The Cost of Ambition: #1 Who Dreamt

By Baibhav Agarwal

It is 1980 when little Atul Kumar first begs his father to work at a local mining site. A bright child who feels suffocated in school and at home, Atul grows up with a thirst for hard work and an ambition to be successful. But when his father dies, Atul finally receives a job offer from the mining site. At last, he can put his mind to work.

As he performs his daily financial duties, Atul secretly admires the charismatic leaders that surround him at the site. Desperate to one day be remembered for the good he has done in the world, Atul makes it his mission to improve working conditions. After he gains the attention of Kunal Sachdeva, the mine owner, Sachdeva begins mentoring Atul and soon gives him a life-changing offer to come to work with him in the city. As Atul sets out on a transformative quest for success that is sometimes fraught with mistakes, he begins to lay the foundation for a business empire as he turns his experiences into a guiding light for his future.

The Cost of Ambition is the tale of an Indian mans incredible journey as he works diligently to make all his professional dreams come true.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Partridge Publishing India
• Release date: Aug 8, 2016
• ISBN: 9781482884524

Baibhav Agarwal

Baibhav Agarwal is a chartered accountant and celebrated entrepreneur in the mining, consultancy, and logistics industries, who hails from a humble background. He currently resides in Kolkata, West Bengal, India, where he enjoys sharing stories of his successes and failures. The Cost of Ambition is his first book.

Book preview

The Cost

of Ambition

#1 Who Dreamt

Baibhav Agarwal

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Copyright © 2016 by Baibhav Agarwal.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

www.partridgepublishing.com/india

Contents

1. Running and Hiding in. The Struggling World

2. Contrasts Between Atul and His Village:. The Birthplace of Contentment

3. Earning in The First Set of Years

4. Meeting The Master

5. This Will Change Everything

6. When The City Calls, You Got to Go

7. Wait, Isn’t There Always A Lover?

8. Bashed Up By Life: Reflecting Part I

9. Fright For How Life Would Look Like:. Reflecting Part II

10. The City Called Again,. You Got To, Got To Go

11. Silver Linings

12. The One with Deep Conversations

13. The Offer of Promotion

14. The Midnight Slurries

15. Mornings to Patch Up

16. The One with The Birthday Bash

17. Mornings That Falls Apart

18. So What Actually Happened?

19. This One’s Going to Bring Them Down

20. But There Comes Another Invitation

21. The Separation

22. If You Want to Become Anything, Then Become Modest

23. The Long Road: The Cost of Ambition

24. Never Stop: The Final Refection

For mom, dad and my sister Juhi;

Thanks for everything.

1

Running and Hiding in

The Struggling World

1992

A t first, Atul felt that his heart was pounding against

a bell metal, but when sleepiness gave way to consciousness, he realized that someone was banging the door, perhaps very violently. By the time he fully roused, a sense of nausea made him want to throw up. He was in a room with three basins which were adjacently placed to three cabins—a public toilet.

The other night was quite a run. Although he had succeeded to casually walk out of grocery shops and eating houses several other times, he couldn’t get away from the owner last night. He had to run across alleys and passages, but when he felt a side stitch, all he could spontaneously resort to was hiding in a public toilet.

The past week had been like this over and over; it was like the night of the city always wanted to get into a brawl with Atul, but a new morning embraced him every day. This morning was no different; he opened the door of the public toilet, which he had locked the other night while trying to hide. He made his way through howls of men who waited for the door to open and walked back to … nowhere.

2

Contrasts Between Atul and His Village:

The Birthplace of Contentment

1980

D ust and grime had become the breathing air of the village. The far end of the village itself looked like a construction site. Trucks carrying loads of coal went up and down every minute. Everyone knew that the land would be used for coal mining, and when people from the Sachdeva project came for a check, they knew that this place was going to be a living filth. Mining brought about a number of drawbacks and danger with itself, but when little Atul saw the gigantic vehicles coming in and out of the village, his heart throbbed at the look of them. He went running to his father at his grocery store.

‘Papa, can I work at the mining site?’

Kumarji laughed. ‘But, beta, you will hurt yourself if you go near those huge mining machineries. Then who will turn my grocery store into a big market?’

Atul’s child heart instantly got burdened with responsibility, and it almost sank at the thought of sitting in a market.

1984

Years passed by, and by the time Atul reached his early teens, school had become an upsetting place, where whatever the masterji spoke went above his head. Other children seemed strange to Atul. Boys were always fighting, and girls were always playing. Even though Atul tried hard to study, he couldn’t. It was unfair for him because everyone knew how much of a bright kid he was. He himself felt enclosed, like he was strangled to a rag through which he might never breathe out.

It would not be possible to know the feeling of suffocation when someone had never stepped out in a