Over the last couple of months, I had been driving my family round the bend, incessantly whining about the imagined state of affairs in my life. I was overwhelmed with work, my body ached all over and I complained that my life was a joyless monotony.
All of that changed last week over a span of just 48 hours and the spring is back in my step. Suddenly, I am looking forward to the times to come and all that it took was for me to step out of my everyday routine and do something new.
Last Friday, I was invited to BMC Software, a prominent IT company in Pune where I was the chief guest at what they said was a ‘Bring your parent to work’ event. I was intrigued and promptly agreed to go. I wanted to know the whats and whys of such an event.
From the time I walked into the large meeting room, all festive and cheerful with balloons, flowers and the sound of happy music, I knew I had made the right decision. Rows upon rows of parents of all ages sat in their smart threads laughing and smiling happily as their children – from ages 22 to 40 years – displayed their talent to the gathering. A smart and, dare I say, woman of great conviction performed a gusty lavani, a young man did a rollicking stand-up comedy act and another stole everyone’s hearts and brought tears with his sensitive lives and art demonstration that brought alive the tragic Nirbhaya rape incident that shook the nation. Each time one of the young adults performed, I stole a look at his/her parents and nothing could compare to the glow of pride that suffused their profiles. Those ageing people had nothing in common with the young, smart, on-the-go population that populate IT companies and yet, the company had forged a link with them by inviting them to come have a joyous day on campus and see what their children do at work. For the IT sector, this could be particularly relevant because I personally know lots of parents/spouses/children who wonder what their other/father/sister/brother do at work for over 12 to 14 hours every day!
If ever there was a picnic for older people then this was it, I thought, as I watched them happily tuck into their boxed snacks, participate in games, rib each other about the romances of their youth, take pics in all manners of poses and costumes at an insta-pic kiosk and walk away with a copy of my book, Legacy as their gift for the day. I was touched when many of the parents thanked me for reminding them to pick up their pens and write letters to their children to tell them how special it is to have given birth and raised them. One 60-year-old lady charmed me when she said their home has a “letter box” where she frequently writes and posts a letter to her married son who lives there along with his family. “I know he reads it because I see him looking in the box every week. We don’t get to talk at leisure very often but the letters keep our bond going,” she confessed. Being with the elders and hearing them talk about their lives in the way only those who have lived many summers on this earth, brought a level of calm to my mind, which was completely the need of the hour for me, as I was hours away from talking at the first ever TEDx talk in Pune.
Considering that I have had a lifelong fear of public speaking (though I love to talk to readers and other groups of 20 to 40 people) my TEDx appearance was a scary proposition but also something I was determined to do. As an author who writes about inspirational people, I have learnt that winners and fighters never turn their back on a problem and run. They never give up for fear of failure and they never turn down an opportunity to try out something new. So I tucked in my stomach, turned up my chin and walked onto to the iconic red carpet where TED speakers have to say their thing, in 18 minutes flat. The first five minutes were sheer terror – I was talking to a gathering of around 300 people, many of who knew me as a journalist and author and some others who did not know me at all. I was worried I would forget my speech, that I would stutter and stammer or even worse, blank out. None of that happened and I walked off the stage to receive much appreciation for my talk on “Dreaming Big and the Power Of Determination”. Our first and last battles are indeed those that we have to fight with our minds. Our biggest stumbling blocks are imagined fears. We have to just firmly squash them down and go do what we have to do.
Just as 24-year-old Shravani Hagargi did when she blanked out the sounds of disapproval from her parents and society, when she launched Safe Hands 24×7, an organisation that recruits and trains women from slums and economically weak backgrounds to become security guards, so that they become socially and financially independent, regardless of their literacy levels. A heavily-pregnant Shravani travelled 16 hours by road from Hubli so that she could present her story at TEDx and took the same route home to deliver her baby the next day! That is the power of determination, as I see it.
Meeting 17-year-old Aisha Chaudhary was like meeting a wise family elder. When she was born, Aisha was given a life expectancy of 1 year by doctors who said her rare immune deficiency disorder would not let her live beyond that. Aisha has a will and spirit about her that is far stronger than normally-abled people (including me) who go about life whining about small things. Despite the fact that her every breath is a struggle (her lung capacity is just 20 per cent), Aisha has a hundred-watt smile on her face and says that her hardships have taught her to be happy, every moment that she is alive. Aisha is a passionate artist who paints amazingly evocative portraits but the canvas she has painted for herself, and for us, is her best work yet.
So, the next time you feel down and out and feel your life is in a rut, go out and meet some people and do something new with your life. There are stories of inspiration all around us of people who dared to dream and worked to make that dream a reality and each of us can make that happen in our lives too, if we only shed our cynicism and get inspired. I could have remained the average girl from a middle-class family who grew up in the wrong side of town, but I chose to be inspired by the people in my family who refused to let their circumstances keep them down and I worked hard to make my dreams come true. And they did…
Image courtesy:©Thinkstock photos/ Getty images
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