Dear Friends,
I don’t want you to get the impression that I am always writing about ‘how I failed and recovered’. I am simply narrating my life’s experiences. In my case, I had more failures than success and I thought it would be very valuable to share this with my readers. Hope you are not getting bored. Hence, the new story “Having Fun in Style”.
As the struggle continued, I started to see myself getting grumpy, incommunicative, forgetting to smile and have fun. Every day was a battle. All of a sudden, I realized I too have a life to enjoy. I knew if I don’t keep my mind and soul calm, it could easily impact my performance and health. During this time, on one of my trips to New York, I was traveling through the west side of New York City, overlooking the Hudson River, where I saw many boats and yachts with people partying on board and having fun. I started to think and wondered, “Do all those people out there, on those yachts lead a perfect life with no problems?”. “Surely not”. On the contrary, they too must have problems, but see how they are having fun, putting their issues behind them.
I desired to own a boat myself. I made some enquiries and found that boats were easily available, but too expensive to buy. The prices that were quoted for different yachts were phenomenal. I visited many marinas and called some of my senior colleagues and informed them of my desire to buy a yacht. Much against my belief that they would disagree with me, they gave me the go-ahead. I guess they knew this would make me happy.My finance controller said, “don’t worry, we will find the money!” Here we go, with all the problems that I was confronted with and the financial muddle, it was a tight rope walk. I ordered the yacht in Florida, to be shipped to Kochi, India, costing $ 600,000 or equivalent to Rs.2.5 crores. I traveled to the manufacturers facility, spent almost a week working with the engineers designing this yacht for operating in Indian waters. The boat had to be ‘tropicalised’ and the electrical arrangements had to be adapted to work in Indian conditions and so on.
My excitement grew and I started to see a change in myself. I became much more active handling my business, simply out of the excitement of owning this yacht. I was motivated to work harder. I knew I had to pay for the yacht and I wanted to exert the least amount of pressure on my finance department for funding this. At this time I even wondered, will my creditors be happy if I did this?
On the one hand, my conscience said, what I was doing was wrong. I could have used this money for paying off my debts. On the other, my conscience reminded me of the life that I have to live, using this little pleasure to bring happiness to one’s own soul and at the same time, using it to motivate efficiency at work. I decided to go for it!
After a wait of four months, we remitted the money and the yacht was delivered to me in the New York waters. The company personnel invited me on board and gave me three days of training and briefing me on all operational procedures. After my third day of training, I began to command the yacht myself, going out over the Hudson River and anchor next to the Statue of Liberty.
I used to go on board with my family and friends, partied on board and simply had fun. At the same time, I used to view the Statue of Liberty and understand the spirit of freedom. The freedom we all need and deserve, irrespective of our financial difficulties. Within about a week, the yacht was shipped to my home town to Cochin Port on a ship.� 40 days later the yacht was in Cochin. It was the first of its kind in the area. The yacht was discharged from ship, directly into the Mattancherry Channel in Cochin Port and I took control right away and sailed her safely into the covered shed that I had dredged into the land where my factory was situated (by the water front).
There was excitement everywhere. The whole organization was puzzled to see this yacht. This became the talk of the town. I used her almost every day after work and invited my creditors and bankers on board, where I offered them first class treatment, which helped as PR exercise. This was a perfect way for building relationships. Deals that would have been difficult to conclude in my office started to materialize on board. Things started coming my way. I started to accelerate the recovery of my business. I even remember how I negotiated a deal of close to Rs.100 crores (25 million dollars) on board this yacht – “Choice Queen”, which brought me substantial profit.
Friends, see how things turned around. Had I looked to my troubles and withdrawn into a shell, I would have probably suffered ill health and destruction. On the contrary, because I believed in living an excellent life with absolute commitment of not walking away from my problems, I just did what I thought was right and I started to see substantial improvements. I made excellent relationships using this yacht as she was simply amazing. I still have her though I hardly use her as my interests have diversified.
Time goes by, man changes and desires vary, but don’t forget to life a full life!
Stay tuned for the rest of the recovery story…