Our ex-HRD minister, Smriti Irani was spotted meeting an astrologer in Rajasthan recently. Astrologer told, she will become the President of India. Her career is bright. We all know, he is right, since we saw Smriti move very fast from her daily soap avatar to the powerful central minister in Govt of India. She is still a minister , a Rajya Sabha MP and Minister of Textiles currently.
Can all this happen to someone meteorically. She is an excellent orator. Well read and extremely logical person. She may not be a graduate but that does not matter.
What MBTI and all other expensive psychometric tests could not tell me about my situation, my self-learning of vedic astrology unearthed for me.
I regret, I did not learn astrology earlier. This is such a beautiful science. So much to learn. I am in kindergarten now. I am not superstitious. I know all myths are actually truths (My+Truths=Myths)
I have been hired for a Central Govt's class 1, Gazetted officer role. Topped MA entrance for Ancient History at JNU, all this 20 years back. Sold my scooter to pay bills a few years back. Kept struggling to find what is my challenge at work. Never got an answer. I knew business leaders hired me. I have mostly been offered by business leaders (especially those who have their own money invested in company, not the one's who run on investor's money). They love me for the results I achieved for them. What none of the psychometric tests told me about, why I have such a touch time with my job search and finance, I got the answer very late, but through my own readings of vedic astrology. I have grahan dosha, Kem Drum Dosha, Shrapit Dosha in my horoscope and all good planets are in enemy houses. My key planets are debilitated or combust and none of my planets are exalted. The best part of my horoscope is my third house, where I have Mars in Cancer and that makes it debilitated and combust at the same time as it is too close to Sun there. My mercury is there and so with Sun and Mercury, it makes a brighter combination "Budhaditya Yoga" (Astrologers say, ~60% birth charts have this yoga, largely as Sun and Mercury are in closer orbits and make larger possibility of sitting together in one Zodiac (Rasi) often. This makes one intelligent and sharp. Sun being there helps me see/notice/acknowledge, what I am able to see , analyse, use in my communication, observation, etc.
I am glad to know, why my life is tough. It is "karma.". Everybody has. There is no life without a prarabdha/sanchit karma. Why am I telling you all this? I have a friend who worked for Accenture for 4 years and came out to look for another job. He told me, Accenture is running a program for Body, Mind, Soul, Life for leaders. He was a key member of that program all these years. He though mentioned that business leaders found no benefit coming from this program, but it ran with a large team supporting it for 5 years plus. Some experiments don't work but that doesn't discourage progressive firms from experimenting. Interesting, but they remain invested, at least financially and that kept lights on in several houses of those employees, who ran such an esoteric program. Here good prarabdha helps.
What MBTI and all other expensive psychometric tests could not tell me about my situation, my self-learning of vedic astrology unearthed for me.
I regret, I did not learn astrology earlier. This is such a beautiful science. So much to learn. I am in kindergarten now. I am not superstitious. I know all myths are actually truths (My+Truths=Myths)
I have been hired for a Central Govt's class 1, Gazetted officer role. Topped MA entrance for Ancient History at JNU, all this 20 years back. Sold my scooter to pay bills a few years back. Kept struggling to find what is my challenge at work. Never got an answer. I knew business leaders hired me. I have mostly been offered by business leaders (especially those who have their own money invested in company, not the one's who run on investor's money). They love me for the results I achieved for them. What none of the psychometric tests told me about, why I have such a touch time with my job search and finance, I got the answer very late, but through my own readings of vedic astrology. I have grahan dosha, Kem Drum Dosha, Shrapit Dosha in my horoscope and all good planets are in enemy houses. My key planets are debilitated or combust and none of my planets are exalted. The best part of my horoscope is my third house, where I have Mars in Cancer and that makes it debilitated and combust at the same time as it is too close to Sun there. My mercury is there and so with Sun and Mercury, it makes a brighter combination "Budhaditya Yoga" (Astrologers say, ~60% birth charts have this yoga, largely as Sun and Mercury are in closer orbits and make larger possibility of sitting together in one Zodiac (Rasi) often. This makes one intelligent and sharp. Sun being there helps me see/notice/acknowledge, what I am able to see , analyse, use in my communication, observation, etc.
I am glad to know, why my life is tough. It is "karma.". Everybody has. There is no life without a prarabdha/sanchit karma. Why am I telling you all this? I have a friend who worked for Accenture for 4 years and came out to look for another job. He told me, Accenture is running a program for Body, Mind, Soul, Life for leaders. He was a key member of that program all these years. He though mentioned that business leaders found no benefit coming from this program, but it ran with a large team supporting it for 5 years plus. Some experiments don't work but that doesn't discourage progressive firms from experimenting. Interesting, but they remain invested, at least financially and that kept lights on in several houses of those employees, who ran such an esoteric program. Here good prarabdha helps.
