One has to have the fear of failure so much that you get the courage to succeed: SRK

  It might not be polite to call one of India's biggest stars a 'fool' , but like the Shakespearean fool, Shah Rukh sandwiched wisdom into an evening of pure 'dumb' Bollywood stardom - at a management convention in Delhi, between his 'I'm the funniest fun you'll ever have', he delivered a moving and honest piece on success and failure. Here's what he said: 

I am going to say good evening again, because that's how I started the speech. First of all, it's really scary here. Some of the biggest managers of the biggest corporations in the biggest convention for management - AIMA. 

It's very sad that in such an august company of people, big business houses and managers, all you could manage was to get a speaker from Bollywood to speak at the convention. The economy must be really bad. 

Well, who am I to speak about the economic downtrend across the globe etc, or anything, for that matter? Just reading the topics being discussed before I came on stage, I was frightened. And if I'm allowed to say so, shit scared. I couldn't understand a word. Let me tell you one of the discussions they had earlier on in the day - 'Could financialisation of commodities be used to incentivise supply growth without inflating prices?' 

Okay, if you say so. Or no, if you guys are in a bad mood, whatever you say. The other one - 'Managing liquidity supply crunch risk of NPA CSR mandate CEOs COOs CFOs UFOs'... mind-boggling and numbing for a person like me who can just about say, k-k-k-k-corporation management. And the topic that my friend Shiv (D Shivakumar, president, AIMA) told me is, I have to speak about courage, in this scared state and ill-informed mindset. But here I am, and so are all of you wonderful people. I wish you a great convention and a happy economy, and I want to thank my friend Shiv for giving me this opportunity to speak in front of such an extraordinary amazement of grey matter - all of you highly successful, perhaps the most successful people in the world - and he chose me to give you a speech on success. Am I the only one seeing the irony here? Or are you all too busy holding back your laughter on what I'm going to say? 

Apart from my lack of knowledge and fear, the only other thing is that I'm not good at giving discourses on how to succeed. I don't know what I'm going to say to you highly motivated people that you don't already know about life. So I'll bore you with a few details of my life. But let me warn you, this is a recycled speech. It's generic and it's simple. 

Successful people are almost never able to pinpoint what it was that made them so. Take Warren Buffet. Here's a guy who must get asked five times a day how he became the most successful investor of his era. His answers? 'Reinvest your profits, limit what you borrow' - are no different from what any fool could tell you. But he's not being cagey - he simply doesn't know. Success is a wonderful thing, but it tends not to be the sort of experience that we learn from. We enjoy it, perhaps we even deserve it, but we don't acquire anything from it. And maybe that's why, it cannot be passed on either. Being successful does not mean my children will also be so, however much I teach them what all did in my life, and they follow it to the letter. 

Success just happens, really. So, talking about how to become successful is a waste of time. So let me tell you, very honestly, whatever happened to me, happened because I'm really scared of failure. I don't want as much to succeed, as much I don't want to fail. I come from a very normal middle/lower middle-class family, and I saw a lot of failure. My father was a beautiful man, and the most successful failure in the world. My mom also failed to stay with me long enough to see me become a movie star. We were quite poor, actually - at certain junctures of our lives, I had even experienced what we call in Delhi a kudki - how many of you know about it? This is a thing that the government does when you don't pay the rent of your house, and they throw you and your stuff on the roads. 

Let me tell you, poverty is not an ennobling experience at all. Poverty entails fear and stress and sometimes, depression. I've seen my parents go through it many times - it means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. At an early age after my parents died, I equated poverty with failure. I just didn't want to be poor. So when I got a chance to act in films, it wasn't out of any creative desire that I signed my films - it was just purely out of the fear of failure and poverty. Most of them were discards of other actors and the producers could not find anyone else to do them. Deewana, which was my first hit, was actually discarded by an actor called Arman Kohli. Baazigar was rejected by Mr Salman Khan, and Darr was negated by Mr Aamir Khan. I did them all just to make sure I was working. The timing or something was right, and that made it happen that I became a big star. 

