Part A: In Tamil there is a saying,’Oru paanai sothukku oru soru padham’. It means that you can use a single grain of rice to test whether the pot of rice is cooked.
The Group has many brands which have an immediate impact on society. But this story is not about those brands which had an indirect impact on me. My story is about a single product from Aditya Birla Group which had a major impact on my life.
And the product is Mr. Saravanan Janarthanaraja, General Manager of GRASIM Industries, Erode. How he made an impact on me? The story goes like this.
I was a mediocre student who finished the engineering and doing a mediocre job at home town with mediocre motivation to clear CAT. Do you know even a wet cloth can give the brightest flame if it is soaked in oil? Mr. Saravanan helped me to get that light. He told me about his struggle to become a manager and gave insights into being a manager. He didn’t stop his work there, he called me on weekends asking about my preparations, he asked me to motivate his son when I got my CAT results and even going further, he paid my admission fees to ensure my seat in IMT Ghaziabad. That’s a rice grain from the bowl of Aditya Birla Group.
Part B: ‘The truth is, we all face hardships of some kind, and you never know the struggles a person is going through. Behind every smile, there's a story of a personal struggle.’- Adrienne C. Moore
I’m a person who smiles a lot. Academics was never hard on me but what came after that was a complete train wreck. The Reality was too hard to handle. When I completed my engineering the challenges were waiting at my door steps - low paying job, family expenses, loans, the drama of adulthood and the list goes on. But I was lucky to have supporting family and understanding friends by my side. The world gave me unimaginable challenges but it also gave me tools to handle it. I failed, I hit rock bottom multiple times and finally, I learned how to have heads up and climb.
‘From zero to something.’ That’s how every story of an inspirational story is and that’s how I want my life to be.
