Selfdiscovery leads Purpose in Life
[Applause]
good evening thank you sandeep for the
pretty elaborate
as i was preparing to speak here i look
back at
my life it gave me an opportunity to
sort of relive my life over the last 20
years
and
i said sort of removed what has happened
in my life so just imagine a small
household
and you have a six-year-old
seven-year-old kid you
you made him in that household
as an adult what would be the question
you asked
the first question is usually the name
which class are you studying which
school do you go to
and essentially the fourth question is
what do you want to become in life
right maybe third also but definitely
not beyond the fourth question
so once
one of our relatives visited home and
asked me this question
as possible in ukj or first standard and
i told i want to become a truck driver
my parents were flabbergasted
truck driver tells you that you know you
control a big
machine
and my i had a small counselling session
after the relatives left
you can’t
tell anyone that you can be a truck
driver
and then my goal changed so i said okay
i’ll become a pilot because i can be the
driver of a bigger machine
and
i went to school and
one of the teachers in school asked this
uh are you ask this question what do you
want to become i said that you want to
become pilot
teacher said
you have eyesight i was wearing classes
from when i was 7 years old
can you become a pilot using glasses
and then the second
ambition i had was out of the window i
could no longer become a pilot they just
caused the doubt i never knew whether
they could become a pilot or not
and then
one day
i saw a movie and i was very excited i
said let me go to the rv
then
one of my friends said you will not
qualify the physical
criteria you are neither tall enough nor
well built
third goal was out of the way
then
the
ship
so i used to make it a point that i
watched that video so there was this
nice episode on open heart surgery
after that video effect i should become
a cardiothoracic surgeon
and
one of my relatives asked me this that
can your family afford to make you a
cardiothoracic surgeon
so there was a lot of excitement around
atomic physics and nuclear physics so i
decided i’d become a nuclear physicist
and i shared this one with my parents my
teachers
actually encouraged me
but
mothers have this concern that you have
to settle early in life
and there was this feedback that if you
are pursuing the research career
there aren’t enough jobs in india
and you will have to you will take a
long time to settle in
and finally i ended up studying
mechanical engineering
after four or five months being thrown
out of the window and while i was
studying mechanical engineering
i realized i wasn’t enjoying engineering
as much
then other interests started i started
writing poetry
i started playing football
then
i started teaching
[Music]
and after so many code changes
finally i went to teach science
in a tribal area
and
when many people thought i was mad
i
had always been accepted
and
i was a lot of questions were asked like
are you mad to go here
my family actually calculated
the financial loss
because i joined an ngo actually they
miscalculated it
i had them correct their calculation
but a lot of dreams
get made
and get shot down
by questions asked
so one of the things which i did
was
once i went to hd quoted
one it’s a small
i should say god forsaken places it’s a
forest belt in the foothills of the
western guards
once i started
spending time there i really enjoyed my
day
i started meeting new people
enjoyed
innocence of or
unadulterated love for people around
and then
in uh several opportunities came by so i
started out as a teacher in a small
remote school
and i used to go with this mobile
science lab to government schools
i didn’t know kannada but i had to teach
students in karnataka
so i learned language that way
and i learned science
in canada
and along the way
we faced several challenges which i
enjoyed
and it helped me
accomplish several things and sql became
a great platform for me
so over this last 12 years that i have
been in
svym at
https that i have been a part of
one of the greatest things that gave me
a lot of satisfaction is
you are able to instantly see
the impact that you have cost
if you are able to teach one kid well if
you are able to answer the kids question
the excitement which the kid shares with
you you are able to see it right in
front of you
that is something which gave me immense
satisfaction
that is something which i decided to
sort of pursue in life
all this way
i sort of stuck to three
guiding principles
one
was when i was doing my engineering i
used to do this small part-time jobs
and i had this hard revelation once that
thanks to our parents with the education
that we get and the access to the
resources we have
we never die of hunger
so let me do what i enjoy
and
i got a war where i decided
that i will give up
the
or i sacrificed
the nice cities which uh iatm should
have pursued but then i do something
which i would enjoy
so one of the key things which has
helped me throughout and i think every
entrepreneur we’re thinking about
is this the education that you get
should give you the confidence to tell
so what if i fail let me try one thing
once again
the second thing
was all along
i’ve been very very sort of happy
i have never really worried about
tomorrow
but so many opportunities came my way
that i was enjoying every moment
i had an opportunity to meet dr ap
i had an opportunity to meet uh
dr kiran kumar the israeli chairman
spent some time with them i had an
opportunity to meet customers
and all the big scientists that you
think of
it just happens
[Music]
so
i don’t think we should really worry
about what should i do tomorrow enjoy
today
and life somehow has this ability to
present you with the right opportunity
and the right thing
but when you do get the opportunity grab
it
and the third one i start by
is i never made a statement in fact i
corrected several people
but i made a sacrifice
i made a choice
to go to hd but
all of us make choices
if we own up our decisions
i think we will
believe that we can also accomplish what
we did
many times we separate ourselves from
the circumstances
failure would be the circumstance and
the success is us not necessary
and even in my life several experiments
have been disastrous
i can’t talk proudly about them here
but
we learn tough
lessons there
so these were three key things
quickly uh rewind one
is
you get a good education
you will never have hunger try whatever
you want to do what gives you happiness
second one
whatever
we do enjoy today and the opportunities
will come you can always grab
the third one
being made choices not sacrifices
while i was doing all this
like i mentioned i met several people
learned lots of things
and you know what i am still a truck
driver in the in the education sector of
sui
we run multiple projects we have 200
staff
it’s like controlling a huge machine
like the truck
when you have a kid who can’t be given
the necessary education or the access to
education when you’re trying to solve
that problem
i get that adrenaline rush of a
physicist who’s trying to solve a
problem
so all our goals
can still be achieved by doing what you
like
and
the old stereotypes of being a social
worker
a kid just asked me are you a social
worker
i said yes
if you think go back think about the 90s
if you have if you have to be a social
worker
you have to be made wearing hawaii
sleepers
wearing the juba maybe a string bag
have classes
poverty and you should be an activist
who should be shouting slogans
it is no longer the truth
the development sector today has changed
we talk about impact we talk about
efficiency we talk about analytics we
talk about strategy in
development center we talk about pilots
we talk about expansion we talk about
impact at scale
the development sector is as
professional
as any other business
and if you can
see happiness on a kid’s
face nothing like
why not pursue it
but
in the development center you have to be
for the long haul
of maharaja
he says the life is short
the vanities of life are transient
in the world and transit
they are known who live for others
the rest are more dead than our life
thank you
[Applause]