. For 363 years the Indians have been the subjects of cruel jokes because of it- but it turns out that they may have made a better deal than the buyers who got the island. At 8% interest on $24 (note: let’s suspend our disbelief and assume they converted the trinkets to cash) compounded over all those years, the Indians would have built up a net worth just short $30 trillion, while the latest tax records from the Borough of Manhattan show the real estate to be worth only $28.1 billion.

Give Manhattan the benefit of doubt: That $28.1 billion is the assessed value, and for all anybody knows, it may be worth twice that on the open market. So Manhattan’s worth $56.2 billion. Either way, the Indians could be ahead by $29 trillion and change!

This little story conveys you the power of compounding and the fact that the earlier you start investing the better it gets.

Illustration

Let’s try and understand this through an example of two friends Ram and Shyam. Both start working at the same time at the age of 23. Ram starts saving when he turns 25 and invests Rs. 50,000 every year. Assuming that on this he earns a return of 10% every year, at the end of ten years, Ram has been able to accumulate Rs. 8.77 lakh.

However, due to financial constraints Ram is not able to invest any more money after the 10^th year. At the same time he does not utilise the fund that he has already accumulated, hoping to live off it when he retires.

He lets the Rs. 8.77 lakh grow and assuming that it continues to earn a return of 10% p.a., he would be able to accumulate around Rs. 95 lakh by the time he turns 60. So the Rs. 5 lakh (Rs. 50,000 x 10 years) he had invested in the first ten years of his working life would have grown to Rs. 95 lakh. This, even though he stopped investing entirely after the first ten years.

Now let’s take the case of Shyam. Shyam believed in enjoying life, spending money recklessly rather than save regularly.

However at the age of 35, reality suddenly dawns upon him and he starts putting aside Rs. 50,000 every year. Unlike his friend Ram, who stopped after the first 10 years, Shyam religiously invests the amount each year for all of 25 years i.e. till he turns 60. Now, assuming he also earns a return of 10% per year on his investments, in the end, Shyam would have managed to 

accumulate Rs. 54.10 lakh.

Putting it differently, even after investing Rs. 50,000 regularly for 25 years, Shyam has only managed to accumulate Rs. 41 lakh lesser in comparison to Ram. Remember Ram has ended up investing only Rs. 5 lakh in total over the 10 years that he invested. In comparison, Shyam over the 25 years invested Rs. 12.5 lakh (Rs. 50,000 x 25 years). So even by saving two-and-a-half times more that Ram, Shyam has managed to build a corpus which is 43% lower! This happened because Ram started investing earlier which in turn allowed the money to compound for a greater 

period of time.

Also, as the corpus grows, the impact of compounding is greater. Ram as we know had managed to accumulate Rs. 8.77 lakh after 10 years after which he stopped investing, allowing the accumulated corpus to compound for 20 years more. In other words, the total life of the investment was for 30 years. However had his investment time-frame been till he turned 55 i.e. had the money compounded for 25 years instead of 30, then at the end Ram would have accumulated a corpus of around Rs. 59 lakh. By choosing to let his investment run for just an additional five years, Ram managed to accumulate Rs. 45 lakh more.

Real life illustration

In terms of a practical example, let’s take the case of HDFC Equity fund. The 5 year return of this fund is around 13% p.a. On the other hand from inception (December 1994), the fund has returned 21% p.a. Now, had an investor invested say Rs. 50,000 five years back, the investment would have grown to around Rs. 91,000.

However had the investment been made at the inception (allowing the money to compound over a greater period of time) the investment would have grown over 24 times to around Rs. 12 lakh.

To sum up, Albert Einstein himself called the power of compounding the 8^th wonder of the world. In this article we have given various examples of how potent this power is when combined with its ally—Father time. It’s never too early nor too late to begin investing. Or to put it differently, better late than later.”

After reading this, I can see where I am, my situation being pretty much similar to ‘Shyam’ of the example! But since now I know about the power of compounding, and as they say better late than later, I intend to chalk out my own financial planning. Hope this article will make us think about investments and financial planning a bit more seriously, especially for the new ones who have recently come out of their colleges & have started earning!