What Would Your Organisation Miss If You Weren’t There?

Looking back on my early career, I realise that some of the opportunities that helped me progress came from simply being willing to do a little more than my job required. I wasn't thinking about career progression at the time; I was simply interested in getting involved and seeing what I could do.

Starting out as a young professional, I took an interest in anything connected with English because I was fairly good at it. Elocution, debating, drama, the school magazine and more soon followed. If something came up, I was usually willing to have a go, and the more I was given, the more I took. When an opportunity finally arose, management felt that here was someone who could be relied upon to deliver. Promotion followed.

Looking back, I can see that those opportunities allowed people to see what I could do beyond my formal role, even though I wasn't deliberately trying to build a career strategy. I simply enjoyed getting involved and was willing to try something different.

That experience has stayed with me and made me think about how valuable we are to the organisation we work for. Value has little to do with how important we think we are or how impressive our designation sounds. You don't have to be a director or manager, or have a long list of people reporting to you, to make a real difference. Some of the most valuable people in an organisation hold no grand title at all.

There is a simple test I sometimes think about: if you weren't there, what would your organisation miss? It might be your expertise, your ideas, your energy, your willingness to help or simply something you do particularly well. If the honest answer is very little, that is probably worth knowing, and perhaps doing something about.

I have interviewed extensively in schools and colleges, including B.Ed colleges in India, and have met hundreds of candidates with the right qualifications, years of experience and good subject knowledge. All of that matters, but at some point I often ask, “What else do you bring to the table?”

That doesn’t mean breakfast.

It could be the ability to coach a team, organise a charity drive, speak confidently in public, arrange an event, sing, dance, paint, write or direct a play. It might simply be the ability to connect easily with people, solve problems or bring energy to a group. These qualities don't always appear on a CV, but they can make a considerable difference to an organisation.

Being good at your job is the starting point, but there is often much more to a person than the role they have been appointed to do. The difficulty is that many people are reluctant to mention the other things they can do. There is no need to boast, but there is equally little point in being so modest that nobody knows what you can offer. An organisation cannot make use of an ability it doesn't know you have.

I see this quite often when I speak to trainee teachers in B.Ed colleges in India. I might ask whether anyone in the room has a particular talent. Usually, there are no hands. I then assure them that I am not going to ask anyone to stand up and perform, and slowly the hands begin to rise. In my experience, a surprisingly large proportion of the room has something they are good at, but most are simply hesitant to say so because they are shy or not confident enough.

I remember one teacher who was very good in the classroom but had never considered herself particularly creative. When she was asked to help with some design work, she produced invitation cards and stage backdrops and showed a real flair for it. She enjoyed the work, gained confidence and began volunteering for other responsibilities. Gradually, she became more involved in school life, grew into a more confident professional and eventually earned a promotion, developing into a strong and dependable leader.

The ability had been there all along. What she needed was someone to notice it, say, “Why don't you try?” and give her the space to discover what she could do.

That is an important part of leadership. A good leader doesn't only look at what a person is doing today; they also notice what that person might be capable of tomorrow. Sometimes a little encouragement and the right opportunity can reveal an ability that even the individual had not recognised.

Of course, this responsibility doesn't rest entirely with the leader. Speaking up can be difficult, particularly for people who are modest or unsure of themselves, but keeping quiet about something you can offer doesn't help either. In a competitive workplace, quietly waiting and hoping that someone will eventually discover what you can do is unlikely to take you very far. Sometimes you have to put your hand up and say, “Count me in.”

Not everyone wants promotion, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with being happy where you are. But if you do want to progress, do your job well, be willing to step forward when an opportunity arises and make sure people know what you can bring. Don't wait for your job title to define everything you have to offer.

So, think about your own workplace. If you weren't there tomorrow, what would your colleagues or organisation genuinely miss? Your judgement, your ideas, your energy, your ability to bring people together or something you do particularly well?

