The Aditya Birla brand is one of the largest conglomerates in India, with brands in fashion, infrastructure, metal and mining industries, financial services and textiles. With a market capitalization of over $50 billion, it is the 3rd largest conglomerate in the private sector and will remain a global leader.
Their one brand which will always resonate in my mind will be Louis Phillipe. The first time I shopped at their store was to buy my father a gift. I had recently completed my internship and with my first salary ever, decided to buy gifts for my family and take them out to dinner. With bags and watches for my mother, grandmother and brother, the only one who didn’t want a gift was my father. He said he was extremely proud of me and didn’t want me to buy anything for him; the fact that I was a mature girl who’d soon be shouldering responsibilities, was enough.
Undeterred, I dragged my younger brother along with me to a mall, and entered Louise Phillipe. Never having shopped in the men’s section before, this experience started out a little daunting. My brother and I, along with a really helpful salesperson, we turned the store inside out. After an hour of searching, choosing, rejecting, fighting, then searching again, I finally found the perfect shirt for my father; the man in my life for whom I have the utmost love and respect for. During the entire process, the salesperson had been extremely cooperative and had joined us on our quest to find the perfect gift. It took a while to find it, given their large variety in apparel, but the look in my father’s eyes when I gifted it to him, was priceless.
One of the biggest challenges I faced in my life, was during my school life. I was learning the keyboard as an extra-curricular activity and the music school where I was learning from, kept regular concerts for the students to showcase their talent. I was a fast learner, and so, for this concert, I had asked for a difficult piece. Because my journey of learning the keyboard had been pretty smooth up until then, I had become over confident in my abilities, and didn’t practice the song as much as I’d been asked to. On the day of the concert, I was a complete bundle of nerves, and my parents and teachers were all trying to console me. Little did they know that I knew I was going to mess up the piece, simply because of my lack of practice and complacency.
Soon, it was my turn to go up on stage and play the keyboard. And the inevitable happened- I missed a beat and that completely threw me off, resulting in hitting a wrong note and then freezing. For 3 seconds, I could feel the blood rushing in my ears, and I felt dizzy. Somehow, I completed the piece and walked out of stage. I could hear the people clapping for me, but I knew it was out of sympathy. I ran to the washroom, and spent the rest of the concert there, hiding. Even on the way home, my parents didn’t say anything, understanding that I needed some time.
The next few months, my confidence had completely shattered. I couldn’t go near the keyboard to practice, and had asked to get it packed away in the store room. However, with the support of my parents, I finally started playing again, and I also understood my lesson. Never again did I procrastinate over the pieces, and started putting in regular practices.