My Memoirs - Volume 9 - My Resolve

"He won't live for more than 6 months"

The world came crashing for my mother when she was told that I only had a few months to live. I was her hope, her happiness, her purpose of life. In my mothers case, I was her life! It was all crushed by an insensitive matter of fact comment by a learned and competent Army doctor. There was no explanation of the illness and possible treatment options. It brought intense pain in my parents life. Life got sucked out of my mother's body while my father processed the situation at hand. He put up a brave front but his eyes often failed his façade and mirrored the worry, gloom and pain he was hiding in his heart. He was a vulnerable man during those days. Appearing to be strong from the outside but his pain strongly visible in his loving touch on my forehead, in his non stop pacing around the house, in his visits to every place of worship in and around the cantonment.

I was diagnosed and treated for typhoid while I was suffering from Tuberculosis. No one diagnosed my real illness and the disease grew and started eating me up. My body weight kept dropping till I was a skeleton. An almost 6 feet boy with a body weight of 28 kg was a sorry sight and reminder of what was to come soon for the parents struggling to see their son survive each day. But the resolve of my amazing parents was such that they refused to give up. No naysayer could take away their conviction in my long life and in my future on earth. They had believed all their life that efforts always lead to outcomes! They fought it out and they got me back from the dead. The lengths to which they went to revive me and get me a treatment for my illness can fill a journal and I will write about it one day. No school or book can teach what my parents taught me through this ordeal. They taught and reinforced in me a resolve that nothing is impossible if we decide and put honest and disciplined efforts. Almost anything can be achieved if we work on it with a dogged determination and a cool head.

“This company doesn’t run on your feelings son”

I was picked up from IIITB by world’s most admired company and sent to upstate New York to work at the finest research institution in the world.  I was a part of a team of scientists who were evaluating a middleware product to integrate the mainframes to a new age “Product data management” application being evaluated by its group company. The consultant who had come to give us the product demo was quite knowledgeable and explained the product very well. But when he tried to demo the product for a very simple scenario, it didn’t work! It was a very basic product feature which should have easily worked but clearly it was not his day and the meeting ended without us seeing any actual product action.When we got in front of the head of our lab he asked us what we thought. The two other old timers told him about the disastrous demo and dismissed the product as not suitable for the highly complicated problem statement at our end. When he looked at me I remember saying "we should consider it and dig deeper as a possible solution to our issue". When he asked me why I thought so, I simply told him “ I have a feeling this could work”.

If looks could kill then that should have been my last day on planet earth. Exasperated at my response he challenged me if I could do better than that. I heard myself accepting the challenge and assured him that I will work with the product company and give him a conclusive proof in 72 hours. When this meeting ended there was a pin drop silence and I could see the pity for me in the eyes of my colleagues. If you could go by their looks, I was on track to make a record for the shortest stint in a century old company.

it was a tough ask and there was no one to guide. I got myself a desktop at the end of a long corridor in a chemical lab and got to work. I spoke to the CEO of the product company and got the consultant, a supremely intelligent fellow by the name of Scott, to work with me over phone. I requested and got access to the mainframe system where our IT vendor deputed multiple full time resources who worked round the clock in shifts. Scott would build up scenarios and I would add my ideas to the scenario and coordinate with multiple people from the IT vendor to create programs and sequencing which would take hours of iterative work to run one demo. Regardless of the efforts we put in, it would fail every time. I didn’t sleep, I stopped eating. The only time I would get up from my seat was to grab a black coffee. It was a race against time and I was fortunate to get few great and motivated people working  with me on the other side of phones in San Francisco, Chicago, Atlanta and New York supporting me in my resolve. After more than 60 hours of relentless non stop work I experienced the sweetest thing in my life when I refreshed the computer screen and a new input labelled "Munish" in the Bill Of Material inserted in the mainframe automatically appeared as an object in the PDM system on my screen. I jumped with joy, I cried and I ran across the company corridor shouting at the top of my voice at 4 in the morning. I had not only saved my job but I had done what I had set out to do. It took time and it took efforts and it took a lot of perseverance and mental strength but it happened. The beauty is that I knew in my mind right from the very beginning that this was going to work. Failure was not an option. Failure can never be an option when we lead our life with a resolve built on values and ethics and an unshakeable belief in ourselves and the people around us.

Both the companies eventually got the order from one of world's largest company and in due course of time became big and got acquired at great valuations. None of them knew that a big part of their success was due to the stubbornness of a young man who refused to give up, took a huge personal risk and went all in on his belief!

"You don't have the option to give up Munish! You will never give up and you will never fail. Nothing is impossible if you set your mind to it. Now get up and get it done."

That's my wife and those are her words whenever she sees a moment of self doubt in me. This amazing woman refuses to give up on me and believes in my abilities more than I do! It's one thing to have a strong resolve but it's another thing to use this resolve when you have an unwilling partner. My resolve is stronger and effective because I have the most beautiful woman backing me one hundred percent on every choice and step that I take. She has always looked at the good parts of my failure and encouraged me to keep moving ahead. She has had to compromise on a lot of comforts but she has stood strong. We all value money so much we don't realise that the real wealth we have in this world is the people we have around us. Those who earn the love and respect of people are eventually the richest and stay happy & content in any situation in life.

I have definitely been lucky in this regard!

"I saw a mountain and used my two arms as wings and started flapping them up and down. Within no time I was flying over the obstacle"

This happened in my dream but I won't be surprised if one day I am able to fly using my arms and hands. The best adventure of life is taking up steep challenges and putting stubborn efforts into making them happen. My parents and now my wife have shown me that we are so capable that we can move a mountain if we really want to. We are all born with the resolve of a tiger.

When we see a seemingly impossible situation, problem, issue, person or a challenge, We should stand firm and challenge it. We should dig in our feet and prepare for a long battle of will and wisdom. The tiger in us should come out and patiently circle around the issue for a solution, weakness or an opening. We can all become tigers and bring down preys many times our size if we work towards it. We can overcome even bigger challenges if we hunt as a pack of tigers rather than do it alone. One should build the people around them and train them all to be tigers. The time and efforts spent in building up the capabilities of the people around you will eventually help you become the tiger who leads a bunch of fierce and motivated pack who are willing to go all the way for their leader.

You just have to awaken the tiger within!