This is No Time to Close Your Heart A Letter From My Mother
namaste
eight years ago my mother wrote a letter
to me
the letter is in hindi so i will
translate it for you and i’ve never
shown this letter to anyone so this is
the first time ever that i’m
showing it to everybody now
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the letter it says
my nickname sadako means be always
blessed
how are you i’m proud that i gave her
i have a son like you when you say
that money is not important in life then
i feel really bad
son money is a very important thing in
life because first of all
we have to arrange marriage for sikha
shikai is my sister my youngest sister
and then we have to help get sunny
settled
sunny is my younger brother
and then we have to build our house we
our first house we don’t have house we
have to build our
first house so i have a full faith in
you that you will definitely go to
america
and that that this is the dream of
our first your unfortunate mother that
your sister sikha will get married to a
nice guy and that that we have our own
house
what do you think blessings to all three
of you
your mother sanjukern
i was born in a very small village in
india
the current literacy rate of my entire
state
is 64 64 so you can imagine the
quality and condition of education 20 23
years ago
in my village there was no electricity
so i used lanterns to read books
i walked approximately five to six miles
every day
to go to a school to attend school
at school we didn’t have tables or
benches
so i had to carry bora bora is a plastic
made rug
i had to carry that in my backpack so i
could take that to school and sit on
that
that rug that plastic made rug
receiving an education has always been a
distant dream for me since childhood
despite all these hurdles last year i
finished my bachelor’s degree from
washington state university here in
everett campus and
thank you thank you and and and i’m
about to choose where i’ll be pursuing
my master’s degree i have already
although i’ve applied at several
universities i’ve already received
acceptance letter from two of the highly
ranked universities uh
including george washington and
university of chicago
um to study education policy
what i have been through in life it’s
it’s
different it’s it’s hard and it will be
hard for me
to explain to all of you that how how
how much i feel what i feel
there have been so many people who have
supported me in my journey
and they are continued to support and
supporting me to become the man i
imagine
i was five years old only five years old
when my
father departed to heaven
my mother who was 22 years old widow
back then
she was she was supposed to remain in a
perpetual state of mourning for the rest
of her life
back then in india widows were not
treated like people like you and i
they had to wear white clothes they were
not allowed to wear any other
any other colorful clothes they
they were not allowed to eat meats
they were not and they were expected to
remarry someone in the family
however the epitome of bravery my mother
she wanted to give her three children a
better life
so she left one place she knew as home
and fled to nepal a nearby country
she worked multiple menial jobs just to
keep food on the table for me
and my two younger siblings growing up
in the shadow of mount everest
i i can vividly remember the room that
we lived in
it was 12 by 10 feet room my we had a
kitchen in one corner
in that kitchen we had a stove and and
some utensils and some
some spices and another another corner
we had an almira almira is like a
rack where we keep clothes so another
corner we had we had that almirah
and then we would slip sleep in the in
another corner all four of us
we we would we slept mostly on the
floors because we didn’t have money to
buy
by the bed that’s it there was nothing
nothing nothing else in that room
i’ve never seen my father or i’ve never
i don’t even remember the face of my
father
but i do remember my mother skipping
meals several times
so we could eat me and my two younger
siblings
maybe it wasn’t expected but i found my
first mentor
in my mother from her i learned
the values of life i learned about
bravery
i learned about courage i learned
what it means to stand up for yourself
to work hard for what you wanted in life
at the age of 16 i became the primary
breadwinner of my house
taking care of my mother putting through
both of my younger siblings to school
colleges universities and now my
youngest sister she’s
finishing up her master’s degree in may
so today i want to share about three
mentors three other mentors
in my life who have made an impact who
have made
a tremendous impact on my life
they have inspired me to serve others to
continue to serve others
it it may not seem to you to
mentor someone or even become a or
even become a mentor but i hope you will
realize the value of the commitment
today it changes so much mentorship it
changes so much
my first mentor i met him when i moved
to delhi in 2008
his name is ajay sahi he
he left the lavish life of diplomatic
life
to to create change in the slum areas in
india
for three years ajay and i we taught
english and mathematics to impoverished
women and children
in different different slums in india
and then we also helped enroll several
students to
high school to primary school to middle
school
and help women learn their rights from
ajaz
selflessness i learned that growth
through sacrifice is in fact no
sacrifice at all
that is that selflessness in the service
of others
even at the cost of one’s own personal
comfort
is noble
i met my next mentor in a place i would
have never expected
maybe i was naive let me tell you of
nisha
nisha was a nisha was 11 years old girl
and i was five years older than her back
then so i was 16.
