Life and Some more

The highlight of the evening was an interactive session of questions and answers with Rev. Dada, involving various facts of peace. Some of the questions and answers were – Q1: What is the price for attaining peace of mind? A: one should rejoice in the Will of God, for His will is the best, whether in pain or pleasure. With this attitude, one will be filled with peace. Sadhu Vaswani’s wise words were God upsets our plans, to set up His own. But his plans are perfect. Q2: Why is that earlier generations seemed to have lived in greater peace? A: This is so because they lived in the love and fear of God. Nowadays, there is no belief in God. We must bring God back into our lives. Q3: Are the pursuit of wealth, power and position compatible with peace? A: Keep in mind that wealth, power and position will be earned only according to the power of our Karma. Then one will always be at peace. There is irritation and frustration only because we do not understand the law of Karma. Q4: Was there a time when you experienced disturbance? A: There was a time when the slightest thing would make me upset and angry. But through God’s grace that stage has been cleansed out. We should pray to Him and beg for his Grace. We have thrown God out of our homes, schools and colleges. The vacuum thus created is filled by the devil. Q5: The Vedas mention the mantra, ‘Om Shanti, Shanti, Shanti. What significance does it have? A: The following is my interpretation – According to the scriptures, three important elements make up man – i. Body and senses ii. Mind iii. Speech which expresses our thoughts. Hence, Shanti being repeated thrice is once each for the above three. Peace in every aspect that makes up man. Q6: How to respond and not react? A: Vanquish the ego. Then there will be no reacting. The hurt and the pain belong to the ego. Till then there will be no peace. Q7: I am in a position of authority. If a subordinate is rude or misbehaves, what should I do? A: Do your duty. You may use some firm or even harsh words to correct the person. But your anger should emanate only from your lips, not from your heart. Q8: How can children be made to feel more peaceful? A: This great responsibility lies with the mother. She should accept the Will of God peacefully when the child is in the womb. Then those vibrations of peace will pass on automatically to the c

The inspiring story of how a single mother made it to the Harvard by Lajwanti Dsouza

This student bagged half a million US dollars in scholarships and educated herself after being left on the road with a baby to look after. Read on to find out how she did it.
For the United States, Lalita Booth is the 'homeless to Harvard' wonder. The face of hope, a much refined version of the staid rags-to-riches story -- only this time the riches is not in dollars but in educational degrees.

For us here, she makes sense because till a few years ago, she was a teenage-mother, living off scraps and out of a car. Today, she is pursuing a degree in Business Administration and Public Policy at the Harvard University. Besides, she is also the author of the book Financial Education for Lower-Income Audiences: A guide to Programme Design, Implementation and Evaluation which is found in the libraries of various US colleges and b-schools.

Her story is stirring not because she is just a cliche -- having fought all odds and emerged supreme -- but because she decided to take the more thorny route to recovery -- education.

At 17 and barely school-educated, with a baby in hand, no place to call home and no family to use as crutch, Lalita decided that the best way to beat life's miseries was to educate herself.

"I wanted my son to be proud of me and I thought no better way than to study and get myself some real degrees. Harvard was just an illusion when I stayed on the streets and went to sleep hungry. Today, I am right there," said Lalita Booth while speaking from the US.

Lalita's story makes good sense because she is also probably one of the few who has been awarded some 20 scholarships in the last five years -- worth a whopping half a million US dollars.
That her life was a mess, Lalita realised when young in Ashville N.C, her hometown.

The only child of her parents, the memories most vivid in her mind are of her parents fighting and being thrown out of homes.

With no inspiration to look up to, Lalita went the 'wild way.'

On turning 16, she legally separated from her parents. "I did that because I thought that would be the end of all my problems. I wanted to live my life my way --there was nothing much with my parents anyway," she said.

But actually, life turned only shoddier. At 17, she got married and at 18, became a mother. And her husband divorced her soon after and left to join the army.

Lalita had just nowhere to go -- her only possession was her wailing child. For a while, she just managed to live -- on scraps and whatever else she could manage. Some months later, Lalita fell in love with another man, and the three moved to Colorado. But life was still exacting and the three had to live on government assistance.

"Both of us did some low-wage jobs to keep it going but it was really tough," recalls Lalita.

And it was an episode one evening, during that phase of her life, that changed everything for Lalita.

"My son was two and I was scared of touching his diaper fearing it would be wet since I had no money for diapers. Then he asked for food and there was nothing at home. I made him sleep hungry. While he slept, I remained wide awake. I felt horrible that I brought into this world a son who I could not even feed. I had to get my life back for my son."

That evening changed Lalita's standpoint forever. Instead of simply crying over how 'cruel life was' Lalita decided to do something about it.

"I sent my son to live with my boyfriend's parents in North Carolina and within minutes of dropping him there I picked up the phone book and searched for financial planners," said Lalita.