I asked Dilip Kumar sa'ab one day - we were watching Devdas together - and I said, 'Sir, yeh joh picture aapne ki hai, itni achhi acting...' I had made my own version of Devdas, and I was sitting next to him, and I said, 'Sir, yeh picture jo aapne ki hai, bahut achhi hai. Kyun ki aapne? Aapko yeh character kyun achha laga?' And he looked at me and he said, 'Pata nahin yaar, bas thoda sa... kya thaa woh... Bimalda ek lakh rupaye de rahe the mujhko...' That was the only reason he did Devdas at that point of time. Of course he's the greatest actor the world will ever see, but at that point of time, that's all he wanted. That sometimes, our success is not the direct result of our actions. It just happens on its own, and we take the credit for it, out of embarrassment sometimes. 

So I believe the true road to success is not the desire for success, but the fear of failure. I tell everyone, if you don't enjoy and be afraid of your failure hard enough, you will never succeed. I'm not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun, but I will insist and hope that all of us will experience it in some measure. The extent of what each one of us perceives as failure must differ, as it should, but I believe that everyone should pass through some stages of failure before they succeed. So how does one fail? 


I'm sorry, this is what I teach my kids, so if it sounds a little novice and silly, please excuse me. First and foremost, it's not the absence of failure that makes you a success, it is your response to failure that actually helps to buffer the reverses you experience. I myself have two responses to failure. First is pragmatism. I believe that if one approach does not work, another one might, as in business, too. The second response is fatalism. I fool myself that it was bound to happen, and that I need to move on, and not get caught up in the oft-repeated question - 'God, why does it happen to me?' It happened, move on. 

Failure also gives me an incentive to greater exertion, harder work, which invariably leads to greater success in most cases. Failure is an amazing teacher. If you don't fail, you will never learn. And if you don't learn, you will never grow. There is a well-known story of a bank president who was asked the secret of his success, and he said, "Right decisions". How do you get to know how to make the right decisions, came the follow-up question. "Experience," was the answer. Well, how do you get experience, asked his interrogator. "Wrong decisions," he replied. 

Sometimes, it has also taught me to stop pretending that I'm someone other than what I'm supposed to be. It gives me a clear-cut direction that 'Hey, maybe I'm not supposed to be doing this. Let me just concentrate on doing and finishing things that really matter to me that really define me, instead of following a particular course that's actually taking me away from what my core liking is'. KKR, my cricket team - and Shiv knows this - is one such example. Till friends like him gave me advice, I was doing everything. Then I got myself a COO, set up a whole new department, and the job I think has been handled much better than what I think I was (doing). And I'm willing to accept that. 

Failure also gets you to find out who your real friends are. The true strength of your relationships only gets tested in the face of strong adversity. I lost a lot of friends post-Ra.One, apart from losing a lot of audience too. And post-Chennai Express, even though I've made no new friends, I have a whole new set of enemies, which is also interesting to know. 

Regular failures have also taught me empathy towards others. Being a star, it is easy for me to be prone to the notion that I'm superior, self-sufficient and fantastic, instead of realising that I was just plain lucky or got some lucky breaks. Overcoming some of my failures has made me discover that I have a strong will, and (am) more disciplined than I suspected. It has helped me have confidence in my ability to survive. So, all in all, I think failure is a good thing. 

I won't bore you with more details of how failure is a good thing because you won't call me back for a talk on success. But I'd like to tell you all that life is not just a checklist of acquisitions, attainments and fulfilments. Your qualifications and CVs don't matter, your jobs don't matter. Instead, life is difficult and complicated and beyond your control, and to know that with humility, respecting your failures will help you survive its vicissitudes. 

There is the greatest practical benefit in making a few failures in life. I say making because I believe failure is not an exterior force. I believe it happens due to our own actions, our own reactions, in such convoluted ways sometimes that we may not understand, but we are the reason for it. So don't be weighed down by it - relish it, cherish it, the experience, and learn from it. By accepting it all and experiencing it will you experience success, not in isolation of life's full offerings. 

Let me conclude by saying that my hope for you is a lifelong love of learning, exciting and inspiring projects, dreams, businesses, profits, power lunches or whatever turns you guys and girls on. But alongside, I wish you a fair number of moderate failures. By experiencing all, I hope that you will experience success. Success is never final, just like failure is never fatal. Courage is ill-defined if you think it means doing something macho, risky or chancy. If that happens at somebody else's cost, it's even less courageous. Courage is doing whatever you are afraid to do - personally scared to do - in whichever capacity you work. There can be no courage unless you are scared. So be scared to feel courage, be fearful. 

