#711
Every calendar date carries invisible layers of history—personal, familial, and national. For me, December 3rd is one such day that has accumulated extraordinary weight across three different decades. On this single date I rejoined my old organisation after a costly mistake, lost my beloved maternal grandfather, and—eighteen years earlier—India launched the war that created Bangladesh under Indira Gandhi’s iron-willed leadership. Three events, one date, lifelong lessons.
3rd December 1989 – The Personal Boomerang
At 25, drunk on a 400% salary jump, I resigned from an organisation where I had spent three good years. The new job in a new town looked like the highway to success. Four months later I knew I had made a blunder—professionally suffocating, culturally toxic, and personally destabilising. Money, I discovered the hard way, is a poor compass when it is the only needle you follow.
Mercifully, my old employer was willing to take me back. They had let me go earlier only because internal constraints blocked the growth (and salary) I wanted. By rehiring me they could bypass those rules—and they matched the new pay. On 3rd December 1989 I walked back into the same office, humbled and relieved.
That failed experiment became my greatest teacher. In those four months I quit chain-smoking, gave up alcohol, stopped gorging on junk food, and (believe it or not) have not watched a single Indian movie since November 1989. The detour forced discipline into my life and proved that sometimes the fastest way forward is to boomerang right back to where you belong—wiser, clearer, and fiercely loyal.
The Same Day – A Grandfather Leaves Forever
As I settled at my old-new desk that morning, a phone call brought shattering news: my maternal grandfather had passed away at the age of about 85. The joy of professional redemption turned bittersweet in an instant.
He was the quiet architect of our family’s stability. In 1968–69, when my father left for his Master’s at Banaras Hindu University, Grandfather dipped into his savings to help build “Gayathri Niwas”, chipping in with his bit for our ancestral home in Karaikudi. No drama, no expectation of return—just unwavering belief that education and shelter were the real inheritance one generation owes the next. Gayathri Niwas became a reality during July 1971.
On the very day I returned to my roots professionally, I lost one of the men who had built those roots. The coincidence has never left me.
3rd December 1971 – A Nation’s Decisive War Begins
Eighteen years to the day before my rejoining, on 3rd December 1971, Pakistan launched pre-emptive air strikes on Indian airfields. India retaliated with full force. What followed was a lightning 13-day war that ended with the surrender of 93,000 Pakistani troops in Dhaka and the birth of Bangladesh.
Indira Gandhi remains the only Indian Prime Minister to have fought and won a war that literally created a new nation on the world map. Whatever criticisms history levels at her, that strategic and diplomatic triumph stands unmatched.
Full Circle on One Date
Three Decembers, three kinds of homecoming:
- A young man returning to the organisation that truly valued him
- A family mourning the patriarch who made “home” possible in the first place
- A nation helping millions in East Pakistan come home to freedom and identity
December 3rd reminds me that life rarely moves in straight lines. Sometimes we must circle back—to workplaces, to values, to roots—in order to move forward with purpose.
To my grandfather, to the soldiers of 1971, and to the 25-year-old who learned the hard way that money isn’t everything: thank you for the lessons carved on this one extraordinary date.
May all our boomerangs, personal and collective, bring us back stronger.
Take Care
Karthik
3/12/25 1230pm PST Foster City. CA.
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