Never Failed Enough

“Hey! When are you reaching? Everyone who has been selected for the core committee has been called for a meeting immediately”

“Oh? I did not receive any call” I say.

Awkward silence. “All the best!” And I hang up.

Contrary to what most people think, the disappointment of not making it to something you really hoped and wished for, stems from the lack of a backup plan. I was no different. Not making it to the committee I really worked hard for, left me clueless of what to do for the whole year! That is when it struck me. Failure is not about not making it to the place you really wanted to. It’s about not knowing what to do, when you don’t.

I get into a frenzy mode when I don’t have work to do at hand, and when I realized I wouldn’t have a pre-planned engagement for the whole of next year, I was hysterical! Using the most popular mode of de-stress, I was scrolling through my Facebook newsfeed when I came across this article from the Hindu about Harvard US-India Initiative. Applying with as good an application as I could, getting into HUII taught me way more than what I had expected, way faster and in a manner more interesting than I expected.

Colleagues at HUII immediately recommended to me the Harvard Project for Asian and International Relations 2015 – a biannual conference held at Harvard University every February and nursing the passion to reach my ultimate goal as fast as possible, I never realized how quickly I was in a Harvard dorm room. My panel was Corporate Leadership and it included discussions on behavior that would be expected of us, young leaders, when we hold responsible positions in the near future and how do we groom ourselves, keeping a wide perspective and targeting inclusive leadership. Meeting people from countries you have probably never even heard of (blame my weak Geography!) and understanding how it is to grow up in different parts of the country, I somewhere fell in love with the way Indian kids are brought up. That is when I decided I would pursue my Post graduation from India itself! The conference involved 200 delegates from over 30 countries across the world with over 70 speakers, each one at the pinnacle in their own sphere. The organizing committee consisted of Harvard students and thanks to HUII, I stayed with an Indian student at Harvard. The greatest pop on what I was doing with my life came to me on the 2^nd morning at Harvard, when my host, a girl from Jaipur, woke up when her phone rang. She picked it up and said “Good morning Amartya! When do you want me to be at the office today?” Yes, she worked part time, managing her final year at Harvard in Applied Mathematics and Economics. And oh, in case you missed it, the call was from her immediate boss – Amartya Sen. THAT is when I realized how trivial things here meant so much to us and how we are blissfully unaware of the real BIG things!

The best experiences, moments and learning came from people who did not realize that they are teaching me something in the course of the conversation. For instance, most of us know that apart from India, pretty much everywhere students support their own selves once in college and still end up doing than an average Indian undergrad. But the more important learning for me was realizing why does this happen. There are a plenty of reasons, the most important ones being – they NEVER want to rise up pulling someone else down, their humor is NEVER sourced from mocking someone else, they read, read and read everything and anything and the most important one (I know I am repeating myself) is that if they have a difference of opinion with you, they would rather keep shut. That implies, conversations are either positive or no conversations at all, and that is where they save their time and energy.

Writing this article probably took me a week to think and minutes to write because I can never express what these interactions have given to me.

The journey that began from a desperation to keep myself busy with a 2 day conference in Delhi in January 2015, will probably terminate with the World Business Dialogue – World’s largest Student run Conference in Cologne, this March, or might never terminate. This is an addiction to me. The high of meeting new people, with different languages and perspectives, getting a 3^rd person view of what you have been doing with your life all along and knowing what you could do. At the end if there is one learning out of all the travel and adventure I have had in these, it must be – You have never learnt enough, never travelled enough, never met enough people and definitely never failed enough!