I believe one has to have the fear of failure so much that you get the courage to succeed. And that, my friends, is my learned piece of courage in success or what I call the success of failure, and being scared enough to be courageous, to make it so. Or if I were to put it into words that surround me, when I entered here and I was scared of all this corporate jargon that I heard, 'This is my theory of the management of high-rising failure to convert it into success by growth index of 100%, while understanding the indices of fear and not compromising the syntax of our courage globally while keeping a holistic 360 degree view of our domestic market through rigorous system and processes.' 

In simple terms or film language, which is what I do - 'If at first you don't succeed, reload and try again. Shoot fast, shoot first and be ready to take a bullet too. And remember what Don said - "Iss company ke management ke dushman ki sabse badi galti yeh hai, ki woh is company ka dushman hai. Kyunki jab tak dushman apni pehli chaal chalta hai, yeh company apni agli chaal chaal chuki hoti hai."

Source: http://m.economictimes.com/news/news-by-industry/et-cetera/one-has-to-have-the-fear-of-failure-so-much-that-you-get-the-courage-to-succeed-srk/articleshow/msid-23353263,curpg-4.cms

Do you feel the worst happens to you..Check these !

Abraham Lincoln:
1)Lost his Job
2)Got Defeated for legislature
3)Started business and Failed
4)Wife Died of Fatal Di eases
5)Got Nervous Breakdown
6)Contested for speaker in Legislature and lost
7)Tried for nomination of elections and lost
8)Applied for the post of land officer and didnt get it
9)Contested for senate and lost
10)contested for vice president and lost
11)Again Contested for senate and lost

AND TWO YEARS LATER............ WAS ELECTED

AS 16th PRESIDENT OF AMERICA ABRAHAM LINCOLN

If you think you can, YES !!! You are Right !!

It's a true fact that it's not where you are born or whom you are born to that determines how your life will be. Its what you do with your life that determines how your life will be. Not long ago, Forbes Magazine publishes a special report on The World's Billionaires. It's a snap shot of who's who of the super rich.


The IKEA Story

IKEA Founder Ingvar Kamprad made headlines in early 2004 when Swedish business magazine Veckans Affarer reported that he had surpassed Bill Gates as the world's wealthiest person. While IKEA's unconventional ownership structure makes this the matter of some debate, there is no doubt that IKEA is still one of the largest, most successful privately held companies in the world, with over 200 stores in 31 countries, employing over 75,000 people and generating over 12 billion in sales annually.

Kamprad was born in the South of Sweden in 1926 and brought up on a farm called Elmtaryd, near the small village of Agunnaryd. Kamprad began to develop a business as a young boy, selling matches to neighbors from his bicycle. He found that he could buy matches in bulk very cheaply from Stockholm, sell them individually at a low price and still make a good profit. From matches, he expanded to selling fish, Christmas tree decorations, seeds and later ball-point pens and pencils. When Kamprad was 17, his father gave him a reward for succeeding in his studies. He used this money to establish what has grown into IKEA.

The name IKEA was formed from Kamprad's initials (I.K.) plus the first letters of Elmtaryd and Agunnaryd, the farm and village where he grew up. He continued to expand his business to a variety of goods, including wallets, watches, jewelry and stockings. When he outgrew his ability to call on his customers individually, he converted to a sort of makeshift mail order operation, hiring the local milk van to make his deliveries.

Kamprad has a reputation for being, well, "cheap". He takes the subway to work, and when he drives, it's an old Volvo. Rumor is that when he stays in a hotel, if he feels the urge to drink one of those expensive sodas from the wet bar, he replaces it later with one picked up from a nearby convenience store. He also encourages IKEA employees always to write on both sides of a paper.

Forbes magazine estimated his fortune at US$33 billion, making him the 4th richest man in the world.

Source: http://EzineArticles.com/483846

Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Born-Poor,-Drop-Out-and-Got-Rich---The-Billionaires-Story&id=483846

From Homeless to Software Success

Accidental entrepreneur Bob Williamson's personal turnaround led to the creation of his 180-employee, $26 million company

Accidental entrepreneur Bob Williamson, 61, is projecting his company, Horizon Software International, will hit $32 million in revenue this year.

