If I Were Not A CFO...

If I were not a CFO, something else I’d rather be... We set out to find the dream alternate profession that our top CFOs would like to be in. The results were surprising. Find out for yourself and also what other dreams they harbour...

- Sangita Thakur Varma

A few decades ago, when I donned the scarf and the badge and pledged myself to honour the Girl Guide’s code, it was a proud moment indeed. Back then, in our Convent school, it was our moment of initiation into senior school and a leadership role. The added attraction was the promised camps that would mean extended hours outside the school and fraternising with the boy scouts of the local boys’ schools. The weekly unit meetings under the vigilant tutelage of Sister Benedict, a strict disciplinarian, were spent mastering the many skills, discussing meeting agendas and designing the campaigns that we would undertake. We learnt how to tie the perfect knot on a rope and the survival skills when camping out in the woods. Camp songs were learnt and the song above was de rigueur at every meeting. It would test our improvisation skills and by the end of it, we would be rolling on the floor with laughter. This song and our visits to local orphanages and old age homes in the older part of the town make up the cherished memories of those halcyon days.

Joshua Foer, winner of the 2006 USA Memory Championship, a journalist, mnemonist and author of Moon walking with Einstein, in a TED Talk a few years ago, had made a startling statement: Our lives are the sum of our memories. This year, working on the annual Anniversary issue was nostalgic, a walk down memory lane, and it struck me that a part of our personality at least is a sum of our memories.