Stages of Life through your Seating Position in the Car

The other day while I was driving my car and was stuck in bad traffic, I kept thinking about the amount of time of our lives that we spend in the car and what struck me was that for every age of our life, we sit in different seating positions in the car and with different sets of people.

It is just that life passes by us so fast that we never see the significance of this or how the dots connect very nicely.

Let me make an attempt to put down how an ideal person’s (male) age and stages of life evolves depending on the seat that he is occupying in the car:

Ages 1- 4: You sit in the front seat on the mother’s lap with the father driving the car and you watch the world around with curiosity.

Ages 5 – 16: You have now moved to the back of the car while being driven and you ask lots of questions to your parents as this is the time of building your identity during the course of these years.

Ages 16 – 18: This is a stage of occupying the driver’s seat with the father on the passenger’s seat giving driving lessons to the son/daughter. This is a frustrating time as every mistake of yours while driving the car can get reprimanded by your father.

Ages 18 – 20: Now you have reached an age where you proudly drive the car with a gang of friends and great music blaring from the stereo. This is the feeling of ‘Cool’.

Ages 20 – 22: This is when you sit in the driver’s seat with the father in the passenger’s seat and mother in the back seat. This is when the responsibility of taking them everywhere comes to you and you love that as you get to drive the car on every occasion.

Ages 23 – 26: Driving the car with your girlfriend sitting next to you. This is the time where the enjoyment is not in the driving but in the fact that you have got a beautiful person sitting next to you. You feel as the luckiest and happiest person on this planet.

Ages 26 – 28: You buy your first car from your own money and it is the proudest moment for you at that point of time in life. You take your parents out in the new car and notice their pride. You take your girlfriend/fiancé out in your new car and love the beaming look on her face. This is the stage in life when you feel that life is perfect for you.

Ages 28 – 29: Driving the car with your wife next to you. This is a great period as you have got married recently and together as a couple you want to check out lot of new restaurants in town, watch all the good movies and make every weekend a great and enjoyable weekend.

Ages 29 - 30: Radio is your morning companion as your tread through traffic, all alone on a daily basis trying to reach to your place of work. This is the stage by when you have driven enough that you hate driving to office daily and you know that it is really not the drive that you hate but the pain of using clutch and brake after every two minutes in the crazy office hour traffic that really puts you off.

Ages 29 – 31: The car usually involves two couples: your best friend and his wife along with your wife and you. All of you feel that it is great fun to go out either for a weekend trip or for a nice dinner with a bunch of friends.

Ages 31 – 33: Once again you are behind the wheels with your wife seated next to you but this time she has got your kid on her lap on the front seat exactly the way you had once been in that seat during the ages of 1 – 4.

Ages 34 – 45: This is a stage when a person is doing really well in life especially with regards to his professional career. This is the time of moving back to the back seat and handing over the keys to a chauffeur who will ensure that you can utilise your time better while seated behind. In most cases, this time the car that you are sitting in is not the first car that you had bought.

From age 34 onwards, during the time that you are not heading to office, it is a repeat of all the ages mentioned above, but this time you are playing the role of a father and your kid is playing the role of you.

Thank You Team India

Dear Team India,


I would like to take this opportunity to thank you not only for myself but on behalf of the entire nation. With such a sensational World Cup victory, you have brought joy and pride to each and every Indian living in every part of the world. You gave all of us a moment that has allowed us to forget our worries, our sadness, our struggles, our mundane lives for some time and given us the opportunity to be a part of this celebration.

Your World Cup victory was celebrated in every house, every street, every corner, and every intersection of the country with great chutzpah, zeal and energy. I was out on the streets of Delhi after the victory and I saw people in big cars and small cars, people on bikes, people on foot, people in autos and people on trucks with each one having a glow on their face, a smile on their lips and just one word to say ‘Indiaaaa… Indiaaa’. When I saw a guy standing on his cycle without a shirt dancing and waving to every car passing by and people stopping by to hug him and dance him, I knew then and there that victory is sweet without any ifs and buts. It also told us once again that victory has no caste, no colour, no creed and no regional bias. The sight of young guys and girls on the bonnets of their cars, standing out of their windows, holding the flag of India was a sight of a lifetime. Even the cops did not want to spoil the party and they let people just be. There were some joyous and amusing moments also when I noticed two guys standing out of the windows of a car, wearing the T-shirts of ‘Dhoni’ and ‘Tendulkar’ mentioned on it and the guy on the front holding a big trophy in his hand. It could not have got more symbolic than this.

