When someone asks us about ourselves, we often tend to tell them that
‘it has been a journey.’ The phrase has been used so many times that it has grown to become a cliché. But, as we call it a
journey, no journey, in the history of
journeys, has been without challenges, problems, or disappointments. Be it something as small as forgetting the kerchief or, say as intensive as missing the flight or losing the luggage. Challenges are part of the
journey. And my
journey is no different.
Following my earliest memories, one of the most dreadful instances of my childhood was when my mother sent me to buy some groceries. The eight-year-old me did all the math correct with the currencies and was walking back to my home, swinging the polybag that had sugar, spices and salt, packed by the local grocer in the traditional manner. The swinging continued with humming a song that had become an earworm since the morning radio show had played it, and before I realised, the swinging went out of control and all the sugar, spices and salt tossed high in the air and came down showering on the road. I was afraid, thinking my mother would beat me up.
I quickly knelt down and started gathering all the mess, trying to segregate the particles like a fool. With whatever I had managed, I went home and gave the bag to my mother and rushed to the bedroom before she could open it.
I ran from my fears. My mother obviously found out about the mishap but said nothing. Later that evening, she came to me and told me never to be afraid of speaking the truth and accepting mistakes; it makes us stronger. It has been over twelve, maybe thirteen years since this incident. But that learning has stayed with me.
Since then, I had decided to face all the problems as they come and overcome every challenge by battling it. It was a small step, with the small feet. But it was a milestone.
When I went to Italy, as my first international trip, as a part of my school’s programme, I was overwhelmed with whatever I saw; the art, the architecture, the people, the place, everything! I was excited to experience all this at the young age of thirteen. This excitement was so much that I lost my passport on the final day of the trip, in the city of Rome. The child inside me panicked at first. There were sixty other people who could be engaged at the huge terminal just because I misplaced the most important document that I was carrying. I went to the school principal who was accompanying the group and told her about the issue. I thought she would scold me for the carelessness, but she didn't. In fact, she was composed and quickly chalked out a plan to manage the situation. She told me she would stay back with me to deal with the authorities and send the rest of the group back to India. Learning to be conscious and accountable, what the incident taught me was to deal with difficult situations with a cool head. The matters settled the same day when I found the passport snugged inside my hastily packed baggage.
A couple of years later, when I was diagnosed with a febrile illness leading to memory loss, the whole family was struggling to get me out of that phase. I stood strong. It was the year of my grade 10 board exams. The academic pressure never left me. But I knew, I had to stand up on my feet and regain the power that the brain had lost. With a rigorous treatment that ran over a period of six months, and with parallel consulting and treatment from several doctors from different cities, I woke up; determined to fight this fear of failure that hovered over my head.
I never left the books since then. I started appreciating the knowledge we were imparted. It was a phase I found myself transform from what they call an average kid to someone who values the education he got. I performed well in that exam, and the next boards too. All of this helped me grow so much so that I started teaching in my first year of college itself, and simply fell in love with what I was doing. Teaching kept me at peace and
knowing what kept me at peace, came as a fortune. The respect I got from the
students, was just an additional perk.
All this was going well until I met with a severe car accident. The year was 2018, and I was at, what I thought as, the peak; until the accident happened and things came trembling down yet again. It felt as if this required more courage to stand up. My bones were broken and I had to take help, in my end semesters, of an exam-writer for who would write down the answers, as I dictated them. With about two months of regular physiotherapy, the body started reverting to the shape, but the mind was still there. It left a terrible impression on the mind.
But there was learning from this incident too. It made me more responsible. I started valuing life more than ever before. I stood for myself in every difficult situation. I fought the phase and developed better self-control. I took the help of meditation to calm the mind. I started appreciating new forms of art that made me happy. I decided to become more self-reliant, started trusting myself more than before. I started cherishing life and honoured whatever came along. I built a new perspective out of the learning. And this, along with everything that had happened, helped me become who I am today.
It made me strong enough to have faith in myself and continue this
journey.
How The Aditya Birla Group Has Impacted My Life
It was a time when the city of Ahmedabad was the brimming with tradesmen, being the synapse between the north and the west of India. Goods arrived from different parts in bits and lots, and boarded the train to Bombay, for eventually being exported to the royal kingdom. Among all the traders, was a man who decided to step out of the warm lands of Pilani and participate in what flourished in those days:
cotton trade. And this stalwart was none other than Seth Shiv Narayan Birla, who established the
House of Birla in the mid-19
th century.
