“Recession time! Are you nuts?!” said my friends. “You won’t get a job anywhere else till end of 2010!” said some colleagues. I’d been the creative head of this film company but I knew I wouldn’t last another day there with the kind of bile rising from my stomach each morning whenever I woke up and realised I had to go to work. So quit I did and also sent in a mail citing every problem I saw in the organisation, which most see but can’t talk about for fear of losing their jobs. Positive Point No. 1: When you lose your job you can point out all the organisational problems that have been staring you in the face without fear of being targeted! The first stop – Goa. As usual the beach state became my haven for some malham-patti as it has always been , making the end of every major phase in my life and ushering in the new. Initially paralysed by this mass recession sentiment I began making frantic calls to placement agencies and previous employers and got further scared upon realising that no one was hiring. But then I took a look at my savings, the time I had on hand if I cut down expenses and after drinking and bingeing on red meat and sea food for 10 days I finally felt better. The first few days my body seemed to crave the absolute inertia that accompanied waking up in the morning, running to catch the bus, the train, the cab all at precise times every day and no matter what I did the day seemed incomplete without them. But soon, I was happy lazing on the beach, on my way to living the Goan life. And I began to work on my second novel.