Many of us would have thought about it, but could never gather enough courage to do it. Especially if we are men, it becomes extremely difficult for us to even think about taking early retirement from our corporate life and just live our lives in our own terms. This is because we know there is no one to pay us enough to sustain our lives. We also can’t expect to get maintenance from our estranged wives who would have left us. Even though we have gender-neutral HMA24 where even a husband can seek maintenance from an earning wife, but we don’t see that happening. In our experience of handling matrimonial cases, we hardly found men who filed maintenance cases on their wives.

There was a time when we used to live for ourselves, but today we live for our companies. Our family and our own life have become secondary. Many of us maybe extremely unhappy with our corporate life and many would agree that it’s a modern-day slavery. But we are forced to follow this without any choice because we have long forgotten the ‘culture’ of agriculture-based economy. We have opened up our economy to the world. Now MNCs sell us their products at a premium and our indigenous products are dying. Even worse, sometimes these MNCs sell us our own produce at a premium. If the liberal economy made some of us richer, there were new ways created to take that extra money out of our pockets. From housing to food to education everything became so expensive that we didn’t realize when we literally became slaves to the corporate world.

The demand of the corporate world from us has only grown. Even when we changed companies, roles or cities we always had increased expectations from us. In the liberal era under our progressive thinking, we are also continuously harping on the importance of equal participation of all genders in the workforce. Many of the old job roles have become extinct but many newer varieties have opened up as well but our salaries didn’t grow to that extent. If each of us takes a look at our last ten year’s pay slip w.r.t. the inflation, we will find inflation has outgrown all our compensation growth. But why?

One doesn’t need to be a super economist to understand why this is happening. If technology is to be blamed for abolishing some of the older job roles, then the increased supply of skilled labour in the market is responsible for bringing down the wages. So, all companies want increased efficiency for every job role every year because they also have an increased customer demand to deliver better and improved services at a lesser cost. That is only possible when companies have skilled labor force at a lesser cost. This cost can easily decrease in a country like India by simply bringing the theory of oppression and making everyone work for corporates.

Yes, a liberalized economy and increased choices actually came to us at a heavy price of our life. Anyone working in the corporate world can understand this. Executives give their everything to these companies, work for 10-12 hours every day but the end of the year, even more, is expected from them. As a result, at the end of our life we realize we have only worked for these companies and didn’t work for our own lives. But then we don’t have any energy left to live our life.

But there are only a few men who can still take the decision to quit the corporate life in the middle of their career and Satish Bhaskar of Thane Maharashtra is one such person.

Satish had worked in the Engineering sector until the age of 50 years when he realized that running after money isn’t the goal of his life. He understood that this rat race didn’t take him anywhere and only deprived him of his life.

Being a man who believes in simple living, Satish lives a life that many of us wouldn’t even imagine living. He travels by public transport, doesn’t watch a movie in multiplexes, doesn’t travel by flight, always travel by second class train, always eat home food and thankfully maintains a good health and good habits.

Most of us who are afraid of quitting our jobs and thus choose to remain in our jobs against our will are always afraid of paying our present and future bills and mainly unforeseen medical expenditure in our old age. India doesn’t have good geriatric care facilities or benefits. So, we always work hard for our youth to ensure (at least in hope) that our future unforeseen medical expenses are paid off. Satish, however, doesn’t bother about this. He maintains clean habits, stay away from modern amenities and addiction to defy this call of urgency. He has only one medical insurance which he thinks is enough to take care of his future medical expenses.

Even though Satish claims that he follows a minimalist lifestyle, but I found him to be doing more than that – practising a Vedic lifestyle in an urban setup. Even though he doesn’t grow his own food or still uses electricity, mobile phone and social media etc., he is following more than just a minimalist lifestyle.  I remember, only recently I went to an Indian Vedic village to learn about the Vedic culture, philosophy and lifestyle. Gurus there showed me a lifestyle that I can never follow. Living without electricity, growing own organic food, maintaining cows and living a full cycle of organic ‘satwik’ lifestyle and living without almost all modern amenities of life, seemed impossible for me. Going to bed at 7:30 pm in the evening and getting up at 3:30 am in the morning and attend prayers and complete the day’s work by 8 am have seemed just impossible for me to follow. People who lived that simple life was most happy and they could enjoy their life with their family and community. We the modern social animals who work in corporate for 12 hours a day and still can’t satisfy anyone unless of course one day we decide to be like Satish.

Satish says he loves to walk a lot and in his leisure time he reads books – a habit that many of us have forgotten. Other than students, who read books nowadays? The Internet opened up the world to us and easily available videos give us edutainment today – most of which is taking us to consumerism and reinforcing the belief that we should work to earn more money for a better life, but that never happens.

Satish is also a creative person. He writes blogs and has a YT channel that he doesn’t want to showcase to others. This is his own world. Other than that, music is another passion that keeps him going. Satish is also a Yoga and meditation freak.  He is associated with a local yoga institute where he goes regularly. Also, he practices housekeeping and loves to meet people in the real world outside the virtual one. In today’s social media age, he believes that human interactions enrich our lives.

His philosophy in life is simple. He says, “retirement should not mean idleness. If that happens, then it will only lead to despair. If you like to do something then do that. Learn something new. Keep yourself busy. Try to work part-time for low-salary but do what you enjoy.” In fact, he says that one can start a small business after retirement.

Satish believes in keeping a positive attitude towards life and to change that when the modern lifestyle is destroying us. His previous job, coupled with surmounting tension from matrimonial cases was leading him to despair. So, he could take that decision easily.

Recently another executive from an Indian MNC posted on social media against giving our life to our companies because these companies do not care anyways. The moment you are not able to deliver more than expected, you are out. The result, at the end of this rat race you don’t get anything. A realization that reinforces Vedic Philosophy and Satish is brave enough to follow that.

But it didn’t happen over a-long-period of time for Satish. He says, that only recently he had the urge to live his life and realized that trying to earn money throughout his life was not taking him anywhere.

But his story doesn’t end here. It’s not all that rosy yet. Even though he is single today, he was married once and his wife got separated from him immediately after their marriage and he has been paying her maintenance as well. He still has those cases running in different Maharashtra courts. Under such circumstances, leaving his job really sounds like a scary alternative life. But to him, he has already thought of managing court expenses and wife’s maintenance. His lawyer wanted a lumpsum amount till the end of his cases. He has some income from his investments in shares and he is confident that he can sustain his simple Vedic life with that.

But I was still not convinced. I was wary of his future medical expenses. I was not sure how much his insurance could cover or how much his simple lifestyle can save him. But he is carefree about it. He says I will see when the problem comes. Why should I waste my present-day life, thinking about something that may or may not happen in future? Why should I stop living?

To him, medical expenses can be reduced to a great extent by following a simple lifestyle that will lead to your happiness. Coupled with this Yoga and Meditation daily can keep one healthy and wise.

But this simplicity doesn’t mean he is following Vedic lifestyle completely. He has three PCs at home and a really fast internet connection. Internet keeps him alive and takes away his boredom.

Many of us who hate our jobs, know that we are just being white collar slaves, are afraid to take that plunge. We think a lot but can’t really do anything to live our life. It needs immense courage and wisdom to follow the path of happiness. And Satish has just done that. A true living example and inspiration for many. May be a true MGTOW himself.

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