The coolest things in life are things that you have not done before. - Afrojack
Good Morning toastmasters. I am Kavitha. I was born and bought up in Chennai – Saidapet to be specific. Both my parents were government employees. My father was working in MMDA and mother in PF. It was a nice beginning. But something tragic happened all of a sudden. When I was 3 years old, my father passed away. I still remember what happened on that day. There were several people around calling to me and trying to hide the truth from me. I simply told them, “You know what...? My father is dead” putting them into surprise. But at that time I did not know that I will not be able to see him anymore. And that was the end of my tragedy.
From then on my beautiful childhood days started in Saidapet in my grandfather’s house. I studied in Alpha school which is the next building. I have a brother who is 3 years elder to me. We used to play and watch a lot of cricket during our childhood days. I was always on the batting end and he was always on the bowling end. He was a cricket champion in school but he was not able to get me out because I was the umpire of my own game. My brother would not mind because he knew that I would not play at all if he insisted me to bowl. Now he is in France. Whenever he came here for a vacation it would be funny to see my daughter on the batting end and his daughter on the bowling end all the time. History indeed repeats!!
I completed my schooling and then my college and I got placed in the very first company. I still remember my first interview. I was so tensed to an extent that, the interviewer offered me a glass of water and asked me to relax before answering his questions. Finally, I was one among the three people who got selected. When I saw the offer letter it said the retirement age is 58. I really thought that I was going to work in Wipro and get retired. I have worked for 3 different companies in 7 years so far J. Isn’t it funny how we think and how it actually turns out to be?
When I was 25 my mom started looking for an alliance. Whenever the boy was from Ambatore or Tambaram she would say, it is far away from Saidapet, let us see someone from Ashoknagar or West mambalam. You know what? I ended up marrying a person all the way from Salem who is our fellow toast master here. The first time when I visited his place I expected a lot of greenery and paddy fields and motor pumps. I grew up watching lots of Bharathiraja’s movies J. It was disappointing to see the same traffic, houses and buildings there. There was not a single paddy field. But something interesting waiting for me there was his good collection of books. When he first asked me what books do you read, I proudly said, “I read Sydney Sheldon, Jeffrey Archer, R.K. Narayan, Chetan Bhagat!! He asked me one question that transformed my reading habits. He asked me, “Do you still read story books?”
I became a fan of Robin Sharma later on. He suggests lot of things, including waking up early, eating healthy, spending time with children, learning new things etc. I am religiously following the “learning new things” part of it. Working very hard to bring about “Waking up early” part. I see to that I learn a new skill every 6 months. Whenever I learn a new skill I would feel like a new window opening from within. That is how I learnt knitting, crocheting, composting, gardening, baking, playing the veena, learning French etc. For most of the skills, “Youtube” was my teacher. I am still in the process of learning and love to be a learner always.
Thank you!
