Ek
Gauon Mey…
Be the change you want to see in the world says Mahatma Gandhi. On his birthday, I am starting off with my leadership journey and to be the change.
Fellow toastmasters, good evening to one and all.
I have divided my life voyage into 3 parts – Rajesh 1.0,
Rajesh 2.0 and Rajesh 3.0.
·
Rajesh 1.0 is about my school life,
·
Rajesh 2.0 is about career and finally · Rajesh 3.0 an intriguing and exciting journey
Aug 15th is the day when independent India was
born and it was the same day, I was born in Pattukkottai. It is a small town in Thanjavur district.
The best part of my childhood life is my school life. My
school life was made special by my mom. She worked as a teacher in the same
school where I studied. If you thought I enjoyed the luxury of my mom’s
presence and influence in school, you are wrong!
Do you know how much complexity it added to my school life? If any of your parents were teachers… you can
very well understand my situation. Oh my
God!! Even trivial things like talking to a girl, getting low marks, classroom
fighting and breaking the window of a classroom comes to my mom’s attention. In
those days, we didn’t have Internet… we didn’t have mobile phones… but,
information traveled faster to my mom – no matter which corner of the school
she was IN. It was like all TV channels such as Sun TV, Vijay TV, and Captain
TV ganging upon me and spreading the allegations.
Time ran very fast… I got over with my school education and
also completed an engineering degree.
Now I’m into Rajesh 2.0
I came to Chennai after my final exams in College. I had great dreams about Chennai and a similar situation what you normally see in Super
Star movies.. I quickly realized Reel life is different from Real life. That’s when I learned the realities of
life. My first salary was just Rs. 800
per month. You can barely have a sharing accommodation in Triplicane Mansions with
that money. It was very difficult for me to meet the ends. During those days, I
used Hindu paper much … not for reading… but for sleeping, as a mat. Central
station and Parrys bus stand became overnight retreat.
After a hand-to-mouth struggle for a year, I got my first
break, when I got an offer from Gujarat for three thousands rupees salary. I
was in cloud nine. Aftermath of jubilations,
I realized that being a hardcore Tamil guy, had to speak Hindi in an unknown
state. I was scared to death. Lot of people discouraged me from going to
Gujarat. Only consolation was, I got
into one sentence in Hindi from a Tamil movie “Ek Gaoun mey ek kissan Raghu
thatha”… I went ahead with that one line of confidence and embarked my Gujarat
journey.
Time passed… I
learned Hindi in my four years of stay in Gujarat. Fortunately, I got a job in Chennai in latest
programming language and worked 18 hours a day straight for a year. Here also
Hindu paper helped me a lot as a sleeping mat but on carpet flooring in a
startup software company. Then, I got placed in Singapore. After a year, I moved
to US.
My life’s turning point came in the form of marriage. I married an adorable lady Sudha…. After
marriage only I realized I became a permanent porter, cook, utensil cleaner and
a driver which continues till day. TM Aditya, whenever you talked about five wives
and one husband, my stomach somersaulted.
I can hardly manage one Joke apart, we believed in unity. We did our masters
together and now we are doing toastmasters together.
We spent about seven years in US. Rajesh 3.0 was about to
start. We returned back to India and I am now working in Verizon as a Program Manager.
3.0 is very exciting.
I want to be a coach and am planning to get my international
certification. I want to be a good public speaker and I want to be a good writer
as well. Having married a toastmaster, I will write a book about “Why should
you marry a Toastmaster”… When it becomes successful and hit New York’s best
seller list, I can apply Toastmaster Shankar’s Table topics strategy and write
another book “Why you should not marry a toastmaster” by contradicting
everything I mentioned in the first book…
My life is a roller coaster journey so far with ups and
downs, success and failures opportunities and missed opportunities, … Looking
back, there were many times I was clueless and penniless. Even I did not have
any clue about money for the next day. At
times, I was literally on the streets. Whatever worst may be the situation, I
strongly believed which I can share with you is “Be the Change you want” & “Never, Never,
Never, Never Give Up” to Go up.
Over to you TMOD.
No comments:
Post a Comment