I am sure every one of us has heard the story about King Bruce. In the story, king Bruce is hopeless after failing six times on the battlefield. But, when he saw the little spider trying again and again, even after failing multiple times, new hope and courage not to give up ignited inside him. Therefore, he tried one more time and succeeded in getting his kingdom back.
I grew up in a small village with the scarcest of resources. But that did not stop me from dreaming. There was no electricity and hence lanterns were our only means at night. We had no concept of eating out as there were no restaurants. But we made the most of our home-made food. We did not have money to buy books and hence they were passed across generations. The leftovers of this year's notebooks became the notebooks for the next year. But all this never really bothered us much. We knew that we cannot fail (even if we fail, we need to get going).
And with limited resources, a decision was made to put me in a boarding school away from parents. It was heart-breaking but when I look back it turned out to be the best decision of my life. I was always a topper in my previous school and the fact that I came second in the second test in the new school was hard to digest. I tasted failure for the first time in my life but it was a wake up call to fight back. For the first time in my life, I failed in a subject (Mechanics) and I was in tears. But I figured out that if I do not get up myself, no one will help me get up. And I ended with a 100 percent marks in the Class X board exam in Mechanics. The way we call finish in style. But this was just the beginning.
I missed going to an IIT and I did not speak to anyone for 7 days. I managed to get into one of the top engineering colleges in India and landed up a job with Tata Motors, the mecca of an engineer. Do I still feel bad about not making it to IIT? No because I more than achieved with a less than dream start.
I always had a dream to do an MBA when I got an admission from IIM Kozhikode, I was on Cloud 9. This was a period when I became a little arrogant. But life is a great leveler. I lost a year due to severe hepatitis and I was not sure whether I will be allowed to continue. But life is fair at times and I finally graduated. But there were surprises waiting. It was a recession here and I ended up landing a job with Lafarge, a cement company. Lafarge was a tough call with a difficult working environment and an unsupported boss. Still, I managed to survive for a while and then moved to Infosys.
Infosys was a golden phase where I saw the world and my career grew exponentially. After that due to a slower growth, I decided to move to Oracle Consulting which also incidentally gave me a dream run.
The best things happen in life when you least expect it. KPMG happened as one of my ex-bosses wanted me to part of his team and thus I forayed into Management Consulting. Deloitte followed this and I got to work in some of the most challenging assignments of my career.
Having spend around 20 years in Supply Chain and Technology, I wanted to do something different and that is how I joined IBM Consulting in the Sustainability Services. It has been a great run so far with lots of learning, reskilling in AI, Hybrid-Cloud.
IBM has also given me the freedom to pursue my hobbies as well namely Trekking, Running, Music. And when I look back, a shy person who always stayed away from everyone ended up giving a TED Talk. But the journey is not over yet.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep!!!