How did I end up on The Apprentice? This story is as interesting as anything that came after.

It’s the first Thursday in the eight month of 2004 in Cincinnati, OH. I’ve been working for a little over a year, and I happened to stumble upon a newspaper article. The article mentioned that the hottest show on TV at the time, The Apprentice, was coming to Cincinnati the next day to do a casting call. “Interesting,” I thought. I entertained the thought of how funny it would be to actually see what it was like, but dismissed the thought so I could actually get some work done.

Later that day, I saw a few friends– Sylvia and Scottie. In passing we talked about trying out for the show. My friend Scottie had a meeting, but Sylvia and I decided it would be a fun thing to do to start our Friday morning. I get all dressed up in my finest suit and head over to the Cincinnati Museum Center. Sylvia is already waiting there, and we agreed to trade places so she could attend to a meeting. We wait outside on line for about an hour.

Once the doors open, we wait in an auditorium for another ~3 hours. We went into the room in groups of 8 and sat at 3 different tables. Each circular table had a casting director seated at it. I (luckily) sat across from the casting director, Jill, and waited for the fun to start. We go around and introduce ourselves, and happening to sit across the table from Jill, the casting director, I’m able to make good eye contact, smile, and tell a joke. After introductions, Jill asks a question about the upcoming presidential election. “Bush or Kerry? And why?” This is too easy. I happen to have followed the election with a fervor typically saved for Super Bowls and World Series game 7’s. I immediately am the first one to speak up, slam my hand on the table and say my choice, and calmly & strongly state 3 reasons why. Other people talk. I ask some of them questions, correct some of them. We had gotten to know the people in our group of 8 (the people on line with you), and so when one gentleman didn’t get a chance to talk, I pointed out that it wasn’t fair, and that we hadn’t heard from him. I calmly controlled the flow of conversation.

Before I knew it, Jill said “thanks,” and we were done. As I got ready to get up, Jill says, “Surya,” and pauses. “Will you stay back a second?” And there it was. I knew. The others look over at me, and I try to look away. I move over to Jill and she smiles at me and tells me that she wants me to go in the back when I’ll get details on what to do next.

I’ll fast forward here 4 weeks to September 1. I’m flying home from Los Angeles on the 7:45 AM flight. The movie that’s playing is The Stepford Wives. And I’ve never, that I can recollect, felt this badly. There was this incredible and total emptiness within me. It was sharp and grating. The night before, less than an hour after learning my “fate,” that though I’d made it to the final round (~25 people for 18 spots), I was not selected, I went to bed. I woke up what seemed like no less than 50 times that night. Each time from almost the exact same nightmare. That I had been at the finals in LA, and had made the show. Each time I woke up sharply, and realized, like a kick in the stomach each time, that it was only a dream, and I had a few hours earlier been told the opposite. This seemed to repeat itself every 10 minutes that night. Seriously. Every time I closed my eyes on that flight, I grew angrier at myself. It was starting. I could hear every single thing I had said in my interview with Mark Burnett and company. Everything that I did say. And think about everything that I should have said. The could’ves, would’ves, should’ves had started. And they wouldn’t leave. The three days that followed were unlike anything I could remember having experienced.

I should add at this point that my reaction was incredibly shocking to me. I have always fashioned myself an intensely introspective, rational, balanced person. I don’t get too excited about great news. And I don’t get too sad about bad news. I loved reading books about buddhism, zen, etc. I believe the role of luck and randomness to be far too great in our lives for our successes or our failures to be wholy our own, and so I choose to strive to celebrate effort, not outcomes. But here, in this most bizarre of cases, this went out the window. I had tried to not want it. To, at every step along the way until they gave me the news that night, believe that the odds were against me and refuse to let me get ahead of myself. And that night I learned that was all for not. It doesn’t hurt any less even if you try not to hope for it. It’s human nature to race ahead, steeling yourself is often futile. And so my reaction was astoundingly strong. It shocked me.

I felt that I had my whole future ahead of me. And that I had in a short few minutes, based on everything “wrong” that I had said in my interviews with burnett and crew, squandered all that away. The Apprentice was the hottest show on TV at the time. Seemingly every former cast member was now a mega-superstar getting tons of offers, endorsement deals, and speaking everywhere. I felt that my entire life, every accomplishment, every lesson learned, every painful failure, all of it, had led up to that moment in my life. And I had let it slip. The eminem movie, 8 mile, was in my head.