Kem Drum dosha makes you broke , mentally and financially. I have run to zero money several times in my life. Zero symbolically is a circle and my birth nakshatra is Shatbhisha, whose symbol is a circle and experts say, people born in Shatbhisha ( in Rasi where Moon is) often come back to start point or zero in life as circle would take you in circles. So, astrology works :). It's a science and the Supreme Court of India agreed so. No savings left for future. Immense mental stress. Sense of self-dejection. Astrologers find this dosha , one of the worst. This brings one's life to 'zero' several times in life. On top of this dosha, I learnt, I have in my career house, a dangerous eclipse, Rahu+Moon, that eclipses career and destroys all growth. This reminds me of the time I met a Persian lady Ms.Naval Gani, a psychic/medium/astrologer, at Bangalore, and met her several times to consult her. . People who have known her know that she used to read your coffee cup impressions formed inside the cup, after you left a few sips and the cup was rotated to spread it and kept inverted. She told me looking at my cup impression that, it looks like a man hanging from a cliff upside-down.
...and I experienced all it's symptoms several time in my career and life due to career. Every occult science merges and they are all mysteriously appealing.
My Mars in cancer does not allow to own house and land , car, other luxury. I have a house, bought 3 cars in my life so far and had to sell all cars one after the other to meet expenses. Transferred 100% my small 2 BHK flat to my wife's name recently so save it from my bad planetary positions. Astrologers had been advising me the same for years. A fashion apparel company, well funded offered me a job of 8 lacs CTC in Feb 2016 and I had no choice but to accept it. In fact I begged for that job to run expenses. Premier B school degree, ex-Central Police Officer tag is all BS. This was after I had 18 lacs CTC in 2007 at ZS. Radio Indigo offered me a contract job for 60K per month. I did not take up any of these. Luckily, I got some consulting and able to pay bills. Net-net, I had a job for 6 to 8 months in last 4 years; rest consulting. Astrology, that I am learning, helped me a lot knowing about what is wrong with my life and destiny. What makes me immensely positive is Jupiter that is aspecting my career house. Jupiter under Saturn gave me career leap in 2007-08. Though Jupiter is in bad 6th house in Libra and not benefice for Taurus lagna/ascendant, which makes it less benefic for me. It's aspect on 10th house of career, helps me from sinking most of the times. Venus, which is my Lagna/ascendant lord is in 4th in Leo with Ketu. Ketu here claws any luxury in life. Karma, I accept. But my Ketu is good as I see and have experienced.
Does good karma in this life helps in this life? I am not sure as a new charter is out when soul changes body and that is next life. Does it impact next life? It does. Can we do anything about past life? No. Can we learn from past life and know what is purpose of this life? Yes. That helps. If we notice why we do what we do, which is so unique, we can trace it to past life. Go check your Akashik records and you will find revealing answers. That helps a ton. It helps you take life better, better prepared.
Since , I had a great career despite this all, I am a fighter and have great friends, who are my support systems. I know, my struggles make me sharper with every onslaught. I am very determined, I will be very successful in future. Lot to give back to society.
Many folks of my LinkedIn connecting keep checking my profile every 15 days, to see what am I doing. This article is for them too. Love you people!
When I thought of writing this article, some random thoughts ran across my mind; this was instant, I just wanted to write something. These days, I am struggling to find a decent job. This is 10th time in my career and I am used to it now. I have been lucky to get jobs back before I ran completely broke. I always wondered why it is so difficult for me to find a job before I quit one. Things never came easy to me. Tonnes of stress, too much of struggle, sense of feeling useless, have been common. Between jobs, I did random stuff to keep me afloat. This is common with me, has been the same for past 20 years. I get bored very quickly. I am not a typical job guy, who accept fate and lives with it. I look for some challenging work at hand, grapple with it and get ahead of it. I didn't like BSF. I was selected for Assistant Commandant role in the Central Police Organisation (Border Security Force is part of it. it's a para-military force). I did not like LIC much, though it was challenging to work in rural area and in a office less workplace. It became a burden sooner. Did not join Intelligence Bureau. Went to write Civil Services 3 times. Missed interviews by 10 or 12 marks. Did not go for IIMC's Mass Communication as I was very close to cracking Civil Services. That did not happen. My astrologer had told me all this very clearly in 1997. All his guidance helped. Jobs are like that. In government sector, it is even more boring. Early days in my career, got offer from TCS, didn't join it. Offer was lower than I expected. Just to pick a job between a jobless phase, I took, L&T at Mysore. I was between interviews then. I got ZS Associates offer and within 20 days at L&T, I had to call it quits. ZS offer was too good to be looking back at L&T then. ZS made an offer, which was so