If you can answer that easily, keep doing it. If you can't, perhaps that is the challenge. Look for something you are good at, find an opportunity to use it and don't be afraid to put your hand up. You may discover an ability you didn't know you had, and others may discover it too.

Because ultimately, your value is not measured by the space your title occupies on an organisation chart. It is measured by the difference your presence makes.

Make sure you make a difference.

I'm burnt out

 

I'm Burnt Out

Young people are talking about burnout more than ever, but not every difficult day is burnout.

"I'm burnt out."

I seem to hear those words more and more these days. Young professionals say it, people in their twenties say it and sometimes even teenagers say it: "I'm done", "I can't do this anymore", "I'm running on empty." Perhaps the expression has simply become part of everyday conversation, but the numbers suggest there is something behind it. In a November 2025 survey of more than 1,400 full-time US employees by Eagle Hill Consulting, conducted by Ipsos, 66 per cent of Gen Z workers said they were experiencing burnout, compared with 37 per cent of Baby Boomers.

I don't remember using the expression when I was young, though we certainly got tired. I started working early, and decades later I am still at it. I have been fortunate to have had two long and rewarding stints in education, both of which have given me much to be grateful for, and my present role in senior leadership has been particularly rewarding. I work for a brilliant Organisation, with good people around me and work that still interests me, so I have little reason to complain. But in my early years I was irritated, tired, angry and upset more often than I care to admit, and yet quitting never crossed my mind. I assumed that some days would be difficult, that some people would annoy me and that there would be times when I would simply be fed up. I took those feelings as part of the job and part of growing up. What I wonder about now is whether we sometimes give ordinary tiredness and frustration a much bigger meaning than they need to have.

The world has changed

That does not mean I think burnout is a fashionable word invented by a generation that can't cope. It is real, and anyone who is genuinely overwhelmed deserves to be taken seriously. But the world young people are growing up in is very different from the one I knew. We had no phone in our hand telling us every few minutes what everyone else was doing, where they were travelling, what they had bought or how successful they appeared to be. We also had an extended family around us — parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins — who noticed when something was wrong. They might not always have had the right answer, but there was usually someone to talk to, or someone who would simply turn up.

Many young professionals in the Gulf have left that support behind. They arrive full of ambition, often far from family, and enter a market that is fast, international and competitive. I understand the attraction because I have lived and worked in that kind of environment myself, but I also see how easily the pressure can build when everyone around you appears to be moving forward. Slowing down can feel like falling behind. A phone call home helps, but it is not quite the same as a grandmother at the table or a cousin who simply turns up. Even when the laptop is closed, the phone remains there, and at the gym and on my walks I often see people who have come to relax or look after their health answering messages or scrolling. The body is on the treadmill while the mind is still at the desk.

I also think work has become too closely tied to identity for many young people. When a job title becomes part of who you are, a bad review can feel like a judgement on the whole person rather than a comment on a piece of work. That is a lot to carry at twenty-four. I don't think the working world is going to become less demanding, so perhaps we need to help young people learn how to handle some pressure without allowing it to take over everything else.

Learning when to speak up

One of the things I have learnt over the years is that problems are often easier to solve when people speak about them early. Many people burn out quietly, and the same survey found that only 42 per cent of burnt-out workers had told their manager. I remember two young teachers in Pune who had similar workloads. One came to me and said, "Please don't mind me telling you, but I feel exhausted with the corrections." I didn't take offence and neither did she have to make a great case for herself. We simply looked at her timetable and I replaced one of her English periods with history, where there was less to correct. The pressure eased. The other teacher said nothing and eventually left. I have often wondered what might have happened if she had felt able to say the same thing. The change cost almost nothing.

There are other things I have learnt from watching young people grow. Resilience matters, but I don't mean pretending that everything is fine or expecting people never to struggle. I mean having a bad day, feeling miserable for a while and then getting up the next morning and carrying on. In all my years in education, I have seen people become stronger after difficult periods because they were given enough space to struggle and discovered that they could get through them. Learning to take criticism without turning it into a judgement on your worth matters too. If someone says, "This needs more work", it is healthier to think, "Then I will improve it", than to hear, "I am not good enough."

