A kids definition of a Conglomerate - Aditya Birla Group

I had always struggled with learning languages as a kid, I had good grades in all subjects but fared poorly in Telugu and Hindi. Though I had immensely supportive parents, who helped me learn this language, I would somehow get scared at the mention of these subjects. I excelled in most of the main subjects like mathematics, science, and social, so even the prospect of failing any other subject was a nightmare. My Telugu teacher at school was extremely supportive of me through the years and was a strong advocate of me excelling in the language. She chalked out a plan to target my irrational fears. She set out a simple task for me. I was supposed to read out major headlines of the day from the Telugu daily newspaper each day to the collective joint family.

Along with this each day, I was instructed to write about 5 – 10 lines about my day in Telugu. Simple as they may seem, these two small acts helped me improve my language skills immensely. I was overjoyed when I secured 80% in my tenth board exams in Telugu.

Overcoming a small fear of language has helped grow in various ways. During my engineering years from SRM University at Chennai, I learned Tamil from my batchmates which helped me in navigating through Tamilnadu and till today, Tamil remains my favorite language to watch movies. Once, I moved to Bengaluru for my work, in that cultural hotchpotch of a place, I tried my best to learn Kannada and Malayalam, it has helped me build a long-lasting friendship and boatloads of memories. Now, as I pursue my MBA at IIM Nagpur, I am more than hopeful to learn Marathi, Bengali, and build every lasting bridge on the foundations of language.