"Whoever I called, I told them that I had no money and I needed free advice on how to earn some money to be able to get my son back and get-off government assistance. One financial planner actually helped me out. Since we were still under government assistance, I managed to keep some money aside and enrolled in a course to become a tax agent. The entrance exam is supposed to be real tough but I got through," Lalita informed.
First job
Within months, she got herself a job which gave her $32,000 per annum with the US Treasury Department. Lalita got her son back but around the same time she and her boyfriend also separated. She was back to being alone with her son, only this time, she had a little bit of money and a longing to 'educate' herself.

"I moved to Florida and enrolled in Trinity Community College since it was the cheapest college. I took a job in the grocery store in the day and went to college later. My son's education was also an emerging need then and since he is autistic I knew I had to work double hard," says Lalita.

Studying through the nights, Lalita managed a straight A grade in all the subjects and bagged the Jack Kent Cooke scholarship worth $30,000. This money helped Lalita enrol at the University of Central Florida (UCF).

There too, Lalita performed extraordinarily during the four-years. Finally she graduated in 2009 and was the College of Business Administration's Top Honour Graduate with dual degrees in Finance and Accounting.

There, she was also awarded the Order of Pegasus (highest honour at UCF) and the UCF's Alumni Association's Distinguished Student Award and became UCF's first Truman Scholar.
Days had begun to look brighter for Lalita. She had reached her mid-20s -- and what the waves of education could do to a person, was staring back at her.

"My interest was in managing finances, having learnt the hard way and I always felt that if poor people knew how to handle their money, they would be better off than where they are," Lalita told..

During college, Lalita started a non-profit organisation called Lighthouse for Dreams. The organisation which is growing in numbers even today teaches financial literacy to high schools students. Lalita says it is important that students know the clout that money holds in the world.

Life had begun to settle for Lalita who by then had an irrepressible desire to keep studying. There was no way she was going to stop -- Harvard seemed like a logical next step but an almost impossible one.

She pursued and before she knew it, was strolling along the hallowed corridors of the graduate school in Harvard, pursuing a dual degree in Public Policy and Master of Business Administration.
The Harvard experience
"The best ever. I can't tell you how good the case study method is. I can still remember lectures from a year ago as if they happened yesterday. Lecture-based teaching can be awfully boring. Case-studies bring life to everything. I look forward to lectures only because of case-studies," answers Lalita.

About extra-curricular activities, Lalita says: "Oh, there are plenty here but I don't take part in many. I have a son to go to at the end of the day. My class mates go abroad for internships but I don't because of my son."

Lalita is 30 today while her classmates are about 25-28. No one makes her feel old and they better not because what she has gained in the last decade by way of education and scholarships, none of her classmates have come anywhere close.

She enjoys every bit of classroom life, a privilege she missed while growing up.

Today, she has almost achieved what she set as a goal 12 years ago. Her son who is 12 happily announces to everyone that his mother is at Harvard. "He is truly proud of me and I feel fulfilled today,"Lalita said.
Her son, Kieren, is also heard discussing his mother's accolades in school. Be it her Harry Truman Foundation Fellowship or the Dean's Gold Medallion for Civil Service or better still the College of Business Founder's Day Award.
Forward, Lalita wants to write some more books for the helpless and poor besides continuing work with her NGO. She has become a bit of a celebrity already with newspapers and television channels keeping an account of her every new degree.

So what is the job that Lalita is looking forward to after graduation?

"I hope the Department of Treasury's Office of Financial Education create a special post for me. I would like to work there. Just earning money is not the end of everything, how to spend and use it is very important," the 30 year-old warns.

Till then Lalita, who is proud to have an Indian name (given by an Indian friend of her parents) will just continue to mount up her degrees. When asked about her success, Lalita always says: "In this world, you either have an excuse or a story. I preferred to have a story."

The fascinating story of a courier company run by deaf people!

Two years ago Dhruv Lakra started out Mirakle Couriers that is almost exclusively run by people with hearing disabilities. This is the success story of the 32-year-old entrepreneur and his company.

A few days before the country celebrated Eid, Mumbai-based entrepreneur Dhruv Lakra found himself with a rather unique problem on his hands. A Muslim gentleman who'd heard of his courier service wanted them to deliver over 3,000 Eid cards across the city.

Lakra and his team of over 50-odd people were far from ready for this. It was a challenge that few courier companies of that size could've been able to meet. Delivering so many shipments in less than two days was out of the question.

With Mirakle the challenge gets more complex -- all its delivery boys and each of its back office staff is deaf.

Sitting across the table from me, Dhruv Lakra speaks softly and in short sentences. He doesn't like to deviate from the question he's asked and seems like a man of few words.

For now though, Lakra is getting a little fidgety. He's promised me this meeting but his heart and mind are back at the office where everyone is trying to sort out the 3,000 cards that need to be delivered ASAP.

