Giving up?

Time of India

13-06-2025

Malaya Rout works as Director of Data Science with Exafluence in Chennai. He is an alumnus of IIM Calcutta. He has worked with TCS, LatentView Analytics and Verizon prior to the role at Exafluence. He takes pride in sharing his knowledge and insights on diverse topics of Data Science with colleagues and aspiring data scientists. LESS ... MORE
Sahil was learning to walk. He took tiny steps while trying to balance his cute little body. He was born to Sanjay and Saundarya thirteen months ago. Sahil meant the whole world to them. Theirs was a lower-middle-class family. Sometimes, finances, or rather the lack of them, gave the family a hard time. Sanjay was the manager of a shoe shop in Chennai. It was a good business. It paid enough for Sanjay and his employer. The salary was weekly. Enough for the livelihood of the two families.
The shop had remained closed for the last four weeks due to the nationwide lockdown aimed at limiting the spread of COVID-19 in the country. Hence, there were no sales for a month. There were no sales for a month even before the lockdown was announced. That might be due to a decline in demand. Lockdown came at the wrong time for Sanjay. He had not left his house in the last three weeks. Saundarya went out a couple of times for vegetables and groceries.
Things grew worrisome for the family. They ran out of their cash reserve. There was no clarity on whether the lockdown would be extended for a second time. It was already extended once. People guessed that the spread of infection would be under control only after four or five months. The immediate future didn't look promising to Sanjay. The fear weighed heavily on him. He had grown increasingly silent and thoughtful with each passing day. Of the two, Saundarya was usually more confident. It might be because she didn't fully understand the extent of the COVID-19 pandemic's impact.
Last night, they fed Sahil dinner. Sanjay and Saundarya had to go to bed on an empty stomach. This morning, Sanjay had gone crazy arranging breakfast for their toddler and themselves. He couldn't manage. He called up his employer, frantically asking for help. Things there were not as bad as in Sanjay's family. However, things were not great, either. His boss had helped him with money several times in the past. That morning, he couldn't.
Thoughts of him coming out of the crisis ran obsessively in Sanjay's head. They troubled him and made him more thoughtful. It was a vicious cycle. The lack of nutrition didn't help his mind. He picked up his mobile phone and an empty wallet and stormed out of the house. 'Will the world know me as a failure. Will I be able to face society? Will I be remembered as the one who couldn't feed his family?' Many such worries created havoc inside his head.
He has been walking for 30 minutes now along smaller streets. At times, he was walking along broader and longer roads. He didn't know where he was going. He didn't know what he was up to. He didn't know whether he wanted to live this life at all. He turned left and went inside a four-story building. It looked like an office space deserted due to the lockdown. Places and structures, which would otherwise be crowded, gave a deserted and there-is-no-tomorrow look.
Sanjay started climbing the stairs absent-mindedly. 'This is it. This is how it will end. Thank you, God, for the 33 years. Sorry, Saundarya, and sorry, Sahil.' He thought. By the time he reached the fourth floor, he was tired. He didn't climb further. He walked towards the edge and stood motionless.
'Everything is empty. Everything is void. Everything is oblivious.' He murmured. Just while he was gathering all the courage to jump off the building, his phone rang. He picked up the call. 'Sanjay, I have some good news for you. As part of the Indian government's efforts to support people in need during the lockdown, your family has been awarded 50,000 rupees. You give me your Aadhaar number, please'. Finally, a ray of hope and life ran through his body. God must have listened to his prayers.
He hurriedly took out his wallet to read the Aadhaar number. As he started to read it out to the person over the phone, he lost his balance and fell down the building. The phone line was on. It dropped around six meters away from the body. He was holding the wallet tightly in his right hand. The body was motionless and showed no signs of pain or struggle. There was nobody around.
In some sense, the above story tells us what we should not do. One in four Gen AI projects fail (I know that giving up on projects and giving up on life are not comparable). Setbacks shouldn't signal surrender but rather strategic recalibration. Organisations that celebrate failures as learning opportunities cultivate cultures of experimentation, which ultimately drive innovation.
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Views expressed above are the author's own.