A Girl - An Inspiration
Dear Ravi,
I hope things are going great with you. It has been a while since we spoke. I did not have much to say earlier, as it was a routine life for me. I go to work, get back home, swap through a few channels, sleep and go back to work the next day. Weekends, I try and meet up with some of my old friends. I write to you today, to tell you about a wonderful person, a person who has inspired me and a person so has made me believe in the indomitable human spirit.
I had a classmate who studied with me during my post graduation. She now lives in Mumbai alone and works for a financial services company. She builds complicated financial models for portfolio analysis and the rest. She travels to work daily alone, her office being a 20 minute drive from her place. She is very smart and she is doing exceptionally well in her job. She was among the top 20% of the students on campus. She is always smiling, cheerful and she loves to hang out with friends and have fun. In all, a totally cool gal!
You must be wondering what is so special about her. Well, she is visually impaired. She can’t focus her sight. She cannot read this passage or any other passage. Now, go back and read every line I have written in the above paragraph with this new perspective.
So, do you see how difficult each of those things is for her? She can see the watch she wears on her hand but cannot read the time. She cannot read documents or mails or numbers on an excel file. Yet, she has graduated from one of the topmost institutions of this country. And she has graduated as top of her class. She has a special software that reads out all documents/e mails to her. For exams, she had a person who would read out the questions and she would answer them verbally and he would pen down those answers. Imagine reading a strategy case which ran into 20 pages and which had over 10 pages filled with tables and graphs. Now imagine this complexity for every subject that we have studied.
A group of us in Bombay had a small get together over the weekend. She was also there and I offered to drop her back. We took a train back. This was her first train journey in Mumbai and she was jumping like a kid. We had a good hour in the train where she told me about her life in college. She had a mental map of the entire campus, a map based on number of footsteps. She knew that it took her 14 steps to reach the staircase from her room and another 25 to reach the mess. In between, at the 12th step she knew she had to climb 3 steps. And this way she had the entire campus mapped out. A campus that was 100 acres big - Wow!
Ravi, more often than not, we never realize what we have, until we have lost it. We take so many things for granted, so many things we do not even think about- like walking in a straight line, like being able to see. Yet, these things sometimes are the biggest challenges people face everyday, day after day and over come them. I look back at my daily activities and try to imagine myself in her situation. The more I thought on this, more my respect for her grew.
She epitomizes the never-say-die attitude. I can go on and on about her, showering her with encomiums and they will still be not enough. One thing is certain. Whatever I achieve in my life, however big (if at all), they will all pale when compared to her achievements on one single day.
Regards,
Karthik
Ps: On a different note, I went for a movie today. They play the national anthem before every show. They played the A R Rehman version of Jana-Gana-Mana which had all great singers of India from D K Pattamal to Lata Mangeshkar the Bhupen Hazarika singing in it. I have never heard a more soul stirring and inspiring rendition of our anthem. There was a silence after the anthem was over. The silence allowed us to immerse ourselves in that moment.
I hope things are going great with you. It has been a while since we spoke. I did not have much to say earlier, as it was a routine life for me. I go to work, get back home, swap through a few channels, sleep and go back to work the next day. Weekends, I try and meet up with some of my old friends. I write to you today, to tell you about a wonderful person, a person who has inspired me and a person so has made me believe in the indomitable human spirit.
I had a classmate who studied with me during my post graduation. She now lives in Mumbai alone and works for a financial services company. She builds complicated financial models for portfolio analysis and the rest. She travels to work daily alone, her office being a 20 minute drive from her place. She is very smart and she is doing exceptionally well in her job. She was among the top 20% of the students on campus. She is always smiling, cheerful and she loves to hang out with friends and have fun. In all, a totally cool gal!
You must be wondering what is so special about her. Well, she is visually impaired. She can’t focus her sight. She cannot read this passage or any other passage. Now, go back and read every line I have written in the above paragraph with this new perspective.
So, do you see how difficult each of those things is for her? She can see the watch she wears on her hand but cannot read the time. She cannot read documents or mails or numbers on an excel file. Yet, she has graduated from one of the topmost institutions of this country. And she has graduated as top of her class. She has a special software that reads out all documents/e mails to her. For exams, she had a person who would read out the questions and she would answer them verbally and he would pen down those answers. Imagine reading a strategy case which ran into 20 pages and which had over 10 pages filled with tables and graphs. Now imagine this complexity for every subject that we have studied.
A group of us in Bombay had a small get together over the weekend. She was also there and I offered to drop her back. We took a train back. This was her first train journey in Mumbai and she was jumping like a kid. We had a good hour in the train where she told me about her life in college. She had a mental map of the entire campus, a map based on number of footsteps. She knew that it took her 14 steps to reach the staircase from her room and another 25 to reach the mess. In between, at the 12th step she knew she had to climb 3 steps. And this way she had the entire campus mapped out. A campus that was 100 acres big - Wow!
Ravi, more often than not, we never realize what we have, until we have lost it. We take so many things for granted, so many things we do not even think about- like walking in a straight line, like being able to see. Yet, these things sometimes are the biggest challenges people face everyday, day after day and over come them. I look back at my daily activities and try to imagine myself in her situation. The more I thought on this, more my respect for her grew.
She epitomizes the never-say-die attitude. I can go on and on about her, showering her with encomiums and they will still be not enough. One thing is certain. Whatever I achieve in my life, however big (if at all), they will all pale when compared to her achievements on one single day.
Regards,
Karthik
Ps: On a different note, I went for a movie today. They play the national anthem before every show. They played the A R Rehman version of Jana-Gana-Mana which had all great singers of India from D K Pattamal to Lata Mangeshkar the Bhupen Hazarika singing in it. I have never heard a more soul stirring and inspiring rendition of our anthem. There was a silence after the anthem was over. The silence allowed us to immerse ourselves in that moment.
3 comments:
Great post da .. Should meet that gal some day !!
Dont we know this babe really well ravi?? :)))
~GV
I know da...isn't she one of the strongest people we know?
and more, aren't we the saddest if we crib and complain about the smaller things in life that we don't have - and never estimate the value of what we do?
-Spunky!
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