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Debi (PGP 93) & Jaideep (PGP 92)

Debi Guha PGP ’93 & Jaideep Lakshminarayanan PGP ’92

There was a time, in the not-too-distant past, when we realised that we had spent half our lives together. It was a strange feeling, knowing that we had few memories of the past quarter century that did not involve each other.
We met at the start of Jaideep’s second year (and Debi’s first year) on campus, and through a commonality of interests and friends, were progressively spending more time together. Our friendship survived Debi knocking Jaideep off the combo quiz and dumb-charades teams, as well as the enthusiastic teasing of the close-knit D-14 gang. There is a reason why friendships made in the cauldron of our campus endure – you get to see the best and worst of each other in a stressful atmosphere, where it is impossible to hide who you really are from others. As an example, we never went through a phase of putting your best foot forward to impress each other (Jaideep’s very occasional showers during the winter being case in point). It also helped that by an extension of the mutual respect one shares with friends on campus, we started off in a relationship where both our careers were equally important and gender stereotypes less relevant. The other benefit of having many common friends right from campus days meant that our house always had folks coming over, creating a nice hub-hub of activity.
Both of us having chosen to work in financial services (one attracted by the nature of the work, and the other seduced by an MNC bank’s PPT showing a nice, hockey-stick graph for future earnings), we decided early on that home would be a no-work zone. We didn’t discuss either of our clients, projects or colleagues, which meant that we were able to leave all the stresses of the industry outside our front door. That approach did lead to occasional near-misses when we ended up working for the same client or meeting common contacts in the industry, who had no idea we were married! In retrospect, this also helped us become friendly with each other’s colleagues without being tainted by office politics or gossip. Or maybe, since we’ve both been incredibly lucky with our colleagues through the years, those friendships would have happened anyway.

If working in financial services involved crazy hours and non-stop travel, the arrival of our kids made our lives a caffeine-fueled haze! Synchronising travel plans and client dinners, taking turns at interminable calls even on vacation and occasionally communicating through secretaries and voicemail…all that was part and parcel of juggling our new responsibilities.
Our ability to manage our time certainly improved over the years, helped by Jaideep taking sabbaticals as often as he could, and Debi moving to the buy-side, where she has had a lot more control over her schedule. Our kids, Aditya and Arushi, have also greatly helped by taking on most of the responsibility for themselves from an early age, not that they had much of a choice.
A couple of years ago, Debi decided to pursue her entrepreneurship dreams and set up her own mezz fund. Taking inspiration from her willingness to give up a senior corporate role to reach for the stars, Jaideep decided to take early retirement and spend the next few years as a stay-at-home Dad. Our kids reassure us that this has worked well for them, but we can see their wistful glances at friends who can get away with a lot more.
As we consider the next few years, we are looking forward to becoming empty nesters (our dog doesn’t count, since he’s the best behaved of the bunch by a mile), giving us a lot more flexibility in doing whatever we want, whenever we want to. Though, come to think of it, we seem to have been doing that anyway.

AUTHOR: admin
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