Bob Williamson fled a broken home in Mississippi at age 17 to hitchhike around the country. He landed in Atlanta in 1970 at 24, homeless, broke, and addicted to heroin and methamphetamine. When he got a job there cleaning bricks for $15 a week, no one would have guessed that he would start a $26 million software company someday.
Successful businesses often spring from a combination of hard work and dumb luck, and Williamson credits both. Not long after arriving in Atlanta, he was injured in a car wreck and spent months recovering in the hospital. While there, he read the Bible, converted to Christianity, and decided to straighten up his life. It wasn't easy: He had a criminal record, no college degree, and few job prospects.
"I was either going to commit suicide, which several of my friends had done, or I was going turn my life around," says Williamson, now chairman and chief executive officer of Horizon Software International, a 180-employee maker of software for food service systems used in schools, hospitals, and other institutions.

Promoted Eight Times in Two Years
Williamson eventually landed a job putting labels on paint cans in the basement of the Glidden paint company in Atlanta. He cleaned up the labeling department and helped Glidden move to the company's first computer system. His work ethic, he says, was: "First one there, last to leave." Glidden promoted Williamson eight times in two years.

He went on to work at two other paint companies. By then a paint expert, Williamson started working in his basement to develop a better formula for his hobby: airbrush art. "I borrowed $1,000 on my Visa card and bought a bunch of chemicals and made a bunch of paint," he says. At a trade show, artists flocked to his booth to buy the paint he developed, called Polytranspar. He quit his job and started his own paint company, Master Paint Systems, in 1977.

He spun that into several other businesses: a magazine for artists, how-to books, an art supply manufacturer, and a mail-order business, teaching himself as he went along. As the business grew, so did his need for organizational tools. It was the early 1980s, and he realized he needed systems for his warehouse, inventory control, and supply-chain management. "Back then you couldn't buy software, so I hired a couple of programmers, and we wrote software for all these different companies," Williamson says.

Recovering From Bankruptcy
By 1986, when he was selling 6,000 different art-related items, Williamson prepared to take the company public. But during the audit for his IPO, he discovered an accountant had been embezzling money from the company. "We fought our way through it, and my accountant and my lawyer and everybody told me to just take bankruptcy and forget about it," Williamson says.

But he was convinced he could recover. Williamson urged his creditors not to file lawsuits that would force a liquidation. "Every week I would send them a letter and tell them what was happening, and we rebuilt it up beyond its former stage," he says.
Focused on School Cafeterias

After recovering, he sold off his previous ventures, and in 1992, founded Horizon. The company was built on the back-office software Williamson spent years developing for his own businesses. "We wrote a system for our mail-order business, we wrote software for our manufacturing company, a point-of-sale system for retail," he says. "We weren't selling that to anybody. We had just written in-house for our own use."

The company focused on systems for school cafeterias when Williamson found no one had written back-office software for that market. He was soon selling into other institutions like hospitals, nursing homes, colleges, and military bases. Horizon recently won the contract for the Los Angeles public schools, the nation's second-largest system.

Williamson's son, Michael, who is Horizon's chief operating officer, says his father succeeded by jumping on opportunities that chance presented. "You would never have thought that we would be in food service software when we started Horizon, but the path just kind of led that way and we took advantage of it," he says. "He's always had a great ability to look out into other markets and other products."

The Element of Chance
Williamson, now 61, presides over Horizon's 44,000-square-foot headquarters in Atlanta. The company had $26 million in revenue in 2007, and he's projecting $32 million this year. Still, Williamson says, "I'm the first one there and the last one to leave." And he ascribes his business success to his conversion. "I have always tried to run my business according to the way that God would want me to…I've always tried to be honest and straightforward, and not lie and not cheat, and not try to take an easy way out."

Hard work was certainly part of Williamson's improbable personal turnaround: He recalls years of working 20-hour days and says he still only sleeps four or five hours a night. But chance guided his entrepreneurial success as well: a car accident that jolted him out of a destructive life, a paint recipe that became a hit, and early exposure to the burgeoning software industry.

And in some ways, Williamson's arrival in Atlanta at the nadir of his life set the foundation for his rise. "I'd been through so much in my life, I don't get discouraged," he says. "The trials I've had in business are mild compared to what my life was like."

Source: http://finance.yahoo.com/career-work/article/105069/From-Homeless-to-Software-Success

Stories of Successful People

When Thomas Edison invented the light bulb, he tried over 2000 experiments before he got it to work. A young reporter asked him how it felt to fail so many times. He said, "I never failed once. I invented the light bulb. It just happened to be a 2000-step process."

