A Maverick’s Journey
The Unconventional Path: Chronicles of a Corporate Rebel
17th June 1974 — That’s the day I graduated from my apprentice school. Back then, there were no caps to toss in the air and no parents coming to take photos to share on social media. It was just another day. However, this story isn’t about my graduation but what unfolded after I became qualified to work as a telecommunication worker.
I was unleashed on the unsuspecting public, a rookie with smooth cheeks and a wisp of hair on my upper lip, easily mistaken for a sixteen-year-old boy. A nobody who suddenly found himself delving into the art of distant communication with the rest of the world, mastering teleprinters, the dance of instant messaging, the rhythm of telegraphy, and the swift ballet of typing swiftly. My treasure was a stipend of three hundred and fifty rupees a month — a princely sum for a teenage dreamer without financial responsibilities.
In the monochrome sea of office attire, I was a splash of colour that refused to blend in. While others conformed to the uniformity of white shirts and trousers, I danced into work wearing flamboyant bell bottoms and spirited tank tops. The workplace buzzed with the rhythm of transmission tapes and teleprinters, bathed in the sterile glow of white lights. Supervisors cast scrutinising gazes amidst this orchestrated order; I stood out as the youngest and boldest beacon of individuality.
There were moments when fear gripped me at being unmasked as an imposter — a greenhorn fumbling through his internship — shackled by a five-year post-graduation bond where fledglings like me were expected to grind away in their corporate gulag. The veterans eyed me suspiciously, dubbing me ‘Yacko bugger,’ a term I wore proudly because, in my mind, they were the true Yacko buggers. The uncultured folks. My English was polished thanks to elite schooling, but fitting into their mould remained elusive. I vehemently resisted fitting in.
Now let’s paint you a picture of my beginnings: sculpted within private schools’ halls, boarding schools, and further chiselled by Sri Lanka’s sole private university’s esteemed walls during that era. My college peers, boys and beautiful girls— an ensemble of luxury — arrived in chauffeur-driven Mercedes Benzes; perhaps a speck of their aristocratic dust settled on me, giving rise to what some might call grandeur or critics could label a bourgeois demeanour.
In my youth’s wake, considering myself akin to royalty unfamiliar with rules conceptually — I chose rebellion against rigid workplaces revering hierarchy — I embraced insurgency and faced tribunal enquiries. That changed when divine intervention seemingly allowed me to venture abroad and grace the corridors of a hotel with my presence.
Now, in the heart of Dubai, I had cast aside all the binding contracts of my first job, an apprenticeship that felt like eons ago. I found myself amidst the grandeur of an international hotel, in the glamour of hospitality, and the only five-star oasis in the thriving emirate. Here, the guests were royalty, and customer service was the gospel. My peers, hailing from the sub-continent, would eagerly vie to offer their ‘good mornings’ and ‘good evenings’ to the guests and the hotel’s higher-ups. Such formalities were alien to me, starkly contrasting the combative environment I had emerged from.
Here, I donned the ebony attire of the elite, my neck graced by a tie, feet sheathed in the shine of polished shoes — oh, how it differed from my past. I revelled in this new chapter, my self-assuredness a fortress built through collegiate triumphs and defiance against the powers that be in my apprenticeship days. The thrill was intoxicating; life was an adventure, and I was its daring protagonist. Barely a season in, with my pockets lined with a fortune that dwarfed my past earnings in Sri Lanka, I shook things up again.
I bid farewell to the hotel life and leapt into the banking world, where the stakes were high and the paycheck quadrupled. Money, once a siren’s call, now whispered insignificance. In three years, a metamorphosis had taken place. The rule-defying maverick had evolved into a pillar of responsibility within the towering walls of a multinational bank. Reflecting, those four transformative months in the hotel were the prologue to my grand narrative of change.
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