By Meghraj Bhardwaj
Goa Institute of Management
PGDM 2019-21
PART - A
Why is Aditya Birla Group Important To Me
To describe Aditya Birla Group is in itself a huge task for me for a very simple reason – it was a find for me. Growing up I saw the advertisements on the television with three ladies dancing to contemporary music and playing around with ribbons and curtains and the performance revealed the words “Aditya Birla Group” on the screen. The mind of that fourteen-year old could not comprehend the expanse of those words written on the screen, even though Freshwrapp was right there in the kitchen. Numerous examples are there throughout the years – Ultratech, Van Heusen, Louis Philippe, Pantaloons, Allen Solly, Peter England and many more – but I never realized that a single corporate house was the mother of all those products that I have used and still use.
At GIM, Goa I got the opportunity to interact with Dr Sujatha Sudheendra, Head – Human Resources, Aditya Birla Finance Limited and saw the Aditya Birla Group in new light. I got to know that it is not a company but a conglomerate which many dimensions to it. Before meeting Dr Sudheendra, I could not have guessed that the Group has ventures into the financing industry as well.
But that does not explain the importance of Aditya Birla Group in my life, does it?
Actually, it does!
Every day, up until the end of graduation, the lunch my mother packed for me was kept fresh by the Freshwrapp. As unaware as a fourteen-year old might have been, he still knew about Ultratech Cement-The Engineer’s Choice. A newly graduate looking for job turned to Peter England for his first formal attire. And while preparing for the interviews for the B-schools, Louis Philippe provided the first formal suit. And most recently, the interaction with Dr Sudheendra gave a new direction of thinking to an engineering graduate who is now enrolled in a B-School.
Maybe I never acknowledged it but Aditya Birla Group always was and is an important part of my life, guiding me even now to look-up more about the organisation and evolve my perspective of the world.
That was a short description of how the Aditya Birla Group is a much more nuanced aspect of my life than it ever seemed to me.
PART - B
How I Overcame Challenges To Achieve My Ambitions In Life So Far
Growing up can be an arduous process for many people but the age when an individual faces the most amount of pressure is often generalized to be the adolescence. As true as it might be, I have other opinions.
Speaking purely from personal experience, the hardest part of an individual’s life is when the meaning in life is unclear or just blatantly absent. That is when the person needs guidance and help, and that is exactly when the person must realize that the help has to come from within. But to realize the latter there needs to be an external trigger, which can take a while to come around the corner in some cases.
For me, the dilemma of meaning in life began right after I graduated from my college and continued for a long time of a year and a half. The nihilism inducted by the constant state of unemployment and the anxiety of my parents rising by the day were working in synergy to put me down for the count. Then one day the trigger came into my life.
I was watching the J. P. Dutta movie, Border, one night after a lazy day (Had a lot of those!). There is a scene in the movie where Subedar Mathura Das is celebrating the sanctioning of his leave he had applied for, in war-time, as his wife is suffering from cancer. Noticing the demoralising effect his pompous celebration might have on the whole regiment, Major Kuldip Singh Chandpuri confronts Mathura Das and in his iconic style tells him, “Zindagi ka doosra naam Problem hai! Agar in sabne apni problems ka bahana de kar chhutti le li to jung kese jeeti jayegi!? (‘Problem’ is the second name of life! If all of these people get leave sanctioned in lieu of their respective problems then how will the war be won!?)”.
For your information, I had already watched that movie dozens of times before that night but for some reason, the point Major Kuldip was trying to make made its way into my head that night.
I began noticing the people and their problems around me, along with how they were tackling the problems. I started seeking advice from people for my own reference.
This helped me greatly as I was not a reactive person anymore, I had begun my journey towards being proactive. It took me some more digging, reading certain books (12 Rules For Life: An Antidote To Chaos By Dr. Jordan B. Peterson being one of them) and watching certain videos to find out that the meaning of life, for me, was responsibility – for my actions, for my well-being and lastly for the people around me.
I started treating myself as someone whose wellness I am responsible for and things started changing for me. I could feel myself making a conscious effort to know myself and to not let myself do something which will be harmful to me or to the people around me.
That is how I found meaning in life and bade farewell to nihilism. I consider it to be my greatest victory yet.