This is not for you Xavier Augustin:-)

I have always been fascinated with the X factor. And this was way before television heard about it and immortalized the brand. Whether it had to do with the naughty letters I received as a teenager with XXXs marked on them or the unfortunate initiation into the Triple X world…or the wonder at reading about the origin of the XXX mark…the car I remember with fondness was an AD’X’ vehicle…but that’s a whole different story.

The point is, I’ve always had a thing about the X.

So when I set up my first company and called it Special Effects, it was natural to abbreviate it to SFX. Many years later when I had to shut that company down and start another I chose to adopt the name of a firm I had set up for my wife to bill clients for all the artworks we were designing and producing for them. The name of the company…you may have guessed was HeartworX…which was a pun on the deliverable Artworks. Strangely her foray into ethnic art forms was named EthniX.

It was for the first time in 1989 or 1990 that I bumped into someone in Bangalore who was into vaastufying stationery for clients…seriously!!! I have had brand names studied by numerologists but this guy in Bangalore was a first. He would look at our designs and suggest changes, visual changes based on the science of Vaastu. And one day, as part of a conversation, he asked me whether I was as successful as I hoped…whether I was ‘doing’ well…when I admitted that things were not hunky dory, he immediately told me that it was the fault of the alphabet X which I insisted on using with every name that I did business under.

I laughed it off and told him in no uncertain terms that he was welcome to suggest Vaastu changes to his clients but he should desist from advising people like me who did not have much faith in his mumbo-jumbo brand of design modifications.

But the two companies I started in Bangalore immediately after this discussion had no X in their names. However both One-to-One Communications and Horsepower had to be wound up when the business environment changed and I had to return to Hyderabad due to health reasons.

When I had an opportunity again in the early 2000s of naming a company I ran at Hitec City and at Dubai Internet City, I slipped back in time and called it Javelin MediaworX. This venture proved to be a folly of immense proportions and I am yet to recover from its impact.

And that was when I began to harbor the doubt that perhaps the alphabet X was indeed bad joss for me.

But I am a rational human being. Not particularly given to believe in superstition…though I am wary of black cats that cross the road just as I am about to drive in that direction…and I am sensitive to sneezes when just about to take a decision…and I remember a friend who advised me to wear yellow for important meetings (not that I do)…but this X thing has me worried.

One mishap can be a chance. Two can be coincidences. Three however can be confirmations. And I have flirted more than enough with the ‘excess’ in my life. So I now operate under the name ‘Heartworks’…

But hey, X is still my journey…into the unknown. It is still my bout with destiny…it is still the adventure called life.

And now if you’ll X cuse me…I have a Monday Morning to deal with:-)

Have a great week y’all…as the kids would say.