When the nation was taking its first steps of revolt, the business of
Birla prospered. And when the founding father of the group, Mr Ghanshyam Das Birla took charge, there was no stopping to the revolution that Indian industries witnessed. The visionary steps were humbly followed by his grandson, Mr Aditya Vikram Birla, the illustrious leader of what we know today as the
Aditya Birla Group.
The
Birla brand has been among those names that I have been coming across since the earliest of my memories. I distinctly remember when, as a kid, I would point out at the
sun logo on the yellow cement bags, when we visited the site where our house was being built. It has been seventeen years in that
house, the same amount of time since it has been
home. The same home where we got our television, on which I saw one of the funniest, yet witty ads that impressed the child in me. It was about saving trees, and how everything was shifting from paper to mobile screens, be it a waiter taking orders, or the stenographer using the QWERTY pad as a replacement to his typewriter;
Idea! was everywhere. I always laughed when the tree hit the lumberjack with its branch when he innocently asked
“Aap Konse Paid Ho? Pre-Paid Ho Ki Post-Paid Ho?”
From
patloons of
Pantaloons to shirts of
Peter England, my mother has always made my father smile at his birthdays all these years, and recently even me, when I turned twenty-one this year and began the MBA journey wearing
Allen Solly formals, on the foundation day of the course. It has been such a pleasant experience, that I wish I remain
Forever 21!
Among the recent discoveries, I also realised that the minimalist, yet beautiful watch-face that I have been using on my smartwatch since past three years is designed by an ABG brand:
Ted Baker!
With the whole
Mutual Fund Sahi Hai! wave, and my experiments with the Bachelors in Commerce (Honours) degree,
Aditya Birla Sun Life Mutual Fund was my first ‘
investment’ from the savings I made out of the prize money I won at college quizzes. The
Active Account application has been in my smartphone since a couple of years, and it simply brings the joy to see the numbers grow.
Talking about quizzes, how can I miss out the story about one question that decided my way into the Mumbai Zonals of a business quiz, the City Round of which had the final qualifier question which included a video played by the Quiz Master. The video had upbeat music with a red and a yellow handprint flickering the LED screen, and I pressed the buzzer! Three words came out of my shivering mouth:
Vodafone-Idea-Merger. The Quiz Master took a pause before exclaiming “Outstanding!” and the celebratory crackers popped, showering our team with glitter and coloured paper. It remains one the most cherished
Quiz Memories noted in my diary that I call
Quiz Chronicles.
Another page in the
Quiz Chronicles talks about a college fest that goes by the name
Apogee. Organised by one the best educational institutes of the country, BITS Pilani’s
Apogee was the first college fest that I participated in as a college student in 2016. The 3-day trip has a special place in my heart, not only because of the victory that I bagged with my quiz team, but also because of the hospitality that was provided to us at the campus, and the atmosphere that surrounded us. Playing music with a bunch of friends within the
rotunda under the clocktower and watching the lanes that take us to the Birla Sun Temple light up in the evening, was simply mesmerising.
Coming to Bombay, it has almost been a ritual to visit the resident of the
King, as in the honoured
King of Bollywood, Shah Rukh Khan; which is naturally followed by walking along the Bandra Bandstand till the Bandra Fort and hanging the feet on the coarse walls to watch the city of dreams with a five-kilometre-long horizon called
The Bandra-Worli Sea Link or,
The Rajiv Gandhi Sea Link. This architectural marvel, again a recent discovery of mine, is strengthened by the same yellow cement bags that I remember from my childhood. The only difference is, back when I went with my father to that construction site as a toddler, I couldn’t identify alphabets or words; which I can now do.
Ultratech Cement.
Knowingly or unknowingly, the brand of
Aditya Birla Group has crossed my path, and of several others. It has been there for over a century and a half, standing tall around us, and with us, being big in our lives. With eminent leaders over all these years, and with Mr Kumar Mangalam Birla now, who I have always seen as a foresighted businessman, the
Aditya Birla Group is truly following the values with which it was established: ‘
delivering superior value to our customers, shareholders, employees and society at large’. And with recent developments like the acquisition of
Binani Cement by
Ultratech Cement, and expansions such as the
Aditya Birla Payments Bank, the rays of this brand with
the sun, is surely reaching new skies.