MY VALUES
I needed a job. I went from interview to interview. Each time I returned without an offer. After a while, the disappointment was no longer only about finding work. I had begun to question myself.
One day, I travelled alone to Velankanni and spent a few hours there. I did not return with an answer. I still needed a job, and nothing outside had changed. But something within me had become calm.
REALIZATION
I was a young mechanical engineer when a relative wanted to develop a bread-kneading machine. We went together to different bakeries. We stood beside the machines, watched them working, and tried to understand how the kneading was actually happening.
Then we began building our own. We replaced the belt-driven mechanism with a gear-driven one. The machine became more efficient, but it also had problems.
Years later, I heard about the machine again. It was still being used. The people using it had found the problems, made changes, replaced what needed replacing, and kept it working. Nearly twenty years after we built it, the machine was still in use. What began with observing how others worked had become something we created, others changed, and continued to use.
INNOVATION
I was a child when I became seriously ill. My aunt was about twelve years old then. I knew nothing about what happened at the time.
Only years later did I come to know that, while I was ill, she had prayed to God: “Let him live. Take my life instead.” She was twelve. I was too young then even to know that she had made that prayer.
As I grew older, I understood more of what had been present in that moment: her concern for me was so real that, in her child’s mind, my life mattered more than her own. That experience has remained part of how I understand relationships. When concern for another person is real, the relationship changes.
CONTRIBUTION
Realization. Innovation. Contribution.
Impact lives positively through my actions.