Growing up in the quaint town of Patna in a family with hardly any emphasis on entrepreneurship or consumerism, my only identification of the Aditya Birla group was from the ever so inspiring Idea Ads featuring Abhishek Bacchan and the usual phrases which Bollywood and people in general used in which they took the names of TATA-BIRLA to show opulence.
However, all this changed when in my class IX History textbook I read the chapter on Indian Independence. As a student who was in love with and awe of history, it piqued my interest when I read that the same Birlas that I’d seen on TV Ads and heard in people’s everyday parlance were also one of the first Indian business families that showed a real involvement in the independence movement of our country. From Sh. Ghanshyam Das Birla representing India to the Round Table conferences in London alongside the Mahatma to Gandhiji being hosted at Birla bhawan whenever he was in Delhi (so much so that Sh. Birla had a room earmarked just for Gandhiji at the Birla bhawan), I read with wide-eyes about the courage exhibited by the Birla Group.
On a more personal level, it was I think around 2010 when I got my first cell phone as I moved out of Patna after my class X to live in a hostel for high school in Delhi. I was just 15, a thousand kilometres away from home where, in addition to my family and friends, also lived the first girl I fell in love with (strong words to describe the feelings of a 15-year old but at least I truly believed that was the case at the time). Since parents called me themselves, cellular charges weren’t an issue, but I had to call my girlfriend and it used to be expensive at the time (love matters, but for a 15-year-old, that 18-rupee call matters much more). I was using an idea sim and they had some plan where idea-to-idea calls and messages were really cheap. Therefore, I urged my girlfriend to get an idea sim which she did and it was smooth sailing thereafter. So yes, as far as touching my life goes, this is right up there with anything else!
Presently, as someone who’s not very comfortable wearing jeans, LP and Van Heusen are two of my go-to-brands when it comes to buying trousers or smart casuals and even formals.
Overcoming challenges: facing my fears and never giving up
I truly believe that everyone has a life that’s filled with challenges and obstacles and that our story is unique only to us and that everyone has a beautiful story to share. As a young boy aged 12 or 13, I read a quote in a Reader's Digest article that has stayed with me ever since. It said, “Life, with all its challenges, obstacles and failures, is still a beautiful thing’.
Coming to my personal journey, I’d like to share two experiences that have come to shape me as a human being.
The first one takes us to 2009 when I was in class IX and we had just started with the more advanced topics in Science. I was particularly struggling with Chemistry with all its chemical equations, symbols, etc. Anyhow, on that particular day, our Chemistry teacher decided to give us a Blackboard test. So, in batches of 5 students we were given 5 chemical equations on the blackboard and were asked to solve them. Now, being an introvert, I didn’t mind failing as much as I dreaded the idea of being ridiculed in front of all the class. So, the test started, I walked up to the board. And here I was, looking at H2SO4+NaOH as if I was reading Greek. Clueless, shaking and dreading to look back, I started writing gibberish on the board. The class erupted in laughter. I expected that. But suddenly, I heard someone snigger from a different part of the class. It wasn’t the students. This was my teacher laughing at what I was doing. I suddenly felt the classroom had got too big for me to hide anywhere. I came back to my seat with a poker face. 3 hours later I reached home and cried like there was no tomorrow. It was that day that I decided I had to be good at chemistry. I went out in the evening, bought this book which had equations and how they work. A month later, I knew IX grade Chemistry like the back of my hand. Now, I didn’t go on and got a Nobel in Chemistry but this episode gave me the confidence that I could learn anything if I put my mind to it(In fact, anyone can).
Another challenge that I faced was when I moved out of my home at the age of 15 to Delhi. I had decided that I wanted to read History in High School but Patna being a small city did not have much to offer in the Humanities stream. My parents, seeing how much I wanted this, decided that they were ready to send me to Delhi. DPS RK Puram was our first choice because of its repute and because it had a hostel, too. And so, it materialised, I got in, moved away and started my High school in July 2010. Unlike what many people might feel, living in the hostel wasn’t the hardest part. In fact, it was quite fun. Students from different states, all with similar stories and aspirations. But it was going to the school which started bothering me. The kids there all seemed to be better than me, spoke fluently, seemed more confident and above all, moved with a swagger I could only dream of. To make matters worse, I’d studied Social sciences in Hindi up till class X and now I only had social science subjects (history, economics, geography, political science). And the medium they were taught in was English. There were terms that I just wouldn’t understand because I only knew their Hindi counterparts. The first few months went past in a blaze. My grades were deteriorating. It was then that two of my teachers took me aside and talked to me about how they understood what I was going through, how it wasn’t that I was a bad student but just the change of the environment that was affecting me. That helped me immensely. Again, I put my head down, started to work and pretty soon was catching up in the classes. The beautiful journey finally ended with me getting 95 in all the five subjects in my 12th Board exams. Apart from the value of persistence and hard work, this episode taught me the importance of guides and teachers in our life and left me a better human being. I now know exactly how I’ll react when I see a young person struggling with his work or studies, and I have those two kind teachers to thank for that!
#NMIMSMumbai #ABGLPWooMe