“Look, if you had one shot, or one opportunity
To seize everything you ever wanted in one moment
Would you capture it or just let it slip?”

That’s an intense thing to do to yourself. To carry around that you had just cultivated and executed the failure of a lifetime. It’s another if you’re delusional enough to believe that you had also let everyone around you down. I pictured how proud my parents would have been. How happy co-workers would have been. The reaction of all the teachers, mentors, and friends I’d ever had. And thought that by making the show I would justified their faith in me. I then proceeded to carry around all this within me for the next 6 months. You see in that weekend, I couldn’t bring myself to staying at home. I sat in my condo when I got home on Thursday night and literally sat there and stared at the wall. I realized that I couldn’t sit alone in my house that weekend. I immediately booked a flight home for the long Labor day weekend. I sat on my parents couch all weekend. My mom was incredibly worried. You see, in all of my 22 years of life (I was just a baby!) to that point, she had never seen me so despondent. I’m normally a ridiculously cheery person around people. This was so not cheery. I knew that I was healthy. My family was healthy. I was unbelievably blessed. And it’s not that I was ungrateful for any of that (though in hindsight, wasn’t I?). It just stung so very shockingly badly.

While I was on that couch, a funny thing happened. A Rocky marathon was on TV. Like every single one. Well maybe not Rocky V. You know the one where he and his family are poor, he would risk brain damage by fighting again, and yet he fights for free, in the street, anyway. For free. Yeah, brilliant move for your family, Rocky. So I don’t know if Rocky V was on or not, because I think that movie is a travesty. Moving on. I sat there and watched hours of Rocky. One after the other. It has that effect. You know…of pumping you up. It did something. I found a notebook, and I wrote furiously. It was my inspiration. The catalyst. I promised that this “failure” wasn’t the end. But the beginning of whatever it was that I wanted. And I promised myself that I would tear myself to pieces over the next 6 months in improving some things about myself, and in 6 months, I would make the cast of Apprentice 4.

I should also mention that I could not even bring myself to watching The Apprentice during any of this time. Just watching it, raced my mind to what I would have done. To picturing myself in their shoes, giving interviews or taking part in a challenge. It was too much. In fact, I not only gave up The Apprentice, but all TV.

So I did that. I don’t want to say I obsessed. Eventually there would actually be some days where I didn’t even think about The Apprentice. But only some. There was a pawl over my days. And honestly, I didn’t want it gone either. I didn’t want to go soft. I didn’t make that cycle of The Apprentice either. I had sent in a tape. Tracked down Jill’s phone number. Even driven up to a casting call in Columbus, OH. Nothing.

Six months later.
I said I was done. But it hung there. Over my life. I couldn’t forget this failure. I couldn’t forget the lost opportunity. To this day, I’m not sure what haunted me. The fact that I had failed. Or the fact that I wasn’t going to take part in what I saw as a life-changing opportunity.

Six months later.
I ended up applying again 6 months later for Apprentice 5. I didn’t go to any casting calls this time. I just sent in another tape. I got a call, because I had sent a note and tape to a few different places. But it never went anywhere. It may have stung even more in this third “rejection.” I promised myself that I had to move on. I had an amazing job, worked with incredible people, had good friends, and a family people would kill for. I promised myself. I had to move on. No one should live life beating themselves up every day, and fixating on a single goal.

Six months later.
The email popped in to my gMail like any of the 100 or so I’d get in a week. But this one had a subject that made me stop cold. “Apprentice”. You see Randal Pinkett the season 4 winner was from Rutgers (my alma mater). He was going to headline a casting call for alumni that they were going to do for Apprentice 6 at Rutgers a day before the NYC try-outs. I looked at it for five minutes. I wondered about the absurdity of this email ending up in my box. I thought about it. My friend Angela knowing how close I had come previously, forwarded the email to me. I thought long and hard about it. And so, against everything that I had said, I flew to NJ. I went to the call. And I made an impression. I did more interviews. I was back in LA. This time after over 18 months of thinking about it, my interviews with Burnett and Trump went so smoothly that it wasn’t even funny. Saying I killed it would be the understatement of the century. Like saying I blew it 18 months before wouldn’t do it justice.

What followed over the next few months could only be described as surreal.