Wilma Rudolph was the 20th of 22 children. She was born prematurely and her survival was doubtful. When she was 4 years old, she contacted double pneumonia and scarlet fever, which left her with a paralysed left leg. At age 9, she removed the metal leg brace she had been dependent on and began to walk without it. By 13 she had developed a rhythmic walk, which doctors said was a miracle. That same year she decided to become a runner. She entered a race and came in last. For the next few years every race she entered, she came in last. Everyone told her to quit, but she kept on running. One day she actually won a race. And then another. From then on she won every race she entered. Eventually this little girl, who was told she would never walk again, went on to win three Olympic gold medals.

In 1962, four nervous young musicians played their first record audition for the executives of the Decca recording Company. The executives were not impressed. While turning down this group of musicians, one executive said, "We don't like their sound. Groups of guitars are on the way out."
They Created an English rock band and became one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music.: The Beatles

In 1944, Emmeline Snively, director of the Blue Book Modelling Agency, told modelling hopeful Norma Jean Baker, "You'd better learn secretarial work or else get married."
She went on, won 54 World awards, and ranked as the sixth greatest female star : Marilyn Monroe

In 1954, Jimmy Denny, manager of the Grand Ole Opry, Fired a singer after one performance. He told him, "You ain't goin' nowhere....son. You ought to go back to drivin' a truck."
He went on to become the most popular singer in America named Elvis Presley.

When Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone in 1876, it did not ring off the hook with calls from potential backers. After making a demonstration call, President Rutherford Hayes said, "That's an amazing invention, but who would ever want to use one of them?"
Today nearly 6.5 Billion people are using phones across this world !!

In the 1940s, another young inventor named Chester Carlson took his idea to 20 corporations, including some of the biggest in the country. They all turned him down. In 1947 - after seven long years of rejections! - he finally got a tiny company in Rochester, New York, the Haloid company, to purchase the rights to his invention - an electrostatic paper-copying process.
Haloid became Xerox Corporation we know today.

Colonel Sanders
When Colonel Sanders w 65 years old, he received his first social security check of US $99. He was broke. His only asset was a secret chicken recipe. He left his home in Kentucky and traveled to the many states in the US to sell this recipe. He offered his secret chicken recipe to many restaurants for free. All he wanted in return was a small percentage of the sales. However, he was shown the door by many restaurants.
” Get out of here. Who wants a recipe from a white Santa Claus?” the restaurant owners shouted, referring to the dress code Sanders adopted: a white shirt and white trousers.
Over 1,000 restaurants rejected his offer. How many of you would have quit after making one or two unsuccessful sales calls? On his 1,009th sales visit, one restaurant finally accepted his offer. Today, Kentucky Fried Chicken outlets and fatherly Colonel Sanders’ statures are found all over the world. He has changed the way the world ate chicken- finger-lickin’ good!

Fred Smith
When Fred Smith attended Yale University Business School, he wrote a project paper on the concept of overnight package delivery. The professor awarded Smith a “C minus” for it. This was because he reasoned the proposal had little potential as the postal industry was monopolized by the US Mail. Who would want to send a package through another courier when there was the US Mail? Undeterred, Smith put his money where his mouth was and started Federal Express. On the first day of business, his goal was to deliver 167 packages. However, he only delivered 7, 5 of which were packages sent to himself. Today, Federal Express is one of the World’s largest overnight delivery companies.


The Moral of the above Stories:

Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experiences of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired and success achieved. You gain strength, experience and confidence by every experience where you really stop to look fear in the face.... You must do the thing you cannot do. And remember, the finest steel gets sent through the hottest furnace.

A winner is not one who never fails, but one who NEVER QUITS!

Source: http://www.allinspiration.com/Life/Stories/stories_of_successful_people.html
http://www.citehr.com/59666-inspiring-stories-successful-people.html

Rickshaw vendor’s son Govind Jaiswal:One of the IAS toppers

The 2006 competitive examinations for India’s civil services is notable for the number of young people from non privileged backgrounds who feature in the merit list. For the first time, none from India’s elite metros feature in the top ten.

We will bring you some amazing success stories in this special series. Today, meet a rickshaw vendor’s son from Varanasi who is one of the IAS toppers this year.


