This is a story across 20 years, that I still can’t believe.
27th August 2002 – I took my first ever flight in my life.
It was for the USA.
Papa had to take a Rs. 55,000 loan to pay for the one-way ticket.
I still remember the scene at the Delhi airport.
My entire family had come to see me off.
Ruchi had come too.
Everyone was crying.
I was crying too.
But I was also excited.
This is what I had always dreamt of.
To go to the US for a fine education, become a space scientist, join NASA, land on Mars.
And that dream was finally coming true.
27th August 2022 – exactly 20 years to the day I left for Michigan State, the university confirmed me as a speaker for their alumni speaker series.
I spoke at the university this April.
Shared my journey with the current students.
19 years back, when I dropped out and came back to India, if someone had come up to me and said:
“Hey – I am from the future. And I have some exciting news for you.
In about 19 years, you will have more than 8M+ people following you on something really cool called social media.
You would have written two best selling books.
You will be invited by top companies to address their employees and motivate them.
Forget all of that – this very university that you are dropping out from, will call you back to address their students.”
I would have told the person to get a CT Scan :))
But here I am.
Living this life.
Not because I am the smartest person I know or the most hard working person I know.
I am living this life because I did not give up on myself.
A lot of you would be going through something similar in your lives.
A new company, a new city, a new career, a new relationship, or a new experience.
And it may not always turn out to be what you wanted it to be.
But that’s not the end.
There is never any end, until the day we all die.
Up until that day, you have yourself.
And I wish for you to find that yourself, one day :)