I have also been lucky to have had plenty in my life besides work. From the age of eighteen I was into music, played in a band and wrote for newspapers in Allahabad. I had good friends and plenty to keep me amused, so although work mattered to me, it was never my entire world. That helped. Family and a few close friends still matter enormously, and young people who have moved abroad often have to build that circle for themselves. It also helps to laugh, particularly at yourself, because not every mistake deserves to be carried around for the rest of the week.

We set the example

There is another part of this that belongs to us, rather than to young people. They watch what we do far more than they listen to what we say. We tell them to switch off while answering emails at midnight, and warn them about comparing themselves with others while we compare schools, houses and salaries. I have been in leadership long enough to know that people notice these things. If a manager takes a proper break, goes home on time occasionally and does not make everyone feel guilty for doing the same, people understand that work is important but it is not everything.

The pressures are real, the word burnout is real, but young people also need to learn how to handle ordinary tiredness, setbacks and pressure — while employers need to create environments where asking for help is acceptable.

There is a difference between having a difficult week and being burnt out. We all have days when we are exhausted, fed up with the job or frustrated by something that has gone wrong. Usually, we sleep, take a break, talk to someone, put the problem in perspective and carry on. Burnout is different. When the exhaustion persists, the interest and energy disappear and simply getting through another day starts to feel overwhelming, it needs to be taken seriously.

So when someone says, "I'm burnt out", we should listen rather than dismissing it or immediately telling them to toughen up. But we should also help young people recognize that not every bad day, difficult assignment or piece of criticism is burnout. Learning to deal with some pressure, recover from setbacks and come back the next morning is part of growing up and part of working life.

After all these years, I am still working, and I still have difficult days. I have learnt that a difficult day is just that — a difficult day. It does not have to define the job, or define me.

Tiredness is part of working life. Having nobody to tell is not.

 

 

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Mathematics

 

I can still remember my Grade 6 mathematics periods at St Joseph’s, Allahabad.

It is 2 pm on a blazing summer afternoon. Lunch is over and I have spent the last hour playing in the sun. I gulp down some decidedly not-cold water from the cement water tank with its 12 taps, wipe the sweat from my face and hear the bell.

I hurry back to class. Mathematics awaits — and, unfortunately, so does the strictest teacher in school.

The lone fan is turning at half speed, moving little more than hot air around the room. Fifty boys are packed into the classroom, sweaty, sticky and not exactly fragrant. The weekend is approaching. My mind is already there.

Then the master walks in.

A hurried, noisy “Good afternoon, Sir!” erupts from 50 boys.

He doesn’t smile. He doesn’t say a word. He walks straight to the front, picks up a stick of chalk and starts writing on the blackboard.

Screeeech.

The chalk squeaks. The noise in the classroom slowly dies down. He carries on writing as though none of us exists.

Then we see the dreaded sum:

A train travelling at 125 kmph enters a platform 100 metres long. The train itself is 150 metres long. How long will it take for the entire train to clear the platform?

I stare at the blackboard.

At that moment, I had absolutely no interest in trains.

I was struggling to keep my eyes open. I certainly wasn’t interested in the love life of a train and a platform.

The answer, of course, is 7.2 seconds.

And even now I wonder: who needed to know this?

The driver? The station master? The passengers?

I had travelled by train many times as a boy. I loved trains. I loved sitting by the window and watching Allahabad disappear into the countryside. But never once did I wonder whether the train would take exactly 7.2 seconds to clear a platform.

And if it took 7.3 seconds, what exactly was I supposed to do about it?

Somewhere along the way, we decided that knowing this was an essential life skill.

I’m still waiting for it to become useful.

But perhaps that isn’t really the point.