Tears ran down Govind Jaiswal’s face and refused to stop. Staring him in the face was the only thing he had ever wanted, and now that he had achieved it, he couldn’t even reach out for the keys on his cellphone.

He waited till the tears dried up, till the news sunk in and made that one phone call on which depended the hopes of his entire family.

Govind, 24, the son of an uneducated rickshaw vendor in Varanasi, had grown up with cruel taunts like ‘However much you study, you will still be a rickshawpuller.’ He had studied with cotton stuffed in his ears to drown the noise of printing machines and generators below his window in a poor neighbourhood where small workshops existed cheek by jowl with tiny residential quarters.

He had given Math tuitions to supplement the paltry sum his father could afford to send him each month. His ailing father had sold a small plot of land to give Govind about Rs 40,000 so that he could move to Delhi which would provide him a better place to study.

Throughout his life, he had lived with only one dream — to become an officer of the Indian Administrative Service. For him that was the only way. And when he broke the news to his family, that he was ranked 48 among 474 successful candidates in his first attempt at the exam — it was the turn of his three sisters and father to weep with unbridled joy.

‘Besides the Civil Services, I had no option’

Icould not afford to have any other career goal. My life would have been absolutely futile had I not made it into the civil services,” says Govind, just back from his medicals in New Delhi, mandatory for the IAS.

“You must understand that my circumstances were such that besides the Civil Services, I had no option. I didn’t have much of a chance with lower government jobs because they are mostly fixed, neither could I start a business because I had no money. The only thing I could do was work hard at my studies.”

It was almost impossible for him to study in the one room he shared with his family. To add to his woes was the power cut that extended between 10 and 14 hours every day. The moment the lights went out, he had to shut the window to block out the deafening noise of generators in the many workshops around his home.

So in search for a quiet place to study, he briefly shared a friend’s room at the Banaras Hindu University. Since that did not help him much, he did what many civil services aspirants in northern India do — he moved to New Delhi.

His father sold his last plot of land for his son’s dream

F or his son to make a fresh start in a city Govind had never visited before, Narayan Jaiswal, Govind’s father, sold the only remaining plot of land he had saved after getting his three daughters married.

Working for ten years at the government ration shop, Narayan earned a living by weighing goods at the store. One day when the shop shut down, he bought one rickshaw and hired it out. He added three more and at one time was prosperous enough to own about 36 rickshaws.

That was a period of financial security and Narayan was prudent enough to buy three small plots of land. With three daughters to marry off, he knew he would need it in times to come. But bad times soon befell the family. His wife passed away when Govind was in school. For 10 years there was acute hardship. The rickshaws dwindled.

On his meager earnings, the uneducated rickshaw vendor with a hearing disability continued the education of his children. The girls were married after their graduation — Narayan sold two pieces of land for the weddings, the last plot was sold to achieve his Govinda’s dream.

Narayan gave his son Rs 40,000 to prepare for his Civil Services exam in New Delhi and pursue his childhood dream of becoming an IAS officer. For the next three years, he sent his son between Rs 2,500 and Rs 3,000 every month, sometimes foregoing the expense of treating the septic wound in his foot that continues to nag him till today.

Courier boys found his house with difficulty; now the fruitwallah will tell you where the ‘IAS’ house is’

Outside his narrow lane, opposite the Varanasi City railway station, where Narayan Jaiswal parks his rickshaws and spends most of his waking hours, he still walks barefooted with a bandage, one end hanging loose and scraping the dirty road.

“Beyond this year, my father could not have afforded to send Govind any more money. It was getting very tough for him. Govind was earning Rs 1,500 from tuitions, I don’t know what he would have done if he didn’t make it to the IAS this year. My father could not sleep for 10 days before the results came,” says Govind’s eldest sister Nirmala, whose son is almost the same age as her brother.

Now that he will earn Rs 8,000 as his starting salary during his two-year training period in Mussoorie, Govind says his first priority is getting good treatment for his father’s wound.

“I want to look after him, I don’t know if he will leave Varanasi but I will definitely move him out of this rented room that we have lived for 35 years.”

If his son’s new job dramatically changes things for the better, Narayan Jaiswal is quite unaffected by it. He is surprised by the scores of journalists and well wishers flocking to his house.

