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Starting from the bottom, something we have all done, is not an easy feat. On some days we’re inspired to march ahead and on others we level with ourselves, wondering how much we can really do. Some ideas make you a million bucks, while others sink and leave you empty inside.
But after all, it’s the journey that makes a man/woman,
1. Taking the leap
‘Mommy, I want to be a journalist’, I’d say this every other day, roam around with a comb in my hand and pretend to interview my Bai. It was adorable at first but then my mom saw the warning signs. This memory of my 4-year-old self has stuck with me for 30 years.
I didn’t know what a journalist did, I thought the newspaper comes from the newspaper boy and not a leading company! My mom wasn’t an easy going, warm lady, she was and always will be a force in my life, pushing me to do better. To be better.
So when she told me that my choice of profession wasn’t good enough, the 14-year-old in me caved.
I made plans, but they were hers. I saw dreams but in none of them was I an architect. I wrote like my life depended on it, but I knew it was for my eyes only. I didn’t have the courage to decline admission to an Architecture course in the UK. So I packed my bags and dragged my feet to a destiny I didn’t wish to reach.
In my 35 years, I have never believed in anything but today I can say I’m a firm believer in fate. I met a girl in University, she asked me, ‘How do you like your course?’, and I looked down and whispered, ‘It’s Okay’. I reciprocated the question, because it was only polite. She went on to tell me everything from introduction to archeology to her 10-year plan.
That’s the day I dropped out, flew back home and followed my dream.
Today I’m an author to 14 books, out of which 5 are International best sellers. I don’t know the girl’s name, I don’t even remember her face, but wherever she is, I owe her a whole damn lot.
2. Alive and Alone
We weren’t the brightest, nor the highest rankers. We were a ‘we’ from the time I can remember, me and my girlfriend. We’d be invited to parties as a couple, when we were asked to form a group for a project, we’d form a two person group. She was my family, one I’d never known. She didn’t care that I was an orphan and I didn’t think of her as an heir to a clothing empire.
But sadly that wasn’t the case with her parents. They saw everything that she didn’t see. I was called an opportunist, a gold digger and a lot worse. When at 21 you hear these words, they hurt a lot more than they should. I needed her in my life and my aunt’s house wasn’t the place I wanted to set up my future with her. I had to let her go, she was the only good thing in my life and I didn’t want to bring her down into this mess. So I did what I had to do, I distanced myself from her.
I was frozen for a few months, neither her 400 missed calls nor her incessant messages made me come back to life.
I wish I could stand here and tell you that I strived and  became a CEO of my own firm, but I can tell you no such thing. I did become a corporate slave, I earn enough to live a comfortable life by myself and I did move out of the hell hole that was my aunt’s house, but I am nowhere close to what she deserves.
Yesterday she got married to a man who wasn’t me.
Today I am truly alone in this world, a feeling I never experienced in the 30 years of my existence, even though I was an orphan. But today I’m happy knowing that she’d never have to experience that feeling, because the man who sits before me signing a contract with my employer, has a framed picture of her on his desk and her smile tells me she’s exactly where she belongs.
3. Resolve is everything
There is a man I saw everyday for 14 years, selling bhel outside my house. He’d greet me with a smile, give me my regular Sukha Puri every evening and tell me ‘Thank You’! It intrigued me, I should be the one thanking him, but instead he’d do it first anyway. I never bothered asking him, after all what was it to me?
One day I was leaving for my usual 8 am routine, waiting for my shared auto, when I happened to look across the street, the middle aged Kaka, as I’d grown accustomed to calling him, wasn’t at his stall. I walked over and tried to see a sign saying why he wasn’t here already as he was every day, but I found none. I stopped thinking about it and ran towards my rickshaw.
But the whole day at work was a waste, I knew there was a story in there somewhere but I couldn’t see it.
Armed with my inquisitiveness, I went to his stall on my way home. To my surprise, there was a very pretty, tired woman working the stall.
I asked her, ‘Aunty, aaj Kaka nahi aaye?‘
She smiled at me, beaming with pride and said, ‘Nahi woh exam dene gaye hai’.
She was swamped with customers, so I didn’t question her further. From the next day, there was no stall, no sign of bhel and no Kaka.
Eventually, like everything mundane in life, I forgot about him.
It’s been 3 years since I thought about Kaka, so imagine my surprise when I picked up the newspaper and read ‘Bhel wala opens 80 schools across rural Maharashtra’. Now his smiling ‘Sukha Puri’ face pushes me to do better every single day.
Inspiration is everywhere, you just need to take the leap.Â
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