Those sums, those blackboards, those squeaking pieces of chalk and those stern masters are part of the landscape of childhood. We didn’t know it then, but we were collecting memories along with marks.

I may have forgotten many of the answers I was expected to remember.

But I remember the classroom.

I remember the heat, the fan, the noise, the trains — and 50 boys trying very hard not to fall asleep.

Maybe that was the real lesson. Some things are useful because they help you solve a problem. Others are useful because, years later, they help you remember who you were.

 

Are We Being Influenced Beyond Reason?

'When a ring light becomes a qualification'

There was a time when an influencer was somebody who had earned the right to influence you. He or she knew a subject well enough to make their opinion worth hearing. Their standing came from what they knew, not from how many people happened to follow them.

Now all you need is a smartphone, a ring light, a confident voice and the ability to look seriously into a camera while saying something that sounds vaguely profound.

And there are so many of them. They have sprung up like blades of grass after rain. Open Instagram, TikTok, YouTube or whichever platform we acquired this month, and somebody is ready to tell you what to eat, how to sleep, how to lose weight, make money, live longer and look younger. You begin to wonder whether you are living your life or following instructions from people living theirs on a screen.

Travel influencers have some of the most extraordinary jobs on earth. They fly First and Business Class around the world and describe it in minute detail: the seat that becomes a bed, the champagne, the caviar, the pyjamas, a verdict on the scrambled eggs at 38,000 feet. And every one of them, without fail, shows us the toilet: how big it is, how lavish it is and, apparently, whether the flush deserves a five-star rating.

And this is a career.

Meanwhile, many of us are at home debating whether turning the air-conditioning down by one degree will make enough difference to the electricity bill. I am not jealous; I am simply wondering whether I made a few questionable career choices.

The trouble begins when popularity is mistaken for expertise. Now everybody seems to be an authority on health, money and happiness. Someone will announce, with great gravity, “Seven things you must stop doing immediately if you want to live longer.”

Seven? Why seven? Why not six or eight?

And what qualifies this person to advise me on longevity?

Apparently, 427,000 followers is enough.

A million followers cannot turn an opinion into a fact, and a ring light is not a qualification.

It is easy to laugh at the airline toilets. It is much harder to laugh when the advice concerns somebody’s body, because that is where this stops being funny.

Body image already troubles many young people. A survey of more than 21,000 of them across six countries found that only 45 per cent were satisfied with their body size. Into that anxiety step health influencers, promising a “quick way” to lose weight.

The advice can be alarming: skip meals, live on liquids, exercise for hours. None of it comes from a doctor or dietitian, yet a teenager who watches the same face every day can begin to treat it as gospel. Several former pupils, now parents of teenagers, have told me they worry about what their children eat and where they learned it. Young people can sometimes trust a stranger online before a parent or teacher.

Then there are those selling the dream itself. A car at nineteen, a mansion at twenty-two, a millionaire at twenty-six. The lifestyle may be exaggerated, but a teenager may not know that. Recent research from the US and Norway found that social media is now a major influence on how young people think about their future careers.

Some months ago, a former pupil asked me for advice. His teenage son had been admitted to a college in Canada but wanted to become a holiday influencer because he loved travelling. Eventually, he listened to a counsellor and decided to go to college.

Influencing is a career, and some people do it well. But behind the successful ones there is usually knowledge, experience, talent or years of learning. For a teenager, walking away from education because an online career looks glamorous can be a costly gamble. The years spent learning cannot simply be recovered later.

Social media has also made it possible for people with little or no training to give health, financial and lifestyle advice to millions within minutes. In professions where bad advice can cause serious harm, we expect people to have qualifications and to be clear about their expertise. It seems reasonable to expect the same transparency online. If you are giving specialist advice, people should be able to see what qualifies you to give it.

There are genuine experts who use social media well. Doctors, scientists, educators, chefs and athletes can share useful knowledge with millions who might never otherwise encounter it. That is influence in the proper sense: knowledge reaching people who can benefit from it.

