THE BRAIN WRITES

The present-day working class is drifting away, slowly yet steadily, from the monotony of a single career track; the emergence of ‘portfolio career’, or the ‘slasher’ career, is now attracting attention more than ever before. As a slasher, you juggle across various streams of income—your professional commitments are spread across photography, music, investment banking, and authorship—all at the same time. An acquaintance of mine, whom I know from my college days, has a 9-5 software developer job on the weekdays and works as a freelance wedding photographer on the weekends. While meeting him for a casual cuppa last Sunday, I asked him to provide his two cents on this line of managing multiple professions in parallel. He said, “PM, personal satisfaction arises out of the tasks or chores that you do willingly. I can’t imagine myself working day-in, day-out, as a software engineer. It makes me feel as if I’m missing out on photography—which is more than a hobby to me. I can do it