He lives in a cozy little house on the sea shore. He wakes relatively early – towards the noon, and stays in bed for a while until he feels that he really wants to get up. He turns to the nearby restaurant, where he usually eats and asks for the tropical breakfast, after which he goes to the sea. Surprisingly enough, he doesn’t like swimming, but he is always eager to meet interesting people that pass in great numbers via the region he lives in.

During the siesta he plays on his musical instruments, composing cordially melodies with his friends – after all, he was a musician (sort of) before it happened. In the evening he surfs the internet on his laptop – in this distant village of one thousand residents there are five or six different internet providers, and plans with his beloved their next voyage to the Himalayas on their faithful bike, that stands near the doors of their cottage. No complicated words needed: he is happy. And he is not a millionaire – his monthly budget sums in five hundred dollars only.

“Several years I climbed the career staircase from the position of delivery boy to the establishing of my own company specialising on the organisation of club events. Eventually I understood that I’m heading a psychological dead end”, says Ajay, “It turned clear to me that I live in the incessant race after the money, and that my necessities are always above my abilities”.

Now Ajay lives in India: in the State of Goa in winter and in Himalayas during the summer. He rented his room in the outskirts of Moscow for five hundred dollars per month and this sum of money allows him to live the life he wants in the country, where the salary of eighty dollars per month considered as very impressive. “Earlier I was ashamed of the fact that I hadn’t hardly been working from the regular point of view”, continues Ajay, “but now I say proudly that I didn’t work in the past and shall never work in the future.”

Ajay, whose new personal English blog is about to be launched at ajayver.com, is one of many young people leaving their career in its very beginning – “downshifters” as they usually called. Earlier the trend became very popular in the West, but now it reaches Russia, Moscow especially. Everything increases constantly there: the speed of the life pace, the prices, the worth of real property, the amount of traffic jams, the blood pressure... And we shouldn’t be surprised, if young and successful people in growing numbers decide to abandon this rat race and choose for themselves more calm way of living. Ajay is one of them. And he is definitely not the one and only.

On the picture: Goa beach