It's a little more complicated as one of the two days they have to deliver is a Sunday, the one day that the staff looks forward to. Lakra knows it will be a tough job trying to explain them the importance of making this work.

So when he returns to the office about 29 minutes later, he will have rolled up his sleeves and along with his staff would be sorting out the cards.

Surely, money is a factor why everyone is working at Mirakle Couriers.

Yet somewhere I'd like to think it isn't so much for the cash that Lakra and his men would be delivering the huge consignment that's just landed on their hands.

For the people at Mirakle it is an occasion they must rise to.

Over two years they've worked hard to build a reputation of being professional and efficient. Certainly, a measly order of 3,000 cards isn't going to ruin that.
The story of Mirakle Couriers isn't just inspiring but also fascinating -- how the seeds of a simple idea have borne fruits.

Today the company boasts of some prominent corporate houses -- including Mahindra and Mahindra, Godrej, Aditya Birla Group, Vodafone, Infomedia18 JSW, The Business India group and Tehelka among others -- as clients. But while it looks all hunky-dory from the outside it has taken two long years of hard work, patience and persistence to make it happen.

It all began in a local bus a few years ago when Lakra, having returned with an MBA from Oxford and still unsure about his future plans, happened to find a seat next to a young boy.

Much later into the journey, Lakra discovered the boy couldn't hear. They 'spoke' using a piece of paper and a pen exchanging notes. The boy, Lakra recollects, was unemployed.

While this got the then 20-something Lakra thinking about job prospects for the deaf it also struck him that the deaf are perhaps the most invisible among the differently abled people.

In a separate instance when he took a courier delivery without exchanging a single word with the delivery boy Dhruv Lakra hit upon the idea.

"Most people don't talk to courier boys. All we do is take the packet and sign the sheet," he points out adding that not being able to communicate isn't always an impediment in a courier boy's job.

If at all, this has worked to their advantage. While making a pitch to a prospective client, the folks at Mirakle use the social card.

"We tell them if you cannot employ a disabled person, outsource one of your functions to us because we employ disabled people," Lakra says.

Sometimes the pitch works; at other times it doesn't.

Even if they do sell them the idea, there are some who have their apprehensions.

"There's the concern of safety and delivery of the shipments. Some of our clients worry about their shipments getting lost. Convincing them sometimes is difficult."

That's when the big corporate houses Mirakle works with come handy. "It helps to work with big names. When people realise that we work with Mahindra and Godrej, it adds to our credibility. (Also) we're not an NGO. We are offering them a service."
Like most social entrepreneurs, Dhruv Lakra is quick to point to me that his organisation isn't an NGO and is run by the rules of business like any other.

When I ask him if he is disdainful towards NGOs he is quick to point out that he was part of one before starting out Mirakle.

"I think for our kind of business, a for-profit model works better. The thing is disability is closely linked with charity and we need to get that notion out. People also don't always take NGOs seriously and since we are a client service division it helps to be a privately run company than an NGO. Moreover as an NGO you cannot become a vendor."

It has been a difficult ride for Lakra but one that he's enjoyed nonetheless.

When he started out in 2009 with one delivery boy, he worked out of a friend's house and delivered letters himself. Then as business grew thanks to the generosity of Anu Aga of Thermax he managed to get a working space enough for six to seven people.

Today Lakra doesn't necessarily go out to deliver letters and rather focuses on managing his team.

In an interview to Rashmi Bansal in her book I have a Dream, Lakra mentions that to be able to enter the world of the deaf isn't easy.

So, over the years he's even learnt to speak sign language, which helps him bond with them better.

"I'm about 80 per cent fluent," he says.

It also helps him communicate with new recruits, most of who come from extremely poor background, have little or no education and are very, very low on self confidence.

"I knew what I was getting into was difficult but you cannot imagine their mental map," he says, his voice betraying signs of exasperation.

"The people who come to me are in their early 20s; they can't hear; some of them are barely fourth grade dropouts and have never once held a proper job. It's very difficult (to reach out to them)."

While the boys do the delivery, the back end operations are handled by the women, all of them in their 20s.

Managing an assorted team of this kind has its challenges. Lakra tells me they meet every once a week to discuss what problems the team faces and they try to overcome it. At the same time they also make sure they don't have such meetings too often.

"Initially there was a lot of handholding but now we're learning to let go because we realise they tend to get over-dependant on us. Earlier if a delivery boy said he couldn't go to an area because he wasn't familiar with it, we'd make an exception. Today we don't. At some level we've come to realise that it is after all their life and they can choose to make a difference," Lakra says.

Dhruv Lakra had a choice too. He could've been an investment banker, could've not returned from the UK after his education and could've gone for the conventional route.