welcoming with a feel of the culture that is inviting you. It mentioned, who will be my mentor to help me get started with a management consulting firm, that is known for it's sixth toughest company interview in Google ranking. Offer letter mentioned, dates of my being at the Global New Hire Orientation and followed by that, my 3 week's HR and culture, process orientation at 4 different offices in the US. Got an opportunity to be part of hiring contingent at LeHigh, Duke, U-Penn , etc. L&T was a great people culture. They are extremely caring. I met during my inerview some very senior VPs at the L&T house in Mumbai and they were extremely caring and inspiring. I was feeling so lucky meeting them. Even folks at TCS were very nice and welcoming. L&T, I recollect had given me a letter of intent (LOI) and not an offer letter. This LOI did not even have the salary mentioned. I joined and got my letter a few days letter. I got a big size PC. By that time in 2007, I was long away from PC and had been working on IBM T42 laptop and IBM's lotus notes application in my previous organization (APC by Schneider Electric). HR folks who were on my team reporting to me were 18 and 23 years of experience and large chunk of that was with L&T itself. They were sweet folks. Working with APC was my first experience with a truly MNC organization. Tremendous learning. The worst part was a compeltely average HR team and some truly non-inspiring HR leaders. They cared but had nothing to offer to the team as learning. I was hired there when they had a ex-pat New Zealander HR Manager for India. Allen Simpson. Loved meeting him. It was June of 2005. He got me to meet Alicia Hendy, a very young and dynamic HR Director for APC, APAC, based at Singapore. She is an Australian. In my first meeting with her, I learnt, how to pronounce the name of Beer "Fosters. "Extremely intelligent and very quick decision-maker, very independent and a very leader like boss. Very unlike typical HR bosses that we see today. After she hired bunch of HRBPs for India HR and other L&D and HRIS folks, she had a last hire , the HR Manager for India. This guy came from a lubes MNC firm in Chennai. He was an MSW and came to join us with his friend from previous company. She joined us as an HRBP at factory. They used the same office cab to commute. They ate together and everyone else in HR gave due respect to the young, single (?) lady. I was at R&D CoE. This is very common in Bangalore. I have seen boss and his lady bird leaving Adobe and joining LinkedIn. Just an example but this is very common in HR in Bangalore.This HR boss (MSW) resigned within a few week of his start. We were shocked to hear about this but everyone knew, he was too unlikely to be accepted as a leader. We heard, In a first management meeting with Head of factory operations, Country Sales Head, R&D Head and others, he had a truly dress down moment. Alicia had to intervene as she did not want the hole HR team, that she had set to have such a devastating news. She rushed to India and salvaged the situation. Some truce with business and then this gentleman, survived for 12 years in the company. Hired people who he could work with. None from any real premier B school. It is rule #1 for such MSW bosses. HRBPs who could not produce their MBA degrees and education certificate claiming an MBA grew 7 fold in salary under his hood. They, however, never got promoted or moved to any other specialist HR roles but, salary in 12 years grew from 5 lacs CTC to 35 lacs CTC until 2017, when she finally moved out. Deleted her LinkedIn profile and pulled out her resume from Naukri.com. Later I came to know that, she had tried all those years to get out of APC, but never got any opportunity. Long live such MNCs.
Usually at management consulting firms, there is any importance given to HR folks. These Consulting guys run the show. HR is more an admin than HR. Consulting folks decide on all hiring and talent management, all decisions on compensation, training and everything else. Typically in a high-end knowledge worker driven organisations, HR is a good social being, that's it. Decisions, they don't take. Learnt a ton at ZS. They pay well. ZS of my time of 2007 and 2008 and now in India is very different. We had been working with Principals very closely. We had hardly 3 to 5 Professional reports for each Professional Development (PD)Managers, who acted as career anchors, mentors, coaches for their PD reports . Soon after 2008, ZS in India made this PD manager role as a shepherd role managing 100 odd associates, etc. Essence lost. I cherish my time at ZS but would not like to join back ZS of today in India. It is just a back office operations focused organisation. I feel pain, when I see their recruitment head in India going to third grade MBA colleges of Pune to get HR awards for ZS. We hired him in 2008, and he was behind me for getting the offer. The then Office Managing Principal did not like him as much so we kept him on hold. But as luck would have it. We offered him a recruiter role and he heads Recruitment today. Before organisations change, you can read symptoms of it much earlier. Almost all promising guys from ZS India moved to ZS US very soon and in quick succession. What I see, mostly remained in India was a typical manager (not an ace consultant). They also grew in title and compensation.
I am not trying to pass any message here. Just wrote my memory, the way it came to my mind. This story will continue in next article.