and so ajay and i had created a a study
group
in a slum called anna nagar salam in new
delhi
in that slum nisha used to come to a
study
english and mathematics she had an
unbridled passion for knowledge
and so we recognized this me and ajayi
both recognized this
and so we enrolled her to uh to a middle
school
and and she went on to school and ajay
and i
we went on to help others children other
children to different
slum areas in 2012 i received a
scholarship fulbright scholarship
to come to the united states so i came
to the united states
and nisha became someone who had come
and gone in my life
two years ago a little less than two
years on 27th
may 2018 i received a message on
from a girl named nisha saying that hi
brother my i’m nisha and i i don’t know
if you remember me but
i was at the nanagar slum and and she
told me
that she had moved out of the agnanger
slum now she works for a multinational
i.t company in delhi and she rents an
apartment in a place called lakshmi
nagar
where she lives with her parents
that day i realized the value of a
simple act
i would have never imagined what a
simple act could
make a change in someone’s life
that day i became an advocate of
mentorship
that day since that day i have been
mentoring hundreds of
students through different non-profit
organizations including a non-profit
that i started pacific willow and
and another nonprofit that i’m currently
working with called freedom english
academy
and where i mentor a group of students
one at a time and so
since then i became
with her sheer persistence she changed
her life
and mine from nisha i learned that
gratitude reciprocates
that giving gives back
i met my third mentor when i was working
for
a non working for a project called
ananya tsai with gates foundation
i was in bihar and sunita at first
instance she seemed really shy but
little did i know that she was a change
maker
sunita like many other women in these
areas
did not have toilet in her home so she
would have to wake up at four o’clock in
the morning
and go to and go to a
in a field to defecate or to relieve
herself
the dog the dark walk to field brought
the dangers along to
because the bad elements of the society
would consider it an opportunity to
harass these women
i learned that issue stemmed not only
for the lack of toilets
but but a far bigger barrier
a cultural unacceptance to use these
utilities
see having a temple in these areas
is as common as having a kitchen in
america
so so having a toilet in your courtyard
was considered
unclean and unholy
despite knowing the fact that it may be
dangerous to her life
or or her husband will will divorce her
she decided to stand up a stand against
her own family
and the whole community
she did not just stand up for or to
build her first ever toilet
and i we supported her as the guest
foundation
people we supported her to build her
first ever toilet she did not just stand
up against her own family
but she also inspired many other women
in the area
to to stand up and build their toilet
from sunita i learned that first one
through the wall burdens the most impact
that nothing is impossible if you’re
willing to accept the scars to see it
through
in my life i’ve realized that we all
need mentors
mentorship transcends age color
sex gender class or any other thing
any other constricted system that we
choose to recognize
we can be 60 or we can be 16.
a cultured man with fortunate
circumstances
sacrificing his for the benefit of
others
a child against all odds
persevering perceiving to
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support to raise up an entire family
entire family
are a woman
against the or women fighting against
the whole society
to to have the toilet we can all have a
mentor and we can all mentor someone
we just have to search with the right
intention to see with the right lens
i imagine that i will seek out mentors
for the rest of my life
as much as i will seek to mentor
so if i could leave you with something
today i would just like to tell you
that mentors change lives
they really do change lives
in the audience i see some some young
people
some little more mature
i urge you to go find
just two mentors or mentees
one who can steer your career in the
right direction
and one who can steer your emotions
towards positiveness whenever you’re
feeling low in your life
and try to beat that to someone else
because gratitude reciprocates
that giving gives back
when you mentor someone you will find
that you are not changing the lives of
just that person
you’re changing the lives of many people
who are associated with that person
many many people my mentors
like sunita like sunita like ajay
or nisha they have not just changed my
life or my mentors many of them who are
actually sitting here
kathy joanne robert they have not just
changed my life
but the lives of my family my friends
or anyone to whom i will impact
because if we create a community of
mentors
we will create a community of trust and
in
any community every community every
member
needs that just one push or a lift up
from the people we trust
so let’s create a community and we will
create a community of selfless service
and reciprocal gratitude and indelible
courage
thank you
you