Having finished his schooling in Jammu, Lakra came to Mumbai because his parents wanted him to experience the big city life. Here, he spent his college years and soon after, like most of his classmates, joined a private financial services firm.

Two years into his job, Lakra realised he wasn't cut out for it. The job went out of the window and the young fellow decided he wanted to contribute to a social cause.

"I joined Dasra (an NGO) and soon after I joined them I was sent out to Nagapattinam and Cuddalore (in Tamil Nadu). I spent almost four months working in the tsunami-affected villages," he recollects.

After working for over two years with Dasra, Lakra bagged a full scholarship to Oxford for an MBA degree in social entrepreneurship.

On returning to India, Lakra was certain he wanted to start out something on his own but had no clue till the incident in the bus happened.

In his blog, Lakra recollects the story and remembers how difficult life was for the deaf and how 'something as straightforward as a bus became a struggle'.

He writes, "It is an invisible disability. You cannot know when someone near you is deaf as there are no obvious physical attributes, and so it's totally ignored.

It is also a silent (voiceless) disability. There is very little public sympathy for the deaf, and by connection, a severe lack of government support for them in India.

Particularly when it comes to employment there are no opportunities because no one has the patience or the foresight to learn deaf language and culture. This is how Mirakle Couriers was born."

While the initial support of friends and family did help him stay afloat, it was the prestigious Echoing Green fellowship in 2009 that really gave Mirakle the thrust it always needed.

The fellowship amount of about $60,000 aims to 'accelerate social change' by investing in and supporting 'outstanding emerging social entrepreneurs to launch new organisations that deliver bold, high-impact solutions'.

Over two years, the fellowship amount that is released in instalments has largely helped Mirakle grow.

Today the company has two offices -- one in South Mumbai and the other in the western suburb of Andheri and is a thriving business.

Dhruv Lakra's family that has gone through a seesaw of emotions wondering where their son would land up is now not just satisfied but also quite proud of what he does.

Mirakle Couriers has since won the Hellen Keller award for being the 'Role model supporter of increased employment opportunities for disabled people' and won the 2010 National Award for the Empowerment of People With Disabilities.

Yet sitting across the table from me, three days before Eid, Dhruv Lakra is a restless man. There's an urgent delivery of over 3,000 invitation cards that needs to be completed over the weekend.

Exactly 29 minutes into the conversation, Dhruv Lakra excuses himself and leaves. He returns to his office and joins his army of silent women and men as they work through the latest challenge thrown at them.

The Real Superman

My mom only had one eye. I hated her… She was such an embarrassment. She cooked for students and teachers to support the family.

There was this one day during elementary school where my mom came to say hello to me. I was so embarrassed.

How could she do this to me? I ignored her, threw her a hateful look and ran out. The next day at school one of my classmates said, ‘EEEE, your mom only has one eye!’

I wanted to bury myself. I also wanted my mom to just disappear. I confronted her that day and said, ‘ If you’re only gonna make me a laughing stock, why don’t you just die?’

My mom did not respond… I didn’t even stop to think for a second about what I had said, because I was full of anger. I was oblivious to her feelings.

I wanted out of that house, and have nothing to do with her. So I studied real hard, got a chance to go abroad to study.

Then, I got married. I bought a house of my own. I had kids of my own. I was happy with my life, my kids and the comforts. Then one day, my Mother came to visit me. She hadn’t seen me in years and she didn’t even meet her grandchildren.

When she stood by the door, my children laughed at her, and I yelled at her for coming over uninvited. I screamed at her, ‘How dare you come to my house and scare my children!’ GET OUT OF HERE! NOW!!!’

And to this, my mother quietly answered, ‘Oh, I’m so sorry. I may have gotten the wrong address,’ and she disappeared out of sight.

One day, a letter regarding a school reunion came to my house. So I lied to my wife that I was going on a business trip. After the reunion, I went to the old shack just out of curiosity.

My neighbors said that she died. I did not shed a single tear. They handed me a letter that she had wanted me to have.

‘My dearest son,

I think of you all the time. I’m sorry that I came to your house and scared your children.

I was so glad when I heard you were coming for the reunion. But I may not be able to even get out of bed to see you. I’m sorry that I was a constant embarrassment to you when you were growing up.

You see……..when you were very little, you got into an accident, and lost your eye. As a mother, I couldn’t stand watching you having to grow up with one eye. So I gave you mine.

I was so proud of my son who was seeing a whole new world for me, in my place, with that eye.

With all my love to you,

Your Mother.

Life is about you

BE IMPECCABLE WITH YOUR WORD Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love.
You can't start the next chapter of your life if you keep re-reading your last one
DON'T MAKE ASSUMPTIONS Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstanding, sadness, and drama. With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life.
DON'T TAKE ANYTHING PERSONALLY Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won't be the victim of needless suffering.
ALWAYS DO YOUR BEST Your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick. Under any circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgement, self-abuse, and regret.