The problem is not influence. It is unearned influence.

But we have a part to play too. Every view, like, share and follow tells the algorithm that we want more. We can become a little harder to influence. Put the phone down. Have a conversation without filming it. Eat a meal without photographing it. And perhaps listen to people who have spent years learning something rather than simply to the person with the biggest following.

And perhaps we can bring back one small phrase that has almost disappeared from social media:

“I don’t know.”

There is something reassuring about someone who can say it. Real knowledge does not need a ring light, a discount code or a million followers. Sometimes the person worth listening to is simply the one who knows what they are talking about.

 

Please Let Children Be Children

Kids need room to struggle, and time to do nothing.

I am supposed to be the expert. Yet when my six-year-old granddaughter gives me that look and asks for a second chocolate, and her three-year-old sister copies her, I hand over two. Their mother is not amused.

I know what I should do. After more than 40 years in education, I have told parents that children need to hear the word “no”, to lose sometimes and to solve their own problems. Then my granddaughters appear, and the theory quietly leaves the room.

It seems the girls have already worked out how the system runs. Yesterday they handed me their list for Santa, and some of the requests were rather outrageous, including a pink pony with a long tail. I must accept some of the blame. I had told them to write to him well in advance because the jolly old man gets very busy, and they took my advice very seriously. Perhaps Santa needs a gentle word with Grandpa.

It also made me think about how different their childhood is from my own. When we were growing up, children were simply allowed to be children. On holidays we played outside until it got dark, and then we knew it was time to go home, or there could be repercussions. We cried, we were rewarded, we were sometimes told no, and we learned about boundaries without anyone having to explain them. We were noisy and messy and entirely ourselves, and we learned about the world by living in it. I do not say that was better. It was just different.

Childhood today is different again, and much of it is lived in a hurry. In neighbourhoods across the UAE, we rush our children from an improvement class to a game to another activity. Every one of these things may be worthwhile, but put them all together and children can end up exhausted, and so can their parents. I say this with sympathy because I understand exactly why we do it. We want the best for them.

As a principal, I often spoke about this, and one moment has stayed with me. I once asked a pupil, “When do you just lie on your bed or sit on the sofa and do nothing?” She gave me a look that said, quite clearly, “Are you mad?” At least, that is how I read it.

Her parents later told me why. She ate a meal in the car on the way from one activity to the next and changed her clothes there too. It was one mad rush, six days a week. She was a real go-getter, and so were her parents, but she often looked tired, sometimes exhausted. I have never forgotten it.

Even the most motivated child needs time to stop, breathe and simply be.

Doing nothing has become almost unthinkable, for children and increasingly for adults too. Yet quiet time is not wasted time. It is when the mind gets a chance to rest, and when a child invents a game, wonders about something or simply thinks. We know what constant pressure can do to a child’s mood, sleep and joy in learning.

We say we want our children to be resilient, but resilience only grows when there is something to recover from. I have watched parents become quite worked up over a squabble between two children at play, something the children themselves had forgotten within minutes.

I understand it. Love makes it hard to watch a child struggle.

But a child who falls, gets up and discovers that falling did not destroy them has learned something no lecture can teach. And a child with no spare time has little room to fall, or to get up.

So where does that leave our schools? They have changed remarkably in my time, and that progress gives us the confidence to ask a gentle question: are we preparing children for the world they will inherit, or for the one we grew up in?

The world they are growing into will not run on timetables. I relied on the bulky Encyclopedia Britannica, and ChatGPT, Claude and other tools are a big improvement. I would not go back. But when answers arrive in seconds, the skills that matter most are the human ones: asking good questions, judging whether something is true, listening, disagreeing respectfully, saying sorry and admitting, “I was wrong.”

None of these appear on an examination paper, and most of them grow in unhurried time.

Perhaps we could start small. One afternoon a week with nothing planned, and see what our children do with it.

