Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Self motivated People

How many self motivated people do you know? 2,3,5,10,20. Good. I am actually going to tell you a story of 2 highly self motivated people I have known. There are plenty others too but these two always stand out for me because they made it look very simple.

M is my best friend's best friend. She is this beautiful Punjabi girl who anybody would want to look at twice. She was quite a svelte. And the beauty of it was she could say "Kuttey kamine" with amazing ease. You wouldn't know how to react to a girl like her say that. We would be giggling all the way home trying to just say it loud and yapping about the reactions she got. No, that was not the motivation bit story. That is still coming. Her father had a paralytic attack when she was in school. She had a younger sister and brother. She and her sister took tutions and scrambled through school fees and all that was needed. They would do all kind of odd jobs to get through their education. M is a doctor, she works with kids with speech and hearing disabilities. She worked part time at some hospitals to get through her medical college fees. She latter moved to Bahrain, helped her brother complete his engineering and then moved to the US to study further. 2-3 part time jobs a day with your regular college and studies, could make anybody feel like a victim of bad circumstances. But not M. She just enjoyed everything she did. Because of the fact that she had to do odd part time jobs to keep the money coming in, she never stopped enjoying life. She would go for odd concerts, plays, movies, anything that caught her fancy. I & my BF(best friend) met her once at 9pm on my way back home. We were dead tired after just that one job we were doing. She was coming back after her college, from where she had taken the local to an another suburb, tutored some kids, then travelled to the next station, changed into a Saree at about 7 and helped around with some product exhibition/roadshow. She had so much to tell us. All I & the BF had to say was "bl**dy code wasn't working". After alighting from the train at 9:30pm we would then walk to the nearest coffee shop and yap another 30 mins over espresso. Gossip, bitch and laugh. Her enthusiasm was just contagious. Inspite of the baggages life gave her, she was totally at peace with it. Absolutely no victim hood stuff. I haven't spoken to her in atleast 7-8 years but She is a constant reminder of how one can make lemonade when life throws lemons at you. She totally rocks.

J taught me C, a computer language. Absolutely brilliant and very lively. Infact his enthusiasm use to tire us out. He lost his father when he was very young. He studied in a vernacular medium school. His mom was a teacher in his school. When he got admission into his engineering college, he did not know how he would pay the fees since he had just enough money for a year's fee accumulated by taking tutions and some odd jobs at TOI(I think). He did 4 years of engineering in double the time by taking breaks after each year to accumulate money for the next years fees. Job at the computer institute where I met him was one such odd jobs. He refused a couple of high paying offers to only pick stuff(VLSI) he wanted to work on. He appeared weird to us then when we were all just doing our graduation and trying to get a hold of what we want. What we wanted was simple anyway - a job that pays. He moved a couple of companies and then moved to the US. Today has a couple of patents to his credit on Chip design or something like that(I mean some totally intelligent stuff). I had lost a year in college and was totally depressed. My parents weren't talking to me. He kept telling to just utilize the time to do something. How does it matter 10 years down the line how many years did I loose. He totally inspired.

Lessons I have learnt long long back, thanks to these people, it doesn't pay to playing the victim. Rise above it. You have one life. Love it and live it. No self-pity please.

2 comments:

Monika said...

wow people like this leave u inspired

BTW saying kutte kamine comes naturally by being a punjabi lol i do it too

Rebus said...

They inspire us, while life inspires them.