Life always gives you a second chance
it is said that life
gives you a second chance i have my
disagreement
i believe that life keeps on giving you
chances it’s up to you
if you want to take that chance or not
and i don’t say this
as a quote that i have read somewhere i
say this with experience
this is what i have lived and
experienced throughout my life
at 19 i was severely depressed at
20 i had taken to alcohol because of the
depression
by 21 i was an alcoholic an out and out
hopeless alcoholic
would start and end his day with alcohol
and at 26 that alcoholism had led me
into an ailment
where doctor gave me only a 15 1 5 15
chance of survival my white organs were
not functioning
and i was put on life support namaskar
my name is
vijay vikram singh i am an mba by
qualification and
a voice over artist and an actor by
profession
you would have definitely heard my voice
in one of the reality shows or the other
meet indian idol we dance india dance
meet super dancer with masterchef india
i have also given my voice to a lot of
art films commercials
and i have dubbed for english movies in
hindi as well
but my claim to fame is that i am the
narrator’s voice
on the biggest reality show in india
which is
big boss so the voice which tells you
who for this course of
conversation of around 18 to 20 minutes
i’ll be talking about
my journey and my learnings from that
journey
i’ll start with my early life i was born
and brought up in kanpur
a small town in uttar pradesh into a
family that
was middle class but eventually my
father lost a lot of money in business
and we had to experience extreme poverty
while we were growing up but
our parents ensured that all three of us
my older brother me and my sister
received the best of education
i always wanted to be an army officer
but
and you know i prepared myself for that
and
when i graduated i started appearing for
combined different services examination
i cleared
them and eventually i appeared for eight
ssb ssb services selection board which
is the interview process for
entry into army army navy or air force
as an officer
and i failed eight times all the eight
times
in a span of three years i failed and i
was not prepared for that failure
that failure that realization that i
cannot be an army officer
led me into severe depression which
you know uh pushed me towards alcohol
and i started drinking and i
started drinking like a maniac in
between all of this i also
appeared for cat and scored 92
percentile i took admission in
faculty of management studies when i was
in the university and my specialization
in the mba that i was doing was
international business so life was
actually not that bad but in my head
my life was bad and i was a worthless
creature because i could not be an army
officer
i had no plan b unfortunately and all
this culminated
into me drinking so much that
one fine day on january 31st 2005
i collapsed and i was i was working
in jp summit at that time and uh i was
in posted in
a place called satna which is a small
town in madipatis
i was diagnosed with severe acute
pancreatitis was the renal failure and
satna was not equipped
to deal with with such such an ailment
so i was referred to
sanjay gandhi pgi which is in lucknow
which is one of the best
medical institutes and i owe my life to
them but
when i was being admitted over there the
doctor bluntly told my mother that
all his vital organs are not functioning
his kidney liver are not functioning his
lung has 70 water high infection and his
chances of survival are
merely 10 to 15 percent it’s
most probably a wastage of money
investing in his treatment
what should we do and my mother the
residue lady that she is
stood up to the doctor and said you do
your job i will do mine
and that was very brave of her to say
that for someone who has
led himself into this
situation and for a family which was
struggling for money at that time
but my struggles have just started
uh in the next 30 days when i was in the
critical care unit of
scpgi and i underwent four or five uh
dialysis i was on life support and one
day
i think on the 15th day i had my immune
system was very weak and i suffered from
pneumonia and i experienced death from
close quarters
to this date uh that thought that that
memory
gives me goosebumps makes me very very
emotional but
yes and that day uh i i really saw
death from close quarters and that day i
realized that uh
that is not as beautiful as
it has been made out to be i’m sure you
would have uh read a lot about death
poets talking about that
there’s a beautiful poetry in anand
which says
foreign
in reality death is not even one percent
as beautiful as it is made out to be
it’s scary fortunately
that night i survived
i survived to tell my story
another 15-20 days miraculously i i
my vital organs started showing signs of
recovery and i recovered really well
to be discharged from the hospital just
before the starts there
they told my parents to walk me a little
i tried standing up i could not because
i was very very weak i had lost some 25
30 kgs
i was absolutely a skeleton and i
remember uh
trying to get up but i could not but i