We cannot prepare them for every possible future. The best gift we can give them is not another qualification or another carefully planned activity, but the confidence to ask questions, make decisions and cope when things do not go to plan. Sometimes it is simply an empty afternoon.

I say that as an educator, and, rather more humbly, as a grandfather of two little girls who knows exactly what he should do and occasionally does the opposite.

What is yours will find you

 

What Is YoWhat Is Yours Will Find You

Not every disappointment is a blessing, but some only make sense much later.

“What is yours will find you.” I have always liked the saying. To me, it speaks of something we all eventually learn: we can work hard for what we want, but we cannot always decide how things will turn out.

It sounds comforting, but it can also be misunderstood. Some people take it as a reason to leave things to fate. If something is meant to happen, they believe it will happen anyway, so there is little point in working too hard towards it.

I have never seen life that way.

If you want something, you have to work for it. You have to prepare, take chances and put yourself forward. You cannot simply sit back and expect destiny to do the work for you. But effort has its limits too. Working hard does not guarantee that you will get the particular outcome you have in mind.

I have spent much of my working life on the other side of interview tables, interviewing teachers and leaders, and I have seen this many times. The person who wants the job most is not necessarily the person who gets it.

I remember a young teacher I once interviewed. She was bright, capable and extremely well prepared, but she wanted the job so badly that it seemed to get in the way. She had rehearsed her answers and was trying to give us what she thought we wanted to hear. In the process, we weren't really seeing her.

We didn't appoint her.

A year later, she applied again. She still wanted the job, but something had changed. She was more relaxed, answered honestly and wasn't afraid to admit when she didn't know something. She wasn't trying to be the perfect candidate. She was simply herself.

We appointed her.

It stayed with me because there is a difference between wanting something and needing it so badly that we become consumed by the outcome.

Perhaps we do this more often than we realise. We become convinced that a particular promotion, career, relationship or opportunity has to work out because we have invested so much in it. We start to confuse effort with entitlement.

Life doesn't always agree.

I learnt that lesson myself many years ago in Pune.

There was a time when I was quite sure I was about to become a principal. I wanted the job badly and believed I was ready for it. If I am being completely honest, I thought I deserved it. I had worked towards it and had begun to imagine myself in the role.

Then it didn't happen.

I was deeply disappointed. At the time, I could see only what I had lost and couldn't understand why something I had worked for and felt ready for had not come my way.

It was, although I didn't know it then, a turning point in my life.

Looking back now, I can see that had I become a principal in Pune at that particular time, the course of my career could have been very different. The opportunities that followed, the people I met and the journey that eventually brought me to Dubai might never have unfolded in quite the same way.

Sometimes what we thought was a disappointment was simply something whose significance we could not see at the time.

And don't I know that.

I have learnt not to romanticise disappointment. Not everything that goes wrong turns out to be a blessing, and some disappointments remain just that. But time has a way of changing our perspective. At the moment something happens, we see the event. Years later, we may begin to see where it led.

That has made me more comfortable with uncertainty. I still make plans, work hard and want things, but I am less convinced that I know exactly how my life should unfold.

Perhaps that is where fate or destiny has a place — not as an excuse for doing nothing, but as an acknowledgement that we are not entirely in charge.

We do what we can, then we live with what happens. Sometimes, it takes time to see the whole picture.

I think that is the more useful meaning of “What is yours will find you.” It doesn't mean everything we want will eventually be ours, nor does it mean every closed door is hiding something better. It simply reminds us that we cannot always judge something by the way it feels when it happens.

The life we eventually live is shaped by many things, including the things that didn't happen.

I know that because of Pune.

And I suspect most of us have a Pune of our own — a job we didn't get, an opportunity that passed us by, a relationship that ended or a plan that didn't work out as we had hoped.

At the time, we wondered why.

Years later, we may see it differently.

I certainly do.

I still don't know whether everything happens for a reason. But I have learnt that not everything has to make sense when it happens. Sometimes, you understand it only much later.urs Will Find You

Not every disappointment is a blessing, but some only make sense much later.