Until now, courier delivery boys found his house with great difficulty but now even the fruit cart-wallah, one-and-a-half kilometres away, will tell you where the ‘IAS’ house is.

“I like my work. I haven’t decided about the future — what could be a better place than Kashi? As long as my son looks after me, what else can one want?” he says, visibly uncomfortable with the media spotlight.

‘My character will be put to the test, then I want to see what a real man I am’

Having lived his life in Varanasi, the holy city on the banks of the Ganga, Govind has given his home state Uttar Pradesh as his preferred region of posting. If he doesn’t get UP, he is open to being sent to any state in India.

“Varanasi needs a tight administration. As for me, I want to be a good officer. We are the agents of change and I as an administrator would like to inform common people about their right to know, their right to information. The benefit should finally go to the people.”

His hero is President A P J Abdul Kalam. Govind is reading the Hindi translation of the President’s best-selling book On Wings of Fire and takes out a nicely thumbed copy from a plastic bag.

“After Gandhiji, President Kalam has given us a dream and the power to dream. His dream is of a developed India and he is a symbol of many common people’s dreams.”

In a time when the Indian bureaucracy has its drawbacks like a lack of accountability, corruption and perpetuating a system that was handed down by the British to rule a subordinate population Govind’s thoughts are fired by the idealism of youth. He insists his idealism will not be watered down in future years, that he will not allow himself to be influenced.

“I am a product of my circumstances that has been wrought with hardships. When I go out as an officer my character will be put to the test, and then I want to see what a real man I am.”

Source: http://freshinspirations.wordpress.com/2010/12/08/some-amazing-ias-success-stories/

Inspiring story from waiter to an IAS Officer

If you don't succeed the first time, try, try and try again

K Jayaganesh's story is similar. He failed the civil service examination six times but never lost heart. The seventh time -- his last chance -- he passed with a rank of 156 and has been selected for the Indian Administrative Service.

Jayaganesh's story is inspiring not because he did not lose heart but also because he comes from a very poor background in a village in Tamil Nadu, and though he studied to be an engineer, he worked at odd jobs, even as a waiter for a short while, to realise his dream of becoming an IAS officer.

Childhood in a remote village

I was born and brought up in a small village called Vinavamangalam in Vellore district. My father Krishnan, who had studied up to the tenth standard, worked as a supervisor in a leather factory. My mother was a housewife. I am the eldest in the family and have two sisters and a brother. I studied up to the 8th standard in the village school and completed my schooling in a nearby town.

I was quite good at studies and always stood first. Coming from a poor family, I had only one ambition in life -- to get a job as fast as I could and help my father in running the family. My father got Rs 4,500 as salary and he had to take care of the education of four children and run the family, which you know is very difficult.

So, after my 10th standard, I joined a polytechnic college because I was told I would get a job the moment I passed out from there. When I passed out with 91 per cent, there was a chance for me to get entry to a government engineering college on merit. So I decided to join the Thanthai Periyar Government Engineering College to study mechanical engineering. My father supported my desire to study further.

Even while doing engineering, my ambition was still to get a job. If you look at my background, you will understand why I didn't have any big ambitions. Most of my friends in the village had studied only up to the 10th standard, and many did not even complete school. They worked as auto drivers or coolies or masons. I was the only one among my friends who went to college.

I understood the importance of education because of my parents. My father was the only one in his family to have completed school, so he knew the value of education. My parents saw to it that we children studied well.

In search of a job

Four days after I completed my engineering in 2000, I went to Bangalore in search of a job and I one without much difficulty. My salary was Rs 2,500 at a company that reconditioned tools.

It was in Bangalore that I started thinking about my village and my friends. I wondered sadly why none of them studied and worked in good companies. Because they had no education, they always remained poor. There was not enough money to buy even proper food. There was no opportunity there; the only place they could work was the tannery in the nearby town. If they didn't get work at the tannery, they worked as auto drivers or coolies. In short, there was no one in my village to guide the young generation.

I thought would I be able to help my villagers in any way?

Getting interested in the civil service examination
Till then, I had not even heard of something called the civil services examination. It was only after I went to Bangalore and saw the world that I was exposed to many things. I came to know that a collector in a small place could do a lot. At that moment, I decided that I wanted to be an IAS officer.

I resigned and went home to prepare for the examination. I never thought resigning was risky because I had the confidence and knew I would do well.