wanted to and
my parents my brother and my mother you
know they supported me
and with their support i walked a little
and reached a window of corridor that
was the first time in around 25 days
that i’d seen
sunlight but that sunlight changed my
perspective towards life
that sunlight was light of positive
positivity for me
and that was the day i decided
that i am going to fight it out and i am
going to make a meaningful life
out of it i never thought that i’d be
famous or what i’ll do i didn’t know but
i
said to myself that no more negativity
and i think that changed my life
i always believe that we are all victims
of our thought process
and i personally was victim of victim of
my thought process at that time
and the moment that thought process
changed everything around me changed so
it took me another three months to
recover completely
and and be on my feet but after that
things started happening i
got into a very very you know
very nice job after that in the public
sector undertaking under ministry of
steel
i was looking after import financing
and i was transferred to bombay so when
i was in bombay
uh i thought my you know career is set i
am into a government job and that is it
what else can someone ask for and within
i think uh
an year of being transferred into bombay
a
friend’s friend told me that you have a
good voice and i said yeah but i can’t
sing
so you know i didn’t know that
there was a career that existed that you
can make out of your voice
i told you angie that i can’t sing she
said no there’s a lot that you can do
with your voice other than singing and
she took me to a studio
for an audition which was pathetic
because i had never faced the mic
but and the engineer said that you know
he has does have a decent voice but he
really has to work hard on it
uh it was very discouraging but i was
at that time i realized that this
is my calling i love that experience and
at
28 i decided
that i found my calling and i will now
work towards it
but it was not as if i plunged
completely you know immediately in uh
into another career of voicing left
everything and
plunging into intervoice and i didn’t do
that i did
some research i quit my government job
took up a job in a radio station
so that in the sales team so that i
could understand how media functions and
what all i need to do to be a voice
artist
and trust me uh media sales is one of
the toughest jobs that you can do
especially radio because at that time in
2007
uh we not only had to sell airtime for
our station we first had to sell the
medium which was radio because radio was
not that
acceptable a medium for advertisers so
we first used to sell the medium that
you know this really works radio really
works and then i used to sell
my station which was big 92.7 fm which
was under reliance at that time reliance
ada group
so but you know i i slogged myself for
two and a half years just to
understand how media functions to train
myself and i was really lucky to have
supportive bosses who
got me trained into in in voicing
let me do a lot of voicing stuff in
their studios after my job
and in 2009 i got engaged to get anjali
and i told her that you know look this
job which i have right now which has a
wonderful package this i might not have
a few months or few years down the line
because i plan
to get into voicing eventually
and she said why at a later stage why
not now
right now we’re getting married i have a
job and uh
once we have kids in all the
responsibilities we might not able to
explore or
experiment so do it right now so that
push that last push that was needed
was given to me by her and i took that
plunge
and took up voice over as a career in
2009 when
dance india danced season one
was launched i was given the opportunity
by the stars yeshua walker who’s my
mentor
to be the voice of that show and that
changed my life so life gave me another
chance
and i grabbed it and then 2010
i received a mail from endemol india
which is the production house which
produces
big brother or big big brother worldwide
and big boss in india that they’re
looking for narrator’s voice on that
show
and i also went and gave my cd and then
i was called for an audition and i still
remember
within one day of giving the audition i
was called to discuss monies and i was
finalized for the show and i
don’t think i’ve ever been so happy as
happy as i was on that day
that uh show has changed my life and
continues to be one of the biggest show
in my
in my career in my cv we are in the 14th
season of that show as i speak today
so life changed after uh big boss
happened
a lot of things became really easy then
life continued for another five years
and in 2014 i realized that probably i
have
started being repetitive in my voicing
journey and i i need to do something
or train myself a little more to be
better in this craft and someone
suggested that you should uh try theater
try doing theater do theater workshops
because
that’ll improve your other your
expressions and eventually that will you
know help you
find new grounds in voiceovers as well
so with the thought of