“What is yours will find you.” I have always liked the saying. To me, it speaks of something we all eventually learn: we can work hard for what we want, but we cannot always decide how things will turn out.

It sounds comforting, but it can also be misunderstood. Some people take it as a reason to leave things to fate. If something is meant to happen, they believe it will happen anyway, so there is little point in working too hard towards it.

I have never seen life that way.

If you want something, you have to work for it. You have to prepare, take chances and put yourself forward. You cannot simply sit back and expect destiny to do the work for you. But effort has its limits too. Working hard does not guarantee that you will get the particular outcome you have in mind.

I have spent much of my working life on the other side of interview tables, interviewing teachers and leaders, and I have seen this many times. The person who wants the job most is not necessarily the person who gets it.

I remember a young teacher I once interviewed. She was bright, capable and extremely well prepared, but she wanted the job so badly that it seemed to get in the way. She had rehearsed her answers and was trying to give us what she thought we wanted to hear. In the process, we weren't really seeing her.

We didn't appoint her.

A year later, she applied again. She still wanted the job, but something had changed. She was more relaxed, answered honestly and wasn't afraid to admit when she didn't know something. She wasn't trying to be the perfect candidate. She was simply herself.

We appointed her.

It stayed with me because there is a difference between wanting something and needing it so badly that we become consumed by the outcome.

Perhaps we do this more often than we realise. We become convinced that a particular promotion, career, relationship or opportunity has to work out because we have invested so much in it. We start to confuse effort with entitlement.

Life doesn't always agree.

I learnt that lesson myself many years ago in Pune.

There was a time when I was quite sure I was about to become a principal. I wanted the job badly and believed I was ready for it. If I am being completely honest, I thought I deserved it. I had worked towards it and had begun to imagine myself in the role.

Then it didn't happen.

I was deeply disappointed. At the time, I could see only what I had lost and couldn't understand why something I had worked for and felt ready for had not come my way.

It was, although I didn't know it then, a turning point in my life.

Looking back now, I can see that had I become a principal in Pune at that particular time, the course of my career could have been very different. The opportunities that followed, the people I met and the journey that eventually brought me to Dubai might never have unfolded in quite the same way.

Sometimes what we thought was a disappointment was simply something whose significance we could not see at the time.

And don't I know that.

I have learnt not to romanticise disappointment. Not everything that goes wrong turns out to be a blessing, and some disappointments remain just that. But time has a way of changing our perspective. At the moment something happens, we see the event. Years later, we may begin to see where it led.

That has made me more comfortable with uncertainty. I still make plans, work hard and want things, but I am less convinced that I know exactly how my life should unfold.

Perhaps that is where fate or destiny has a place — not as an excuse for doing nothing, but as an acknowledgement that we are not entirely in charge.

We do what we can, then we live with what happens. Sometimes, it takes time to see the whole picture.

I think that is the more useful meaning of “What is yours will find you.” It doesn't mean everything we want will eventually be ours, nor does it mean every closed door is hiding something better. It simply reminds us that we cannot always judge something by the way it feels when it happens.

The life we eventually live is shaped by many things, including the things that didn't happen.

I know that because of Pune.

And I suspect most of us have a Pune of our own — a job we didn't get, an opportunity that passed us by, a relationship that ended or a plan that didn't work out as we had hoped.

At the time, we wondered why.

Years later, we may see it differently.

I certainly do.

I still don't know whether everything happens for a reason. But I have learnt that not everything has to make sense when it happens. Sometimes, you understand it only much later.

Sometimes Growth Looks Like Not Fitting In Anymore

 Sometimes Growth Looks Like Not Fitting In Anymore

The WhatsApp Group That Never Arrived

A few months ago, a group of us were sitting together one evening, talking about old times, old friends and the usual stories that become more entertaining every time they're retold. Someone suddenly said, "Why don't we all go to Allahabad?" It was the kind of suggestion that could easily have been laughed off. Instead, within minutes, everyone was interested — the wives too, which is usually a very good sign when several families are involved.

