Inspiration.
One of the most positive words when it comes to us writers. We find inspiration
in the most common looking things and in the most routine of the circumstances.
Or in most ordinary people. Real people. Not just the heroic tell-tale ones.
The ones, who fell down at some points of time in their lives but didn’t give
up, stood up again. I know everybody would have heard this line a million
times. Sounds clichéd isn’t it? But still, when you see people actually following
this line in the truest form, you believe that yes, there are people like these.
People around us.
Five
Years Back:
She
is a friend. A college friend I met in my Business school - the place where
young harbor the dreams of high-flying corporate jobs. We weren’t any
different. We had similar hopes too. It was just that we entered or rather we
were exiting a B-school at one of the worst times. The doomed financial year of
2008-09. The one which changed the future of many companies and along with it the
dreams of many B-school students who were to pass out that year. The companies
were distributing pink slips and hiring was the cuss word. And that too fresh
MBAs? No. Never, said most of them. The Placement Committee (of which yours
truly was a part of) worked in overdrive. Calling companies one after the
other. Trying to lure them to visit the school. Just a handful few paid heed to
us.
It
was late January. Quite late by B-school standards of getting placed. More than
half of the Finance stream students were yet to be placed. A bank had shown
some mercy on our school and had come for recruiting. But, that Bank was the
last hope. Because after that bank, there were no companies lined up for
recruitment. Group Discussions and Interviews. We gave our best. Hoped. Prayed. Prayed hard for getting placed. But
luck had different plans. We (as in me and my friend) weren’t a part of five
students that were recruited that day. Sad faces loomed around. Because as I
said, we didn’t have any more companies lined up.
Everybody
left one by one. We were the last ones. We were sad but none of us was in a
mood to say anything. Just before leaving, at the parking, she broke down. Completely.
I joined too. The ‘what nexts?’ found their place in our tear laden voices. Take
up marketing jobs, may be? And then, came the ‘why does God always have to do
this to me’ questions. The ones for which we didn’t have any answers. She cried
about her unused law degree, her lost dreams of clearing IAS exam even after
slogging for years, the fact that her younger sister was well settled in her
career, the fact that when she entered the best B-school of the State she had
hoped that now, atleast now her career would take a better turn. I had never
ever seen her like that. Broken down, totally. I don’t remember how long we
cried that day in the empty, dimly lit parking lot of a place which once held high
hopes for us.
Today:
That
was some other day. Today is another. And today, my friend runs multi-crore
business ventures. Yes. You read it right. The same woman who had broken down
in the parking lot five years back for not getting placed in a bank, today runs
business ventures giving employment to many. She runs a Credit Co-operative
society with eight branches all over Gujarat and Rajasthan. She runs another
business of manufacturing ready-to-eat snacks and a venture in textiles. And
she does it, single handedly.
Wasn’t
an easy journey for her. She eventually did get placed in one of the Credit
Co-operative societies from Rajasthan at a salary most of us would not have
taken. She stayed in various cities of Rajasthan away from her family for a
year and half surviving in that meager salary, learnt the ropes of the
business, left her job and created her own Credit Co-operative society which today
is giving some serious competition to the one she initially joined. And mind
you, the one she joined had been established way back in the year 1999.
The
woman I knew back in cold January of 2009, the woman who cried along with me
for not getting placed in a bank is the woman today who is a business woman, the
woman who has learnt the ropes of the trade, who knows how to deal with
people. She is the woman who has made something out of herself. Inspiring. Isn’t it?
