It was a warm summer morning in New Delhi when I got a call from my supervisor at work. He sounded grim when he said, “I have some bad news for you, the company has announced the next set of lay-offs, and your job is getting affected. You’ll be with us for only 6 more months”.

I had come from Bangalore to New Delhi on a 2 week vacation, mainly to attend OJ’s wedding at Dehradun. OJ was one of my friends from the Breakdown Gang (BDG), as our Leh motorcycling group had come to be known. Besides me, Kini, VMK & Paddie (all members of the BDG as well) had also come to New Delhi.

To be told that you’re getting laid-off on the first day of a well-deserved vacation was a setback, but not entirely unexpected. The mobile devices division of my company - a large Fortune 500 organization employing thousands of people worldwide - had not been profitable for over a year now, and the series of mediocre products in the pipeline was nothing to write home about. To add insult to injury, a global financial crisis had set in and jobs being made redundant (a hitherto unheard of situation in India) was becoming all-too-common.

It was a consolation to be with some of my best buddies when I got the news, and I could easily confide in them. Truth be told, they were more dejected over this development than I was. In the back of my mind, I felt that the lay-off may in reality be a blessing-in-disguise. I was deep within my comfort zone with a well-paying job that challenged me little while still affording me a good lifestyle. I had gotten lazy living this relaxed life for about 5 years now, and would have continued for God-alone-knows-how-much-longer had it not been for this external “agitation”.

So now I had to rethink what I wanted to do next, but thankfully I had 6 more months to decide!!