Soon we were discussing dates, flights, hotels, food, drinks, whether we needed a hall, what music we should have and, inevitably, what we'd do afterwards. Someone even suggested a WhatsApp group for the preparations. We all thought that was an excellent idea. I am still waiting for the WhatsApp group.

Nobody has bought a ticket yet, and if I'm honest, I don't think this particular trip is actually going to happen. But as I thought about that evening afterwards, I realized it was never really about organizing a reunion. We were talking about going home.

The Place We Came From

For me, Allahabad is not simply a city on a map or a collection of childhood memories. It's home in a way that's hard to explain unless you've left somewhere that shaped you. It's where I grew up, went to school, spent my teenage years and made friendships that have lasted for decades — back when I had no idea these ordinary days would one day become precious memories. We were simply getting on with life.

I've been to reunions of pupils I taught many years ago, some now in their forties, and there's something wonderful about meeting people after so long and discovering that an old friendship can return within minutes. There's also, of course, what time has done to all of us. We remember each other as young men and women and then meet again with more kilos, fewer hairs and considerably more lines. Some of us now approach a low chair with the caution normally reserved for a flight of stairs. But once the conversation starts, none of that matters. The teasing returns, the old stories come back, and somebody remembers something everybody else had forgotten.

That's what I imagine when I think about Allahabad — not a city frozen in the past, but a place that still holds the people we once were.

When Things Stop Fitting

There's a point in life when you notice that some things that once suited you perfectly no longer do. I don't mean clothes, though that's part of it too. I mean roles and expectations.

Early in my leadership career, it mattered to me that people liked me — that they understood my decisions, agreed with them, and left the room happy. Leadership cured me of that rather quickly. As a headmaster, I once made a decision a group of staff clearly disagreed with — no argument, no raised voices, just a definite coolness around me for several days. The younger me would have worried about it for weeks. The man I'd become simply thought: I've listened, I've considered it, and now I have to take responsibility for the decision. It was oddly freeing, discovering I could carry that coolness without losing any sleep over it.

Families teach the same lesson, more gently. The child who once needed your help with everything arrives one day with opinions of their own — their own home, their own way of doing things — and the role that once fitted you so naturally has to loosen its grip. Stepping back, you learn, isn't the same as stepping away.

Going Back, Without Going Back

Perhaps that's why the thought of Allahabad has stayed with me.

If we do go, I know exactly what I want to do. I want to walk through our old schools, wander the famous markets for the jalebis and the curd, and see just how busy that once-sleepy little town has become.

And there is somewhere else I want to go. A quiet corner of a cemetery, where someone I lost many years ago still, in some way, feels like part of that place. It isn't something I've planned aloud or spoken about with the others. But if I make it back to Allahabad, I know I won't leave without going there.

That contrast would probably be the most striking part of any visit. The town in my memory has changed — buildings gone, new ones risen, streets that once seemed enormous now perhaps looking surprisingly small. But somewhere among all that change would be the places that take me straight back.

And we would have changed too. We would arrive carrying everything that happened afterwards — careers, marriages, children, mistakes, disappointments, friendships, and all the experience accumulated over the years. We can't recreate the Allahabad of our youth, because we can't recreate our youth. But perhaps that isn't what going back is about. It's about standing in a familiar place with old friends, recognising how far we've travelled, remembering the boys and girls we were without pretending we still are.

Whether we'll actually go, I honestly don't know. Most likely, life will do what it usually does — the dates won't align, the WhatsApp group will stay unmade, and Allahabad will remain, for now, a place we talk about rather than visit. And perhaps that's all right.

That evening already gave us something no trip could improve on: a few hours of being simply old friends again, with no titles and no schedules, just old stories and the people who shared them.

And perhaps that's enough. We don't need to relive the past. We can simply be grateful that we once belonged there.