improving my voicing uh abilities i
started doing a little theater i did a
workshop with barry john
and they here also italy you know pushed
me into it i was thinking of doing it
but she was the one who pushed it
while you know doing that workshop with
barry and
i was that doing some theater i realized
that i started loving the
the whole process of acting and i
started doing more and more theater
uh i did a lot of plays with my group uh
abhidhammankar who cast me in alexander
versus chanak in the role of chanakya at
that time
and then i thought that if i’m loving it
let me you know explore it more in terms
of learning the craft a little more so i
worked with jeff goldberg to understand
method acting
i i worked with sachdeva to understand
myself technique a little bit
and in 2018 as luck would have it
so i also coach a lot of actors in voice
uh mr mukesh chardo is one of the
biggest casting directors in the country
called me
to coach one of the leading actors of
his film
for voice and that’s when he asked me
that i heard you act as well i said yeah
i do
and then he asked me why haven’t you
come for an introduction or audition
ever i said
i never got the time but i’m happy doing
theater and he said would you want to
give an audition i was more than happy
to do that
and he auditioned me for the character
of ajith and family man
and that’s how i made my debut in front
of the camera with
a show called family man which is which
will be into his second season soon
so all in all you know so basically uh
2015 life gave me another chance and i
grabbed it so the point over here is
that
life keeps on giving you chances life
keeps on giving
presenting you with opportunities it’s
up to you to recognize those
opportunities
and grab them with both hands one more
thing that i’ve realized
is the importance of stress in life
stress is not always bad
please remember we associate stress with
negative emotion but stress is not
always bad there is something called
eustress eu stress and distress
this stress is of course the stress that
breaks you the stress that we associate
stress with
but eu stress or eustress is the
positive stress that
brings the best out of you that deadline
to submit a project that you know
uh deadline to meet that sales target i
find all that stress to be very very
positive stress because
that is pushing you towards your limit
we as human beings are designed
in a way that our mind you know
functions in a way where we tend to
get into our comfort zone really easily
and we tend to
think that you know this is it so
pushing the limit
is is very very important and stress
plays an important role in
pushing that limit so always look for
those positive stress
don’t always look for stress as
something which is really bad of course
there’s a very thin line
but experience teaches you how to
differentiate between positive
stress and the stress that can break you
so stress is not always bad
and stress negative stress can always
lead you into depression but
please understand that please try and
look at positives that is happening
around you
it’s easier said than done when you are
in that state of mind
but it is important to not lose your
rationality and sanity when you are
depressed or when you’re
undergoing a negative emotion so it’s
very very important to keep
try and keep negativity at bay it’s it’s
difficult
but it’s not impossible another thing
that i’ve realized in this
creative journey is the importance of
insecurity now these are all negative
words but the they can have a positive
connotation
so your insecurity
can lead you into trying different
things
your insecurity should not make you
cynical or your insecurity should not
make you negative your insecurity
should make you start exploring
yourself more so try and be a little
insecure always
that’s the way i have progressed in life
and that’s
the way i think it should be you know
your insecurities
should lead you into doing or exploring
yourself
a little more a little more a little
more pushing yourself a little more so
all these negative emotions that we
think and talk of uh they you can
actually
utilize them you can actually utilize
them in a very very positive way if you
just change
your outlook this is what i have learned
in my life and also
please remember these days you you hear
a lot of upskilling
it’s very very important to keep doing
that why because uh if you continue
upskilling yourself if you continue
learning new things
uh your mind and your mind will be used
to
changes as we grow older
the acceptability towards change
keeps going down we we become
prone to not accepting change so if you
keep up skilling yourself if you
keep learning new things continuously
that resistance will keep going down
that resistance will not be there
and it’ll help you progress a lot
so i will end my conversation with
one very beautiful line
foreign
this thought i thank you for your time
and i hope that i could
change a little bit about you
or i could bring about a little bit
change in your thought process
in your professional lives in your
journey
towards achieving your best
no scott
you