My father also supported me wholeheartedly. He had just got a bonus of Rs 6,500 and he gave me that money to buy study material. I sat in my village and studied from the notes I received by post from Chennai.

Failed attempts

In my first two attempts, I could not even clear the preliminary examination. I had no idea how to prepare for the exam, what subjects to opt for and how to study. There was nobody to guide me.

I had taken mechanical engineering as my main subject. That's when I met Uma Surya in Vellore. He was also preparing for the examination. He told me that if I took sociology as an option, it would be easy.

Even with sociology as the main subject, I failed in the third attempt. But I was not disappointed. I knew why I was failing. I didn't have proper guidance. I started reading newspapers only after I started preparing for the examination! So you can imagine from what kind of background I came from.

To Chennai for coaching

When I came to know about the government coaching centre (external link) in Chennai, I wrote the entrance examination and was selected. We were given accommodation and training.

Because I got tips from those who passed out, I passed the preliminary in my fourth attempt. We were given free accommodation and food only till we wrote the main examination. After that, we had to move out. I didn't want to go back to the village but staying in Chennai also was expensive.

I tried to get a job as an engineer but my efforts turned futile. I then decided to look for a part time job so that I would have time to study.

Working as a waiter in Chennai

I got a job as a billing clerk for computer billing in the canteen at Sathyam Cinemas. I also worked as the server during the interval. It never bothered me that I, a mechanical engineer, preparing for the civil services, had to work as a server. I had only one aim -- to stay on in Chennai to pass the examination.

Attending the interview in Delhi

After I got the job at the Sathyam Cinemas, I was called for the interview. As counselling was my hobby, a lot of questions were asked about counselling. I was not very fluent in English but I managed to convey whatever I wanted to. Perhaps I did not articulate well. I failed in the interview.

Preliminary again, the 5th time

Once again, I started from the beginning. Surprisingly, I failed in the preliminary itself. On analysis, I felt I did not concentrate on studies as I was working at Sathyam Cinemas.

I quit the job and joined a private firm to teach sociology to those preparing for the UPSC examinations. While I learnt the other subjects there, I taught sociology. Many friends of mine in Chennai helped me both financially and otherwise while I prepared for the examination.

Sixth attempt

I passed both the preliminary and the main in the sixth attempt but failed at the interview stage.

While preparing for the interview, I had written an examination to be an officer with the Intelligence Bureau and I was selected. I was in a dilemma whether to accept the job. I felt if I joined the IB, once again, my preparation to be an IAS officer would get affected. So, I decided not to join and started preparing for one last time.

Last attempt

I had to give the last preliminary just a few days after the previous interview. I was confused and scared. Finally, I decided to take the last chance and write the examination. Like I had hoped, I passed both the preliminary and the main.

The interview was in April, 2008 at Delhi. I was asked about Tamil Nadu, Kamaraj, Periyar, Tamil as a classical language, the link between politics and Tamil cinema etc. I was upset since I did not wish the interviewers at the start and they did not respond when I said thanks at the end. Both the incidents went on playing in my mind. I just prayed to God and walked back.

The day the results were out

I was extremely tense that day. I would know whether my dreams would be realised or not. I used to tell God, please let me pass if you feel I am worthy of it.

I went to a playground and sat there meditating for a while. Then, I started thinking what I should do if I passed and what I should do if I didn't.

I had only one dream for the last seven years and that was to be an IAS officer.

156th rank

Finally when the results came, I couldn't believe myself. I had secured the 156th rank out of more than 700 selected candidates. It's a top rank and I am sure to get into the IAS.

I felt like I had a won a war that had been going on for many years. I felt free and relieved.

The first thing I did was call my friends in Chennai and then my parents to convey the good news.

Warm welcome in the village

The reception I got in my village was unbelievable. All my friends, and the entire village, were waiting for me when I alighted from the bus. They garlanded me, burst crackers, played music and took me around the village on their shoulders. The entire village came to my house to wish me. That was when I saw unity among my villagers. It was a defining moment for me.

What I want to do

I worked really hard without losing faith in myself to realise my dream. My real work starts now. I want to try hard to eradicate poverty and spread the message of education to all people. Education is the best tool to eradicate poverty.

Source: http://www.investmentforum.in/forum/inspiring-story-from-waiter-to-an-ias-officer-t62.html