What also amused me was the same people who were abusing the style of playing of the Indian team during the qualifying stages and criticizing Dhoni’s captaincy, his strategic decisions and his form on Facebook and Twitter after every inning, every session and every match had suddenly done a volte face and were now tom-tomming the same team and captain calling him a great leader and a true strategist. I remember telling my mother how quickly people change their stance and colour surprises me and she summed it up beautifully by saying ‘Ugte hue suraj ko sab salaam karte hain’. I always knew India is an emotional side when it comes to cricket but not only are we extremely emotional, we are also extremely impatient as we expect results instantly and cannot control the urge of lambasting you guys even when the match is not over as yet.

To further add to the drama, there was the Indian media playing its role of Narad-Muni to perfection, building full hype around every player and every match, with complete background music, interspersing movie dialogues with scenes from earlier matches of India and getting everyone from an ex-cricketer to an astrologer to come and give their two bit of what will happen in the next match and who will be the key. Some of the people giving all the tips had never every played cricket or picked up a bat in their lives but that is India, where every person, be it an auto-driver, a fashion designer, a corporate guy or a normal middle-class businessman with a paunch has his own expert comments on what you guys should be doing and what you should not.

Team India – you showed us all how it is done in style despite 2.4 billion eyes watching you like the eagle watching its prey, ready to swoop down on it when there is one wrong move. Achieving the victory through a six was a statement to the world that we have arrived and arrived in style and now we will dominate like never before. Each and every one of you - Sachin, Yuvraj, Virat, Gambhir, Raina, Zaheer and of course Dhoni showed why India is such a formidable opponent.

There was a lot to learn from you guys in terms of team work, handling pressure, delegation of responsibility, managing and leading from the front, never-say-die attitude and I already know that over the next few years, every corporate AV, every new launch, every team-building workshop and every leadership seminar will have pictures and videos of the quarters, semis and the finals telling each and every one of us how it is done.

While it is good to use all these visuals to motivate working people like us, I also feel that there was lot more that the corporate world can learn from you guys. They can learn that one does not have to be made to work for years and years before being given the command of a team. It is not always about experience. Sometimes it is also about the ability, capability, killer instinct and passion that an individual possesses that should decide who should lead from the front. Corporates should also learn from you guys that it is perfectly fine for even a 15 year old senior to work under his junior without the senior feeling any insecurity about it or the junior feeling a sense of over-achievement about it.

Dhoni, by staying behind a few paces and letting Sachin get all the limelight post the victory, you also told us that credit should be given where it is due and a leader should know when to step back and yet enjoy the success of his team. By shaving your head off immediately after the victory, you also taught us that staying true to your word is far important than looking good from the outside.

I can go on and on about what all was there for us to learn but I would leave that part to the HR people and motivational speakers at this point of time as this blog is really not about picking what I learnt but rather about what I saw during the entire duration of the tournament all around me.

One of the things that struck me during the course of the World Cup was that surprisingly China has not picked up this sport as yet. Could it be because cricket is still not included in the Olympics and so it does not hold the same charm to them? I am not ready to believe that China is not capable to play cricket as today they are playing each and every sport, including Volleyball and Basketball, which earlier was not the key sports of China. I would not be surprised if over the next few years, seeing what you guys have been able to achieve, they pick up this sport and we see them participating in the World Cup of 2019. I would surely be keen to see a battle between India and China on the cricket field. It would also allow us to avenge for the Indo-China War. Well I guess there is no point of talking about this as right now China is not a cricket playing nation so there is no point in discussing that further.

From a corporate stand point, being a marketer, I can vouch for the fact that this victory of yours has got a large number of people of my fraternity extremely excited and they have already started discussing new campaigns and new brands having one or lot of you in that. As I had said earlier ‘Ugte hue suraj ko sab salaam karte hain’. You guys deserve it as well and you should it enjoy it to the hilt. After all, a wait of 28 years has been brought to an end. You have brought rains to the land suffering from the drought of the World Cup victory and so once again, I would like to thank each and every one of you with utmost gratitude and with great pride.

Cheers Team India!