During our IIMB days, Kodhi and I used to measure our lives in pinnacles. Pinnacles could come through various ways. Getting a hug from a sought-after person of the opposite gender usually qualified. Getting featured in newspapers also worked. Sometimes even a compliment from a professor would be enough of a “pinnacle”.
In any case, in college days pinnacles keep coming your way, and you can live your life from one pinnacle to another. Once you graduate, that suddenly stops. Positive feedback of any kind in your work life is rare. If you “manage to do well in social life”, it might work, but there is really nobody else to show off your pinnacle to. It is really hard to adjust to this sudden paucity of positive feedback in life, and this usually leads to what people call as “quarter life crisis”.
Shortly after I had resolved my quarter life crisis, and “done well in social life”, I decided to change track. I quit full time employment, and as you all might know, have been pursuing a sort of “portfolio life” in the last eight odd years. And this means doing several things apart from the thing that contributes to most of my income.
One upside of this kind of life (lack of steady cash flow is the big downside) is that you keep getting pinnacles. Publishing my book was a pinnacle, for example. Getting invited to write regularly for Mint was another. Becoming a bit of a social media star (nothing like yesterday) in the run up to the 2014 general elections was yet another. And there were the kicks about being invited to teach at IIMB. And all that.
It had been a while since I had one such pinnacle. Perhaps the last one was in 2018, during the Karnataka Assembly Elections, when I had my first shot at television punditry, when I appeared on News9, and waxed eloquent about sample sizes and survey techniques.
In any case, that was nothing compared to the sort of pinnacle that I’ve got following my tweetstorm from yesterday. This email came to the inbox of NED Talks (I didn’t know that email ID was public) this afternoon:
Kind Attn: Karthik Shashidhar, Founder NED TALK
Dear Sir,
Greetings from Republic TV!
I’m <redacted> , a Mumbai based News Coordinator with Republic TV. Republic TV is India’s first and only Independent News Venture headed by Mr. Arnab Goswami.
Sir, we would like to get in touch with you for our show on Corona virus reality on Rahul Gandhi Claim that Lock down is temporary measures and not the solution to defeat virus and need more testing to be done in the country.
Sir,It will be our pleasure to have you join us on our channel at 9PM.
We, at Republic TV, believe that your command over the issue will add depth and perspective to our discussions and help mould popular discourse.
As it happened, I was unable to accept this invitation. However, I’m documenting this here to record this absolute pinnacle of life. The next time I feel shitty about myself, or feel a sort of imposter syndrome, I can look at this invite and think that I’ve truly arrived in life.
PS: Just look at the number of times I’ve been called “Sir” in that email. That alone should constitute a pinnacle.
Knowing the shit hole of a channel as republic I would say u dodged a bullet being made a talking head used just to attack Rahul Gandhi for his rather sensible suggestions.. I don’t think anyone on the show would have given a f about Bayes theorem anyway or the nuance in ur argument or the fact that lakhs of people with symptoms are being turned away or not tested especially at this stage when more testing is actually required to flatten the curve and scale down the bubbling paranoia and impending chaos.